Fanless PC for XITE -- build ideas

[jksuperstar]

I'm working toward ditching the laptop, and building a portable PC. If possible, I'd like to go fanless.

My ultimate goal is to build a custom box, that is more or less like the Open Labs idea, but DSP based. I already have an XITE, PCIe and ExpressCard interfaces, A16mkII (option), iConnect MIDI, and a touch monitor. For various controllers, I may add a Lemur/iPad, C-thru music Axis-49, launchpad, BCR2000, BCF2000, SparkLE drum control, or other.

Many fanless systems are based on mobile processors, but I'd like to avoid mobile if possible, only because many of them involve extensive power conrol, which is the last thing I want disrupting use.

Any suggestions or Motherboards in use out there?

[Immanuel]

How many cards are you planning to use? Xite?

[jksuperstar]

No cards, just XITE. I know one option is a Mac mini, bootcamped into Win7/8, and a thunderbolt adapter. But that means a straight up PC should be available for less.

[Immanuel]

Hd-plex has some fanless PC cases and fanless PSUs. www.hd-plex.com. You will need a PCI-extension/riser cable. I will not recommend plugging it into a 16x port. The fit need to be very (too) precise for it to work. I tried this, myself. I would recommend you get a 1x PCI express riser cable and use a 1x port on your motherboard. At some time, HD-plex planned to make a rack mount front. I think they skipped it again, but you can ask for it on the forum to show more interest in it. Or you could get someone to make a 2u front with custom holes to mount the case.

[dawman]

I use a PCI-e 1x riser ribbon, but you could get a snug fir with the 16x to 1x ribbon also.
Look into the new i7 NUC by Gigabyte, then you could build your own if need be too.
mini PCI-e adapters are working on these as I am looking into a PICO-ITX design.
SOme folks don't need the i7s and excessive power.
For example a Kontakt only guy I know uses the i5 NUC and gets along just fine in real time.

[jksuperstar]

That says a lot that Kontackt is running live on an Intel NUC. I was worried that the on-board video display sharing memory with the system wouldn't be the best idea, but maybe shit is so fast now it really doesn't matter.

And I did find these at amazon for $30, for getting the Xite PCI-e card into that mini PCI-e slot.

[jksuperstar]

Looked more into that gigabyte Brix Pro. Damn, lotsa power in a tiny box, and Intel added dram for graphics! The real beauty, is that same ram can serve as a huge cache. I'd have to ditch WiFi/BT, in order to get the pcie cable in there. Which is OK by me. WiFi is my xite's worst enemy for low latency anyways.

[dawman]

Mini PCI-e idea is great.
Do you have it working yet...?

The last time I had an issue with GFX was the Clarksdale CPU/GPU, it sucked hind tit.
But everything since the Ivy Bridge, which works great, has just improved more and more as Intel is so far ahead of AMD they haven't done much of anything except new names and refreshes, but better GPU. The triple display Iris and HD5000 series is pretty impressive.

[jksuperstar]

I haven't pulled the trigger, I read about some issues of the gigabyt Brit pro having thermal issues, and the cup throttling down some. Still trying to see if that is a general problem or specific to some. That would be a deal breaker.

There is one other box that uses that same cpu (aside from new Apple laptops). Ideally, I'd like to get it down to 1/2 rack size, but if I make a custom box, it might not matter so much.

[dawman]

Supermicro deson't mess around when it comes to airflow for servers in 1Us, etc.
Any chassis they offer is good, also check out Travla if you want to build your own.
They have really great Mini ITX 1U/2Us and then you can avoid the new Haswell as I think they are just too hot to trot.
Ivy Bridge works really cool at 3.4GHz, and the Haswells are basically Ivy Bridges with faster hotter GPUs and faster hotter frequencies from overclocking the same design.

ASRock has a great board here using an 8 core CPU, without Intel GPU. A meger 2D 400 MHx VGA chip is onboard like servers use, and this little puppy is passively cooled.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7970/asro ... management

Then there's another NUC by Gigabyte here that seems pretty sweet.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8641/giga ... il-ucff-pc

Personally I would build a custom 1U of half rack like the old hardware BOSS FX.