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CompuLab Rolls out Fanless, High-End PCs With Unique Design (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Israeli PC maker CompuLab has begun shipping the Airtop PC that allows assembling high-end PC components into a completely fanless design. Phoronix's initial testing of the Airtop PC showed that it has a Core i7 5775C Broadwell processor, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and GeForce GTX 950 all while being fan-less thanks to the innovative design. The early results are quite positive for this uniquely designed PC but it comes at a cost premium of a fully-loaded system costing more than $2,200 USD.
LOL.
ever since BIZX acquired slashdot, we've been seeing these slashvertisements at least once per day (worse than Dice's twice-weekly rate). What's the going price for buying an article on slashdot these days?
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
google finds nothing. fanless GeForce GTX 950 passive GeForce GTX 950
How odd. I would have thought that a silent machine with reasonable power would garner LOTS of fans.
After replacing the fans in my rig with ultra-low quiet ones, I found that the coil whine from the power supply and video card are more annoying than the whoosh of noisy fans. I'm too cheap to subscribe to phoronix's site, so maybe someone can suggest it to him.
Advertisement or not, this is a pretty neat piece of engineering and definitely belongs on /.
I always had very high sensitivity to fans noise and dreamed of absolutely slient pc. I've finaly made it using streacom case. It's running great. Newer intel cpus also have good integrated GPU, so everything except gaming is simply exceptional (and I have a separate pc for gaming). But adding powerful GPU to the system was a pipe dream. If they have managed that in such a small case, that's beyond cool.
in spyware developed by top Israeli engineers. Available to the NSA, CIA, FBI, Pentagon and other government employees/elected officials at a steep discount.
Not sure I'd call that spec high end but whatever.
Too bad advertisements are not required to be 100% truthful. If they were, I could see an ad for this system where a devil on one shoulder whispers "No fans! Ain't that cool?" while an angel on the other shoulder whispers "No fans! You'll have to replace it in 2 years!"
Sure it performs fine when brand new but how well is it going to work after a few years of dust buildup?
16 years ago. It was called the G4 Cube.
No one buys $2,200 PCs anymore, unless they are Apple. Come to think of it, no one buys desktop PC's for home anymore.
I've been building silent, often fanless systems since 2003, so I'm always interested at these rare occasions when a commercial offering actually cares about noise. However, I'm somewhat worried about the peak temperatures of 80 C, and frankly it doesn't surprise me. Passive cooling is hard, and it's almost always better to aim for the low hum of large, slow fans. I'm running high end GPUs fully loaded all the time, and they stay around 50...60 C with aftermarket coolers (not water) in open cases, with 140 mm fans running at 7..10 V. The same goes for CPUs, though I'm not sure if they count as high end. Anyway, quiet and cool is easily done with aftermarket coolers that cost around 50 euros apiece. I live in a single-room apartment, so the lack of noise is pretty important.
I always wonder why proper cooling seems like an afterthought in components such as motherboards and cases, and why you always need aftermarket solutions if you don't want your machine to sound like a jet engine. For example, if the CPU were at the backside of the mobo, there would be no limit to the size of the heatsink. Yet the default is always a very crowded place in the middle of everything, where the "solution" is a small and whiny fan.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
are the IoT compatible?
If you strip everything out except the mainboard and the case (no cpu, no gpu, no ram, etc), you're still looking at $700. This is what they mean by "starts at".
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
like the Gigabyte brick with the "Desktop" GPU that just clocks itself down when it gets hot.? Or is this just a laptop without a screen again?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What I'd like to know, and isn't covered in the linked article, is whether or not this system is hot to the touch.
Not only do I have concerns about how this will work under very high ambient temperatures, I don't see it's usefulness for 99.99999% of users. If you are spending that kind of money, you could have a machine that is virtually soundless and has at least one and probably 2 high end GPUs. This really limits your options because of the unique form factor and I don't really see tradeoff.
