Rugged Intel Core Mini PC

Friendly reminder: Tranquil PC's Rugged Intel Core Mini PC is a no-nonsense and robust Intel-powered system for home or industrial use. The small 54mm x 208mm x 180mm chassis is IP50-protected and designed for 24/7 operation between -15°C and 40°C. Proudly made in the UK.

Budget mini-ITX NAS

There's nothing like the satisfaction of successfully completing a DIY project. Building a NAS is actually not that hard, check out this cute system featuring ASRock's best-selling J5005-ITX motherboard and two Seagate IronWolf 2TB HDD. The Sharkoon case is mediocre at best but does the job, including featuring enough mesh for convection to occur.

Source: PCPartPicker

Quiet PC's fanless NUC review

UK's IT Pro takes a look at the Quiet PC UltraNUC Pro 7 Fanless which is essentially Intel's Dawson Canyon NUC passively cooled using Akasa's Newton S7D case. The system is fully configurable on Quiet PC.

"Switching from the stock NUC case to the UltraNUC is a trade-off: the system becomes a lot larger than it was designed to be, but the annoying stock fan is ditched in favour of using the finned case as a giant passive heatsink. It's still not a large machine by normal standards, measuring 177mm across and 61mm high, but it's bigger than most of its competition and with a weight of 1.7kg, it's heavier too."

Source: IT Pro

Logic Supply's 35W offering

A selection of 35W Coffee Lake processors - including the Celeron G4900T, Pentium G5400T, i3-8100T, i5-8500T, and i7-8700T - is now available for the ML510G-50. The heat sink case has also been updated with additional cooling fins at the bottom of the chassis. The brand new ML510G-50 features six USB ports (including four USB 3.1), two Displayport and two Gigabit Ethernet ports.

Source: Logic Supply

ECS LIVA Z2 (Celeron N4100) available

We're not sure if ECS' inability to find a US distributor or Intel's shortages are to blame, but it took more than a year and a half for the LIVA Z2 to be widely available. The OS-free Celeron N4100 / 32GB eMMC iteration is now listed for $183 on Amazon. The barebone features two SO-DIMM slots, one 2.5" bay, four USB 3.1 ports (including one Type C), two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI 1.4 and 2.0 ports, and Gigabit Ethernet.

APU gaming PC?

The Ryzen 5 3400G features "the most powerful graphics on a desktop processor". Well, that's according AMD ("Testing as of 05/14/2019 by AMD Performance Labs using an AMD Ryzen™ 5 3400G Processor and Intel Core i5-9400 in 3DMark Time Spy. Results may vary with configuration."). Make sure to use the AM4-compatible SilverStone HE02 V2 for passive cooling.

BREATHTAKING music server

The Taiko Audio SGM Extreme is a mind-blowing €24.000 music server featuring out-of-this-world specs. The 42kg CNC-machined aluminum and copper chassis (for reference the Akasa Euler is 2kg and the HDPLEX H5 is 7kg) rocks dual 10C / 20T Xeon, 48GB of industrial memory, 280GB of PCIe Optane storage for a custom Windows-based OS, 2TB of PCIe SSD storage for files (up to 24TB) and an internal linear PSU. Built to last a lifetime.

Source: Taiko Audio

MINIX finally gets it

After years of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad passive cooling, MINIX finally gets it and lets its CPU cooler breathe. The NEO G41V-4 is powered by the Celeron N4100 and features a much-need perforated case to provide airflow. Easy access to the M.2 SSD is also a nice touch.

Special thanks to Notebook Italia for sending the pictures.

3 alternatives to the Chaco Canyon NUC

Shuttle's DX30 features the 10W Celeron J3355, M.2 and 2.5" storage options, HDMI, DisplayPort, and a legit CPU cooler. $195

The DL10J is the DX30's successor, featuring the more powerful Celeron J4005 (Gemini Lake). This barebone is also 4K and 4G-ready. $199

Logic Supply's CL200G features the very same CPU used in the Chaco Canyon NUC, and a rugged chassis that doubles as a heat sink. $259

Airtop3 benchmarks

"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."

