
Compulab Airtop – Natural Airflow Desktop - icefox
https://airtop-pc.com/
======
m-i-l
I've been putting together fanless PCs for my own use for a few years now,
also disliking the aircraft-taking-off sound of many desktop PCs when they are
switched on. I started with the Zalman Reserator[0] water cooling tower, then
moved to the Zalman TNN 500-AF[1] where the case was a giant heatsink (it was
an amazing piece of kit), although more recently have been using ready-made
fanless PCs (which are more widespread now most of the components run much
cooler). The site at
[http://www.silentpcreview.com/](http://www.silentpcreview.com/) used to have
useful information for people building quiet PCs, and
[https://www.quietpc.com/](https://www.quietpc.com/) still has some good
components (and ready-made machines) too.

[0]
[https://www.quietpc.com/reserator1-v2](https://www.quietpc.com/reserator1-v2)

[1] [https://www.quietpc.com/tnn500af](https://www.quietpc.com/tnn500af)

~~~
hubert123
I use an integrated graphics chip and a noctua cpu cooler, it's practically
completely silent. I sleep right next to my PC often.

~~~
masklinn
Different people have different noise threshold, and different ability to
filter out noise. I couldn't sleep next to a running computer even using large
low-speed fans until I built one using a Reserator. I have friends who can
sleep next to what are essentially heli turbines. The big annoyance of the
Reserator is it's a pain in the ass to carry around.

------
krylon
Funny/scary anecdote: I have a PC whose CPU fan has stopped working about 18
months ago. The thing has been running as my home server, reliably, and it is
very stable.

Of course, the fan sits on top of a huge heat-spreader, which still
(passively) works, and the case is open, and the machine has not all that much
to do serving me. On hot summer days, the system log tells me frequently that
the CPU has throttled itself to prevent overheating, but that's about it. And
that's Core2 Quad, so it has not been exactly engineered for this scenario.
And still, to my utter surprise, this thing runs along merrily, with an uptime
of currently 148 days.

If I can create a "fanless"[1] computer by accident that works and is - in
face of the rather modest load I put on it - rock-solid stable, building one
intentionally should not be that hard.

I own two notebooks, for Pete's sake, that are fanless, and they work well.

So, yes, the idea that a computer must make some kind of noise to show you it
is working is gradually becoming a thing of the past. If sufficient cooling
can be achieved without moving parts, that is preferable.

OTOH, the sounds devices emit used to be indicators of what was going on
inside them. With SSDs, you can no longer hear your hard drive work. When I
sit at one of our CAD workstations and watch a designer model something in
Autodesk Inventor, more and more fans are spinning faster and faster as the
temperature rises - the noise level correlates to the workload of the system.
If the computer becomes absolutely silent, we need substitutes for those
metrics. Blinkenlights, maybe.

[1] Strictly speaking, the power supply still has a fan, and that one is not
all that far away from the CPU, which might improve the situation somewhat.

~~~
ethbro
I believe a lot of fans in modern systems are for worse case rather than
average case situations.

As far as I know, there's nothing in the Dell et al. warranty that prohibits
you from running a high-load system in a confined nook in a dust-clogged room
with a high ambient temperature. So cooling needs to be designed to be
sufficient even in pathologically stupid situations.

------
Patient0
The configurations that allow multiple 60Hz 4K monitors appear to depend on
either having a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 or NVIDIA Quadro M4000 graphics cards.

But the NVidia GeForce GTX says it needs a 350W power supply [0]. The NVidia
Quadro says it needs 120W and says it has a "Ultra-quiet active fansink" [1]
... i.e. quiet, but it still needs a fan.

Can anyone therefore confirm if the Airtops are _completely_ passively cooled?
Is it just the CPU that is passively cooled, or the graphics card too?

[0]
[http://www.evga.com/products/Specs/GPU.aspx?pn=567ece10-ff52...](http://www.evga.com/products/Specs/GPU.aspx?pn=567ece10-ff52-4ebb-b856-6f38e9cde6f2)

[1] [https://www.pny.com/nvidia-
quadro-m4000?sku=VCQM4000-PB&type...](https://www.pny.com/nvidia-
quadro-m4000?sku=VCQM4000-PB&type=m)

