Category: review

Asus VivoBook E203N

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In the never-ending saga to find the best in value in technology I pounced on something I could not resist. I have a terrible weakness for cheap laptops. Typically, I purchase a new laptop every other year and my old laptop becomes my dad’s new laptop. Almost every purchase is made during the Boxing Week sale at the end of the year. That is how I have ended up with several years of HP laptops, and a Lenovo all with AMD APUs.

Of course there were some available with Intel CPUs but as an AMD guy I went out of my way to get a laptop with an AMD CPU which was harder than you may imagine.

The last laptop I purchased was a Lenovo that I have been pretty happy with though it came with a defective power supply. Buying a new power supply fixed it and I moved on. What I have really not been liking is the size and weight of the laptop. It’s a full size 15.6” laptop, relatively thin for it’s size but still very heavy.

Something smaller was needed. Much smaller.

Enter the Asus VivoBook E203N. Price point was a major reason for this particular purchase. At $279.99 right now on Amazon I had to pick one up.

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Asus VivoBook E203N

  • CPU
    • Intel Celeron N3350 1.1GHz (Boost to 2.4GHz) TDP 6W
  • Memory
    • 4GB DDR3L 1600MHz
  • Storage
    • 32GB eMMC SSD
    • Included 32GB Micro-SD Card
  • Screen
    • 6” LED Backlit 1366×768 TN Panel
  • Graphics
    • Intel HD Graphics 500
  • Connectivity
    • 11ac Wi-Fi
    • Bluetooth 4.1
  • Battery
    • 38 Wh

So this CPU is very similar to the N3050 we have in our Intel NUC in the studio we use for skype and initially that did concern me but it looks like the extra year and a half being baked the new late 2016 N3350 is a much better performer. I won’t lie though. Watching Youtube and then open a few more tabs of Opera. This is a no go as it pegs the CPU to 100%. This has forced me to find another browser and so I did something I haven’t done in years. Use a Microsoft browser. Briefly, Microsoft Edge doesn’t completely suck. On top of that you can multi-task as the CPU sits around 25 to 40% playing back a 1080p60 video on Youtube.

On the memory front, I have seen cheaper netbooks (as that’s really what this is) running 2GB but I can’t see Windows 10 running on it in any kind of efficient fashion. This VivoBook has 4GB and it appears to be more than enough especially when there isn’t going to be a bunch of multi-tasking going on during use.

Storage is the real issue on this netbook. 32GB is not enough to do major Windows updates. This was a huge complaint and Asus, after their initial launch of the E203N, responded by providing a 32GB micro SD card allowing you to update. This is good because almost as soon as I started the thing up it wanted to update to the latest 1803 Windows version.

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Obviously with this little amount of storage you aren’t going to be lugging around a giant library of Steam games. That said you won’t really be playing much on this laptop. You do get a steady framerate in Minecraft (even though I really don’t play that it’s still worth noting that). Older titles like Half Life and things of that era play well on the laptop. Rocket League at 720p sees pretty poor performance with about an average of about 12 to 15 frames per second.  So playable but not really enjoyable. No matter the case the integrated Intel graphics are not impressive to behold.

As for connectivity this little netbook has a lot. We’ve got two USB 3.1 ports, one USB-C and an HDMI out. For networking we have 802.11ac wireless and Bluetooth 4.1. I had no performance issues streaming from YouTube over the 2.4 and 5GHz bands  of my wifi.

Aesthetically the netbook is really nice. Its blue on all surfaces and the bottom is black.

There are no user accessible parts on this guy which is no real surprise. I am also happy with how sturdy the frame is on this. The is a minute amount of bending when typing on the keyboard and it feels solid overall. The plastic is equivalent to most other laptops in the sub $600 range. It’s also less than an inch thick and just over 11 inches wide.

Speakers are impressive for such a cheap device. Certainly, they feel a bit tinny but nearly so as my cheap Lenovo from a few years back. Besides, who doesn’t have a decent pair of headphones?

The E203N has incredible battery life. This thing can stream YouTube for almost ten hours on a single charge. Not bad at all considering my Lenovo can only make it three hours.

The screen is fine for being a TN panel. It’s not bright enough for outside though so this is a room to room champion.

The BIOS is a treat as well. There really isn’t any reason to go in there on this kind of computer but it’s still a custom ASUS bios with their familiar interface that you can find on their more expensive motherboards and computers. I like to see that as almost any other laptop I have bought in the last ten years has that ancient blue and white text interface.

