OCZ Neutrino 10″ DIY Atom Netbook Review

Neutrino Netbook Specifications

On March 30, 2009, OCZ Technology unveiled the Neutrino netbook, their latest Do-It-Yourself (DIY) solution for consumers looking to save a buck and do some sweat equity themselves. This netbook got the attention of many when it first was announced because it was the very first DIY netbook to be available to consumers. The OCZ Neutrino DIY netbook not only cuts costs, but it also lets consumers fine tune this netbook by being able to choose and install their own memory module, storage drive, and preferred Operating System (OS) into this Intel Atom processor powered 10.1 netbook. That’s not too shabby considering one of these chassis can be picked up for around $236.01 shipped. This is a fair price for a 10.1″ netbook with the following specifications.

Processor	Intel Atom N270 1.60GHz
Memory	None, but supports up to 2GB DDR2 667MHz SO-DIMM
North bridge	Intel 945GSE
South bridge	Intel ICH7M
Graphics	Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Display	10″ TFT with WSVGA (1024×600) resolution and LED backlight
Storage	None, but supports up to 250GB SATA SSDs and HDDs
Audio	Stereo HD audio via Realtek ALC269 codec
Ports	2 USB 2.0 1 VGA 1 RJ45 10/100/1000 Ethernet via Realtek 8168 1 analog headphone output 1 analog microphone input
Expansion slots	1 SDHC 1 ExpressCard/34 1 Mini PCI Express
Communications	802.11g Wi-Fi via Realtek 8187SE Bluetooth 2.0
Input devices	83-key keyboard Touchpad with vertical scroll zone
Camera	1.3-megapixel webcam with microphone
Dimensions	10.3″ x 7.3″ x 1.5″ (241 x 185 x 38 mm)
Weight	2.86 lbs (1.3 kg)
Battery	4-cell Li-Ion 2200mAh

The OCZ Neutrino features the Intel Atom N270 processor, Intel 945GSE North Bridge, Intel ICH7M South Bridge, and the Realtek ALC269 codec for HD audio. It seems this is the combination of choice for many netbooks on the market today, so this should be a fairly solid netbook.

Opening up the retail box of the Neutrino you’ll find the netbook, user’s manual, setup guide, driver disk, and the power brick. Remember you’ll need a storage drive and a notebook memory module to complete the hardware needed to fire up the Neutrino netbook. For this we went with the OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD that we recently reviewed here, and an OCZ 2GB DDR2-667 SO-DIMM.

Total Netbook Cost: $638.44 (as tested)

• OCZ Neutrino 10.1″ DIY Netbook – $236.01
• OCZ Vertex 120GB SATA SSD – $377.44
• OCZ 2GB PC2-5400 DDR2 SO-DIMM Memory Module – $24.99

Now that we know the basic specifications of the OCZ Neutrino DIY Netbook and know what we will be putting inside it for testing, we can take a closer look at this notebook and walk you through putting one of these together from scratch.