~~~
dmayle
It is entirely passively cooled. The GTX 950 has a thermal profile (TDP of 90W
[0]. The 350W recommendation is for your entire system, it's not asking you to
add 350W to the size of your current power supply. The Airtop can passively
cool about 200W, so they put in a GPU at 90W TDP, and a CPU at 85W TDP

[0] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9547/nvidia-launches-
geforce-g...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9547/nvidia-launches-geforce-
gtx-950-gm206-the-lesser-for-159)

~~~
Patient0
Awesome. I bought a NoFan from quietpc.com last year but I struggled to get a
completely fanless setup capable of driving 4K at 60Hz (there was exactly one
fanless card they offered which had displayPort 1.2).... Now though it looks
like Airtop will be my next upgrade!

~~~
jdietrich
An ordinary GPU can be made fanless with an aftermarket cooler. The Arctic
Accelero S3 will handle 135w TDP cards without a fan. That's sufficient to
cool a GTX 1060. You will need a large case with plenty of ventilation.

[https://www.arctic.ac/uk_en/accelero-s3.html](https://www.arctic.ac/uk_en/accelero-s3.html)

------
thaumaturgy
Funny, I was looking at these guys' latest offerings just earlier today,
before the HP announcement.

This is built by the same guys that built the FitPC ([http://www.fit-
pc.com/](http://www.fit-pc.com/)). I've had one of their little 5-watt fanless
systems running 24/7 in my home for a couple of years now. I love it. Never
had a problem with it. It's easily one of my favorite pieces of computing
equipment.

I was looking at their stuff earlier because I'm considering getting some more
from them.

------
SimonPStevens
I find the hum of lots of computer fans comforting. I did a lot of my work at
uni very late at night in the computer labs when it was empty, just the
constant noise of a hundred or so desktop machines. It's my ideal working
environment.

~~~
vijucat
We've got you covered, mate. Here we have retro computer fan and server room
sounds in the age of these pesky-quiet, small form factor fanless PCs:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeESf9aCZHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeESf9aCZHQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy_RHdE7zsc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy_RHdE7zsc)

:-)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
If you like those you might also like the star ship Enterprise idling, for
24hrs... for a more futuristic spin (haha!) on things.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPoqNeR3_UA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPoqNeR3_UA)

~~~
swozey
That's awesome. [http://mynoise.net](http://mynoise.net) has similar ambient
sounds, they have a section on "Transports" that contains (just a few);
Spaceship, Railroads, Sailboat, Aircraft cabin, Flying Fortress.. etc

It's awesome when I'm writing short stories, they've also got stuff like; RPG
Dark Forest, Dungeon, Battlefield that helps me get in the mood if I'm writing
a fantasy story.

IIRC it's a sound engineers hobby side project. I've got nothing to do with
the project, just been a happy user for years.

~~~
vijucat
Brilliant site, thanks for the recommendation.

------
linuxkerneldev
My fear with these designs is that because the chassis is the heatsink, there
is the issue of the continuous deformation (expansion and contraction) of the
chassis body/heatsink, and you get mechanical stresses on the mobo that
eventually cause internal vias to break. So yes, it may work fine for 12
months, but the overall lifespan of the product might be significantly
shortened.

~~~
IshKebab
Not going to happen. They're too small to expand much.

Aluminium is 22 microstrain per degree apparently. Say it raises to 60C and is
30cm long, that gives you're looking at 0.26 mm. Easily accommodated by flex
in the mountings.

------
pbowyer
Last PC I built I looked very hard at fanless, but eventually decided to
choose my fans well and run them as slowly as I could get away with to keep
the computer cool.

It works well - the swoosh of the 120mm on the back is _just_ audible when the
computer is working hard (with the computer 4ft away from me). Otherwise I
don't hear it.

