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The CompuLab Airtop Continues Hitting Expectations As A High-Performance, Fanless PC

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  • The CompuLab Airtop Continues Hitting Expectations As A High-Performance, Fanless PC

    Phoronix: The CompuLab Airtop Continues Hitting Expectations As A High-Performance, Fanless PC

    At the end of February I posted my initial hands-on with the passively-cooled Airtop PC that's been exciting many readers over its unique design and being Linux-friendly. As I hadn't written anymore about it in the past few weeks, some Phoronix readers had emailed me and tweeted, curious what the deal was and if it wasn't living up to expectations. That's not the case at all and the Airtop PC continues to exhibit great potential and is yet another solid offering from CompuLab.

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    It's not for everybody and it's not cheap, but that is still an impressive piece of technology and thanks for showing it off running Linux.

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    • #3
      Why Broadwell? Integrated GPU (Iris Pro) is not used, or there is a option in BIOS setup?

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      • #4
        Originally posted by chuckula View Post
        It's not for everybody and it's not cheap, but that is still an impressive piece of technology and thanks for showing it off running Linux.
        x2, the custom system board looks unique for a number of reasons:
        • The CPU appears to be mounted on the reverse side of the board?
        • The motherboard provides the PCI-E 6-pin power for the video card.
        • The PCI-E slot is attached via a ribbon cable.

        The fit and finish of the case appears to be superior as well, with the fitment around the I/O porting being very well done. It's clear a lot of engineering time went into this machine.

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        • #5
          800 buck for case is too much, for this price i would like to see top notch product with more audio jack and with guarantee that MB, CPU and GPU would be replaceable in the future.
          And this custom MB, i would like to see some proven Asus, GB or MSI one, only customized.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by ruthan View Post
            800 buck for case is too much, for this price i would like to see top notch product with more audio jack and with guarantee that MB, CPU and GPU would be replaceable in the future.
            And this custom MB, i would like to see some proven Asus, GB or MSI one, only customized.
            If I recall correctly, the video card is normal, just put in without a heatsink.

            The rest of the design is done for the ambient cooling reasons -- the #1 reason to buy it with still decent performance.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by ruthan View Post
              800 buck for case is too much, for this price i would like to see top notch product with more audio jack and with guarantee that MB, CPU and GPU would be replaceable in the future.
              And this custom MB, i would like to see some proven Asus, GB or MSI one, only customized.

              Lol, what? This isn't a L33T gam3r peecee. What you want can be found at Best Buy or Wal Mart.

              And I would much rather have this top notch custom mobo in a premium case, than any of the unreliable and unproven boards from Asus, GB, or MSI. Those three especially are hit-n-miss in terms of both component quality and Linux support.

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              • #8
                Interesting but to expensive.

                torsionbar28 I build from Asus parts my gaming PC and never had any problems.

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                • #9
                  Interesting, this could very well become a standard (as a case, and motherboard form factor) if compulab tries to push it as such (which is what I think is needed for long term success). Next generation hardware only has lower and lower TDP after all so just with the next egeneration of gaming cards (from either AMD or Nvidia) You might possibly be able to use the highest end (or close to it) graphics card in a case like this.

                  And honestly; make a Zen/Vega combination Airtop next year, and I will probably buy. Make intel/nvidia and intel/amd variations later this year (with polaris/pascal) and some other people might buy at that point as well.

                  But all in all what this product seems to need right now more than anything is public awareness. I also think the prices are fair, as long as people understand what they're getting, but for widespread popularity prices may have to be brought down.

                  Originally posted by fuzz View Post

                  If I recall correctly, the video card is normal, just put in without a heatsink.

                  The rest of the design is done for the ambient cooling reasons -- the #1 reason to buy it with still decent performance.

                  Lol, no. The card is put in yes, without heatsink, yes, but not "just without heatsink" it has thermal paste applied to it connecting with the side of the case which is what it uses as a massive heatsink instead.
                  Last edited by rabcor; 26 March 2016, 07:13 AM.

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                  • #10
                    I'd get this if it had an NVIDIA GTX 970 or equivalent since I'd like to test out VR. Maybe version 2. Otherwise, a (probably larger then I'd like) custom built silent PC would be below ambient noise to notice anyway.

                    Is the CompuLab logo removable? It doesn't like nice. Also, can the LCD be turned off or set to display something else? The Airtop display doesn't look nice either.

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