Fujitsu Esprimo Q5030 review

Businesses looking to reduce operational costs need to focus on their utility bill and one way to make big savings is to stop buying "fat" clients and use smaller, more power efficient desktop PCs. The Fujitsu Esprimo Q5030 is a good candidate, as this little mini-PC isn't much bigger than a couple of stacked paperbacks, yet has enough grunt to handle most common business applications.

The Q5030 exhibits a better build quality than the majority of products that employ third party chassis as, despite weighing a mere 1.7kgs, it looks and feels much more solid. The grey aluminium chassis and its wraparound piano black lacquer panel also make it look classier as well.

It packs in the hardware, coming equipped with a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo teamed up with 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 memory. The latter is deployed on an SO-DIMM and a spare internal socket allows this to be upped to 4GB.

There's a pair of USB2 ports at the front with four more at the rear, and if you need more storage speed there's also an eSATA port. Graphics are driven by an Intel Mobile embedded controller that supports resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 pixels, and the DVI port can be converted to VGA as the package includes an adapter.

A single Gigabit Ethernet port is provided and wireless is a possibility as Fujitsu offers an optional internal Atheros 802.11b/g/n mini-card. The review model comes up short in the storage department, as with only a 160GB Western Digital SFF SATA hard disk, but a 250GB version is also available.

Getting inside the case for upgrades isn't too difficult as you lift away the corners of the rubber mat underneath to access the chassis screws. Take care releasing the two halves of the shell, as there's a lot of wiring going from the motherboard to the front panel.

Every inch of internal space has been put to good use and half the main board is covered by an active heatsink for the processor, which contains a small blower fan. Next-door are two stacked SO-DIMM sockets that are easily accessible, and alongside is a mini-card slot for the optional wireless card. Not only will the Q5030 be easy to miss but it won't be heard either, as we found it virtually silent during testing.

The hard disk sits in the roof and its combined SATA and power interface mates with a socket on the main board. Hidden above this is a DVD Multi drive, and you also have options for a Blu-ray version instead. With such a small chassis, an external power supply is inevitable, but we found consumption to be extremely low. With the Q5030 connected to our inline power meter we recorded a draw of only 2W in standby and 16W with Vista idling along. Using SiSoft Sandra to blast the processor to the max, we saw this rise to a modest 35W.

You are paying a premium for miniaturisation, but the Esprimo Q5030 does pack a lot into its miniscule chassis. Storage capacity could be better, but this little mini-PC is very quiet and consumes very little power, making it a good green alternative to a standard desktop PC.

Author: Dave Mitchell