ASUS Chromebox Goes Fanless For CES 2021

ASUS has made a bunch of announcements at CES 2021, but one of the most interesting is the latest iteration of its Chromebox. ASUS has been making Chrome OS boxes for a long time now, but this one stands out from its predecessors because of its fanless design. In fact, that design informs the name of the product, which is simply Fanless Chromebox. It's safe to say that ASUS probably isn't winning any awards for the creativity of its naming conventions.

In any case, the Fanless Chromebox will be available in a number of configurations, either with an Intel Celeron 5205U CPU at its core or one of Intel's 10th-gen Core processors – buyers apparently have their pick of an i3, i5, or even an i7. Buyers have some choices when it comes to RAM, as the Fanless Chromebox is available either 8GB of DDR4 2400 RAM or 16GB of DDR4 2666 RAM. Storage options, meanwhile, include either 128GB/256GB of M.2 SATA SSD or 32GB/64GB of EMMC flash storage.

The Fanless Chromebox features a USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port that supports both power delivery and DisplayPort, but it can also connect to external displays using HDMI 2.0. ASUS says that the Fanless Chromebox can support up three 4K displays simultaneously, and it also supports WiFi 6. The box is built using an aluminum chassis, which we're assuming acts as something of a huge heat sink for all of the hardware running inside it.

While ASUS seems to be positioning this as a device for enterprise and business customers – suggesting that it could be used to power digital signage or point-of-sale systems – the company also pitches it as a desktop replacement for regular folks who are increasingly moving workloads to the cloud.

This latest iteration of the the Chromebox will be available sometime next month with a starting price of $399, though we imagine the cost will go up depending on the component upgrades buyers may choose to make.