14 DAY TRIAL // There are PCs that can get by without active cooling, by using cases which double as heatsinks and lots of other heatspreaders inside. High-end systems haven't managed to go without active air or water cooling though, until now.
Silent Power PC claims to have introduced the first high-end computer that does, in fact, have what it takes to go about its life without any fans or water cooling.
Called Silent Power, or even the full Silent Power PC by some, the newcomer takes a dramatically new approach to heat dissipation: copper. Lots and lots of copper.
Copper's heat conductivity has never been in question. There is a reason why the best coolers, active or otherwise, use copper base plates and heatpipes after all.
No, it's not the use of copper that might leave you flabbergasted here, but the application: the Silent Power PC basically uses one, big, copper wig.
Then again, the shape isn't quite along the lines of a wig. It has been likened more to a metallic fiber kitchen sponge actually.
The cooler is a lot more complex than it would first appear. While it does look decidedly strange, it is thus for a good reason, and there is more to it than just the foam-like copper structure.
A copper base (surprise surprise) listed at the bottom comes into direct contact with the central processing unit (CPU), as well as the graphics processing unit (GPU) of the computer.
The Base also happens to be one and the same thing with the top of the chassis. From there, the heat is released and spread evenly through the copper foam, bringing heat dissipation to 500 times that of fin-type heatsinks systems. Thus, the surface temperature never rises to over 50° C / 122° F.
The computer itself is made of 8 or 16 GB of DDR3 RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 graphics card, various network and I/O interfaces (USB, Wi-Fi, Ethernet), two video outputs (HDMI and DVI), plus audio, all driven by an Intel quad-core Core i7-4785T 2.2 GHz CPU. The Windows 8.1 operating system is installed on it.
All in all, it measures 160 x 100 x 70 mm / 6.2 x 4 x 2.75 inches (not counting the sponge wig), weighs 1.5 kg / 3.3 pounds, and has a price of $930 / €699 (with 8 GB RAM and 500 GB HDD), $1,030 / €769 (16 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD), or $1,550 / €1,159 (16 GB RAM, 1 GB SSD). Do note, though, that the Silent Power PC is only being crowd-funded, so the retail price will be a bit higher once availability arrives in spring 2015.
