Phoronix has spent a bit of time with the CompuLab Airtop PC, a SFF machine with passive cooling and no moving parts. It sports decent components, an i7-5775C Broadwell processor, 16GB of RAM, 256GB ADATA SSD, and a GeForce GTX 950, with Linux Mint installed and support for just about any other flavour of that OS you might prefer. It also has a very impressive array of outputs on the back including dual LAN ports and antennae for wireless connectivity, two power connectors for redundancy and a plethora of USB 3.0, HDMI, DisplayPort and other ports. Check out this overview of the construction and a quick peek at the performance of this passively cooled machine.
"At the end of February I posted my initial hands-on with the passively-cooled Airtop PC that's been exciting many readers over its unique design and being Linux-friendly. As I hadn't written anymore about it in the past few weeks, some Phoronix readers had emailed me and tweeted, curious what the deal was and if it wasn't living up to expectations. That's not the case at all and the Airtop PC continues to exhibit great potential and is yet another solid offering from CompuLab."
Here are some more Systems articles from around the web:
Systems
- MSI Gaming 24 6QE AIO System @ Kitguru
- Raspberry Pi 3 Benchmarks vs. Eight Other ARM Linux Boards @ Phoronix
- Overclockers UK Titan Dark Zone Gaming PC @ eTeknix
- Initial Hands-On With The Passively-Cooled Airtop PC Boasting A Core i7 & GTX 950 @ Phoronix
- MSI Nightblade MI2 @ Kitguru
I’m still honestly impressed
I’m still honestly impressed by the thermal design of the Mac Pro “trashcan” model from a few years ago. Instead of the orthogonal motherboard / expansion card idea from 30 years ago, you put the 3 hottest chips in the system against a big triangular aluminum block that naturally convects the heat upward, then add a large quiet fan on top of it all.
More folks should innovate like this, but the standard form factors limit what custom builders can do.