Samsung unveiled its cylindrical PC, the ‘ArtPC Pulse’ through e-commerce website Amazon listings. The new PC from the South Korean giant resembles Apple’s Mac Pro.
The ArtPC Pulse has four USB Type-A ports, one USB Type-C port, an audio jack, an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, an SD card reader, and a power connector arranged on the rear.
Both models pack in quad-core Skylake Core i5-6400 and i7-6700 CPUs, which are high end but cannot compete with the 6, 8, and 12-core CPUs that come with Mac Pros. The base model Core i5 Pulse costs $1,200, and the high-end Core i7 model costs $1,600.
The base model includes 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 256GB NVMe SSD, while the high-end system comes with 16GB RAM and a 1TB 5400RPM HDD internal storage. Both PCs feature a Radeon RX 460 GPU with 2GB of RAM, suitable for 1080p gaming but not 4K gaming or VR. The Amazon listing doesn’t reveal Wi-Fi or Bluetooth specifications.
The ArtPC Pulse is slimmer and lighter compared to the Mac Pro, it weighs 7.4 pounds and 5.5 inches in diameter. The Pulse's speaker setup makes it slightly taller at 10.7 inches compared to 9.9-inch.
Users can also customize the system with “expansion modules”, like the 1TB hard drive module, which comes with the $1,600 model, but it is still unclear how these modules look like, and their functionality or who will manufacture these modules. The availability of these modules is yet to be announced
Samsung on the software front is also planning big—the Pulse is a Microsoft “Signature Edition” PC, which means it runs the purest form of Windows 10 with very no bloatware and very few pre-installed apps.
