Netbook Review UK

DIY Acer Aspire One 1080p edition

Over at Terracode, they’ve done some major work to incorporate Broadcom’s HD Accelerator mini PCI-e card (model BCM70012) into the Acer Aspire one.  There were two options to install the external graphics accelerator, either older on a mini pci-e connector into the existing traces on the motherboard or remove the 802.11g Wi-Fi card from it’s mini PCI-e slot and install it there.  Initially, soldering was attempted, but after a botched attempt (due to the tiny traces on the motherboard), the Broadcom card was slotted into the Wi-Fi card’s place.  That necessitates the use of a US B Wi-FI card, but they though it was worth it to see how the HD ugprade would perform.  While they were at it, they also upgraded the HD to a Kingston ssdNow V series 64 GB SATA solid state drive and upped the RAM from 1gb to 2gb.

Performance wise the upgrade was a success.  By installing the  mini PCI-e card video decoding and scaling was off-loaded from teh processor onto the new graphics processor (Broadcom PCIe card).  That reducedthe load on the CPU and allows full screen smooth 1080P playback. You may be thinking, what good is 1080p resolution on a netbook screen, and you would be right.  The guys used an external monitor, capable of 1920×1080 pixels vs. the Acer’s 1024×600 pixel screen.

Read on for side by side video performance comparisons and a cost breakdown.

Project Cost Breakdown (in US dollars)

• Acer AOA150-1706: $259.00 on sale
• Broadcom BCM70012: $40.00 (EBay)
• Kingston SNV-125-S2BD/64GB: $129.00 on sale
• 1 GB DDR2-5300 DIMM: $14

Total cost $442.00. The cost of a similarly equipped HP Mini 110 XP is $444.00 (32 GB SSD and 1 GB memory).