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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garadante - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
With the system running that hot, I would've liked to have seen temperatures for the other components, notable the SSD. I don't think SSDs are designed to run as hot and as long as CPUs/GPUs are. Same with the RAM.airmantharp - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
That'd definitely be nice, but I don't think it'd be much of a problem; RAM has a high thermal tolerance these days, and the SSD is pretty far away. I'd be much more worried about an mSATA drive and WiFi mPCIe card, though, and I'm kind of puzzled why those options weren't explored.garadante - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Well looking at the external temperatures of the case, it looks like some areas are hitting 70 degrees Celsius, which is above the working temperature for many SSDs I believe, which are rated for 60 degrees. generally? But not to mention every component in there is likely baking at around 70 C, I'd like to see an analysis on the actual temperatures inside there and the impact this would have on longevity.OCedHrt - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Still waiting for one with eSATA output. Seriously.ganeshts - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Pretty sure Habey would be ready to do a custom back panel for you if it is required in volume (for a price, of course). There are plenty of spare SATA ports on the motherboard.airmantharp - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
He could just cut a hole for one or two- where's your Dremel and sense of adventure?!?JimmiG - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Would be interesting to see what could be done with an ATX-sized case acting as a heatsink. There would be a *lot* of surface area to dissipate the heat..cjs150 - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Zalman did one a few years back. Very heavy and expensive but workedganeshts - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
You can take a look at our Streacom FC10 review (linked in the article). It performs well and obviously better than this one because of its size.Heartdisease - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
It sounds like this would be a perfect unit to put in a car behind the dash as a media hub for the Kiddo's. How is therice compared to a do it yourself non dust proof box?