The Airtop Is One Of The Coolest Linux-Friendly PCs Ever For Enthusiasts

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Airtop Is One Of The Coolest Linux-Friendly PCs Ever For Enthusiasts

How would you like a powerful PC that is all passively cooled -- thanks to a special design, able to naturally dissipate 200 Watts -- that can drive four 4K displays, four hard disks, multiple Ethernet ports, can handle a discrete graphics card, and is made of aluminum? Oh yeah, and is from a Linux-friendly company...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=CompuLab-Airtop-Announced

[EmbeddedSteve]

In 1984 Apple introduced a Computer called the Macintosh with . . . . Convection Cooling! Meaning the same sort of thing, cold air in the bottom, hot air out the top. . .
Nothing new here. The infamous Apple "cube" was also true to this design, connector technology had not caught up with reality yet.

[lvlark]

So, it looks like RAM and HDD's are easily accessible and replaced, how about the GPU? Can I drop in an AMD Polaris? (If those do, indeed, up the perf-per-watt game they would be a strong combination with this pc) Better yet, will they offer a Polaris option out of the box? Ofcourse, Polaris will have to be released first...
Same question for the CPU, can it be replaced? Will there be an AMD option?

[Michael]

So, it looks like RAM and HDD's are easily accessible and replaced, how about the GPU? Can I drop in an AMD Polaris? (If those do, indeed, up the perf-per-watt game they would be a strong combination with this pc) Better yet, will they offer a Polaris option out of the box? Ofcourse, Polaris will have to be released first...
Same question for the CPU, can it be replaced? Will there be an AMD option?

CompuLab might be able to respond in the forums, but without getting my hands on the system yet, doubt the GPU would be too easily swappable considering I am pretty sure they designed a custom heatsink for the GPU to fit with the case. Haven't heard anything about an AMD CPU option but that really wouldn't be interesting anyways until Zen.

[TheBlackCat]

In 1984 Apple introduced a Computer called the Macintosh with . . . . Convection Cooling! Meaning the same sort of thing, cold air in the bottom, hot air out the top. . .
Nothing new here. The infamous Apple "cube" was also true to this design, connector technology had not caught up with reality yet.

This doesn't use simple convection cooling. Convection is involved, but the computer case shapes the airflow to increase the amount of convection. This is all addressed on the website.

[bug77]

In 1984 Apple introduced a Computer called the Macintosh with . . . . Convection Cooling! Meaning the same sort of thing, cold air in the bottom, hot air out the top. . .
Nothing new here. The infamous Apple "cube" was also true to this design, connector technology had not caught up with reality yet.

If you really want to go there, Apple didn't pioneered that either. IBM was looking into convection cooling as early as 1965: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comput...supercomputers

So, it looks like RAM and HDD's are easily accessible and replaced, how about the GPU? Can I drop in an AMD Polaris? (If those do, indeed, up the perf-per-watt game they would be a strong combination with this pc) Better yet, will they offer a Polaris option out of the box? Ofcourse, Polaris will have to be released first...
Same question for the CPU, can it be replaced? Will there be an AMD option?

If you read the fine print, AMD has only said that Polaris will be the "largest jump in performance per watt in the history of Radeon GPUs". Not in the history of GPUs. Chances are Polaris will probably close the efficiency gap to Maxwell (if they could beat Maxwell, their PR would be far more aggressive, I think). As usual, I'm hoping AMD will surprise me, but I'm not holding my breath.

[TheBlackCat]

So, it looks like RAM and HDD's are easily accessible and replaced, how about the GPU?

There is an airtop DIY that lets you install your own graphics card, so I would think so.

[Passso]

So, it looks like RAM and HDD's are easily accessible and replaced, how about the GPU? Can I drop in an AMD Polaris? (If those do, indeed, up the perf-per-watt game they would be a strong combination with this pc) Better yet, will they offer a Polaris option out of the box? Ofcourse, Polaris will have to be released first...
Same question for the CPU, can it be replaced? Will there be an AMD option?

Alert : Subliminal advertizer detected

Is it POLARIS with POLARIS and POLARIS ? if POLARIS then POLARIS else POLARIS end POLARIS.

Now concerning this computer, if it works that well even in summer I already love it.
So bad the price is not revealed atm! Definitly wanna follow this project, as all my PC are primarly built for silence

[Sonadow]

No Skylake. Do not want.

*continues typing away on new Skylake notebook and desktop*

[GraysonPeddie]

I love that symphonic song in the video! That would be my inspiration for writing that kind of song, as I have Studio Orchestra from Digital Sound Factory. It probably won't be as good as compared to the one in the video.

And fanless PC! That's something I'd like. My server is fanless and it powers my AMD Athlon 5350 APU. I'm using my Arctic Alpine M1 Heatsink. I really don't know if I could go fanless with a 65W TDP CPU that's in my Thermaltake Core V21.

Could a CompuLab AirTop be a NAS? I don't need a high-end CPU as a media server that streams movies to my home theater PC. Since the article mentions it can hold up to four hard drives, could it hold an SSD as an OS drive?