HABEY BIS-6922 Fanless Ivy Bridge Industrial PC Review

Introduction

Industrial PCs come with stringent requirements that are not satisfied by generic PCs. It is customary for builders to use active cooling in order to ensure that the components are in proper working order. Ventilation slots are also provided to keep airflow up. Chassis size is also not always a concern. However, these flexibilities are not always possible in industrial PCs. Operating environments for such systems usually call for passive cooling, dust resistance, rugged nature and minimal size (read, mini-ITX).

We reviewed the Aleutia Relia last year. Today, we are adding another fanless Ivy Bridge PC to the list, the Habey BIS-6922. The unit was launched late last year. Unlike units meant for the traditional PC market, embedded and industrial units are more focused on long term support and reliability rather than the latest and greatest that the silicon vendor has to offer. So, it is not surprising that Ivy Bridge-based industrial computers are seeing a strong presence in the market only now, after long-term validation by the manufacturers. The high level specifications of the BIS-6922 are available in the launch piece. In the table below, we have a quick overview of the configuration of the review unit sent by Habey.

Our review unit came with the above internal configuration. In addition, we had the installation disk for a OEM copy of Windows 7 Professional x64, a 60 W DC power adapter, mounting plates with screws and a driver and utility CD. I wonder why companies bother with these optical discs when the product itself carries no optical drive. With Flash becoming more economical day-by-day, it might make better sense to bundle these in a USB stick instead of a CD or DVD.

The first section of the review will deal with the setup impressions and teardown of the system. We will take a close look at the thermal design. This is followed by results from our performance evaluation. The numbers will help up get an idea of the relative performance of the unit compared to other PCs with low power consumption. A separate section on thermal performance is also included.