Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Mini PC Dev Kit With Snapdragon X Elite Is Up For Preorder

Qualcomm Snapdragon Dev Kit (angled render)

Is the era of x86 computing about to end? Not at all, though today’s Arm-based solutions present the biggest threat to date to x86’s decades-long dominance in the Windows landscape, and in time we could see a shift towards a more balanced (or at least less lopsided) roster of chips. Qualcomm’s Snadragon X Elite and Plus platforms are spearheading the charge, which is getting a boost with a Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows.

The Snapdragon Dev Kit is basically a sleek and rather affordable mini PC powered by the top Snapdragon X Elite SKU, the X1E-00-1DE. Here’s a high-level overview…

Chart of Snapdragon X Elite and Plus specs.

All four Snapdragon X Elite SKUs (the other three being the X1E-84-100, X1E-80-100, and X1E-78-100) sport a dozen CPU cores, 42MB of total cache, LPDDR5x-8448 memory support, and a dedicated NPU (neural processing unit) with 45 TOPS on tap for AI chores. However, the X1E-00-1DE is the fastest of the bunch with a 3.8GHz multi-threaded frequency, which is the same as the X1E-84-100, and 4.3GHz dual core boost clock, which is 100MHz higher.

This is also Snapdragon X Elite’s first appearance outside of a Copilot+ laptop. It’s not really intended for typical consumers, though, and instead takes aim at developers to test apps and code for Windows, especially those who want to ensure that their x86 software runs without issue on Arm-based hardware.

Rear view of the Snapdragon Dev Kit showing the ports.

The Snapdragon X Elite on board this model also sports an Adreno GPU with up to 4.6 TFLOPS of graphics performance. Other foundational specs for the mini PC as a whole includes 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM and a 512GB NVMe solid state drive (SS).

Connectivity is comprised of three USB4 ports, two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, a LAN port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and an HDMI output. And for wireless connectivity, it supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

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