CompuLab's Airtop 3 Is The Most Powerful Fan-Less Computer We've Tested Yet

The past month and a half we have been putting CompuLab's Airtop 3 computer through some demanding benchmarks and a variety of endurance workloads. With the Airtop 3 under test loaded with an 8-core / 16-thread Xeon processor, NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 graphics, and 64GB of RAM with NVMe SSD storage there were some concerns over thermal throttling and if this fan-less industrial PC design could really deal with the generated heat. But after all of this testing, the Airtop 3 continues running strong and another shining example of CompuLab's engineering strength.

In case you missed it, back in July we posted our preview / initial impressions of the Airtop 3 with some preliminary numbers. Since then I've run benchmarks near continuously on the Airtop 3 via the Phoronix Test Suite and Phoromatic to really stress the device and ensure it could hold up fine.

The Airtop 3 continues to leverage CompuLab's natural airflow design while being like the manufacturer's other products is built with industrial use-cases in mind with its ruggedized design. CompuLab has rated their design as being able to dissipate up to 300 Watts without a fan and backs the systems with a five year warranty.

The Airtop 3 can be fully loaded with either a Core i9 9900K or Xeon E 2288G (what our review sample is using) and besides these 95 Watt CPUs there is the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 that was also installed with its 160 Watt TDP. Rounding out this rugged fanless PC is support for up to six storage drives and up to 128GB of RAM, allowing for the most capable fanless computer we have ever seen.

In suiting for industrial use-cases,besides the dual Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11ac WiFi on the Airtop 3 there is also options for an LTE/4G modem, dual 10GbE SFP+ ports, up to four additional Gigabit Ethernet ports, and 802.3af PoE support using different faceplates on the device to allow for these different "FACE" modules. We've seen these FACE modules on different CompuLab devices over the years and they have proven to be quite useful.

Those interested in more background on the Airtop 3 and its design can find the details via Fit-IOT.com.