Aleutia Relia Industrial PC Review: Ivy Bridge & Q77 in a Fanless Chassis
by Ganesh T S on December 4, 2012 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Industrial PC
- HTPC
- Ivy Bridge
- Aleutia
HTPC Aspects:
In this review, we will not go into the detailed decoding and rendering benchmarks. Instead, we will take a look at the power consumption profile while playing back 1080p YouTube videos and HD Netflix streams (720p at 3.6 Mbps). The test streams are the same as the ones we used in earlier HTPC reviews.
We briefly tried to check whether the Q77 chipset also exhibited the 23 Hz issue (given that the display output is driven by the chipset and not the CPU itself, and we have only tested H77 boards for HTPC purposes before). There is no change from what we experienced earlier: 23 Hz setting gives us 23.972 Hz instead of 23.976 Hz.
Personally, this hasn't caused me lot of trouble in my media center setup, but I would definitely point this out to anyone particular about this aspect and considering the Aleutia Relia for HTPC duties. Before proceeding to the next section, it is interesting to note that the availability of the Display Port output gives the unit the ability to drive 2560 x 1600 displays also.
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Rick83 - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
I see you mention the NIC on the last page (might have been better placed on the first page, where you list the components), so the hardware is there.Is BIOS support there as well?
Haven't seen anything from the BIOS so far, and AMT is heavily dependant on entire-system support.
Did you actually get a KVMoIP session to work?
While this particular model is not that interesting to me, I am looking generally into systems with AMT support, so getting to know the functionality that each vendor provides is quite interesting.
jhh - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
I suspect a slower RAM was selected to work in a fanless device, but if you had an IR camera, it would have been nice to confirm device temperatures. The case top probably adds to the case heat-sink capacity, so removing the top could cause problems with the processor and its heat-pipe to the case, which would make it difficult to take such a picture.Minion4Hire - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
That doesn't seem likely. There's not much in the way of chassis ventilation and the heatpipes connect directly to those side heatsinks. If anything temperatures should drop with the cover removed as less heat can be trapped inside of the chassis, although in a temperature controlled testing environment with zero airflow it might not really matter.Googer - Monday, December 17, 2012 - link
Cooling isn't necessary DDR3 1600 as most ram chips generate very little heat. Modern day DIMM salesmen add heatspreaders and heatsinks, mostly as a marketing ploy.cjs150 - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
I have recently built a very similarly spec HTPC (using the HDplex case rather than what I guess is a streamcom/wesean case) so it was nice to see a comparison. Price is a lot more reasonable than my build.i7-3770T works extremely well as an HTPC (shame about screen refresh rate - Intel should hang their heads in shame)
Personally I would not use a mechanical hard disc, I hate noise and for an HTPC, an SSD is fine.
The problem as I see it for an HTPC is that if no optical drive or TV tuner why bother with something this complex, probably easier and cheaper to store all the media on a NAS and have a very cheap streaming device as the HTPC.
After saying that, none of the fanless cases I have looked at that support an optical drive give any thought to noise dampening the drive.
Kevin G - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
Looking at the internal layout, I can easily see why the hard drives get hot: one is mounted directly over the CPU. I wonder how just a single hard drive mounted over the memory performs with regards to temperatures and throttling.It also looks like the Wi-fi chip is replaceable so that single band disadvantage can be rectified.
My only other complaint would be the 19V external power supply. It would have been nicer to see a 12V external PSU or even an internal PSU to avoid a power brick entirely. Minor quibble in the grand scheme of things.
Guspaz - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
The as-configured price seems to be at least $500 overpriced. This thing has a BOM somewhere around $900ish at *RETAIL* pricing (I made a list), $1500 for the machine is ridiculous.mrdude - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
Poor WiFi that only offers single-bandNo card reader
No Bluetooth
Aaaaand somehow this is supposed to be an HTPC? viable small form factor PC? At that price? say what?
These people must be kidding themselves.
A5 - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
No, this is designed to be used in an industrial environment. I have no idea why Ganesh tested it as an HTPC.Aikouka - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
I would assume that it's being tested as a HTPC device because it looks like a decent contender on paper.Also, keep in mind that you can just buy your own Streacom case and build your own machine. They have models with card readers, disc drive access, etc.