The Nano chucks out traditional aesthetics in favor of “function over form” design, with nearly every crevice of its shell opened up by grates and holes to keep the airflow constant. It will be powered by an Intel Core-M 5Y10c, a standard choice these days for mini-PCs, but still a solid piece of kit that should keep benchmarks in line with the rest of the competition.
Connectivity options will include four USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI and DisplayPort 1.2 to handle video output, dual GigE controllers for networking, as well as an 802.11ac chip for Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0. Storage will be handled by an SSD of your choice, as long as it conforms to the M.2 or 2.5-inch SATA chassis standard. Eight gigabytes of memory should keep things running at a decent clip.
The news of Zotac’s Nano comes just a few short days after the debut of Intel’s new NUC5CPYH line of compact computers, featuring the company’s new low-power Braswell processors. The Nano will be more powerful than those, but won’t be more powerful than the previously introduced Core i3, i5 and i7 NUCs, which are still available.
No release date has been set for the Nano just yet. Intel says the NUC5CPYH is still on track to hit shelves sometime next month. It looks like the mini-PC market is about to become a lot more crowded, and offer many more choices with silent, fanless design.
