Logic Supply's Karbon 300: A Well Built, Extremely Durable Linux PC For Demanding Low-Power Environments

Written by Michael Larabel in Computers on 3 June 2019 at 03:02 PM EDT. Page 4 of 4. 9 Comments.

Obviously depending upon the workload, some of the other systems can come out ahead with their four cores or Hyper Threading. If looking for something more powerful than the Atom E3930, the Karbon 300 has the Atom E3950 model that is four cores with a 1.6GHz base frequency and 2.0 GHz burst frequency as well as Intel HD Graphics 505 but with a 12 Watt TDP.

Over the span of dozens of workloads tested, the Karbon 300 continued to show the best thermal characteristics against the other hardware tested. For this rugged, ventless and passively-cooled PC, the Karbon 300 had an average core temperature of 35 degrees and a peak of 38 degrees. In comparison, the actively-cooled Intel NUCs had a 43~45 degree average temperature while the passively-cooled Fitlet2 came in with a 51 degree average temperature and 64 degree peak. The Karbon 300 worked out very well for the thermal characteristics.

As for the AC power draw over the span of many single and multi-threaded workloads, the Karbon 300 had an average pull of 9 Watts with a peak of 12 Watts. This average power draw was similar to the Fitlet2's average but that CompuLab device peaked at 18 Watts.

Overall, the Logic Supply Karbon 300 is a very well built, passively-cooled and ventless PC that can be pre-loaded with Linux. The power of the Atom Apollo Lake chip doesn't make it the most suitable for demanding compute tasks, but is certainly enough for many industrial use-cases, some edge applications, and its triple Gigabit Ethernet / CAN bus / COM ports and other connectivity make it relevant for a range of possible applications. Those wishing to learn more about the Karbon 300 can do so at LogicSupply.com.

As some follow-up tests will be further tests of the Atom E3930 / Karbon 300 under different Linux distributions and BSDs, etc.

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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.