Overall this is an incredible value for the price. I would like to see Asus ditch the 32GB + 32GB sd card setup for a straight 64GB SSD but at least they do send you a 32GB sd card now. I have been very impressed by this and I am more than happy to bring it in the truck with me now, even if it can’t play DVDs. For a passively cooled netbook I can’t honestly think of anything more I would want.

Meet Zero Point Module.

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Meet my new gaming system, Zero Point Module (ZPM – THAT’s “ZED” PEE EM SILLY AMERICANS). Yes, I am a mad man. Not only did I build a system I certainly did not actually need, I built a, DUN DUN DUN, Intel system!

Go ahead and faint. I’ll wait.

Welcome back. The theory was always to have two systems but my other system, CAPSUPREME was re-purposed into our studio editing system and Farpoint was re-purposed into a media centre for my room. So I was left with Tantalus. Which wasn’t so bad really until lately I had been having some real problems with Windows erroring out on things and my rx480s (of which I truly love) started to really give me a hassle when installing new drivers in a crossfire configuration.

So I said to myself, “Self, if you get a good tax return you shall build a new mini-ITX system for less than $1200 and you will base it on the recently announced Ryzen 2000 series APU’s.” Naturally I agreed with myself because myself and I are reasonable people and went ahead with the plan.

Then Dan said, “Well if you’re building a system I’m going to build a system later this year to blow it outta the water. And It’s going to be AMD.”

I said, “That’s just silly. You’re the Intel guy. Are you saying I am going to have to go Intel just so our systems can fight each other to the death later this year?”

Dan said, “Yep! WAHAHAHA!”

parts

Deflated I started playing around with PC Partpicker to decide on parts. To keep this build on budget and to have money to buy parts to repair Tantalus I had to scavenge some parts from my bin. This is what I came up with:

  • CPU and Cooler
    • Intel i3-8350k
    • Corsair H115i RGB v2
  • Motherboard
    • Asus ROG Strix Z370-I Mini-ITX
  • Memory
    • G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4 3000MHz 2x8GB (Scavenged from Tantalus)
  • Storage
    • Samsung 850 EVO 250GB (Scavenged from bin)
    • Samsung 1TB 2.5″ 5400RPM (Scavenged from bin)
  • GPU
    • Asus Radeon RX480 8GB Reference (Scavenged from Tantalus)
  • Case
    • Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV ITX
  • Power Supply
    • Seasonic 520W M12II Bronze Fully Modular
  • Several Sanpellegrino Aranciata bubblies (no they are not a sponsor, they’re just tasty)

So all the parts I had to buy came in roughly around $850 bucks. If I had to buy all the parts for the build it would have cost somewhere around $1600 to $1800 CAD. Thankfully that other $1000 is used in the repair of Tantalus.

The hardest part of the build was installing the water cooler. I originally planned to remove the included 200mm front fan and install the cooler there but it would not fit. So I had to install it up top. This is ok but in the case of this particular 280 rad from Corsair it fits with a only millimetre to spare. This also blocked off the exhaust for a standard depth fan and I had to order a thin profile 140mm Cryorig fan later (so you won’t see it in the pictures, sorry). If I were to build this again I would go for a 240 rad but I am happy still.

completed

One thing also to note, There is only one chassis fan header on this motherboard. The other two headers are dedicated to the cpu fan and the water pump. Technically you can use all three with fans but just a note to you thats all. Any bigger a water pump and it would not have fit in place. The universal Intel bracket is not a smart design. There should be separate brackets for LGA2011 and whatever this one is, uh, LGA1151. Because of the limited space around the CPU the water piping is resting a bit on the memory. Not very happy about this but it’s working so we continue on.

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I do not have any benchmarks yet as when I was done building this I had to tear down my office and rebuild and since I am a truck driver and on the road all the time it’s taken a few weeks to get everything done. I will update this post with benchmarks in the near future.

Overall the building of this system was an experience. Would I build this complicated of an ITX system again for myself? No. Its a lot of hassle. What I can say though with all the hassle the system booted up perfect the first time and has been solid ever since.

perchedontantalus

I was able to initially get a 4.9GHz stable overclock on the rig but when I went to overclock the memory (which ended up at 2933MHz) the stable overclock had to drop down to 4.7GHz. Still not bad.

This will be my main gaming rig from now on. I have finally ordered a streaming card for Tantalus so it will finally do duty as editing and streaming rig (and maybe some gaming too for fun sometimes cuz I got some new stuff for it as well which I will cover in another post). Once my office is all setup I’ll have a pretty decent podcasting/twitch setup.

