Hello from Logic Supply!

Hi SFF folks, Darek here from Industrial PC manufacturer Logic Supply. After reading Jay's great review of our MC600 case I was excited to see such a thriving and engaged community of small form factor PC fans having great conversations here in the forum.

By way of a quick introduction, Logic Supply is a 12 year old IPC company based in South Burlington, Vermont. We design and build commercial, industrial and rugged hardware for clients in the manufacturing, industrial control, security & surveillance, digital signage and energy management industries (just to name a few) and specialize in small form factor, fanless systems that can be installed in virtually any environment.

For my part, I'm the Content Manager at Logic Supply and really enjoy reading what other folks interested in this type of technology are discussing. I look forward to sharing in the conversation and am happy to pull in other members of our team to answer any questions that you all have about our hardware or fanless tech in general.

Happy to be here,
~Darek
 
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Phuncz

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May 9, 2015
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I recently bought my first ever passive case. I feel the NUC platform and possibly the mini-STX platform lend itself perfectly for completely passive usage and there is definitely room for better universal designs with the NUC platform. Too many different SKUs for the many different boards due to the rear ports. Maybe some I/O backplate should be considered.
 
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DarekLogic

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Logic Supply
Jan 13, 2016
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Thanks for the warm welcome iFreilicht and Phuncz! Like I said, it's exciting to see such a thriving community interested in SFF computing.

I feel the NUC platform and possibly the mini-STX platform lend itself perfectly for completely passive usage and there is definitely room for better universal designs with the NUC platform. Too many different SKUs for the many different boards due to the rear ports. Maybe some I/O backplate should be considered.

We've had a very similar thought Phuncz. An additional complication is the need for unique heatsink designs within each system to account for each board/processor combination. Even slight generational changes between processors (specifically in Z height) can impact proper cooling, which leads to the need to create individual cooling solutions for each new board. That said, many of our recent designs have incorporated removable backplates in an attempt to accommodate for future board releases, allowing us to utilize the same case design for multiple motherboards. Our recent ML340 series (more info here) was specifically designed for both the boards it launched with, and upcoming NUC boards as well.
 

Phuncz

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I didn't know the CPU height differed among the NUC boards, that does complicate things. Although if it is within a few millimeters in difference and mainly/only the height, thermal transfer pads might be an option to alleviate this.

It is time for flexible heat-transfer mounting. I've seen braided nickel-plated (I think) copper wires being used as a heatsink with LED lights:



This does make me wonder if it would be somehow possible to use a braided or stranded copper material as a kind of heat-transfer. Considering this is rated at 40W (the two CREE XHP-50's are rated at 19W each), it should be useful somehow.
 

GuilleAcoustic

Chief Procrastination Officer
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Jun 29, 2015
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Could sintered heatpipe work ? From what I've read, but I might be mistaken, they work in every orientation. You could then just provide them with a heatpipe bending tool, à la Coolermaster Heatpipe Bender:



Then use coupling blocks:

 

DarekLogic

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Logic Supply
Jan 13, 2016
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Great points Phuncz and GuilleAcoustic. It really comes down to the application and the space available within a given system. In our market, with the need for high reliability in often dusty and vibration-prone environments, and with clients looking for plug-and-play fanless solutions, we use custom machined aluminum blocks that enable a single thermal interface (in some of our systems the heatblock is actually machined directly into the lid). This is part of the reason why many of our more recent chassis designs aren't available as stand-alone cases, because the relationship of enclosure to board is literally 1 to 1 and careful assembly is required to ensure optimal thermal performance.

This approach obviously doesn't play well with independent SFF component-based builds, but it works well for our IPC clients who want to be able to purchase a few hundred systems that they can count on to essentially "set and forget".

I didn't know the CPU height differed among the NUC boards, that does complicate things.
We recently ran into an issue with pre-production NUC boards (those on which we based the design of our ML100) having different Z heights than the eventual production run of those boards (an issue that came to bear in the Ars Technica review of that product). It's not something that happens often, but it points out the seemingly small changes that can make a huge difference when it comes to optimizing thermal performance in a fanless system.

Thanks again for the great comments!