That Exciting, Passively-Cooled Linux PC Is Arriving Next Week

[Compulab]

So, does this GPU have a fan?

The graphics card is sold by EVGA with heatsink and fan.
Compulab removes both, and also the tall DVI connector to make the card single slot.
Then the card is attached to a custom copper plate and mounted on the left wall of Airtop where the generated heat dissipates passively through the air-tubes.

It says there that power requirements are 350W. How does that fit in the maximum total of 200W? Does the GPU reach peak performance?

The card is set to dissipate 100W as per NVIDIA specifications for GeForce GTX 950. 350W is the recommended system power.

What's the maximum ambient temperature for the whole PC to be still fully functional, even if the GPU and CPU are in full load?

According to our measurements CPU and graphics card do not throttle at room temperature under full load.
Both have very advanced thermal/power management so if ambient is raised Airtop will be functional but power and performance of CPU and GPU will be adjusted accordingly.

Best regards,
Irad Stavi, Compulab

[smartalgorithm]

Hope you'll do some benchmarks with Xeon E3-1285 V4 Workstation version in near future... Would be interesting to see how it performs and behaves in various temperatures. I'm sure Compulab did some industrial testings before production but anyway seeing some Phoronix benchmarks here would be very appreciated!
thanks

[Brane215]

This thread paints a grim picture. Do people really think that noise is a necessity when using computers? You guys have really low standards in acoustics if you really prefer spinning fans to passive solutions.

Nope. Noise is just a sign that thing ate all the crap it could, that vents are clogged and that it's time to clean it.

After short cleaning cycle vent is inaudible again - if it was chosen right.

Passive things have no such option - they can just silently overheat until aither something burns or solderjoint cracks under repeating thermal stressess.

[silviumc]

On the airtop site, in the specifications page, I clicked on the GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 Graphics Card to see details about it. It takes me to EVGA. Some things aren't clear to me about it:
So, does this GPU have a fan?
It says there that power requirements are 350W. How does that fit in the maximum total of 200W? Does the GPU reach peak performance?

What's the maximum ambient temperature for the whole PC to be still fully functional, even if the GPU and CPU are in full load?

[Petteri]

This thread paints a grim picture. Do people really think that noise is a necessity when using computers? You guys have really low standards in acoustics if you really prefer spinning fans to passive solutions.

[tinko]

I hate that passive cooling stuff. If it's done on the stuff that sips so little , it's a non news, since competition is probably doing it or is about to.
If it's done with other, hotter stuff, then it's contrived on some level and has to have decent environment. Stuffing any kind of disk in this kind of enclosure is to ooptimistic for my taste. Is it worth all those complications when you can have one big, slow, silent vent ?

Usually I don't hate stuff for the sole reason that I consider other designs superior. I don't think this would be good for my well-being. If you feel actual hate for passive cooling stuff, for which there are legitimate use cases, even if you are not interested in those, I'd advice you to stop clicking on news related on it.

Also, if a tech site only reports on stuff for which there is no competition doing it or about to do it, then it won't be able to report about many items at all.

[Brane215]

I hate that passive cooling stuff. If it's done on the stuff that sips so little , it's a non news, since competition is probably doing it or is about to.
If it's done with other, hotter stuff, then it's contrived on some level and has to have decent environment. Stuffing any kind of disk in this kind of enclosure is to ooptimistic for my taste. Is it worth all those complications when you can have one big, slow, silent vent ?

[computerquip]

"This product is a lie"
"This is already around"
"This product sucks because it doesn't follow my immediate moral code"
"It should be better"
- Seemingly everyone on this thread

What the hell people... seriously a bunch of haters.

[karolherbst]

??? it have more than 3 times the performance

sure it hasn't

GTX 750: 1044 GFLOPS SP
Iris Pro (P)580: 1152 GFLOPS SP
Iris 550: 844 GFLOPS

the only thing where the nvidia one is much better is memory (GDDR5 vs DDR3/DDR4) and that only by around doubled bandwidth.

[rudl]

the poblem with current pcs is not that miniaturisation stopped but that we stopped to call the big old specs obsolete. Who needs something bigger than Y atx? seriosly even SLI Crossifire is a non reason. Soundcards are pretty much obsolate and wifi cards will be once more vendors integrate onboard solutions. For everything else just a single 1pci-e x1 for home computing will be more than sufficient.