'fanless' PCs...

[MontyVeda]

I'm looking at spending some money and this little PC caught my eye...

...question is.... how does 'fanless' work when it comes to cooling? The spec doesn't say it's water cooled, so what's the crack?

 

[Piemaster]

Big heatsink and natural cooling flow design, plus low power chips that don't don't develop much heat in the first place. My wifes netbook was fanless too. Don't expect much in the way of performance from it.
Looks like it would probably have an external power supply too.

 

[accountantpete]

Presumably the cpu has a low thermal design power and they have added on a passive heat sink.

It looks like a HTPC offering - if so the acid test will be how it copes with Blu-Ray.

 

[the_mikey]

What's this optical media / laser disc slot thing? It seems a bit incongruous..

 

[fossyant]

What's this optical media / laser disc slot thing? It seems a bit incongruous..

Looks like a flashy light to me. Nothing more.

As said, the unit will use big heat sink and a lower power cpu. Perfectly fine for web and word.

I have a net book with an i5 in it at work and it has a tiny little fan that's virtually silent. Our home i5 laptop is fairly quiet. The i7 gaming laptop with GEforce graphics is noisy as hell, same goes with my sons gaming PC.

You can get second hand desktops like the HP 8000 elite for a couple of hundred. These are pretty quitet but do have fans.

 

[Profpointy]

I assembled my own PC last time ("built" would be over-egging a somewhat simple task). I specially chose a quiet fan and a quiet case. It lives in my sitting room, runs all the time for music and TV recording / DVD playing and I can't hear it at over normal house noises. If not self-assemling, then it's arguably more difficult to guarantee a quiet machine if not fanless, and as others have said, arguably you'll be compromising performance or reliability to some degree. That said, it can be done I guess

 

[MontyVeda]

Thanks for the explanation

Big heatsink and natural cooling flow design, plus low power chips that don't don't develop much heat in the first place. My wifes netbook was fanless too.
Don't expect much in the way of performance from it.
Looks like it would probably have an external power supply too.

is that because of its fanless design?

plus.. I'm no gamer so one person's idea of 'performance' may not be the same as mine. (current laptop is a dual core 2ghz with 3gb of RAM and serves my needs quite well)

 

[fossyant]

It looks like it might be an Intel Atom processor.

With performance comes heat. The Atom is a perfectly capable processor for every day use. Ideally you really want an i3 if you want anything more intensive.

Does it need to be fanless. Let's just say my sons gaming PC heats his room. It's the water cooling on the processor that takes the heat straight out of the case.

What are you wanting to use it for ?

 

[MontyVeda]

Thanks for that.

It looks like it might be an Intel Atom processor.

With performance comes heat. The Atom is a perfectly capable processor for every day use. Ideally you really want an i3 if you want anything more intensive.

Does it need to be fanless.

Not necessarily... was mostly wondering how fanless works and if it suits my needs or not

...
What are you wanting to use it for ?

Mostly as an entertainment centre (music, DVD), but do do a lot of dabbling in photoshop and video editing, and a bit of music stuff. my current laptop serves my needs but has struggled a couple of times when I've been working with very large multi layered images in photoshop. The current laptop is on long term loan and could be recalled at any time, hence me looking to replace my old desktop.

 

[Piemaster]

Thanks for the explanation


is that because of its fanless design?

plus.. I'm no gamer so one person's idea of 'performance' may not be the same as mine. (current laptop is a dual core 2ghz with 3gb of RAM and serves my needs quite well)

It looks like it might be an Intel Atom processor.

With performance comes heat. The Atom is a perfectly capable processor for every day use. Ideally you really want an i3 if you want anything more intensive.

Does it need to be fanless. Let's just say my sons gaming PC heats his room. It's the water cooling on the processor that takes the heat straight out of the case.

What are you wanting to use it for ?

Summed up more eloquently than I can.

 

[dan_bo]

Does it need to be fanless. Let's just say my sons gaming PC heats his room. It's the water cooling on the processor that takes the heat straight out of the case.

What are you wanting to use it for ?

Water cooled processor haha thats mint.

 

[drummerbod]

Video editing will need an i5 minimum

 

[midlife]

The boy is looking into water cooling for his gaming rig .....

Shaun

 

[drummerbod]

Water has little advantage over air these days. My Scythe stack is quieter than a Corsair water cooler and does just a good a job. There is one caveat though. A water cooled system takes the heat away from being blown around the case which can only be a good thing.

 

[machew]

Plus water cooling stops the dust etc being sucking into the PC and killing the fans. Serviced a PC at the Birmingham Crem, asked what all the dust was in the PC. The answer, this PC was in the basement so dont ask. Still it beats the keyboard replacement for a customer after the Cat had peed all over it.