Oh - and when I game occasionally I hear the graphics card fan, but that was
expected. The fan only runs when needed (ASUS Strix) so is silent in normal
use.

~~~
theandrewbailey
Yup, large (100+mm) and slow (<1000) RPM fans are the way to go. Put it under
the desk (desktop to deskunder?), use SSDs and a noise insulated case, and
that's a fairly quiet machine. And that's before going overboard with liquid
cooling.

Gaming has lots of sound to mask any kind of noise from the case, unless
there's something quiet and _emotional_. I have 1000w 7.1 speakers, and never
notice case noise.

I have a four year old GTX 680 with the blower reference cooler (fairly
quiet). I've blown air into the outside vents to get the dust out, but a few
weeks ago, I took off the shroud for the first time, and was amazed that there
were no dust bunnies anywhere, even though I hadn't blown the dust out for at
least a year.

------
dpfu
I recently got my parents a fanless desktop computer. There a lot of options,
but I went with a cheap Shuttle XPC slim barebone [1]: It is tiny, has a
really nice industrial design and two front facing COM ports (!).

[1]
[http://www.shuttle.eu/fileadmin/resources/download/docs/spec...](http://www.shuttle.eu/fileadmin/resources/download/docs/spec/barebones/DS68U_e.pdf)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
_two front facing COM ports_

They'll come in handy!

But seriously, what's the motivation behind putting those on the machine, or
wanting them?

~~~
spin
I imagine that's for use with POS terminals (ie cash registers). A lot of
those still have serial-port barcode scanners or serial-port printers.

~~~
jsjohnst
I'm pretty sure the ports are also commonly used for cash drawers.

------
chx
I am using this [https://www.amazon.com/Qotom-Q190G4-Celeron-Processor-
Barebo...](https://www.amazon.com/Qotom-Q190G4-Celeron-Processor-
Barebone/dp/B019Z8T9J0) machine as a Linux router and also as a media player.
It's astonishingly cheap for what it is and is not an Atom which CPUs I really
dislike because of their incredibly slow single thread performance. This is
not fast either but it's about on par with a i3-4020Y so don't be put off by
the "Celeron" marking. It's very similar to the Shuttle @dpfu mentions in this
thread except a little different in ports and appearance and 20% cheaper. The
Shuttle one has two DIMM slots while this only has one.

~~~
throwanem
Qotom boxes are great! I run one as a router with pfSense, and it gives me no
trouble. If I ever start using my TV again, I plan to get another for media
center use.

One note of interest: depending on the shipper, you may need to pick it up in
person, as photo ID may be required if it comes through customs. This was no
issue for me since the DHL depot at BWI is less than a mile from the light
rail stop - I even got to see a couple of 777 and 747 freighters up close! -
but may be inconvenient depending on shipper and depot location. Still very
much worth it IMO - the price/performance of Qotom hardware is extremely
impressive, and nothing I could more easily source compares.

~~~
chx
Yeah when I looked at the price I was extremely skeptical of getting four
Intel Ethernet controllers but there they are... LOL I remember when a four
port Ethernet card costed more than this whole machine :D

------
luxpir
Checked this out last night when it was linked to in the HP post. I like the
direction these fanless PCs are going in, but as others have said, it's more
or less a solved problem.

Fanless laptops are where I'm now looking. The UX360CA Zenbook is fanless,
low-power, and very reasonably priced (at least in the USA - still waiting on
price to 'settle' over here). Silence would be very welcome for night reading
and viewing.

~~~
exDM69
> Fanless laptops are where I'm now looking. The UX360CA Zenbook is fanless,
> low-power, and very reasonably priced

The fanless Zenbooks are fantastic. But they're also really low power with the
Core-M CPUs with a TDP of 4.5 Watts [0]. That's in a power budget that could
fit in a tablet.

The Airtop-D has a Core i7 CPU, which has a TDP of 65 Watts (can downtuned to
37W) [1]. You can roughly expect it to have 10x+ more computational power.

It's just a whole different category of devices.

[0] [http://ark.intel.com/products/88199/Intel-
Core-m7-6Y75-Proce...](http://ark.intel.com/products/88199/Intel-
Core-m7-6Y75-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz) [1]
[http://ark.intel.com/products/88040/Intel-
Core-i7-5775C-Proc...](http://ark.intel.com/products/88040/Intel-
Core-i7-5775C-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_70-GHz)

~~~
chx
You will be sorely disappointed if you expect those CPUs to have a 10x
difference. First, you have a 2.75x clockspeed difference and then a double
core count so 5.5 times is what you could expect if they were the same
architecture but the 6Y75 is Skylake (don't be mislead by the "Core M"
moniker, these the same architecture as their larger wattage brethen just with
a lower TDP, they used to mark them with an Y postfix like i3-4220Y and the Y
is still in the moniker) and the 5775C is Broadwell but it has eDRAM so the
difference is negligible here [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-
skylake-review-6700...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-
review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/9). So in real world, you can
expect to see a 3-5x speedup.

