Asus is now selling a Core i3 Haswell-equipped Chromebox

ASUS began to sell their very first Chrome OS desktop computers earlier this March, where they launched the ASUS Chromebox M005U which retailed for $179 apiece. This particularly small desktop machine can be carried around on a single hand, but then again, that kind of compromise led to a lack of processing power, especially when you take into consideration how it runs on an Intel Celeron 2955U Haswell processor, has 2GB RAM, sports just 16GB of internal memory with Google’s Chrome operating system running proceedings from underneath the hood.

Asus started selling its first Chrome OS desktop computers in March with the launch of the $179Asus Chromebox M005U. The tiny desktop is small enough to hold in one hand, packs an Intel Celeron 2955U Haswell processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and Google’s Chrome operating system. It also runs Ubuntu or other Linux-based operating systems reasonably well, and it’s easy to upgrade the RAM or storage yourself. But if you want a system with a more powerful CPU, now you can get one. The Asus Chromebox-M075U is now available for about $399, and it features an Intel Core i3-4010U processor. The best prices I’ve seen for the new model are from ExcaliberPC and Provantage, which are selling the Asus Chromebox-M075U for $399 and for $397, respectively).