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Now my choice of power supply was fuel for the trolls on PC Partpicker. Would I change it? No. But what would you have done differently? Let me know in the comments.

Star Trek Discovery – First Season Thoughts

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Star Trek has been my go to science fiction for a long time. Well at least until I discovered Stargate SG1 and Atlantis. Neither SG1 or Atlantis have the staying power of Star Trek.

This year we were given a new high-production mini-series to watch, Star Trek Discovery. Star Trek is near and dear to many a nerds heart and many poo-pooed the idea as soon as it was announced. Even I was not very excited.

But then I watched the show.

And it didn’t suck.

I did a “first impressions” post on this show when it launched and I was pretty happy with it then. Among a few choices I would have chosen to leave out. The constant talking in Klingon being one of them. While I appreciate the absolute nerdiness of that I don’t enjoy listening to that language.

Was there anything else I would have changed? Yep. Star Trek doesn’t need love scenes. Don’t care who you are you don’t need it. If you do you shouldn’t be watching Star Trek. This was annoying infatuation throughout the entire run of the series. Why does every female lead need to have a boyfriend? Seriously, this happens in way too many things.

Other than that, the special effects were incredible. The props were incredibly detailed. It was all very well executed.

Anyways, the second half of the season proved to be the reason to watch the show. The first half while interesting was a bit of a mess. The past of Captain Lorca catches up to everyone and we see some familiar faces.

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I gotta say the final touch for me was seeing the Enterprise hail the Discovery. Man they did a great job bring the constitution class from the Original Series in to this era.

My only regret is that these mini-series seasons are only supposed to focus on one era every season. It turns out I really want to see more from the crew of Discovery.

Star Trek Discovery is totally recommended.

It Turns Out the Nintendo Switch Doesn’t Suck…

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Like may of us, I made a lot of purchases on Black Friday and my one and only big ticket item was a Nintendo Switch. And yes, I picked up the one with the neon blue and red joycons cuz FUN!

Since the terrible handling of the NES Classic edition and the current mishandling of the SNES Classic edition I had written Nintendo off. No, not in that I believed they would die because of this as I am well aware they are making a killing with the Switch. No I just was unhappy about their blatant approval of price scalpers on their NES and SNES Classic. I had decided I would not buy another Nintendo product.

Well I caved on Black Friday. There was a $60 off promo on Ebay for new Switches so I picked one up. It arrived while I was on the road but I when I got home I quickly opened it up and began exploring the console. Continue reading “It Turns Out the Nintendo Switch Doesn’t Suck…” →

I Built a Home Theatre! Part 2 – Choosing Speakers

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Last time we were gathered here together, class, we took a look at the process of picking up the heart of any home theatre system – the receiver. The receiver is so important because that’s where all your inputs go into and where those inputs get turned in to audio and video for our consumption. The audio and video produced can only ever be as good as what the receiver can handle so picking the right receiver is critical. I picked up a refurbished Sony STR-DH550 receiver that has been praised for it’s great audio reproduction and looked down upon for it’s ancient menu interface.

Today we look at how we get the audio out of our Sony STR-DH550 receiver from our inputs. So there are a few things to consider when you look at a speaker setup for your home theatre system. Continue reading “I Built a Home Theatre! Part 2 – Choosing Speakers” →

Nespresso Inissia

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So I am far from new to the single-serve instant brewer systems out there. I started with the Keurig (before the 2.0 DRM stupidity) and use it occasionally for brewing large cups of coffee when entertaining guests. I then supplemented my Keurig K65 with a Tassimo T65 to make quick and easy lattes and cappuccinos with the supplied real milk tdsics. Real milk was the thing there.

Recently Tassimo moved to a new way of making cappuccinos and lattes. They are using condensed milk and powered milk in almost every case now and the beverage quality has suffered a lot. This led me looking to alternatives. The next big brand of singe-serve brewers is the Nespresso line. Continue reading “Nespresso Inissia” →

Star Trek Discovery – My Thoughts

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Like many nerds world-wide I have been waiting on a new Star Trek television series for ages. Since the demise of Enterprise no one was sure if we would actually see another show on the small screen.

Be warned. I am going to do my best to keep out any spoilers or really any information about the show so you can enjoy it yourself when you watch it. That means the following descriptions will be as intentionally vague as possible but I may unintentionally slip something out. Continue reading “Star Trek Discovery – My Thoughts” →