I was using a large Lenovo Y70-70 laptop as a pseudo-desktop machine and additional monitor. It's quite powerful, but its fans would run at all times. Getting really tired of that, I googled for the better part of an afternoon for "fanless desktop" and it turns out it's much harder to find one than I'd initially thought. (Slow fanless machines are easy to find, but I was looking for one as powerful as any desktop.)

At about the time I was ready to give up I found an obscure site of an Israeli company that claimed to make a real i7 fanless machine. It was releases very recently, too, so I'm thinking it might be of interest to some others.

So I got it from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CP4S15E. I fitted it with 8 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD. It's more expensive than a traditional desktop of the same configuration, but as soon as you turn it on, you know where that extra money went. (Speaking of money, ironically, the extra expenditure has had an unexpected return: I occasionally daytrade, and when I do I need CNBC on. That made the laptop's fans make even more noise than usual, so I was avoiding it. Nowadays I can keep CNBC on no problem, which allowed me to handily cover the extra expense.)

I've put Linux Mint on it (which is what they recommend) and it works swimmingly. The handling of multiple desktops is just awesome. The one thing I don't like about the machine is it always powers the discrete graphics card, which I don't use. Their engineers (who've been very active to respond to my emailed questions) said a future BIOS upgrade will allow powering off the card.

Thought this might help others looking for a fanless dekstop.


Andrei

On Friday, 12 August 2016 at 19:13:12 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>
> Thought this might help others looking for a fanless dekstop.
>

I built fanless desktops that I use for HTPC. I find it's much easier to just find a fanless heat sink and choose the parts for the rest of the machine based on that.

On Friday, 12 August 2016 at 19:13:12 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> At about the time I was ready to give up I found an obscure site of an Israeli company that claimed to make a real i7 fanless machine. It was releases very recently, too, so I'm thinking it might be of interest to some others.

Compulab is pretty well-known among hardware enthusiasts, as they're pretty much the only company putting out ARM desktops:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=compulab_utilite&num=1

They seem to have focused more on the fanless x86 nettops these days.

A pity Amazon sell them in the USA, but not the UK.

On Friday, 12 August 2016 at 19:13:12 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> I was using a large Lenovo Y70-70 laptop as a pseudo-desktop machine and additional monitor. It's quite powerful, but its fans would run at all times. Getting really tired of that, I googled for the better part of an afternoon for "fanless desktop" and it turns out it's much harder to find one than I'd initially thought. (Slow fanless machines are easy to find, but I was looking for one as powerful as any desktop.)
>
> [...]

Also Puget System makes some pretty awesome machines - not fanless but still absolutely quiet.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/serenity.php

They don't ship to France but they give the parts references so I basically built one myself. I'm really happy about it. It's on 24/7 in my bedroom and I can't ear it while sleeping.

On Friday, 12 August 2016 at 19:13:12 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> googled for the better part of an afternoon for "fanless desktop" and it turns out it's much harder to find one than I'd

Quiet doesn't necessarily mean fanless. I have a Corsair H100i with Noctua fans, and you can barely tell it's on.

> I've put Linux Mint on it (which is what they recommend)

Friends don't let friends use Linux Mint:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4v116g/can_we_stop_recommending_linux_mint/

https://lwn.net/Articles/676664/

Not mentioned above: Linux Mint's upgrade policy is "format and reinstall". Their update policy is also "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it". No wonder they have internal security issues.

On 08/13/2016 08:37 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Friday, 12 August 2016 at 19:13:12 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> googled for the better part of an afternoon for "fanless desktop" and
>> it turns out it's much harder to find one than I'd
>
> Quiet doesn't necessarily mean fanless. I have a Corsair H100i with
> Noctua fans, and you can barely tell it's on.
>
>> I've put Linux Mint on it (which is what they recommend)
>
> Friends don't let friends use Linux Mint:
>
> https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4v116g/can_we_stop_recommending_linux_mint/
>
>
> https://lwn.net/Articles/676664/
>
> Not mentioned above: Linux Mint's upgrade policy is "format and
> reinstall". Their update policy is also "If it ain't broke, don't try to
> fix it". No wonder they have internal security issues.

Good to know, thanks. So what should I use then? -- Andrei

On 08/13/2016 08:37 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Friday, 12 August 2016 at 19:13:12 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> googled for the better part of an afternoon for "fanless desktop" and
>> it turns out it's much harder to find one than I'd
>
> Quiet doesn't necessarily mean fanless. I have a Corsair H100i with
> Noctua fans, and you can barely tell it's on.
>
>> I've put Linux Mint on it (which is what they recommend)
>
> Friends don't let friends use Linux Mint:
>
> https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4v116g/can_we_stop_recommending_linux_mint/
>
>
> https://lwn.net/Articles/676664/
>
> Not mentioned above: Linux Mint's upgrade policy is "format and
> reinstall". Their update policy is also "If it ain't broke, don't try to
> fix it". No wonder they have internal security issues.

Also, I like Cinnamon. (Tried Gnome, the new KDE, Mate and XFCE, don't like them.) Is Cinnamon available on other distros? -- Andrei

On Saturday, 13 August 2016 at 12:37:55 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Friday, 12 August 2016 at 19:13:12 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
>> I've put Linux Mint on it (which is what they recommend)
>
> Friends don't let friends use Linux Mint:
>
> https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4v116g/can_we_stop_recommending_linux_mint/
>
> https://lwn.net/Articles/676664/
>
> Not mentioned above: Linux Mint's upgrade policy is "format and reinstall". Their update policy is also "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it". No wonder they have internal security issues.

The comments on the reddit post mitigate the post itself, for example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4v116g/can_we_stop_recommending_linux_mint/d5vo9l6
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4v116g/can_we_stop_recommending_linux_mint/d5uk29l

The security issue you talk about is probably the fact that their forums have been hacked earlier this year. That's a totaly different problem. You can't charge them for this. Some people are on a constructive side (they build, they program, they create...) while others are on a destructive side...Do you think that's smart to exploit the forum of an open-source OS community with the aim to sold a stupid list of email 85$ to a bunch of idiots who spend their life at running spam server ?

If you see someone being pushed in the back on the stairs and who falls, what do you do ? Do you blame the guy who falls "hey you're even not able to stay up" or the guy who pushes "a****hole, that's not fair"...

On Saturday, 13 August 2016 at 14:54:10 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Also, I like Cinnamon. (Tried Gnome, the new KDE, Mate and XFCE, don't like them.) Is Cinnamon available on other distros? -- Andrei

Cinnamon exist on most distros, just that you need to install it manually from their package manager.

Here is a list of all distos that have cinnamon as default: http://distrowatch.com/search.php?desktop=Cinnamon

I would probably recommend https://antergos.com/ because it is rolling-release and it uses the ArchLinux repositories, so you will always have the latest version of software (after it has been tested for about a month).
It also has a GUI installer which configures everything for you so you don't need to configure everything like you need to do with ArchLinux.

If you want something super stable I would recommend Debian.

It is all depends on how you want your computer to be configured.