Updated Airtop3 available

The 7.5-liter fanless workstation is back and while it's still rocking a 9th Gen i7, graphics are now updated with NVIDIA's RTX 4060. Connectivity is simply out-of-this-world and includes seven 4K display outputs, six storage units, seven USB ports, dual LAN and more. The Airtop3 is available as a Windows machine for $3,290 or as the Linux Mint-affiliated MintBox3 for $2,780. 

fitlet3 is back in stock

fitlet3 is a miniature x86 industrial computer, optimised for industrial IoT gateway and edge computing applications. Its multiple connectivity options and industrial interfaces make it a highly capable computer in a very small form factor. This Celeron J6413 (Elkhart Lake) barebone edition features six USB ports, dual LAN, HDMI and mini DisplayPort for $299. 

Colors are the smiles of nature

We just stumbled upon this limited edition of the Compulab fitlet2 in a striking shade of red. It's truly lovely. We believe fanless PCs would gain wider appeal if they were offered in more vibrant colors. A touch of personality could go a long way in making them more mainstream.

Source: Harlander 

fitlet3 is available

Compulab's popular fitlet is back and powered by Intel's IOT-oriented Elkhart Lake family. Three processor options are available, including Atom x6425E (12W TDP), Celeron J6412 (10W TDP) and Atom x6211E (6W TDP). Display outputs are not so exciting with HDMI 1.4b and Mini DisplayPort 1.2 only, but the system is fully configurable (additional LAN and even cellular modem are available). Prices start from $229.59.    

fitlet3: Elkhart Lake confirmed

The fitlet3 specs are online and Compulab's diminutive PC is indeed powered by Intel's 10nm embedded Atom range. Three options will be available: Atom x6211E (dual core up to 3.0GHz, 6W TDP), Celeron J6412 (quad core up to 2.6GHz, 10W TDP) and Atom x6425E (quad core up to 3.0GHz, 12W TDP). Another great news is, the dual LAN solution is also supplied by Intel, for stable and reliable connection.

Source: Compulab (PDF)

fitlet3 is coming soon

A new Atom-powered Compulab fitlet is just around the corner. Our money's on Elkhart Lake. Fitlet3 will feature six USB ports, dual LAN, HDMI and mini DisplayPort. The heat sink case is slightly larger than before since fitlet3 now accommodates a COM port. Previous models were priced around $300. Stay tuned.

Source: Compulab

Best fanless PCs right now

Don't bother with exotic or unknown brands and get this extremely affordable barebone from a trusted player. The ZBOX CI341 edge is powered by the capable Celeron N4100 and features great connectivity. Just add your memory and storage of choice. $179.99

At the opposite side of the spectrum, the MintBox3 Pro is a highly integrated and highly powerful workstation featuring the i9-9900K and the GeForce GTX 1660. The MintBox 3 comes with Linux Mint and can literally handle everything you throw at it. $2,499

Powered by the Whiskey Lake Celeron 4205U the Shuttle DS10U is on the pricey side but connectivity is superb and the system is approved for 24/7 operation. Note that vertical position is required to ensure optimal cooling. $349.25

The cirrus7 nimbini is a work of art (and a labor of love) it's specially designed for the Intel NUC. Various options are available from the Gemini Lake NUC, to the Iris Graphics NUC 8 or the latest NUC 10. From 299 euros

Some AMD love. OnLogic's NUC-like ML100G-40 features the 15W Ryzen Embedded R1505G or V1605B (Radeon Vega 3 and Vega 8 Graphics respectively). Also onboard are two GbE LAN ports, M.2 storage, HDMI ports and two DisplayPort connectors. From $533

The MintBox3 is back in stock

The most powerful, most feature-rich, most integrated, most Linux-friendly fanless PC, anyone? The MintBox3 Basic features Intel's i5-9500, 16GB RAM and a 256GB NVMe SSD for $1,399 while the MintBox 3 Pro boasts the i9-9900K, a GTX 1660 Ti, 32GB RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD for $2,499. Both ship with Linux Mint 19.3 and 5% of the price is donated to the Linux Mint team. Compulab's patented Natural Airflow technology combines flat vapor chambers and air tubes for effective passive cooling.

fitlet2 is reaching for the stars

Compulab's fitlet2 is part of the Huntsman Telescope, a one-of-a-kind project that uses regular Canon telephoto lenses to study extremely faint regions of space. Anthony Horton, the telescope's technical lead, tells us:

"We are using the Fitlet2 as the main control computer for the Huntsman Telescope. It runs a combination of custom and commercial software to automate the entire system, assisted by 11 Raspberry Pis and a microcontroller which act as distributed controllers for the 10 cameras, the dome rotation, and the dome shutter.

The inside of a telescope dome is a semi-outdoors environment, subject to a wide range of temperatures, humidity, and dust. A rugged fanless Linux PC is just what we need for reliable unattended operation."

Follow the latest developments and ask the team questions on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Image source: Twitter (2) (3)

Tensor-PC announced

Coming soon from Compulab, a wide range of fully modular and scalable fanless PCs. Tensor-PC is destined to replace their current lineup which includes fitlet2 (low-power), Intense PC (NUC-like performance) and Airtop (workstation-class).

