Silent Black Warrior

This stunning build features the powerful i5-14600K, Palit's less powerful but plenty capable Kalmx GTX 1050 Ti graphics card, the SilverStone 450W SFX power supply and the Deng A12 Pro mini-ITX chassis. Just beautiful.

Source: Chiphell via Cowcotland 

Robtech reviews the MINIX Z300

Courtesy of Robtech

Inside the Byte Mk II (it's bad)

The Byte Mk II is an interesting N100 mini PC that comes with Ubuntu, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 4TB of storage. The Byte Mk II is a stylish piece of hardware, and we do love the idea of Linux-friendly PCs, but the cooling system is a major oversight. The very average heat sink is located under the motherboard, preventing convection to occur properly. Given its design, it's possible the Byte Mk II was initially conceived as an actively-cooled PC, but the fan was simply removed during development.

Source: Star Labs 

Turing RC Pro available globally

The now iconic fanless Akasa case, designed for the NUC 14 Pro, is now available in the UK (scan, QuietPC), Germany, France, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, and more. The vertical chassis houses two heat pipes, seamlessly integrated into the case for easy installation.

Unlikely duo

The Noctua NH-L9i CPU cooler is a great match for the Raspberry Pi 5. Despite being designed for powerful desktop processors, its compact size and efficient cooling make it an ideal upgrade for the Pi 5, especially when running demanding workloads. This pairing reduces the Pi's operating temperatures, leading to improved stability, performance, and longevity.

Source: Le Bon Coin 

Lon Seidman reviews the MINIX Z300

Courtesy of Lon.TV

Meet the NUC 14 Essential

ASUS launches the entry-level NUC 14 Essential, powered by exclusive and unannounced Alder Lake-N Refresh CPUs (Intel N150, N250, N355). The NUC 14 Essential will be available as a complete Windows 11 PC or as a barebone system. The system will likely require active cooling, although third-party fanless cases are always a possibility. 

"NUC 14 Essential offers seamless connectivity with a host of I/O ports on its front and rear panels, supporting up to three 4K displays and offering high-speed networking performance. The front panel features a headset jack, one USB-C (10 Gbps) and a USB Type-A (10 Gbps) port; while the rear includes two USB Type-A (10 Gbps) ports, one USB 2.0, one USB-C with DisplayPort (10 Gbps), one DisplayPort, HDMI, and one LAN port.

The energy-efficient Intel Core N-Series processor that powers NUC 14 Essential delivers outstanding performance while consuming less power. Unleash the power of multitasking in a compact 0.56L chassis, supporting up to three 4K displays with reduced latency, minimized power consumption, and smoother data transfer."

Source: ASUS 

MINIX Z300 review

"Although definitely not intended for gaming or any other high performance task, this little MiniPC should do quite nicely for most basic multimedia tasks and most standard business tasks. The Alder Lake-N Core i3-N300 CPU in this MiniPC actually performs much better than I expected it to. It is essentially 8 non-hyperthreaded Intel E (aka unofficially "efficiency") cores without any P ("performance") cores. That said, the performance isn't bad at all. It is quite responsive, works very well with any typical inbound streaming or internet access scenario, and would work great as a basic HTPC mounted on the back of a TV with the included VESA bracket. It would also work wonderfully in a kiosk or checkout style retail situation.

Honestly, I have pretty much nothing bad to say about this little PC: it came with the most recent Windows 11 Pro 24H2 update, it has 16Gb of DDR4, it has a reasonably well performing 512Gb NVME SSD, it has large and effective external WiFi antennas, it has a 2.5GbE wired ethernet port, it has an adequate number of USB ports, it has dual HDMI outputs, and it is totally fanless and silent. While the memory and SSD are not from particularly well known brands, they seem to operate pretty well and the memory does use Hynix chips. Additionally, the combination of Intel WiFi and Realtek 2.5GbE wired LAN is probably the most optimal choice at the moment. I also like that they were wise enough to include the external WiFi antennas, as internal antennas simply wouldn't work well inside an all metal case. Having the dual external antennas on this one makes the WiFi reception MUCH, MUCH better.

While it definitely won't win any gaming awards, a quick benchmark at 1920x1080 wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and you might even be able to get by with some VERY light gaming at lower resolutions. I was also quite impressed with how well the cooling on this unit performed and how well it handled operating fanless. Even after almost an hour of running two stress tests simultaneously (nearly maxing out both the CPU and GPU subsections), the core temperature never got over 66C and no errors occurred. The outer surface of the case itself was quite warm to the touch after this, but nowhere near being uncomfortable to hold. In summary, I like it and have essentially no complaints (which is rare!)."

Source: Amazon 

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NUC 13 Rugged review en espagnol

"Las temperaturas del Mini PC se mantienen completamente controladas por debajo de los 58ºC cuando estresamos únicamente la CPU, mientras que el conjunto completo estresado, es decir, con los gráficos integrados, las cifras suben a los 62ºC estables.

El consumo de la CPU bajo estrés será de tan solo 8W con sus dos núcleos activos, mientras que con gráficos integrados el consumo sube a esos 16W de TDP especificados. Las cifras del equipo completo serán de 16W y 24W respectivamente."

Source: Profesional Review

Get the NUC 13 Rugged here.