First passive build

"I was highly satisfied with the quality and strength of HDPLEX H5 material, it will last a lifetime. Online instructions, although not perfect, guided us along well. I think HDPLEX should have included printed instructions in the package. I would have liked to see more symmetry in the heat pipes also. I think HDPLEX should also include a mounting system to fit an sfx or sfx-l power supply with an atx motherboard, the best place for an sfx or sfx-l power supply would be near the chipset area of the motherboard, requiring a longer internal power extension cable. If only I had a 3d printer. I also think the screws and threads at least for the motherboard should be larger. Also, HDPLEX could have included a simple magnetic filter for holes on top and bottom panels, and even their logo on the rear to reduce possibility of settling dust or bugs getting in."

Source: Audiophile Style 

Passive GPU experiment

Courtesy of TrashBench

The worst of 2026

Our pick for the worst fanless mini PC of 2026 is the MSI N150 Cubi NUC. Fifteen years of fanless mini PCs, and MSI still can't get it right. There's no passive cooling strategy here. The fan was simply removed. Without a convection-friendly chassis, the heat has nowhere to go. It saturates the interior, baking the SSD and RAM modules, turning what should be a snappy little machine into a thermal-throttling paperweight (and giving fanless mini PCs a bad rep).

The $18 mini PC

Courtesy of Spec Tech

KUBB Mini available on Newegg

The White, Red, and Graphite versions of the KUBB Mini are now available to US customers via Newegg. At just 82 x 82mm (3 x 3-inch) the KUBB Mini is one of the smallest passively cooled PCs on the market. No plastic heatsink here, though, the KUBB Mini features a heavy 500g metal heatsink case. Powered via USB-C, the KUBB Mini comes with the Intel N150 or N300 processor, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB NVMe SSD.

Source: Newegg 

Mac mini goes silent

Source: Facebook 

The Wildcat Lake ZBOX is official

In fact, there are three of them. Meet the ZBOX CI431 nano (Core 3 304, 5-core, up to 4.3GHz, NPU up to 15 TOPS), ZBOX CI451 nano (Core 5 320, 6-core, up to 4.6GHz, NPU up to 16 TOPS) and ZBOX CI471 nano (Core 7 350, 6-core, up to 4.8 GHz, NPU up to 17 TOPS). These barebones systems support up to 64GB of memory, an M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD, and three displays. The compact machines (204 x 129 x 68mm / 8.03 x 5.08 x 2.68-in) also feature excellent connectivity, including 2.5G Ethernet and two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the front.

Akasa Kepler 2U case installation

The Kepler case is available here: https://www.quietpc.com/akasa-kepler

Or as a complete system here: https://www.quietpc.com/kepler-system

Mini PC + touchscreen = what?

This one is something else entirely. It’s basically a mini PC with a built-in 5.5" touchscreen attached directly to the front. Think like a tiny all-in-one desktop or a thick Windows 11 mini tablet. Packed with full-sized ports (USB, HDMI, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) so you can still plug in a mouse, keyboard, or an extra screen if needed. It's powered by the aging Intel N4100 but could still be useful as a home server dashboard, smart home controller, or for light browsing. Get it today for only $209.99.

ZimaBoard 2 review

"The ZimaBoard 2 is sadly following the jack of all trades, master of none figure of speech, although a lot of that comes down to the fact that ZimaOS isn't anywhere close to where it needs to be, either to be a usable NAS OS, nor really an OS for anything else you'd want to do with the ZimaBoard 2. It looks slick at first look, but it's very restrictive if you want to be able to rely on the GUI, and several features are hidden under the developer mode. For example in the instance of SMB multichannel, it doesn't even seem to work. Setting up storage is confusing and clunky, and unmounting drives makes it look like you're going to destroy them, words really matter in this instance. On the plus side, ZimaOS is using a recent Linux kernel and the OS seemed to work just fine, as long as you're aware of its limitations.

The ZimaBoard 2 is an interesting piece of kit if you're looking for some hardware to tinker with, just make sure it suits your needs before splashing out for one, especially if you're planning on relying on ZimaOS for your projects."

Source: TechpowerUp