Passive Cooling
As part of the lead up to CES 2021, Akasa made a couple of interesting announcements related to its lineup of DIY fanless cases and a second family of RGB lighting accessories. We have covered Akasa's Turing fanless cases in detail earlier - starting off as a complete reimagination of a fanless Bean Canyon NUC (delivering excellent results in our review), Akasa also created the Turing FX based on the same design for the Frost Canyon NUC. Now, they have set their sights on one of the popular consumer-focused Ryzen-based mini-PCs in the market - the Asus PN50. The Asus PN50, based on the Ryzen 4000-series mobile APUs (Renoirs with a TDP of 15W), has a physical footprint similar to that of the NUCs (with a...
Zotac ZBOX CI662 nano Fanless mini-PC Review: Second Stab at Silencing Succeeds
Zotac is one of the major players in the SFF PC space, having marketed ultra-compact form-factor machines even before the NUCs took off. The growth in that segment has...
16 by Ganesh T S on 1/5/2021Akasa Turing Fanless Case Review: Unrivalled Noiseless NUC
Silent computing systems are preferable for a multitude of use-cases ranging from industrial applications (where dust and fans make for a troublesome configuration) to noiseless HTPCs (particularly for audiophiles)...
30 by Ganesh T S on 10/26/2020CES 2020: ZOTAC ZBOX CA621 Nano With Passive Cooled AMD Ryzen 3 3200U
One of the more interesting announcements from ZOTAC at CES 2020 comes via the ZBOX CA621 Nano. What makes this stand out from ZOTACs other announcements is that it...
8 by Gavin Bonshor on 1/9/2020Noctua Concept Fanless CPU Cooler: Up to 120W Of Cooling Performance
Noctua might have had a small booth showing off its products at Computex, but it had plenty to show for itself. On the booth was a new and conceptual...
38 by Gavin Bonshor on 6/6/2019The Zotac ZBOX CI660 nano Fanless mini-PC Review: A Promising HTPC Platform
Zotac is a major player in the SFF PC space, and the emergence of the ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) NUCs has broadened the available market for ther mini-PCs. The company...
23 by Ganesh T S on 4/16/2019The SilverStone Nightjar NJ450-SXL 450W SFX PSU Review: Passive Excellence
In today's review we are taking a look at a a rather unique SFX PSU, the passively cooled SilverStone Nightjar NJ450. Despite the lack of active cooling, both the...
25 by E. Fylladitakis on 4/4/2019EKWB Begins Selling Heatsink for Intel’s Optane 905P M.2 SSD
EK Water Blocks has started selling its passive heatsink for Intel’s recently-released Optane 905P M.2 SSD. The cooling solution is meant to ensure consistent performance of the drive under...
15 by Anton Shilov on 2/14/2019Akasa's Turing: A Passively-Cooled Chassis for Intel’s Bean Canyon NUC
Akasa is prepping an aftermarket chassis for Intel’s 8th Gen "Bean Canyon: NUC systems. The Turing chassis will allow Intel’s NUC 8 ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) computers to be converted...
32 by Anton Shilov on 2/8/2019Arctic Unveils Alpine AM4 Passive CPU Cooler
Arctic this week added its first passive cooler that is compatible with AMD’s AM4 processors into its lineup of products. The Alpine AM4 was designed for APUs and CPUs...
26 by Anton Shilov on 5/25/2018Cryorig 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 3/1/2016