Passive Cooling
Intel introduced the ultra-compact form-factor in 2012 to reinvigorate the PC market. The incredible success of the product line has now resulted in the brand name propagating to other novel system configurations and form factors. The introduction of the mainstream Alder Lake NUCs last year - the NUC 12 Pro (Wall Street Canyon) - marked a decade-long journey for the original design. As part of bringing out the versatility of the form-factor and its evolution over the last ten years, Intel sampled three top-end Wall Street Canyon NUCs targeting different market segments - the NUC12WSKi7 for traditional business and consumer users, the NUC12WSKv7 in a slightly more eye-catching designer chassis for business and enterprise deployments, and the NUC12WSBi70Z in a rugged fanless case for...
Cryorig Set to Reveal the Dual Heatpipe Frostbit M.2 SSD Cooler
With the ever-raging debate about the correlation of high thermals and the performance throttling of M.2 SSDs being a hot topic, Cryorig intends to unveil an interesting and aggressive...
15 by Gavin Bonshor on 5/24/2018Compulab Passively-Cooled Airtop2 Inferno with GeForce GTX 1080
Compulab has announced its first passively-cooled gaming desktop computer developed using the company’s expertise in fanless SFF systems. The Airtop2 Inferno uses an enhanced version of the Compulab’s proprietary...
14 by Anton Shilov on 2/24/2018Habey BIS-6862 & Shuttle XPC Slim DS77U Fanless Kaby Lake Industrial PCs Review
Passively cooled computing systems are popular amongst consumers worried about the reliability of moving parts, noise from fans, and other associated maintenance requirements (particularly, for industrial use-cases). Traditionally, fanless...
13 by Ganesh T S on 1/5/2018Compulab Launches the Fitlet2 Passive SFF PC with Apollo Lake SoCs
Compulab has announced its new fitlet2 ultra-compact PC designed for a broad range of applications, including office, IoT and industrial. The Compulab fitlet2 is a small unit, cooled passively...
28 by Anton Shilov on 11/9/2017Logic Supply ML100G-50 Fanless Skylake vPro Industrial NUC Review
Passively cooled computing systems carry many advantages. Most of these turn out to be very important for industrial and embedded applications. The low power nature of the NUCs make...
37 by Ganesh T S on 2/27/2017Zotac Updates ZBOX mini-PCs with Kaby Lake: vPro, Thunderbolt, and More
As part of their pre-CES teaser, Zotac had talked about their mini-ITX GTX 1080 and their external Thunderbolt 3 graphics dock. They had also hinted about some updates to...
10 by Ganesh T S & Anton Shilov on 1/16/2017CES 2017: GIGABYTE Shows Passive Apollo Lake BRIX in Embedded UCFF
Despite the candid approach that Intel has had to its Apollo Lake platform, we are now starting to see fully developed platforms coming out to play from the major...
15 by Ian Cutress on 1/11/2017Zotac ZBOX CI523 nano Fanless Skylake-U mini-PC Review
Passively cooled computing systems are popular amongst consumers worried about noise from fans and their associated maintenance requirements (particularly, for industrial use-cases). Traditionally, fanless high-performance PCs have come with...
35 by Ganesh T S on 10/5/2016Compulab fitlet-XA10-LAN Review: A Fanless AMD UCFF PC for Networking Applications
Passively cooled computing systems carry many advantages. Most of these turn out to be very important for industrial and embedded applications. The attention paid by AMD and Intel to...
50 by Ganesh T S on 4/19/2016Voyo V3 Review - A Fanless Intel Atom x7-Z8700 (Cherry Trail) mini-PC
Intel transitioned their Bay Trail-T Atom lineup (targeting affordable 2-in-1s, tablets and Compute Stick form factors) to 14nm with the introduction of Cherry Trail-T. The Atom x5 and x7...
69 by Ganesh T S on 3/1/2016Compulab Rolls-Out Passively-Cooled Airtop Systems
Compulab, a maker of miniature and small form-factor computers, is introducing its first desktop system called Airtop today. The new computer can be equipped with rather high-performance components, but...
35 by Anton Shilov on 1/14/2016ECS LIVA Core Review: A Fanless Core M mini-PC
The desktop PC market has been subject to many challenges over the last few years. However, the miniaturization trend (including the introduction of the ultra-compact form factor - UCFF...
35 by Ganesh T S on 10/7/2015HDPLEX Unveils 2nd Generation H5 Passive PC Chassis
The advent of CPUs with low TDPs (but having enough power to handle HTPC duties) has resulted in passive HTPCs becoming more and more popular. There are a number...
16 by Ganesh T S on 9/15/2015ECS LIVA x2 Review: A Compact & Fanless Braswell PC
The popularity of the NUC form factor has led to a resurgence in the nettop category. Thankfully, the core computing performance of the new systems have been miles ahead...
30 by Ganesh T S on 8/24/2015Aleutia Updates R50 and T1 Fanless Industrial PCs with Partial Copper Chassis
Aleutia's fanless industrial PCs have seen deployment in a large number of developing countries as well as other extreme environments, thanks to their rugged nature and low power requirements...
8 by Ganesh T S on 8/10/2015ASRock Beebox Review: A Fanless Braswell UCFF PC
ASRock had taken an early lead in serving the mini-PC market, thanks to its Core / Vision series units. Based on motherboards meant for the notebook market (smaller than...
45 by Ganesh T S on 7/14/2015Logic Supply ML100G-30 Fanless Broadwell vPro Industrial NUC Review
Passively cooled computing systems carry many advantages. Most of these turn out to be very important for industrial and embedded applications. The low power nature of the NUCs make...
34 by Ganesh T S on 4/29/2015ECS LIVA X Review: A Fanless Bay Trail-M mini-PC
Over the last couple of years, mini-PCs in the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) have emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. ECS first took...
35 by Ganesh T S on 1/16/2015Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano Review: A Fanless Bay Trail-M mini-PC
Over the last couple of years, mini-PCs in the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) have emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. Zotac is no...
44 by Ganesh T S on 1/6/2015Zotac ZBOX CA320 nano PLUS Review: A Fanless AMD mini-PC
Over the last couple of years, mini-PCs in the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) have emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. Zotac is no...
31 by Ganesh T S on 11/26/2014