~~~
exDM69
Yes, 3-5x (peak performance) sounds quite reasonable. But 10x is not out of
the question under high load for extended amounts of time (like compiling big
software) when you take the form factor thermals into account. A laptop like
that will start throttling quite aggressively quite quickly.

The Zenbook I have isn't a powerful computer by any measure. It's a fine
laptop for light use but the CPU and thermal characteristics aren't suitable
for intensive computation. I'd expect any fanless desktop computer to wipe the
floor with it when it comes to perf.

~~~
chx
This is why I rent a server at Hetzner. Considering you can get an i7 3770 for
33.61 EUR a month, it's pretty economical. It also serves as a backup (2x3TB)
and occassional webhost.

------
bnegreve
I have been using a laptop and a docking station for a while now. I think this
is the optimal configuration.

\- no / very little noise

\- no need to synchronize between work / home (Given that I also have a
docking station at home, I essentially use my laptop as a portable hard drive
with a screen)

\- I can take my current work to meeting rooms anytime.

\- ...

~~~
stinos
> no / very little noise

Doesn't that heavily depend on usage? At least I've never had a laptop which
wouldn't turn into a noise generator once you start compiling, computing or
heavy imaging/editing.

But yes a single machine + docking station at home and one on the job isn't a
bad solution

~~~
hocuspocus
> Doesn't that heavily depend on usage? At least I've never had a laptop which
> wouldn't turn into a noise generator once you start compiling, computing or
> heavy imaging/editing.

Exactly. For the past decade I've built desktop computers that are silent no
matter the load (I don't do any GPU heavy work). I really cannot say that for
my work laptops.

------
brianolson
This is awesome but expensive. The base configuration is $800 ($795) for
case+motherboard+power_supply. I'm used to $50 case, $200 mobo, $100 ps. $800
is a lot more than $350. Maybe you'll get $450 of enjoyment out of a sweet
silent workstation. [http://airtop-pc.com/product/airtop-
customized/](http://airtop-pc.com/product/airtop-customized/)

~~~
dmayle
Well, you should at least compare apples to apples. A fanless power supply
will cost your more like $200, a quality small case will cost you $200, a
fanless cpu cooler like the NoFan will cost you $100, so you're at about the
$700 range, which is not too far off. A $100 permium to get all of this
integrated, and able to cool 200W (as opposed to about 100W of cooling in the
generic solutions) is a lot less extravagent.

------
kogepathic
I've got a MintBox 2, which is a fanless PC produced by CompuLab (same
manufacturer as the Airtop).

From what I can gather, CompuLab's primary market is industrial/embedded PCs.
As such, they have extremely long SKU lifetimes.

The MintBox 2 for example comes with a 5 year warranty, and the "Long Term
Availability" of the Intense PC SKU (released in 2012) is 2019. So they will
still be selling 3rd Gen Intel parts in 2019.

The MintBox 2 cost $599 US when released, and if you check the price today
it's still the same $599 as on release day. So don't expect the models to get
any cheaper over time.

The only issue I've had thus far with the unit is that it's very picky on
memory. You _have_ to install modules from their QVL or you'll end up with
memory errors and crashing.

Otherwise, if you want a compact fanless PC, you don't want to build it
yourself, you want a long warranty, and you're willing to spend Apple-level
money, then CompuLab has the product for you!

------
misotaur
Here`s hoping for a future where desktops are so efficient that they don`t
need any active cooling.

~~~
clarry
Arguably they've been around for a while now (I have two fanless shuttle mini
PCs running on my desk, and one laptop made fanless by stabbing a screwdriver
through the vent holes into the fan). It's just that whenever you want the
last three inches of extra performance, you pay a heavy price with respect to
thermal power.

------
sliken
I was hoping for something like this with the skylake iris 550. Top of the
line perf/watt (for a cpu+gpu). GPU fast enough for light gaming/webGL, or
older games.

There's an intel NUC that's close (M2 slot + iris 540), but it's a little
pricey at $340 and uses 15 watt version (that throttles very quickly), instead
of the 28 watt version that can actually sustain a decent level of
performance.

Fast, quiet, decent CPU+GPU shouldn't really be that hard.

Seems like GPUs are getting their with the gtx 1050/60/70 having tiny half
length cards available, but I've seen very few cases designed for them.

