Tiny, Passively-Cooled Gaming PC - Compulab Airtop 2
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,339 words · ~6 min read
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so when it comes to computers there's your performance your size and your
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quietness and the general rule is you can pick two so you can have a really
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powerful small pc that sounds like a
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quadcopter under load or you can have a powerful silent thing that takes up your
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entire desk that is until today
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compulab claims to have hit the trifecta
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and this is the air top a small and
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powerful and completely silent gaming grade machine
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this video is brought to you by mac weldon mack weldon believes in smart
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compared to other passive computers that we've seen in the past the compulab air
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top is tiny but that doesn't mean that
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it's lacking in features it's actually got more i o than some full-size
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desktops that we've looked at including a total of seven display outputs and
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three serial ports if you're into that and it doesn't mean that it's light
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fully loaded the air top is close to 14
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pounds and there's a good reason for that covering both sides of the machine
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are these thick heat sink fins that are
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somehow supposed to dissipate all of the heat that's created by the impressive
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internals like seriously inside this thing there is a
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workstation option with pro grade stuff but our g model sports an Intel core i7
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7700 an NVIDIA gtx 1060 32 gigs of RAM
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and a total of three terabytes of solid-state storage
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but it has no fans how does it stay cool
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i don't know but it does
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after two hours of full synthetic load
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our processor only reached 70 degrees celsius with our GPU reaching a warm but
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totally acceptable 80 degrees and the casing didn't get too hot to touch
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either and this is cool if you're ever concerned about how toasty things are
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getting there's a handy-dandy display on the front of the computer that can show
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your CPU temps your CPU clock speed and
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a bunch of other useful stuff although it should be noted that the GPU temp
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sensor does not seem to be very accurate
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and there are some other imperfections as well our CPU did not turbo very hard
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or for very long staying at around 3.3 gigahertz for the majority of our test
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which raised the question is this going to hurt its performance in
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games well because games typically don't utilize
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all four cores the way that a stress test would it actually managed to stay
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around 4.1 gigahertz throughout our testing and only reached about 45
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degrees running 3d mark time spy now it did still lose to our open-air
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bench that had the same specs but it was only just by a little bit like we can
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see right here our GPU clock is at over
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1800 megahertz even though we're running passive cooling
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okay so at this point in the video we could just say
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it's magic neat huh but that is not the LTT way so we got
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our workspace ready and our tools out preparing for a complicated teardown
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process to find out just how this thing
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really it's that easy
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okay so then with the panel open uh there were a few
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things that we noticed in here number one is that the inside is separated into
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two thermal zones so the right cooling plate makes contact with the CPU which
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is on the opposite side of the motherboard and also through this
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thermal pad that's revealed under the drive cage handles cooling for the up to
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oh and by the way that's the second thing we notice for the up to seven
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drives that you can put in this thing a single pci ex2 m.2 two pci ex4 m.2s and
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up to four two and a half inch SATA drives then while you're in there you
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can throw in a wi-fi card here a sim card here another sim card here a micro
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sd a mini PCIe card and up to 64 gigs of
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standard sized memory wow it's got a lot of expansion leading
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us to the last thing we noticed the gtx 1060 graphics card other than having
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non-standard mounting holes that appear to have been drilled through the pcb and
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a re-soldered 6-pin power connector that is now 4 pins
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is just an off-the-shelf evga card
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meaning that theoretically you could
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upgrade it in the future if you found a physically compatible board or you could
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actually just remove the side panel with the GPU attached and replace it with a
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next-gen wall something that they plan on selling as an upgrade
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anywho since we're looking at the video card let's finally get to how this
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cooling system works this massive hunk of copper makes contact with the GPU and
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has a large heat pipe underneath it this heat pipe is on top of another heat pipe
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that spreads across two more heat pipes which go over almost the whole area of
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the side panel allowing the entire thing to efficiently dissipate heat
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once hot these square channels cause
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natural convection moving the heat energy away from the computer
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so once all is said and done each side is capable of dissipating about 100
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watts for a total of 200. it's well thought out and well executed and the
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way it's built makes it feel more like a a piece of equipment and less like a
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computer but of course with great engineering
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comes great cost and the airtop is no
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exception with our config coming in at an eye watering
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3700 us dollars now if you can deal with a bit less
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storage and memory the gtx 1060 model
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can be had for as little as 2500 which
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given the low volume and highly customized nature of this product seems
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reasonably fair so then
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if you're looking for a gaming machine that can deliver a solid vr capable
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experience or a powerhouse workstation that is small enough to carry in a
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shoulder bag and is completely silent the compulab air top looks like a great
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choice then again if all of that sounds pretty
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good but you still want more than currently in the works is the
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inferno a similar passively cooled
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gaming system this time with a 7700k
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and a freaking gtx 1080 although before that goes into
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production they're going to be gauging interest with kickstarter which is
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probably a good idea given the presumably very small audience with that
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kind of exact requirements and the money for it
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