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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
63 Comments
View All Comments
lmcd - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
And if they wanted the CD they can just set up with an external CD drive, which oftentimes they already have on-hand. Once external CD drive can serve a whole setup team and any of the different industrial pc models.airmantharp - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
I think the USB stick is the better way to go; how would it look for a retailer to ship a system with a CD in the box and no drive to read it? That's the kind of thing the government does :).evilspoons - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Appreciate seeing the reviews of industrial equipment. I use machines similar to this on a regular basis at work (electrical engineer doing industrial automation). The PCs are used to run HMI software for motion controllers, as well as NI's LabView.This specific model doesn't meet my needs in a few ways - lack of serial ports and lack of 24 V DC input power, but it's good to be aware of other brands.
I'm curious how my usual choice would stack up against this. I've used dozens of Advantech UNO-21xx units, mostly the UNO-2172 with a slow-as-hell Celeron M 1.5 GHz CPU, but they've recently released the UNO-2184G that gets you all the way to some sort of second-gen Core i7. Haven't tried one yet though.
kmmatney - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
You can always use USB-RS485 or USB-RS232 converters. We've been using converters from EasySynch and they work great.alex_alfanet - Friday, August 16, 2013 - link
evilspoons, I found from this company this option PRO-6820, may be it's what you need. it has 12v-28v dc option and 4 serial ports.ddriver - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Hey, maybe it is just me, but when I hear "industrial equipment" I imagine durable, overbuilt, mission critical hardware...The thermal performance is unacceptable, and I doubt that hardware will last more than 2 years before frying itself. Certainly not something I would rely on.
A shame, considering how those rounded radiators really invite the idea for a pair of nice low RPM cylindrical turbine fans that would keep it nice and cool.
Rick83 - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Well, I'm not sure anyone has done long-term thermal testing of this hardware quite yet. Additionally, I doubt that the usual scenario will see it running at full load for more than minutes at a time. If it were run full throttle for extended amounts of time, I would expect the PSU to fail first.If you run this device 24/7 at full load, you will know this in advance, and have cooling installed inside the cabinet. But clearly, this was not designed for this kind of permanent load. Still, the cooling keeps everything within spec, so if anything goes wrong inside the first two years, you'll be covered by warranty.
airmantharp - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Based on how quickly it cools down, having any real airflow over it would likely mitigate most cooling concerns, even in the rare instance of a 100% sustained load over time. I think ddriver is over-dramatizing the issue quite a bit; as you (Rick83) say, the PSU would be likely to fail first, and anyone using this system would be aware of the thermal constraints beforehand and would build the rest of the 'system' with that in mind. And that wouldn't be very hard to do.ddriver - Monday, August 19, 2013 - link
Considering the outside of the case hits 70 degree C and it is even hotter inside, that already puts most of the components outside of their optimal operating temperatures, dramatically increasing the chance of errors or failures. Industrial strength equipment never operates on its limits and mandates significant headroom.God forbid this thing gets direct sunlight while under load...
cjs150 - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Very interesting. I have a fanless HDPLEX case running an i7-3770T. Running at full load for about 45 mins it tops out at around 92C core temperature (room was 23C). I use it as an HTPC so other than encoding a Bluray it rarely gets stressed to that level. Hdplex have improved the case since I got mine so may well run a few degrees cooler with the new case.I believe that the best way to drop core temperature is to remove the IHS, replace the crap intel thermal paste with something decent and refit IHS. I could not be bothered, but worth considering