Airtop fanless linux computer

[glowrak guy]

http://airtop-pc.com/

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... -Announced

[asbak]

Nice, but

- Looks pricey.
- No useful pci express expansion, apart from gfx card.
- Will a kitted out system with drives in the case run mprime for 24H in a 25C room without overheating or crashing?

Unless we know the answer to the last question I'd be sceptical about this product.

[gimmeapill]

- Will a kitted out system with drives in the case run mprime for 24H in a 25C room without overheating or crashing?

I bet it will, given that modern Intel cpus simply go to throttle mode when they get past their temp. threshold.
How fast the benchmark will run after 45 seconds at max power is another question

Still, they claim they can dissipate up to 200W - that's a fair amount compared to your average ultrabook...

[folderol]

Quad core hyperthreaded is a no for me. For heavy floating point work i.e. audio, that's effectively a dual core device.
Looks like it major target is industrial, which tends to be continuous low demand, with just bursts of high.

P.S.
It might be worse than dual core if two processors want to access the same FPU at once.

[asbak]

Quad core hyperthreaded is a no for me. For heavy floating point work i.e. audio, that's effectively a dual core device.

How does it "become a dual-core device?"

Those are 4 x core CPU's in the Airtop-G and Airtop-W with hyper-threading disabled.
When hyper-threading is turned on (which is not useful for audio usage) it goes up to "8".

[folderol]

Where does it mention 8 core?
It's not in the spec I saw.

[asbak]

On the spec page for the product it clearly states what CPU's are included.

Airtop-G
Intel 5th Gen Core i7-5775C Processor
64-bit quad core
Intel Hyper-Threading Technology

Airtop-W
Intel 5th Gen Xeon Processor E3-1285L v4
64-bit quad core
Intel Hyper-Threading Technology


http://airtop-pc.com/airtop/specificati ... M4000-FM4U

[folderol]

OK, My mistake. I didn't look closely at the processor series.
People are using 'cores' and 'threads' so interchangeably these days it's hard to keep up - and some CPU monitor software shows hyperthreaded processors as separate cores. The problem is just as bad with AMD CPUs

[glowrak guy]

The problem is just as bad with AMD CPUs

Even worse, and where is the wiseguy who decided odd numbers of cores would be cool?
Probably under a new slab of concrete at the nearest construction site,
or shackelled to a pipe in a remote server closet.

[lem18]

Both of those processors are 4 core, 8 thread:

Intel 5th Gen Core i7-5775C Processor: http://ark.intel.com/products/88040/Int ... o-3_70-GHz

Intel 5th Gen Xeon Processor E3-1285L v4: http://ark.intel.com/products/88043/Int ... e-3_40-GHz

The Xeon will be slightly faster (+100MHz on base/turbo, and officially supports faster RAM), though it would depend on how OEMs configure the system.

[CrocoDuck]

Seems an interesting machine! I was thinking that you guys could be interested in these designs. They ship with Linux pre-installed as well.

[glowrak guy]

Yes, that's a nice website for future reference.

http://www.quietpc.com/

Photos with basic pricetags, and click for the detailed price list
to choose each componant. And the prices don't seem to be
out of range, considering the build service. Not limited to what
the Costco and Dell beancounters decided you want

[glowrak guy]

But that website offers M.2 drives... what is M.2 thought the dinosaur

(I hate being last brontosaurus to the party) so a little googling...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... pred&num=1

Yet more jargon and charts to ponder! Will it ever end? Windoze 13, and the sun goes nova?

[asbak]

The M.2? Looks like a plug in (to the motherboard) SSD card and way overpriced. They seem to be asking for 120 quid for a 256GB M.2 card. SSD's sell for 1/2 that price or less.

Looking at the pics I get the impression that the critical parts of these "fanless computers" are the CPU heatsink & fanless power supply. The rest seems to be standard equipment.

So provided your CPU is in sub 100W territory (which rules out old-school I7's), you don't have a monster gfx card installed, crammed the case full of drives and you're not living in a desert or the tropics, you could probably just tack the heatsink & power supply onto any old case + motherboard and achieve essentially the same thing.

Why pay more like those millions of Mac brand slaves.

[folderol]

Although a bit dated now, this model gave surprisingly good results. It's actually been available since 2012.

https://linitx.com/product/fabiatech-fx ... stem/13171

At work, we originally bought it for an industrial process controller, but the project was delayed so I borrowed it for a while I installed a minimal debian, with just enough gui stuff to run jack and Yoshimi. I used the on-board audio, and fed MIDI in over USB.

It's now been running for it's intended purpose 24/7 since late 2013