For comparison, my PC with an overclocked i5 2500k and 7970 is 3 decibles above ambient (34 db in my apartment) as measured by an open vent in the top. That is actually coil whine, not fans. I could do the same thing to any single GPU machine for at most 400 USD and in most cases under 300.
"However, I'm somewhat worried about the peak temperatures of 80 C, and frankly it doesn't surprise me"
The thermal limit of the i7 Broadwell CPU was/is 103 C. I have had it running around 70 C at 100% load, totally passive Akasa case. Normally it runs from 34 - 40 C under light load.
It doesn't surprise me that some of the Skylake Xeons will run at similarly high temps. Compared to stock, however, it seems that my passive build is more efficient at cooling, without the noise.
The motherboard layout is standard (ATX) dating from the mid 90s. Things were different then. ITX is newer, but not much better.
Also, if you put the CPU on the other side, you couldn't just mount the motherboard to one side of the case.
If you well designed cooling, you need it to be designed for the components involved. Apple does this for their computers (the single fan cylindrical power mac is a great example), as do most laptops, but its impractical for standardized part swap-able desktops unfortunately.
I like to run my systems hot: cooling is more efficient the hotter you run. If it is specked for it, you might as well use it.
No one buys $2,200 PCs anymore, unless they are Apple. Come to think of it, no one buys desktop PC's for home anymore.
Best Sellers in Desktop Computers
#57 CybertronPC Thallium X99 Red Gaming Desktop-Intel i7-5960X, 64GB DDR4,3x NVIDIA GTX980 Ti, Microsoft Windows 10 $6000.
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[12:15 AM EDT March 1]
I like to run my systems hot: cooling is more efficient the hotter you run. If it is specked for it, you might as well use it.
Yup, great idea.
When Israel continues to harm and oppress. It's like an abusive person who is a good engineer. Sure, that person maims, kills, and imprisons innocents, but darn--what a good engineer!
Now, libreboot support?
Well, you can almost build "something similar" cheaper yourself. This is what I did: https://www.techtalk.cc/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1814 (How to build a 100% fanless zero decibels quiet gaming PC), full specifications and all the parts which I used. Granted, it's not a "super gaming PC" but it is still pretty good I would say. I can for example run ArmA3 without any issues pretty good.
Interesting article!
I like to run my systems hot: cooling is more efficient the hotter you run. If it is specked for it, you might as well use it.
Specifications are not binary. Things will generally last longer if they don't run at the extreme of allowed specs all the time, due to effects such as electromigration.
In the second hand GPU market, a lot of people are always worried about overclocking history. What they should be asking about is temperatures. In overclocking, it's not the frequency that kills components, it's the heat. And it's easy to do heat damage while staying within allowed frequencies. Long-term heat damage is also an issue for other components around the main chip, such as VRMs on a GPU board.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Israel makes advances in PC Technology, medicine, biology...
"Palestine" makes advances in bombings, hijacking, shooting, stabbing, suicide bomb vests, terrorist tunnels, beheading, killing gays, killing girls over "family honor"
I've been thinking about just such a machine quite a lot lately. Rather than some sort of desktop gaming system, I'm more interested in a server solution. I'd really like to buy/build a server with Xeon CPU(s), 30-60GB of RAM, hardware RAID 5 6 10, SSDs, dual power supplies(ideal) and NO FANS.
I want a passively cooled and (near)completely silent server. A real server.
Does anyone know if/how I can achieve such a beast?
I've been running mp PBX on a fanless CompuLab PC2 for over 6 years.
Why didn't you tell me I couldn't do that and would have to replace the PC in two years? Now I look/feel stupid! Why didn't you tell me?
Sonsonic PSU's are awesome. I have a 2u server where I needed a power supply that didn't have a bottom fan intake (would be blocked by the case). The only one I could find that fit was a Seasonic but it's been rock-solid for years without an issues. Quiet and reliable. A bit pricey but you're paying for a quality product.