✓ Tensor-PC offers dozens of different modules to choose from. Additional modules are developed in a progressive manner

✓ Modules are open-source-hardware in order to provide a reference to 3rd parties developing custom modules

✓ Tensor-PC supports multiple off-the-shelf cards in PCIe, mini-PCIe and M.2 form factors

✓ The first Tensor-PC model - [I20A] - is based on Intel 9th generation Core / Xeon with up to 6 cores, 64 GB RAM and 37 lanes of PCIe

✓ Tensor-PC is introducing a new industrial temperature predictable-performance rating with no-throttling

✓ Tensor-PC supports out-of-band management as well as identification and control of connected modules

Source: Compulab

MintBox3 review

Clément Lefèbvre, the mastermind behind Linux Mint, takes a looks at the MintBox3, and he's refreshingly unbiased.

"The MintBox 3 is passively cooled and it is silent, but it isn’t “completely” silent. This is my main issue with this computer and if I had to change anything in it, that would be it. The components which come in the Pro model (i9 and GTX 1660 Ti) are extremely powerful and they produce what we call “coil whine”. These are high-pitched electronic squeaking or scratching noises. How noticeable and distracting they are largely depends on how silent your environment is. If you’re not familiar with coil whine, it sounds a bit similar to how HDDs sounded in the past, when they had these little noises coming from moving the read/write arm inside the hard drive. It’s not loud, it’s nowhere near as loud as a fan, but it’s there and so it’s not “completely” silent."

Source: Linux Mint

fitlet2 is now $168

Compulab's Atom-powered fitlet2 is now available for only $168. The barebone features the Apollo Lake x5-E3930 processor, one M.2 slot (2260), one SO-DIMM slot (up to 16GB RAM), mini-DisplayPort and HDMI ports, four USB ports, miniSD card reader, and two Intel Ethernet ports.

Coming soon from Compulab

Here's a first look at Compulab's upcoming fanless PC launching in February. Specs and price are expected to be confirmed soon. Stay tuned.

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

Airtop3 review

CompuLab has done it again. The turbocharged Airtop3 is a technical marvel and keeps a mighty Xeon and an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 at bay. We just wish their products were more readily available (and in sufficient quantities).

"The average CPU temperature for the Xeon over the span of hours of constant load was 68.8 degrees. During the most demanding multi-threaded workloads for a period of time it did peak into the 90s and hit thermal throttling, but as you can see most of the time was spent at 77 degrees or less. The Airtop 3 did do a good job at quickly recovering its temperatures in between benchmarks."

Source: Phoronix

MintBox3 is Airtop3

Linux Mint's upcoming MintBox3 is based on Compulab's Airtop3 and will be available in two versions. The entry-level model will feature a six-core i5, 16GB RAM and a 250GB Samsung M.2 SSD for about $1,550. The top-of-the-line machine will rock an Intel i9 CPU, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics, 32GB RAM, and a 1TB Samsung M.2 SSD for about $2,700.

Sources: Linux Mint, Compulab

Early Airtop concept

Recently, we stumbled upon these beautiful Airtop renders featuring a more modern and cleaner look. According to Compulab's Irad Stavi : "These are two of the concepts our industrial designer offered. It has more "consumer" finish with a semi transparent front. Eventually we decided to go for a more ruggedized design and switched to aluminum front. The footprint and trim of the product stayed exactly the same."

Compulab Airtop 3 (rave) video review

Plenty of people had their doubts about Compulab's ability to passively cool an i9-9900K / NVIDIA QUADRO RTX 4000 combo. Well, it turns out that the Airtop 3 is truly something special.

Courtesy of Linus Tech Tips

Compulab's turbocharged Airtop3

Compulab is introducing Airtop3 – a ruggedized small-form-factor fanless IoT edge server powered by an 8-core Intel Core i9-9900K Processor and Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000, both passively cooled using Compulab’s Natural Airflow technology. With a volume of just 7.5 liters, Airtop3 can passively dissipate up to 300W and operate in the wide temperature range of -40°C to 70°C. Airtop3 ships with a 5 year warranty.

Airtop3 supports 9th Generation Intel Core i9 Processors and future Intel Xeon E Processors, including the highest power 95W Core i9-9900K. The maximum RAM capacity is 128 GB DDR4-2666. Standard storage is comprised of 6 devices – two NVMe SSDs – up to 2 TB each and four 2.5” SATA 3 HDD/SSD with RAID support. Standard networking includes two GbE ports and support for Wi-Fi 802.11ac and 4G modem. Standard I/O includes 3 4K displays, 6 USB 3.1 ports, 3 RS232 and audio.

Airtop3 cooling is based on Compulab’s Natural Airflow technology that increases airflow without moving parts. The CPU, GPU and storage devices each have their own dedicated thermal zone. The 7.5 liter all-aluminium housing is made of die-cast and extruded parts with precision machining for seamless fit, shock and vibration resistance. The Airtop3 is available from $1,559.

Source: Compulab

2018 fanless mini PC roundup

ASUS PN40 is an affordable and stylish option. This barebone features a Celeron N4000 and an internal heat sink. No sign of passive cooling (which is generally not a good sign) nor any particular attention given to convection, but the 6W Gemini Lake chip doesn't seem to suffer much. $159

Free to breathe at last. The case of the MintBox mini 2 is the heat sink. The diminutive box does feature an Apollo Lake Celeron J3455 from 2016 but is a complete PC. It comes with 4GB RAM, a 64GB SSD and Linut Mint 19. The political choice. $299

One step further. When power and extreme reliability are required, Logic Supply's ML100 Series delivers. The current version features Kaby Lake i3-7100U, i5-7300U or i7-8650U processors and is fully configurable. $689