~~~
trengrj
I've owned a couple NUCs. One that was fanless (Gigabyte BACE-3000), but a bit
slow. I upgraded to an Gigabyte Intel i5 NUC, it has a fan but I can't hear it
at all. Brilliant machine.

I think the "quiet pc issue" is a solved problem provided you aren't building
a massive gaming machine.

------
MiguelHudnandez
Looks like a much beefier alternative to a NUC, which I was already impressed
with.

------
princeb
interesting. the whole case is a heat sink directly applied to the cpu.

although, 100W cooling does nothing for the r9 390 which is something like
275W TDP. i have a veritable wind tunnel below my table, blowing really hot
air up my shorts.

------
TekMol
I have the following approach to fanless computing:

1) I buy any desktop I like for its form factor

2) I either use the onboard graphic or a fanless graphics card

3) I set the threshold for all fans that are accessible via fancontrol to a
level that keeps them permanently off

4) I pull or cut the cables of any fans that remain spinning

People always tell me I am "insane" to do so. But I have been doing this for
years now and never had a problem.

~~~
djsumdog
Modern CPUs will just downclock themselves. I mean it's not insane; you won't
damage the components, but you will be running A LOT slower than you could be.

Do you run tools to see how far down your CPUs frequency scaling is taking it?

~~~
TekMol
I would be surprised if any downscaling takes place. I run some heavy
computation software from time to time and compare the performance to other
computers. Many of them in datacenters. I would probably notice if a machine
suddenly downscales.

That said, I would be happy to measure it and post the results. Running the
computations now. According to "top" it saturates 2 of my 8 CPUs. So far,
"lscpu" reports the CPU at 1600 MHz. "sensors" reports the CPU Temperature is
slowly rising. Was 48°C at IDLE. Is 50°C now.

15 minutes later. CPU temp was raising so slow that I stopped it now. Don't
think it will get to anything critical ever. It was at 52°C. CPU speed was
still at 1600MHz.

~~~
alphapapa
Isn't 1.6 GHz quite a low frequency? What CPU do you have?

------
qplex
IMO 120mm+ fans running at low speeds combined with large heatsinks and SSDs
pretty much solved noise problems for desktop PCs.

~~~
durzagott
Except for discreet graphic cards, of course.

~~~
synackrst
Some GPUs have fans that spin down entirely under light load (Asus calls it
0db mode), and only spin up the fans when under moderate to heavy loads.

~~~
qplex
Yes. Also, at least With NVDIA cards, you can specify a temperature target to
the driver. I think the defaults usually run the chips at ~70C.

I guess the fans are actually mostly 100mm in 2x fan configurations,
manufacturers seem to have many custom solutions for blade configuration etc.

------
lugus35
It reminds me of Amstrad PC1512 in 1986 [1]:

> "Whereas IBM's PC (and almost all PC compatibles) had a power supply in a
> corner of the main case, the PC1512's power supply was integrated with that
> of its monitor. The monitor had sufficient venting to cool itself by
> convection, instead of needing a fan. The PC1512 was therefore quieter than
> other PCs. Rumours circulated that an Amstrad PC would overheat, and while
> existing owners would note that this did not happen, new buyers were
> discouraged. As a result, later models had a cooling fan integrated into the
> main case."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC1512](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC1512)

------
jfindley
This is not all that new of an idea. I had one of these around 2005/2006:
[https://www.quietpc.com/hfx-mini-metal](https://www.quietpc.com/hfx-mini-
metal) \- completely fanless and (virtually) silent - back in those days there
were no SSDs, so one had to content onesself with slow spindle speed HDDs
mounted on soft rubber to minimise vibrations.

