CompuLab Airtop Fanless PC First Look

[mrmez]

Dumb idea.
There are plenty of powerful tiny computers with fans you just can't hear.

This allows them to be more powerful and much cheaper.
It's also ugly as fk. At least build it to look like something that should be in the museum of modern art.

 

[bit_user]

Plenty of guitar amps use fans in them; that's not a problem at all.

It's not the musician who needs silence, but the mixing/recording engineer. Anyway, this isn't my field of expertise, but a friend built quite a nice little business supplying custom PCs for studio use, years ago.

Why use this $2000 box instead of a single board machine built for the purpose that are cheap and plentiful and have the benefit of being designed not to need active cooling from the start. Truely dust proof systems are encased in epoxy.

It's true that industrial PCs don't have to look nice, and will be more dust-proof than this thing. But, if someone needs a similar amount of horsepower in one, it'll be neither cheap nor devoid of substantial cooling.

For your typical office desk jockey, if they really want something totally passive, this thing is overkill. There are plenty of options in the lower end of the market like a Bay Trail/Braswell from Intel or the AMD Kabini series of SoC that will do everything a desk jockey would need from word processing and internet browsing to watching online videos and playing facebook games. Plus, there are many completely passive options for these SoCs available from most of the major vendors like Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, etc. You just need the right mITX case with an external passive PSU and an SSD and you have a 0 dB PC for literally a small fraction of the price of this thing. You don't need 8 threads, over 3 GHz and a GTX-class video card for standard office tasks

I think many here are missing the point of this. First of all, many systems which are quiet at near-idle speeds start to get very noticeable during gaming. Secondly, I think this attempts to reduce the tradeoff between noise, performance, and aesthetics. So, think of it as targeting power-users who are either very noise-sensitive (like another friend of mine) or in noise-critical situations. In other words, your premise is flawed - it's definitely not for the typical office desk jockey.

There are plenty of powerful tiny computers with fans you just can't hear.

Assuming they have comparable horsepower, maybe your hearing isn't so good, or you haven't used these things in a truly quiet room with a decent load.

It's also ugly as fk. At least build it to look like something that should be in the museum of modern art.

I wouldn't exactly call it beautiful, but I think it's a lot better looking than most passively cooled cases, not to mention most gamer-oriented cases. But that's entirely a subjective matter.

 

[cub_fanatic]

For your typical office desk jockey, if they really want something totally passive, this thing is overkill. There are plenty of options in the lower end of the market like a Bay Trail/Braswell from Intel or the AMD Kabini series of SoC that will do everything a desk jockey would need from word processing and internet browsing to watching online videos and playing facebook games. Plus, there are many completely passive options for these SoCs available from most of the major vendors like Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, etc. You just need the right mITX case with an external passive PSU and an SSD and you have a 0 dB PC for literally a small fraction of the price of this thing. You don't need 8 threads, over 3 GHz and a GTX-class video card for standard office tasks

I think many here are missing the point of this. First of all, many systems which are quiet at near-idle speeds start to get very noticeable during gaming. Secondly, I think this attempts to reduce the tradeoff between noise, performance, and aesthetics. So, think of it as targeting power-users who are either very noise-sensitive (like another friend of mine) or in noise-critical situations. In other words, your premise is flawed - it's definitely not for the typical office desk jockey.

Not sure what you meant by "your premise is flawed". Did you mean that these CompuLab Airtops are not for a typical office jockey? If so, that is exactly what I said. Desk jockeys don't need 8 threads, 3 GHz and a GTX class GPU. They can get 0 dB PCs with a low end SoC for much less. So, a typical system gets a little noisy during gaming. Yeah? What game are you playing that has no sound effects and where absolute silence is a necessity? Or is just an annoyance to some anal people? How many of those people are there that would be in the market for a PC like this? On this entire planet, that number can't be higher than triple digits. The rest of the sane normal people will either not care because the game sounds are drowning out the little woosh coming out of their case or they know what headphones are. My premise was that this is a niche product. There is nothing flawed about that.

 

[bit_user]

So, a typical system gets a little noisy during gaming.

I was just using that as an example many would have experienced, first hand. I don't honestly think these are targeted towards gamers. There are plenty of other things one can do with a PC that would get its fans spinning up.

