The Aleutia X1: A Fanless, Low Power, Dual Gb Lan Server
Available Monday the 17th for £349 ex VAT the Fanless X1 Server combines an Intel Atom N550 Dual Core Notebook Processor (2 x 1.5GHz) with 2-4GB of RAM, a 2.5" SATA-II drive (up to 1TB) and either a Dual Gb Lan Configuration or 5 Gb LAN ports. With idle power consumption of 16W and peak power consumption of just 24 Watts, the X1 is ideal as an always-on proxy server. A fanless design ensures longevity in the field and the X1 is not only VESA/Wall mountable but small enough you can wrap your hands around it.
In the 5 Gb LAN option, 3 of the LAN ports support WoL (Wake-on-LAN) making this system ideal for server applications.
Fanless Core i3 2100T PC
This is what a fanless Intel Core i3 PC would look like. The current crop has minimum TDP of 73 Watts - that is a lot of heat (though lower than the Core 2 Duo average of 95W). The new 1155 (Sandy Bridge) processors are going to be 65W. Still a challenge to cool without using a fan, especially in a small case.
However, the new Core i3 2300T has a TDP of just 35W, which is a remarkable accomplishment given it's performance of 2 x 2.5GHz and the 3MB of cache.
So using a custom heatpipe and chassis, that's a manageable amount of heat to dissipate out - you just need to maximize the surface area of the chassis. This is just link a human body maximizes surface area with your hands and head - which is why those parts get cold.
The best part is that the PC maintains a stable temperature - the PC doesn't get warm, the room does.
Fanless Small Network Server with Dual NIC and Low Power Intel Atom Processor
CD and hand shown for scale
Many customers buy the Aleutia T1 to use an always-on server. It supports PXE Network boot and can be configured to automatically Power On after Power Loss. It is also very low power, using only 17 Watts under load. With 500GB and 750GB 2.5" laptop drives now affordable, this makes it ideal as a small, low power network server.
However, the T1 has only 1 network port (10/100/1000) and naturally a lot of projects require two network ports.
We recently solved this for one of our customers by using a PCI Gigabit Network card with full Linux support and mounting it with a riser card in a larger, ventilated case. This has the advantage of offering more air flow. It's not VESA-mountable like the T1 but it can be wall mounted.
Unlike many fanless network servers, the T1 Dual NIC comes with 2GB RAM (OEM customers can have 512MB or 1GB for less) and a decent x86 processor in the Intel Atom N270 at 1.6GHz.