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We know Google made some big improvements in this year’s Chromecast 2015 and Chromecast Audio, but their Google Store listings are sort of… well, vague. If you were curious to see some of the inner workings of these tiny dongles, iFixit’s got your back. In a new teardown we get to see not only how exactly how the Chromecast was put together, but the specific hardware components therein.
Chomecast 2015 hardware
• Marvell Avastar 88W8887 VHT WLAN, Bluetooth, NFC and FM Receiver
• Samsung K4B4G1646D-BY 4 Gb DDR3L SDRAM
• Marvell Armada 88DE3006 1500 Mini Plus dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 media processor
• Toshiba TC58NVG1S3H 2 Gb NAND Flash Memory
Chromecast Audio hardware
• Marvell Avastar 88W8887 VHT WLAN, Bluetooth, NFC and FM Receiver
• Nanya NT5CC128M16IP-DI/EKDDR3L 2Gb SDRAM
• AKM AK4430 192kHz 24-Bit Stereo DAC
• Marvell Armada 88DE3006 1500 Mini Plus dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 media processor
• Toshiba TC58NVG1S3H 2 Gb NAND Flash Memory
As you can see, they’re pretty similar for the most part. Both Chromecasts feature the same dual-core Marvell processor, but the Audio has half the RAM and a 24-bit stereo DAC module to handle high quality audio output. It’s starting to make sense why both models share the same pricing despite one handling video and the other “only” handling audio.
One thing we found interesting was the 2GB flash memory from the original 2013 Chromecast appears as if it has dropped to 2 gigbits in the new models (about 250MB). But it probably has something to do with the Toshiba’s memory stacking multiple chips on it. You can check out the rest of iFixit’s teardown via the link below.
[iFixit]
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