so when it comes to computers there's your performance your size and your
quietness and the general rule is you can pick two so you can have a really
powerful small pc that sounds like a
quadcopter under load or you can have a powerful silent thing that takes up your
entire desk that is until today
compulab claims to have hit the trifecta
and this is the air top a small and
powerful and completely silent gaming grade machine
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compared to other passive computers that we've seen in the past the compulab air
top is tiny but that doesn't mean that
it's lacking in features it's actually got more i o than some full-size
desktops that we've looked at including a total of seven display outputs and
three serial ports if you're into that and it doesn't mean that it's light
fully loaded the air top is close to 14
pounds and there's a good reason for that covering both sides of the machine
are these thick heat sink fins that are
somehow supposed to dissipate all of the heat that's created by the impressive
internals like seriously inside this thing there is a
workstation option with pro grade stuff but our g model sports an Intel core i7
7700 an NVIDIA gtx 1060 32 gigs of RAM
and a total of three terabytes of solid-state storage
but it has no fans how does it stay cool
i don't know but it does
after two hours of full synthetic load
our processor only reached 70 degrees celsius with our GPU reaching a warm but
totally acceptable 80 degrees and the casing didn't get too hot to touch
either and this is cool if you're ever concerned about how toasty things are
getting there's a handy-dandy display on the front of the computer that can show
your CPU temps your CPU clock speed and
a bunch of other useful stuff although it should be noted that the GPU temp
sensor does not seem to be very accurate
and there are some other imperfections as well our CPU did not turbo very hard
or for very long staying at around 3.3 gigahertz for the majority of our test
which raised the question is this going to hurt its performance in
games well because games typically don't utilize
all four cores the way that a stress test would it actually managed to stay
around 4.1 gigahertz throughout our testing and only reached about 45
degrees running 3d mark time spy now it did still lose to our open-air
bench that had the same specs but it was only just by a little bit like we can
see right here our GPU clock is at over
1800 megahertz even though we're running passive cooling
okay so at this point in the video we could just say
it's magic neat huh but that is not the LTT way so we got
our workspace ready and our tools out preparing for a complicated teardown
process to find out just how this thing
really it's that easy
okay so then with the panel open uh there were a few
things that we noticed in here number one is that the inside is separated into
two thermal zones so the right cooling plate makes contact with the CPU which
is on the opposite side of the motherboard and also through this
thermal pad that's revealed under the drive cage handles cooling for the up to
oh and by the way that's the second thing we notice for the up to seven
drives that you can put in this thing a single pci ex2 m.2 two pci ex4 m.2s and
up to four two and a half inch SATA drives then while you're in there you
can throw in a wi-fi card here a sim card here another sim card here a micro
sd a mini PCIe card and up to 64 gigs of
standard sized memory wow it's got a lot of expansion leading
us to the last thing we noticed the gtx 1060 graphics card other than having
non-standard mounting holes that appear to have been drilled through the pcb and
a re-soldered 6-pin power connector that is now 4 pins
is just an off-the-shelf evga card
meaning that theoretically you could
upgrade it in the future if you found a physically compatible board or you could
actually just remove the side panel with the GPU attached and replace it with a
next-gen wall something that they plan on selling as an upgrade
anywho since we're looking at the video card let's finally get to how this
cooling system works this massive hunk of copper makes contact with the GPU and
has a large heat pipe underneath it this heat pipe is on top of another heat pipe
that spreads across two more heat pipes which go over almost the whole area of
the side panel allowing the entire thing to efficiently dissipate heat
once hot these square channels cause
natural convection moving the heat energy away from the computer
so once all is said and done each side is capable of dissipating about 100
watts for a total of 200. it's well thought out and well executed and the
way it's built makes it feel more like a a piece of equipment and less like a
computer but of course with great engineering
comes great cost and the airtop is no
exception with our config coming in at an eye watering
3700 us dollars now if you can deal with a bit less
storage and memory the gtx 1060 model
can be had for as little as 2500 which
given the low volume and highly customized nature of this product seems
reasonably fair so then
if you're looking for a gaming machine that can deliver a solid vr capable
experience or a powerhouse workstation that is small enough to carry in a
shoulder bag and is completely silent the compulab air top looks like a great
choice then again if all of that sounds pretty
good but you still want more than currently in the works is the
inferno a similar passively cooled
gaming system this time with a 7700k
and a freaking gtx 1080 although before that goes into
production they're going to be gauging interest with kickstarter which is
probably a good idea given the presumably very small audience with that
kind of exact requirements and the money for it
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this thing doesn't clear