FanlessTech was “salivating” over the PERFECTRON PC, which might be good for its cooling potential if the water doesn't short out the electronics. Logic Supply, designer of the fanless systems, specializes in ruggedized, industrial builds. Rugged, fanless, and high performance — what's the downside?
They start at over $6,000 USD.
So for businesses (and probably only businesses or governments) that can afford these systems, you're probably going to get the computer equivalent of a tank. They are rated to operate in ambient temperatures between -40C (-40F) and 70C (158F). To put that into perspective, NVIDIA controls their overclocks to maintain 80C on the GPU, which is, generally speaking, in a system with ~30C internal temperature. These systems are rated to operate in 70C ambient. Again, that is about 20C hotter than my CPU peaks at load with my Corsair H100i. Actually, the PERFECTRON SR-700 ($13,793 USD) model can operate at up to 75C ambient.
That is some serious heat for any PC to cope with, especially rugged, fanless models. I guess “you get what you pay for” scales up pretty high. From what I can tell, they are rated to pretty much run these fanless PCs in a beef jerky maker and be cool enough to operate.
They better be military+
They better be military+ grade parts for that price with a 5+ year warranty! The Fit-PC, and other industral PC folks make some nice inexpensive industrial PCs that are not made for as excessive of environments, but they make for nicer than the consumer branded stuff in connectivity features! I Really can’t wait for the Carrizo R series based low cost industrial boxes to begin to become available, especially if you want ECC and DDR4 abilities. The industrial boxes are better than the crap that is marketed as for consumer use! The industrial boxes can be had at affordable prices, and the feature set on the industrial lines are better than any consumer grade stuff.