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Cirrus7 – Fanless Mini-PCs

27 points by leonry 4y ago

marcusarmstrong 4y ago
I’d be particularly interested in something along these lines in a 1U form factor if anybody is familiar with such a thing. Obviously the actual fan-less-ness is less important in that use case but I have a hard time justifying high wattage hardware for my home server operation, and racking provides a lot of convenience.
- toast0 4y ago
  If you get a 1U mini-itx case, you can put pretty much whatever in there. Finding a heatsink that fits will be a challenge, but they're out there. Expect thermal throttling (or set a low power throttle, which is inline with your desire to reduce watts anyway)
- radicality 4y ago
  Take a look at the Supermicro brochure. Not sure the height is 1U, but the E100 and E302 series look interesting and are fanless. The E300 series I believe is a compact 1U but does have some active cooling. I myself have been eyeing getting one of these but haven’t decided on which one yet. https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/brochure/brochure_Embedded.pdf https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/brochure/brochure_Embedde...
qhwudbebd 4y ago
These look really nice hardware. I wonder if there's any chance of coreboot on them...
capableweb 4y ago
Looks interesting, been looking at putting something similar together myself. Fanless does scare me a bit though. How does the temperature envelope look like when your maxing out the CPU or other components? I guess it'll start to throttle at one point, question is how quickly and how much.
- greggyb 4y ago
  Maxing out at the 12900T means they are using laptop-level SKUs. The nominal TDP of 35W [0] is what you see in high end, performance-oriented laptops. Unsophisticated thermal designs can handle this easily. I have a cheap fanless mini PC from AliExpress. The thermal solution is an all-aluminum case, to which the CPU is coupled with thermal paste. The body is thicker than your typical case to provide thermal mass. The outer surface has thick grooves (approximately 1/2cm). This thing never comes close to throttling. A more sophisticated passive solution that could create convective air movement would dissipate much more heat. [0] I am fully aware of the flaws in the TDP published by CPU manufacturers, but the listed value is useful as a qualitative categorization.
rambambram 4y ago
Nice, looks interesting, especially for the price points mentioned. Since using my RPi 4 with a passive heatsink as my daily desktop computer for a year now, I'm looking for slightly beefier options. I would love to be able to play SuperTuxCart again, it just doesn't work on my RPi.
bitwidget 4y ago
One thing that always irked me when it came to configurations is that a device is advertised as "starting at $599" but has a bunch of specs like "Up to I9, 64gb of ram, etc.). I understand from a marketing perspective, but it is a pet peeve of mine when it comes to these websites.

27 points by leonry 4y ago

I’d be particularly interested in something along these lines in a 1U form factor if anybody is familiar with such a thing. Obviously the actual fan-less-ness is less important in that use case but I have a hard time justifying high wattage hardware for my home server operation, and racking provides a lot of convenience.

toast0 4y ago
If you get a 1U mini-itx case, you can put pretty much whatever in there. Finding a heatsink that fits will be a challenge, but they're out there. Expect thermal throttling (or set a low power throttle, which is inline with your desire to reduce watts anyway)
radicality 4y ago
Take a look at the Supermicro brochure. Not sure the height is 1U, but the E100 and E302 series look interesting and are fanless. The E300 series I believe is a compact 1U but does have some active cooling. I myself have been eyeing getting one of these but haven’t decided on which one yet. https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/brochure/brochure_Embedded.pdf https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/brochure/brochure_Embedde...

qhwudbebd 4y ago

These look really nice hardware. I wonder if there's any chance of coreboot on them...

capableweb 4y ago

Looks interesting, been looking at putting something similar together myself. Fanless does scare me a bit though. How does the temperature envelope look like when your maxing out the CPU or other components? I guess it'll start to throttle at one point, question is how quickly and how much.

greggyb 4y ago
Maxing out at the 12900T means they are using laptop-level SKUs. The nominal TDP of 35W [0] is what you see in high end, performance-oriented laptops. Unsophisticated thermal designs can handle this easily. I have a cheap fanless mini PC from AliExpress. The thermal solution is an all-aluminum case, to which the CPU is coupled with thermal paste. The body is thicker than your typical case to provide thermal mass. The outer surface has thick grooves (approximately 1/2cm). This thing never comes close to throttling. A more sophisticated passive solution that could create convective air movement would dissipate much more heat. [0] I am fully aware of the flaws in the TDP published by CPU manufacturers, but the listed value is useful as a qualitative categorization.

rambambram 4y ago

Nice, looks interesting, especially for the price points mentioned. Since using my RPi 4 with a passive heatsink as my daily desktop computer for a year now, I'm looking for slightly beefier options. I would love to be able to play SuperTuxCart again, it just doesn't work on my RPi.

bitwidget 4y ago

One thing that always irked me when it came to configurations is that a device is advertised as "starting at $599" but has a bunch of specs like "Up to I9, 64gb of ram, etc.). I understand from a marketing perspective, but it is a pet peeve of mine when it comes to these websites.