Aleutia Relia Industrial PC Review: Ivy Bridge & Q77 in a Fanless Chassis
by Ganesh T S on December 4, 2012 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Industrial PC
- HTPC
- Ivy Bridge
- Aleutia
Unboxing and Setup Impressions:
Aleutia doesn't bundle input accessories (keyboard / mouse / IR remote etc.) with the system. We also don't find any detailed operating manuals. The package is pretty barebones as it can be. This is perfectly acceptable given the target market. There is a single welcome note which lists the package contents and also provides the initial login details for systems with pre-installed operating systems.
The contents of the package include:
- 90W AC adapter (with country-specific power plug)
- Driver and software CD from Intel for the DQ77KB motherboard
- OEM Windows 7 Home Premium installation DVD
- HDMI to DVI adapter
- Two TP-Link 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n compatible antennae
- Main unit
One of the most interesting aspects of the package is the main unit itself. The chassis is solidly built and meant to act as a giant heat sink. The industrial design is extremely pleasing to the eye. The rounded corners and the curved heat sink base on either side add to the aesthetics.
We would have liked the rubber feet at the bottom of the unit to be thicker in order to give more clearance to the ventilation slots at the bottom. A number of screw slots for mounts of varying sizes is also provided. The rear panel of the unit has the DC-in jack, four USB 3.0 ports, a full-size Display Port output as well as HDMI, two GbE LAN ports, analog audio out and microphone jacks and a Kensington lock slot. On the top side of the rear panel, we have ventilation slots interrupted in two places by Wi-Fi antenna holders.
The front panel is relatively bare, with a single power button and an LED indicator (which lights up blue when the system is powered up) on one side and two USB 2.0 ports on the other.
The top cover has ventilation slots running on either side close to the heat sink base. All the ventilation slots are covered by a thin gauzelike layer underneath which provides a certain degree of protection against internal dust build up.
Our review unit came with a pre-installed copy of Windows 7 Home Premium x64. Fortunately, there was no bloatware to uninstall. All our benchmarking programs were installed fresh. LAV Filters 0.52 and madVR 0.81 were used to test out the HTPC aspects in conjunction with MPC-HC v1.6.4.6052. Since the system has no in-built optical drive, we didn't have to worry about Blu-ray playback software.
We conclude this section with a summary of the data and A/V connectivity options for the Aleutia Relia review unit.
| Option | Status |
|---|---|
| HDMI | Yes [v1.4a] |
| Display Port | Yes |
| Component | No |
| Composite | No |
| VGA | Yes |
| SPDIF | Yes [Optical] |
| Stereo | Yes |
| Option | Status |
|---|---|
| Optical Disk Drive | No (DVD Slimline Drive Optional) |
| USB | Yes [4 x v3.0, 2 x v2.0] |
| eSATA | No |
| LAN | Yes [ 2 x 1000 Mbps GbE ] |
| Internal HDD | Yes [ 2 x 500 GB ] |
| Internal SSD | Yes [ 128 GB mSATA ] |
| WiFi | Yes [ 300 Mbps 1T2R 802.11b/g/n (Single band)] |
| Bluetooth | No |
| Card Reader | No |
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Rick83 - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
I see you mention the NIC on the last page (might have been better placed on the first page, where you list the components), so the hardware is there.Is BIOS support there as well?
Haven't seen anything from the BIOS so far, and AMT is heavily dependant on entire-system support.
Did you actually get a KVMoIP session to work?
While this particular model is not that interesting to me, I am looking generally into systems with AMT support, so getting to know the functionality that each vendor provides is quite interesting.
jhh - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
I suspect a slower RAM was selected to work in a fanless device, but if you had an IR camera, it would have been nice to confirm device temperatures. The case top probably adds to the case heat-sink capacity, so removing the top could cause problems with the processor and its heat-pipe to the case, which would make it difficult to take such a picture.Minion4Hire - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
That doesn't seem likely. There's not much in the way of chassis ventilation and the heatpipes connect directly to those side heatsinks. If anything temperatures should drop with the cover removed as less heat can be trapped inside of the chassis, although in a temperature controlled testing environment with zero airflow it might not really matter.Googer - Monday, December 17, 2012 - link
Cooling isn't necessary DDR3 1600 as most ram chips generate very little heat. Modern day DIMM salesmen add heatspreaders and heatsinks, mostly as a marketing ploy.cjs150 - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
I have recently built a very similarly spec HTPC (using the HDplex case rather than what I guess is a streamcom/wesean case) so it was nice to see a comparison. Price is a lot more reasonable than my build.i7-3770T works extremely well as an HTPC (shame about screen refresh rate - Intel should hang their heads in shame)
Personally I would not use a mechanical hard disc, I hate noise and for an HTPC, an SSD is fine.
The problem as I see it for an HTPC is that if no optical drive or TV tuner why bother with something this complex, probably easier and cheaper to store all the media on a NAS and have a very cheap streaming device as the HTPC.
After saying that, none of the fanless cases I have looked at that support an optical drive give any thought to noise dampening the drive.
Kevin G - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
Looking at the internal layout, I can easily see why the hard drives get hot: one is mounted directly over the CPU. I wonder how just a single hard drive mounted over the memory performs with regards to temperatures and throttling.It also looks like the Wi-fi chip is replaceable so that single band disadvantage can be rectified.
My only other complaint would be the 19V external power supply. It would have been nicer to see a 12V external PSU or even an internal PSU to avoid a power brick entirely. Minor quibble in the grand scheme of things.
Guspaz - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
The as-configured price seems to be at least $500 overpriced. This thing has a BOM somewhere around $900ish at *RETAIL* pricing (I made a list), $1500 for the machine is ridiculous.mrdude - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
Poor WiFi that only offers single-bandNo card reader
No Bluetooth
Aaaaand somehow this is supposed to be an HTPC? viable small form factor PC? At that price? say what?
These people must be kidding themselves.
A5 - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
No, this is designed to be used in an industrial environment. I have no idea why Ganesh tested it as an HTPC.Aikouka - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
I would assume that it's being tested as a HTPC device because it looks like a decent contender on paper.Also, keep in mind that you can just buy your own Streacom case and build your own machine. They have models with card readers, disc drive access, etc.