CompuLab Intense PC System Review: Fanless Ivy Bridge
by Dustin Sklavos on April 20, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Fanless
- Ivy Bridge
- desktops
- CompuLab
Application and Futuremark Performance
Testing the CompuLab Intense PC is almost an academic exercise; mostly we want to make sure the Intel Core i7-3517UE is performing up to snuff and not being thermally throttled. I've hopped a lot of my desktop benchmarks over to the new mobile suite to keep everything lined up, so there isn't a tremendous amount of comparative data here. Still, you should get a pretty good idea of how the Intense PC stacks up against similar low-noise or no-noise boxes.
Unfortunately these are currently the only comparative results I can offer, but they paint a fairly clear picture. Any system running an SSD is going to perform better in PCMark 7, that's a given, and both Puget Systems boxes are operating off of SSDs. The Lenovo ThinkCentre M92 Tiny is a different beast, offering superior CPU performance with its low-wattage quad-core processor.
| Intense PC | Dell XPS 12 (i7-3517U) | |
| 3DMark (Ice Storm) | 24472 | 32841 |
| 3DMark (Cloud Gate) | 2997 | 3721 |
| x264 HD 5.x Pass 1 | 21.69 | 29.83 |
| x264 HD 5.x Pass 2 | 4.19 | 5.51 |
Above are the remaining benchmark results compared against Dell's XPS 12 ultrabook featuring the non-embedded Intel Core i7-3517U. It doesn't look good. While actual core temperatures for the Intense PC are pretty good, I suspect the embedded CPU is throttling more, and/or the BIOS for the Intense PC is keeping the chip from hitting higher thermals. Since the chassis is one big heatsink, the CPU would need to be kept under a certain temperature to avoid actually burning anyone who chooses to use the system. Performance isn't bad, but we're clearly looking at about 20% of the i7-3517U's potential left on the table.
Update: The embedded i7-3517UE actually has a nominal clock of 200MHz less than the standard i7-3517U, so the Intense PC's performance is actually pretty close to where it should be.
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Bob-o - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Heh, it looks like the head off an old air cooled motorcycle engine. Cool.55Tan - Tuesday, December 9, 2014 - link
The CompuLab Intense PC is far from one of the better desktop if you ask me! /55Tan from http://www.topreport.org/desktop/colinstu - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
No SSD? *thumbsdown* Terribledanjw - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
You can get a bare bones version that doesn't include a drive or memory and add your own. The memory is SODIMM and drive 2.5".DanNeely - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Not offering one for something targeted at industrial customers is rather disappointing. Vibrations/shocks are much more likely there and a small factory isn't likely to have someone like us to customize their systems to what they should've been shipped as. Big companies will probably want ti configured right out of the box because it makes things easier for their bean counters.Intense PC user - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
There are some inaccuracies in the review:Intense PC does support mSATA ( I guess it was added to the current revision of the machine)
I posses this machine for couple of months and using CT128M4SSD3 mSATA SSD (for OS) together with 1T Hitachi HGST 2.5" HDD ( for DATA)
Regarding to the 3517U Dell XPS - Intel claims 15% higher graphic (1.15Gz vs 1.0GHz) and ~12% higher CPU frequency (1.9GHz vs 1.7GHz) so the conclusion about ~20% lost performance isn't fair enough.
Dustin Sklavos - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Good lord I wish they'd made the mSATA thing clear on their site. Updating.lehtv - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Little typo in the conclusion title: it's -> itsKaarlisK - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
The 3470T is a dual core :)Laststop311 - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
The barebones ones are pretty frickin cool. Got lotsa Ram and HDD's lying around. The problem is I wish they had a little more cpu range offered. You either have to get the crappiest celeron for 400 or a top end i7 for 800. Wish I could get a middle i5 version barebones for 600. That would be perfect for an HTPC. But I would hold off and get it with Haswell chips. They will have the configurable TDP that will run with even less power than these 17 watt ivys with equal or even higher performance. Less power = less heat to dissipate = heatsink can be shrunk making it lighter and even smaller (potentially) or the same size with more thermal headroom for permanent turbo mode. Plus Haswell has greatly enhanced GPU the gt3e igp on haswell is a large jump in performance compared to ivy hd 4000 even has its own dedicated memory directly on die with it all for the graphics side of the chip. Obviously it won't be enough memory to hold everything like dedicated gpus with 4GB of memory I think its estimated to be on 128MB of on die memory for the IGP but intel probably has smart ways of putting the most used most important stuff on that directly connected memory.