High-end ASUS Eee desktop to get Core 2, Blu-ray

ASUS' Eee lineup will include a second and relatively high-end model when it bows at the Computex show next week, the company says. The Essentio CS5110 will be rebranded as the Eee Station and come in a slightly larger but more powerful form than the EBOX also scheduled to appear at the expo. While starting off with a Celeron and other budget components, the system is the smallest to ship with an dedicated graphics card, ASUS says, and has the option of scaling up to a Core 2 Duo and a Blu-ray drive.

In its home region of Taiwan, prices will range between the equivalents of $657 and $1,642, with a base system including the basic Intel processor, a 250GB hard drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi, an NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT and a wireless remote to make it friendly to home theaters. Scaling up to Blu-ray boosts the price to about $1,315, according to the company. All versions include HDMI video out, while a version known as the ES5000 will swap out the NVIDIA chipset for an unspecified ATI Radeon HD model.

ASUS hasn't said whether the Eee Station will migrate to the US, though its inclusion with the Eee line potentially improves the likelihood of a release in other countries.