HABEY BIS-6922 Fanless Ivy Bridge Industrial PC Review
by Ganesh T S on August 13, 2013 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Industrial PC
- Ivy Bridge
- Passive Cooling
- Habey
Concluding Remarks
Passively cooled high performance PCs are not easy to design and bring to the market. Creating a dust-proof enclosure is also a big challenge. By successfully rising up to these two challenges, Habey manages to hit a home run with the BIS-6922. The choice of chipset and processor as well as the design of the motherboard lend themselves well to the target market. In terms of the performance of the review unit, we would have liked to see DDR3-1600 SODIMM, considering that the Ivy Bridge platform supports it officially. A SSD with higher performance wouldn't have hurt either.
The review unit was not without its problems, though. The power brick (Great Wall brand) bundled with the unit was rated for 60W DC output. Full loading of the unit drew close to 67W. Habey indicated that they don't expect consumers to fully load both the CPU and GPU and stress the power adapter to that extent. We found that the power brick also developed a very audible whine after prolonged use at medium loads. Habey later sent us a 100W power brick (a no-name Chinese OEM model) as replacement and it doesn't seem to be suffering from the whine issue as yet.
The nice aspect about Habey's BIS-6922 is the ability for consumers to customize the components extensively. Components of a particular brand / model can be requested, be it for the DRAM or the SSD or the PSU. I strongly recommend prospective customers to request a power brick from a reputable manufacturer while configuring the system (Seasonic and Delta Electronics come to mind as adapters that have held up well in our labs). Unlike most other manufacturers, Habey doesn't sell units off-the-shelf. Due to the extent of customization that most of the target market requires, an inquiry needs to be placed on their website in order to initiate a purchase order.
In conclusion, the BIS-6922 is the most powerful and efficient passively cooled PC in the mini-ITX form factor that we have seen. Other than the fact that the end user needs to be a bit careful in selecting some of the components, we have little to complain about.
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airmantharp - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
It's too hot? Only if you lock it away. But since it's small and it produces no noise, you could place it somewhere it might get airflow, unlike a larger system.But why would a music or movie editor use one of these? How is that representative at all? GigE isn't fast enough for that, there is no TB port, so what, USB3? Really?
I think you're perspective on this system is poor- this system is designed to be used outside of the living room, which the Mac Pro is not; and the Mac Pro is huge in comparison!
UpSpin - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
My current computer is a MiniITX placed on my desk next to my display. I would place the habey PC on the same place, and there's just no airflow, except I mount a fan on top of it. I also don't think that Ganesh placed this computer inside a small box but ran it on his main desk.What person needs a quad core high end system? How is GigE not fast enough? Why should USB3 (5Gbit/s) not be fast enough? And what has all of this to do with TB? And how are Windows people able to do music or video right now? They also don't have TB! And they also can't stuff all hard discs in their case, but need some larger and more secure storage server somewhere else.
Why do you compare the Mac Pro with this one? I only mentioned it because of its design. The design of this habey is just poor and fails to cool the system. A design similar to the Mac Pro which makes use of a chimney effect would have been much better.
So this system is to be used outside of the living room, but according to you also not suited for work because it lacks TB and we might tax it too much. So we could use it for terminals which need a quad core CPU (I don't know a single use case), but therefore it's also not suited because it will get too hot because there won't be any air flow either.
I don't get it, where can we use such a thing?
Dentons - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
You're right. There is no use-case for this system as configured. None at all.Either you need an i7 or you don't. If you need an i7, this product can't cool it adequately, so is a terrible choice.
ganeshts - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
I am pretty sure Habey's intent was to provide enough CPU grunt for occasional bursts and not 24x7 loading.I am still waiting for someone to link me to a similar product (size / CPU perf.) with better thermal performance.
Dentons - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
There may not be any similar product able to handle the heat created by a fully utilized i7. That doesn't excuse this product's failings. What it actually suggests is that Habey reached too high.It shouldn't be surprising that a fully utilized i7 needs active cooling.
UpSpin - Thursday, August 15, 2013 - link
I completely disagree. It's a quad core! If Habey wanted to provide a CPU for occasional bursts used in industrial environments, they would have used a high end dual-core! If one program needs some more processing power it easily gets it. But barely any program scales dynamically across multiple cores, except high end software which won't get used in a terminal but in production environments. And then, this software really taxes the system. You also don't need a quad core for multi-tasking, except you really tax the system (maybe 3 cores) and still want to continue to work with the computer on the fourth core. But again, this Habey system won't support this without exceeding several temperature limits.And maybe there are no comparable systems, because such a small case with such a poor 08/15 design just can't dissipate the required heat without active cooling?
Dentons - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
This is a machine designed to function without fans. If it requires air flow in order to work properly, the design is a failure. This case was probably designed to run with far cooler chips, but since that wasn't tested with those, we just don't know if it works adequately with them.Yes, a lot of video production is done on Mac's, but certainly not all. Probably not even half. Windows does still hold nearly 90% of the desktop / laptop market.
You fail to address the really important question. What is the point of an i7 if it's power can't actually be used? Transcode some video and the temperature of the case will exceed many safety standards and the internal components will be heated to well beyond their rated temps?
That's acceptable?
fluxtatic - Saturday, August 17, 2013 - link
The new Mac Pro isn't passive, and how the hell are industrial users going to use something that looks like a trashcan?The Mac Pro is a an honest-to-god workstation with a Xeon (well, it's got a Xeon, at least). This is like comparing Little League to MLB.
crashtech - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
It's Furmark. I wonder how hot the thing would get in any conceivable real-world app. Probably under half those temps. The takeaway is it passed a torture test.whyso - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Looks like its throttling. I have a 3630qm which gets about 6.3-6.4 in cinebench R11.5. This 3720QM is getting significantly lower than that.