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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coolhardware - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Crazy that they included a power supply not rated to meet max consumption, otherwise it seems like a nice industrial machine!DanNeely - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Assuming the 68W measured number was wall power it was probably in spec; at 88% efficiency 68W in provides 60W out and peak efficiencies are near 50% at full load it''ll fall off some. It the brick was a cheap low efficiency model it might only have been putting out 50-55W at that point.Samus - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
I've used a 60w power brick on my A6-5400K system for nearly a year. Like all of them, it is a cheap Chinese brand, but it works. It does get hot, but I never pull 60w from a system where the CPU itself is rated at 65w alone. If you include motherboard overhead (chipset, memory) and SSD/optical drive (yes, it has both) the system should theoretically pull 90w.But it doesn't. I have a killowatt and it idles around 18w and never goes over 50w while playing back video. Even during Bluray playback it stays under 50w.
flyingpants1 - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Congratulations. They still should have shipped a larger brick.g00ey - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
That's a ... very, very ... E-X-O-T-I-C word for 'power supply'. You know, I shit bricks sometimes, perhaps I should become their supplier...JSStewart - Thursday, August 15, 2013 - link
You should certainly do what you are best qualified for...flyingpants1 - Friday, August 16, 2013 - link
Maybe you already are. That would explain a lot.alex_alfanet - Friday, August 16, 2013 - link
What I found interesting is that the system was tested with a 45W TDP CPU but in the specs says that supports up to 35W TDP CPUs and in the Datasheet also says that Power Design Supports up to 35W CPUs. Requiring 10W less translates into a cooler systems and the 60 W power supply should be ok. I found that i7-3612QM and i7-3632QM are 35W TDP CPUs with Tj 105 °CDentons - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
The external case reaching 155 deg F presents a definite safety issue. That's hot enough to burn skin.Something reaching that temperature in a work environment would very likely need big warning labels or more likely, be enclosed in a cage to protect workers from incidental contact.
Clearly, this is not for home users. It's hard to imagine a computing product with external case temp of 155 being approved for any consumer, home use.
DanNeely - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
A lot of these are probably installed inside other machines; it getting that hot isn't any more of an issue in normal use than all the moving parts sealed away behind access panels.