Despite the fact that the mfr appears to think it's a "revolutionary" idea,
I'm not really seeing any material difference between that and the case above,
from over 10 years ago. Perhaps I'm wrong though?

~~~
besselheim
I had a couple of machines from Hush Technologies (long since out of
business), also ~10 years ago. They were passively cooled through a finned
chassis, connected to the CPU and other hotspots by heat conducting pipes.

Like yours, sounds like the same sort of thing as these Airtop machines.

------
d3ckard
If this thing can dissipate 200W of heat, that I must say it's truly
impressive. I cannot say I want to buy one (I'm not that sensitive about
noise), but from technical point of view it seems like a little marvel.

------
usaphp
Reminds me of this company: [http://www.calyos-tm.com/calyos-fanless-pc-
workstation/](http://www.calyos-tm.com/calyos-fanless-pc-workstation/)

------
CPLX
Seems to me that if someone could figure out how to create a stable Hackintosh
install package that exactly fit one of their builds it would be a thing of
major usefulness.

------
clarry
Does anybody understand the copper heatpipes? It mentions virtual vacuum, but
my understanding is that heatpipes are typically filled with a liquid that
boils and turns to gas as it heats, thus moving up along the pipe and carrying
heat further away to allow for a larger contact surface with the heatsink. Are
airtop's heatpipes somehow different? What "virtual vacuum" and how does it
work?

------
fest
On a slightly related note: does anyone have recommendations for embedded PC
distributor/manufacturer in EU with online order system? I don't want to waste
time talking to sales reps.

From time to time I need a PC to stuff inside places a regular desktop
wouldn't survive too long (think factory floor).

I've ordered from IPC2U but they introduced a minimum order of 10 for their
Intel NUC based systems.

------
bikamonki
Compare to something like this that you can get for $30:

[https://www.pine64.org/?product=pine-a64-board-2gb](https://www.pine64.org/?product=pine-a64-board-2gb)

Yes, the airtop will give you 4x-6x the features, yet in these days of cheap
electronics, is $1800 really worth it?

~~~
jajern
A fairly powerful, fanless computer with a 6 year warranty that can run
multiple 4K displays for less than a well built MBPro is probably worth it to
quite a few people. Besides people who just "want" a fanless PC, there are lab
applications that require noiseless computers. Noiseless lab computers are
VERY expensive. I'm sure there are many other professional use cases where
$1800 isn't that much money. Maybe video/audio production?

------
RazrFalcon
Too much compromises and too expensive. For this money you can buy a normal
i7- __ __k processor with Noctua cooler, Asus Strix video card with DirectCU
and PSU by 'be quiet!'. Put all this stuff in a good case and you will get a
PC with a great performance and almost no noise.

------
imperialdrive
What is the use-case for this? It seems pricey for entry level, but has a lot
of nifty options for power-users.. but, then why would I risk having no
airflow or extra power (200watt PS) for when I get cookin' with storage or
fast video?

~~~
hibbelig
It's silent. Maybe to you it makes no difference, but for me it's really
important.

~~~
imperialdrive
I'm a 'fan' of silence, but a Silencio ATX case is <100 and I never notice my
computer, ever. I also spent a lot of time finding just the right keyboard and
mouse, a sweet-spot of solid action without too much click... us techies sure
are picky now that I think about it, and for a good reason, tools of the
trade.

~~~
masklinn
> I'm a 'fan' of silence, but a Silencio ATX case is <100 and I never notice
> my computer, ever.

Sounds like you have a pretty high "silence" threshold. I have a Define R4
with undervolted front fans, and while it's good enough when awake I couldn't
sleep next to it.

------
PeanutNore
I've never had any issue with PC fan noise - I have a fish tank in the room
where my desktop lives and the PC can't be heard over the sounds of the
aquarium's filter and air pump, which sound quite pleasant to me.

~~~
smrtinsert
My latest build is surprisingly quiet as well. Part of it is using only SSDs.
The only fan I hear is the GPU and seldom honestly even while gaming.

------
monssoen
Streacom has fanless cases that look way better. They're not as small though.

~~~
Flenser
They're much harder to open though.

------
mmagin
I'm kind of disappointed that it relies on an external power brick. If I'm
spending a premium on a desktop, I don't want another bit of crap cluttering
up the desk or floor.

~~~
sliken
Indeed, lame. Just a cheap and silent way to get 10% or so of the heat
generation outside the case.

------
bovermyer
I am not the target market for this. I'm pretty sure I might be in the
minority, but I enjoy the sound of desktop PC fans, especially the larger,
noisier ones.

