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Anyone familiar with low-profile/half-height video cards? There are a few 1050/Ti models coming out and I was curious about dropping one into a business-class SFF; the 1050s are nice because they only use up to 75 W through the slot and don't need external power connectors (although there are some overclocked models that include them.) The thing is, as I was researching this stuff I found that at lot of the boards in these systems limit the power through the PCIe 16x slots; the Lenovo ThinkCentre M9x/M8x SFFs for example seem to max out at 40 W for each of their two 16x PCIe slots. Beyond that, the PCIe spec itself seems to mandate a maximum power of 25 W through a 16x half-height slot. Do you know the reason for this kind of discrepancy in the first place, and then what I could expect to happen if I tried to run an AIB that wanted to draw 75 W from a slot that only provided 40 W, or worse, 25 W? I mean I'd expect reduced performance maybe, but I'm more concerned about crashing or other system instability.
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Feb 15, 2017 09:14
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FlyingCheese posted:https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=16388 All of the manufacturers have some kind of business-class SFF. For that price I'd suggest something with a much newer CPU like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thin...-gAAOSwdGFYpzcD Zero VGS posted:This is $170, fanless, and is the size of a smartphone: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883722004 Zero VGS posted:I mean yeah it's an Atom chip, Cherry Trail, sorry, I use Skylake to mean "14nm", as in super power efficient. With Prime95 I think it was capping out at 15 watts which explains how they can have it passively cooled. The Kangaroo is passively cooled and is noted for overheating and throttling; read the comments where users mention turning a room fan on it to keep it cool. They do otherwise work, but it's a shame that you can't get the Plus model with the Pro dock.
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Feb 20, 2017 09:12
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Zero VGS posted:Like I said I bought several dozen Kangaroo for work, I had one overheat because we placed it behind a TV that was up against a wall so it was dealing with hot ambient air plus itself... I'm sure there's some other ways to overheat one but if you place it in an open area away from other hot stuff it'll run for months without issue. Just keep in mind, when we talk about these Kangaroo PCs overheating it doesn't necessarily mean to the point of failure. Because these are passively cooled and can't manage heat well, they will simply throttle down as they heat up, leading to reduced performance which you may or may not notice depending on what you're doing with them. If you're using these at work for basic productivity then it's not going to make a difference, but if you tried to set up Plex Media Server on one you'd definitely notice when it tried to transcode. The manufacturer (Infocus) itself is well aware of the situation; here's some quotes from their responses to Newegg reviews: quote:Manufacturer Response: They even recommend the external fan solution: quote:Manufacturer Response: While I guess that works, it sure is disappointing and not what a PC buyer would expect to have to do. Just for clarification, I have a couple of these that I don't use; they're fine for specific uses, although I wouldn't recommend the base model (2+32 GB) for much. Personally I just need Windows for gaming and ChromeOS for everything else which is why the Kangaroo PCs are gathering dust.
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Feb 21, 2017 02:08
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buglord posted:Are there any SFF cases built with SFF GPUs in mind? Cases? Not that I know of. Premade though? Yes: https://www.zotac.com/product/mini_pcs/magnus-en1070
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Feb 23, 2017 08:11
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I was looking at the GPD Win 2 the other day and saw an upcoming SFF PC, the Chuwi HiGame. It went live yesterday, and essentially it's just a variant of the Hades Canyon NUC. Like the latter, it has two CPU options out of the 5 Kaby Lake G variants, although the two on the Chuwi are slightly below the two on the NUC. The NUC is primarily a barebones although you can buy prebuilt complete systems, whereas the HiGame is being sold complete. The problem is that even with the included RAM & SSD the Chuwi isn't really worth it over the Hades Canyon. Aside from obvious differences in I/O, size, cooling, noise, etc., if one was considering either of these systems it'd probably be worth it to just go with the NUC. The top Hades Canyon barebones is currently $900 as of this writing, and if you were to add 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB m.2 SATA SSD like the HiGame comes with you'd end up between $1-1.1k, and the latter was $1k as a limited day 1 perk, $1.1k regularly. So even if the Chuwi has a slight edge in price as a complete system, it's probably worth the slight price premium to go with the unlocked NUC, and then on top of that you get the ability to start at $900 and go with the exact RAM you want (ideally 16 or 32 GB dual-channel) and perhaps a better [NVMe] SSD than the SATA one they're throwing in. Also, the NUC has 2x m.2 (NVMe/SATA) slots whereas the HiGame has one of those and one 2.5" slot; the former configuration is more valuable as they're the highest-performing ports available in this kind of setup and a 2.5" SATA drive can just be connected externally via USB3 so you're not really gaining anything there. On top of all that, however, was the realization that, unless you specifically needed a SFF desktop, in a price:performance scenario for a small gaming system the laptop that I always recommend (the Acer Predator Helios 300) is by far the best option still. The Radeon Vega M graphics options in the Kaby Lake G chips are all less powerful than the 1060 in the Helios, even if the latter's CPU is a little older. Plus, you get an SSD (SATA, but NVMe is supported) (plus an empty 2.5" bay,) 16 GB of RAM, and finally of course it comes with a display and keyboard, peripherals being an added cost with the desktops. Considering those SFF PCs are aren't any more upgradeable internally than a laptop, unless you specifically need TB3 there's no way I could recommend either of them over the Acer.
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Jun 15, 2018 08:07
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