Source: Phoronix

New Intel-branded fanless NUC!

5 years after the first Atom-based fanless NUC, Intel is about to launch a new affordable and passively-cooled mini PC. The NUC8CHK A.K.A NUC 8 Rugged A.K.A Chaco Canyon features the 6W (Apollo Lake) Celeron N3350, 4GB of soldered RAM, and 64GB of eMMC storage. Thankfully, adding M.2 and 2.5" SSDs is entirely possible.

While we're thrilled at the idea of a new fanless NUC, our enthusiasm is tempered by its convection-starved cooling solution. Hopefully, we'll be proven wrong.

Source: KoolShare

$330 Pentium N4200 barebone

The previously hard-to-find GIGABYTE's EL-30 is now available for $330. Powered by the 6W Pentium N4200 (4C/4T up to 2.50GHz) the system features 32GB of eMMC storage (mSATA slot available) and is compatible with Windows 10, Windows 10 IoT, and Ubuntu.

✓ Intel® Pentium® N4200
✓ onboard 32GB eMMC
✓ 2 x SO-DIMM DDR3L slots
✓ 2 x GbE LAN ports (Realtek RTL8111HS)
✓ 2 x HDMI ports
✓ 1 x Full-size Mini-PCIe slot for 3G module or mSATA storage
✓ 1 x Micro SD card slot
✓ 4 x USB 3.0
✓ 140.8 x 107.5 x 29.5 mm

Source: Amazon

Xeon motherboard, anyone?

ASRock launches a unique mini-ITX motherboard featuring Intel's Xeon D-2123IT and four DIMM slots for up to a mind-blowing 256GB RAM. The 17cm x 17cm board also features ten SATA3 6.0 Gb/s, M.2 storage, and three LAN (including one as Intelligent Platform Management Interface). The D2123D4I4 is Linux-friendly and fully compatible with CentOS, SUSE Enterprise, FreeBSD, Fedora, Ubuntu, and RedHat.

Source: ASRock

3.5 liter case

The Goodisory MX01 is the ideal case for ASRock's J5005 or J4105 Gemini Lake motherboards (yes, they're back!). The 7.9 x 3 x 8.4" chassis offers 2.5" or 3.5" storage options and comes with a stand for only $33. Make sure to get a pico-PSU and a power adapter to complete the system. Happy building!

HUMBLE experiment

HUMBLE is a mini-ITX PC case that comes as a do-it-yourself kit. At only 6.6L, the diminutive chassis offers just enough space for the Scythe Grand Kama Cross 2 CPU cooler, and enough convection to passively cool the 51W Pentium G4500.

Source: Theez Designs

ASRock's most powerful barebone yet

Following impressive Whiskey Lake and Ryzen Embedded barebones, ASRock is readying an even larger system, compatible with 35W 8th / 9th Gen Intel CPUs. The IEC-JH310 features two SO-DIMM and one M.2 slots, one 2.5" bay, two USB 3.1 (Type C), two USB 3.1 (Type A), four USB 2.0, HDMI, VGA, DisplayPort, Ethernet, and what looks like one of the most efficient heat sink case on the market.

Source: ASRock

Everything old is new again

Check out this pretty smart open-air build made mostly from recycled materials and spare parts. It features the ASRock T48EM1 motherboard (AMD G-T48E, 18W TDP) passively cooled using decade-old VRM and RAM heat sinks from Thermalright. Special thanks to our talented friend Ben J for the pictures!

PrimeMini 4 easy SSD upgrade

Courtesy of Prime Computer

ZERORPM's tower is available

ZERORPM's mini fanless tower is available in China, but we're not sold yet. The heat sink case is supposed to handle a 65W CPU and a 120W GPU but it's heat management is rather puzzling. For instance, why are the CPU heat pipes connected to the bottom of the case? Given the poor performance of ZERORPM's HTPC case, we have a hard time recommending this brand.

Source: Taobao

Update: Their X1 model looks much more convincing.