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BuckRogers
Looks like we took the site down. I have an Intel Skull Canyon NUC and love
it, will be using these from here on out. Be nice to see more companies offer
fanless cases.

------
lmm
0dB is pretty loud, no? IIRC it's the loudest sound expressible on an audio
CD. (Decibels are a log scale - true silence would be minus infinity).

~~~
joelwilliamson
No. 10dB is the volume of calm breathing, 0dB is the threshold for auditory
perception of a sound at 1kHz.

With regards to a CD, the decibel measures the gain rather than the volume.
0dB in this context simply means "full volume", while -10dB means 10% of full
volume, and -20dB means 1% of full volume.

------
noja
I worry about dust. With a non-fanless PC, you will notice it needs cleaning
because the fan becomes noisy. With a fanless PC you won't get that.

~~~
commentzorro
These (AirTop, Fit-PC, etc.) are completely sealed machines so no dust enters.
It does build up on the case - depending on your environment - but doesn't
effect the thermal characteristics at all.

~~~
clarry
It looks like the airtop has open air pipes that work like chimneys, letting
the heated air inside flow up and out of it. These ought to be easy to clean
with compressed air though.

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magoon
12" MacBook has no fans, and I hardly ever hear them with 11" MacBook Air
(unless I were to switch back to Chrome)

------
joshuak
FYI, This page crashes on my iPad Pro in Safari 100% of the time.

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EugeneOZ
200 W for gaming card? Just ridiculous. Even gtx 1050 need 300 W PSU. And
modern quiet fans in quiet cases are really quiet - below 20db, so it's
difficult to hear it at all. My son have such with Gtx 1080 - it's the gaming
card.

~~~
sliken
GTX 1050 is just 75 watts, nvidia is just being conservative because many
people have crappy power supplies or tons of power consuming extras.

Assuming an intel cpu (mostly 65 watts or less), a SSD (few watts), some dims,
and the normal overhead for usb/power conversion, etc. you can get away with
quite a bit less than 300.

~~~
EugeneOZ
card: 75w, cpu when gaming: 80w, memory: 6w, 2 ssd drives: 6w. Total 167 W.
200 W pcu with 80% efficiency: 160 W. PCU with 95% efficiency: 190 W. Step
left - step right (any gaming hard moment) and bye bye. Looks like nvidia
recommendation is not so dumb. And it's for a low-level gaming card.

~~~
masklinn
> 200 W pcu with 80% efficiency: 160 W. PCU with 95% efficiency: 190 W

That's not how efficiency is computed (in general, but especially in PSU).

The power rating (200W in your example) is what the PSU can provide to the
system as DC power, the efficiency is the difference between AC input (wall-
draw) and DC output.

An 80%-efficient 200W PSU will provide 200W internally but draw 250W from the
wall-plug (and waste the extra 50W as heat).

If your 200W PSU maxes out at 160W it's not because it has 80% efficiency it's
because it's a worthless piece of shit. You should throw it away as there's
significant risk it will blow up (figuratively or literally) and/or catch on
fire. Here's an article (in french but you can look at the pictures) checking
out garbage PSU exhibiting that sort of behaviour:
[http://www.x86-secret.com/dossier-36-3000-Alimentation_Nonam...](http://www.x86-secret.com/dossier-36-3000-Alimentation_Noname.html)
spoiler: shitty components, detonations and burnt smells.

~~~
EugeneOZ
no worries, I use pretty decent CPUs, calm down in your negative adjectives.

------
ommunist
Read the thread. The main question is still open. Does anyone actually own
such a computer?

------
anentropic
nice, I want one!

preferably as a Hackintosh... is it possible?

~~~
dmayle
Not directly... But with a discrete GPU and the KVM hypervisor on Linux, you
could get the same effect

~~~
anentropic
what does that mean?

this airtop has a discrete gpu

what does "KVM hypervisor on Linux" have to do with running macOS on it?

~~~
dmayle
In order to run it as a hackintosh natively, you would need compatible
hardware and drivers, which this doesn't have. A niche alternative (starting
to be more documented) is to install Linux and run an OSX virtual machine.
Traditionally, that gave you terrible performance, and specifically terrible
graphics.

