Gadgetory

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 Compu lab claims to have hit the trifecta and this is the air top a small and powerful and completely silent gaming grade machine this video is brought to you by Mack Weldon Mack Weldon believes in smart design premium fabrics and simple shopping use offer code tectus and get 20% off your next order at the link below compared to other passive computers that we've seen in the past the Compu lab err 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 err top is close to 14 pounds and there's a good reason for that covering both sides of the machine are these thick heatsink 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 and NVIDIA GTX 1060 32 gigs of ram and a total of 3 terabytes of solid-state storage but it has no fans how does it stay cool I don't know but it does after 2 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 ever concerned about how toasty things are getting there's a handy-dandy display on the front of the computer that can show you 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 tests which raise the question is this going to hurt its performance in games well because games typically don't utilize all four course 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 3dmark times 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 LTTE way so we've got our workspace ready and our tools out preparing for a complicated teardown process to find out just how this thing really it's bad easy okay so then with the panel open 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 PCIe X 2 m dot 2 2 PCIe x4 M 2 s and up to 4 2 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 microSD a mini PCIe card and up to 64 gigs of standard-size 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 resaw turned 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 any 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 a hundred 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 air top is no exception with our config coming in at an eye-watering 3700 u.s. dollars now if you can deal with a bit less storage and memory the gtx 1060 model can be had for as little as 2,500 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 v are capable experience or a powerhouse workstation that is small enough to carry in a shoulder bag and is completely silent the compy lab our 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 7700 K and a freaking GTX 1080 although before that goes into production they're gonna 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 but you know what isn't that expensive tunnel bear tunnel bear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open Internet with tunnel bear turned on your network connection is secured and your online activity is kept private from your internet provider advertisers or anyone looking to track you or profit from your data and it allows you to access online services from other countries as though you are from that country so goodbye pesky geo restrictions total bear has a top-rated privacy policy and does not log your activity so go try it for free no credit card required at Tunnel Bear comm /l tt so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to her to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there's our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join Brendan