And obviously, it's a niche product. That's self-evident. If there were widespread demand for such a thing, there'd be tons of similar machines, and they'd be priced more affordably. I assume low sales volume is the main reason it's so expensive.

 

[ledhead11]

IBM PC AT, Intel 80286 running at 6 MHz, 256kb of RAM, 20MB hard disk, 2x 1.2MB 5.25 in. floppy drives, Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA), running PC-DOS 3.0, IBM 5170 AT case and power supply, IBM Model M mechanical keyboard, Epson MX-80 Dot Matrix Printer

Gotta love it. Really takes me back to my Tandy 1000ex days. You're awesome!

 

[sephirotic]

100% Passive/Fanless PC are utterly pointless.
It baffles me how little attention is given to SEMI-Passive pcs. Any regular build can be tuned to work semi-passively. My computer, with a FAN hub connected to a digital thermostat has ALL of its fans completely off for 90% of the time. The only noise the computer generates is the eletronoic noise of the CPU which is often bellow the background noise. (This can be further dampened by some special foam isolation around the case, a future project for me). The fans only turn on when playing high demanding games and temperature raises on the CPU close to 75C and the internal temperature of the Case to 42c.
The biggest advantage of SEMI-passive compared to regular low speed fan builds is increased lifespan of the FANS and reduced dust accumulation. It's a WIN WIN.
I have been meaning to make a video showcasing how to build a cheap simple SEMI-PASSIVE pc for a while, but since I still pack an old i5-2500k with a cheap case, I decided to wait until I upgraded to a more beefier PC, but Skylake was a disappointment and I have further postponed the upgrade and the Video to the next generation.

 

[bit_user]

100% Passive/Fanless PC are utterly pointless.

Not gonna repeat everything already covered, but that's clearly not true.

You're assuming that everyone's needs and usage patterns match yours. So I grant that maybe fanless is utterly pointless for you.

One thing that strikes me about this thread is that a lot of comments suggest the only demanding apps you can run on a PC are games, and that everyone who's not a gamer is just browsing the web and using email/office apps.

As a counterexample, I write code, and maybe I just don't like hearing my PC's fans spin up, every time I kick off a build. A friend of mine just bought a fanless laptop (with an i7-6500U, no less), for this exact reason.


There are plenty of other CPU-intensive apps, as well. A lot of workstation users don't need high-end graphics or a RAID - they actually buy them for CPU performance. By the same token, a low-power CPU isn't always suitable/satisfactory for people/scenarios where noise is an issue, and they might be taxing their CPU more than the 0.1% of the time that you're assuming they are.

It baffles me how little attention is given to SEMI-Passive pcs.

I also disagree on that point. If you get the machine quiet under load, then it stands to reason that it'll be even quieter when idling. Therefore, I tend to focus on the moderate-to-heavy load scenario. Not extreme load, however.

To your point about fan life, if you buy reasonably good quality fans and spin them slowly (most of the time), then fan life shouldn't be an issue. Getting decent lifespan out of them doesn't require shutting them off.

 

[skit75]

100% Passive/Fanless PC are utterly pointless.
It baffles me how little attention is given to SEMI-Passive pcs. Any regular build can be tuned to work semi-passively. My computer, with a FAN hub connected to a digital thermostat has ALL of its fans completely off for 90% of the time. The only noise the computer generates is the eletronoic noise of the CPU which is often bellow the background noise. (This can be further dampened by some special foam isolation around the case, a future project for me). The fans only turn on when playing high demanding games and temperature raises on the CPU close to 75C and the internal temperature of the Case to 42c.
The biggest advantage of SEMI-passive compared to regular low speed fan builds is increased lifespan of the FANS and reduced dust accumulation. It's a WIN WIN.
I have been meaning to make a video showcasing how to build a cheap simple SEMI-PASSIVE pc for a while, but since I still pack an old i5-2500k with a cheap case, I decided to wait until I upgraded to a more beefier PC, but Skylake was a disappointment and I have further postponed the upgrade and the Video to the next generation.

There are whole industries where completely passive designs are not only requested but, required. Many would surprise you because they are not always so obvious but, make perfect sense with a little critical thinking.