A hypervisor is a very lightweight wrapper around a virtual machine that
either requires a modified virtual machine (not the case here) or hardware
support in the CPU so you get to run a VM with a performance hit on the order
of 3%.

The newest intel CPUs have added hardware virtualization support, so if you
have a discrete GPU (like for this box), you can give the integrated graphics
to the host Linux system, and dedicate the discrete GPU to the virtual machine
(again, performance within a few percent of native).

All of this is to say that you can run a virtual OSX system on top of linux,
and get almost native performance like running a hackintosh, but without
having to have a perfect match of already supported hardware components.

------
tuananh
at this price, i would rather buy intel NUC.

~~~
gambiting
Have you ever used one? They can be extremely loud under load. It's like
comparing apples to oranges.

~~~
ZoFreX
There are fanless NUC cases available. I have one from Akasa, it's a beautiful
piece of kit. Solid black metal with heatsink ridges on the top, it looks and
feels like a hi-fi amplifier.

[https://www.scan.co.uk/products/akasa-newton-h-aluminium-
fan...](https://www.scan.co.uk/products/akasa-newton-h-aluminium-fanless-case-
for-intel-nuc-d34010wyb-and-d54250wyb-with-2-usb30-audio-and-i)

------
bosdev
The site is currently reporting an "Error establishing a database connection."
If at all possible, please try to make simple content sites like this static
using a tool like Netlify or [http://stout.is](http://stout.is). Static sites
are faster, more reliable and cheaper to operate.

~~~
bo1024
Knowing nothing about web hosting - could a static site hosted on a basic
hosting plan survive a hacker news front page? Or what would be required?

~~~
will_hughes
It'd depend on the shared hosting provider and your site.

Having hundreds of MB of content that people are going to want to load, even
if it's all served statically, will probably still have you in a bad way with
the cheapest of hosting providers.

But it'll have a much better chance of surviving than someone running
wordpress or something that's got zero caching and needs to do a ton of calls
to a shared MySQL host.

~~~
bo1024
Right sure, I was just picturing a static HTML page measured in KB.

~~~
PuffinBlue
Then yes, it would probably be fine, within reason.

When running a static site at very high traffic loads it becomes about how
many connections the webserver can handle and how much bandwidth you have to
serve the site itself, rather than pure power of the server to process all the
requests a dynamic site would generate.

You can start to chew through bandwidth allocations pretty quickly when you
get a couple thousand concurrent visitors, so a shared hosting plan might run
out pretty quickly if the cap is small, even with a fairly small site. And
something like Apache would need tweaking a fair bit to handle that number of
connections without eating all the RAM. Nginx is better in that regard and
could pretty easily handle thousands of concurrents.

So a small DigitalOcean VPS can easily handle millions of 'hits' per day if
set up with a little care, and more than that if setup well, but you just have
to watch you don't saturate the connection.

I mirrored a few sites that had faced the reddit hug of death (just to see
what the load was like) and I found you can easily hit 200mbps* sustained
connection requirement with all the visitors it brings just from the comment
thread, which people don't enter as much as the list posting.

*(depending on the size of the page obviously, the bigger the page the more mbps it'll need to serve, average was around 20-50mbps).

~~~
will_hughes
A VPS is quite a bit different than regular shared hosting though.

Like the absurdly low single-digit-per-month hosting plans with 'Unlimited'
everything. They're run to push the most customers onto the fewest boxes
possible, and offer incredibly large feature sets.

So, while you might be tuning your static content to be as small as possible,
you're probably on a box that's serving a heck of a lot poorly optimised
sites. Disk IO is probably going to be an issue if you can't keep your content
in memory (remembering that memory pressure is probably pretty high)

~~~
PuffinBlue
Ah, you're right, disk IO is one I hadn't considered too. I"m so used to
availability of cheap VPS and SSD I'm not sure the last time I used actual
shared hosting myself.

Those sorts of shared hosting plans have a funny way of disabling your site if
you get a big surge of traffic, despite the 'unlimited' claims.

I was told once, "Yes, your plan is unlimited, but not infinite.' when I had a
post on a long forgotten site go mildly popular.

I suppose on those types of machines the sheer number of connections would get
you in hot water too, especially if they're running vanilla apache and it
starts burning through memory there.

------
thenormal
Site is down for me

