The OnLogic Helix HX500 Review: A Rugged Fanless 35W mini-PC
by Ganesh T S on September 17, 2021 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Fanless
- Industrial PC
- Passive Cooling
- Comet Lake
- OnLogic
Miscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks
Networking and storage are aspects that may be of vital importance in specific industrial PC use-cases. The Helix HX500 can be configured with 4G LTE support (there is a SIM slot in the front panel that connects to a 4G mPCIe card on the board). The system also has two GbE LAN ports, one of which has AMT support to help with remote management. On the storage side, our review sample was configured with a 256GB SATA SSD. After the OS installation and loading up of our benchmark programs, we didn't have enough free space left to run our storage benchmark. A SATA SSD in the M.2 form-factor is a known quantity and no match for NVMe SSDs that are becoming de-facto entry-level storage options. That said, the SATA SSDs used by OnLogic come with MLC NAND, and are suitable for industrial applications requiring longevity and minimal maintenance. End users requiring high-performance storage can always opt for NVMe SSDs in the configuration stage.
One of the key aspects of fanless systems is the thermal profile under load. Our stress test saw the internal package temperature go as high as 98C, and the chassis (doubling up as a heat-sink) managed to keep it stable around that mark.
The external temperature plateaued around 79C, but only in one particular region of the top panel, as shown above. Additional thermal images are available in the gallery below.
We opted not to evaluate the gaming and HTPC capabilities of the HX500. Simply put, the HX500 is meant for completely different use-cases, and consumers looking for a passively cooled gaming machine or HTPC have other system options that can be explored (like the Bean Canyon NUC in an Akasa Turing chassis).
Closing Thoughts
The OnLogic Helix HX500 provided us with the opportunity to evaluate a fanless industrial PC targeting the burgeoning market for high performance density in edge deployments. From our evaluation, it is clear that OnLogic has been able to deliver effectively on the promise of a rugged computer capable of operation over a wide temperature range. OnLogic allows fine-grained customization that can tweak the system for any use-case.
In terms of scope for improvement, it is possible that the absence of variety in terms of native display outputs (all three are DisplayPort, none HDMI) or a native Type-C port could act as deal-breakers for specific deployment scenarios. In most cases, additional dongles can solve the problem. Power consumption numbers could do with some improvement, but OnLogic has done the best they could given Intel's efforts to cram in as many cores as they could for a particular TDP in their 14nm process.
Despite these minor quibbles, we have to say that OnLogic's Helix series presents a wide range of compelling options for industrial edge deployments. Prices start at $887, which is par for the course for industrial fanless PCs being sold as a B2B product. Technically, it would be interesting to see what OnLogic can do in terms of coupling the Helix chassis design with a 35W TDP Tiger Lake processor. As it stands, the Helix HX500 is a solid step-up from the line of NUC-based fanless PCs that OnLogic has been offering so far. The new product line opens up yet another option for end users in the industrial PC market.
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Oxford Guy - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
130W with a 120W adapter.Thermal throttling.
Double failure.
Oxford Guy - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
138W.Wrs - Saturday, September 18, 2021 - link
No issue there. Adapter is rated for DC output; review measured AC input “at the wall.” 120 into 138w is 87% efficient. We don’t actually know the system was pulling the full 120w DC. The fanless system obviously cannot dissipate that sustained, but settles in the 50-55w range, 60w at the wall. That’s how modern CPUs work. They idle cold, blow past the normal power budget for load and then settle closer to rated power when things warm up.Oxford Guy - Saturday, September 18, 2021 - link
Ok. Thanks for the clarification.So, it's only a single design failure then (thermal throttling).
My view of thermal throttling is that it should only happen as a preventative measure to keep a system from being ruined due to user error (such as letting a machine become clogged with dust).
Otherwise, you're clocking the chip wrong or doing something else wrong with the design. Stuffing 14nm into a passive case in 2021 probably is part of the mistake.
But, for tricking people with numbers I guess hiding the real performance behind a shifting facade of throttling is fun.
Wrs - Sunday, September 19, 2021 - link
So there is normal throttling and then there is emergency throttling or sometimes shutdown. The CPU is rated for 35w, even though the same silicon is known to be capable of 65 or 95w. What they do is as long as all the temperatures are cool, they let the silicon use 60w+ for a few seconds. This can happen in a laptop, or in this industrial enclosure. It makes it feel just as fast as a desktop, but it can’t last for a heavy sustained workload because of heat buildup. After it warms up, it goes back down to the voltage and frequency it was designed to sustain.It has nothing to do with 14nm. My 7nm desktop works similarly. In 2021 Intel’s got 10nm for low-power (that’s what all Tiger Lake laptops are), but OnLogic was too cheap for that or figured their clientele doesn’t want the latest and greatest. Their case successfully prevented the 35w chip from emergency throttling, so it passed the thermal design test in my book.
Oxford Guy - Sunday, September 19, 2021 - link
Marketing magic to try to justify inadequate cooling. Not a fan.Wrs - Monday, September 20, 2021 - link
I mean, it is a fanless, almost sealed enclosure the size of a standing router or cable modem - how much more can you expect? The benchmarks were more than fine. They way outclassed the Zotac, which is also fanless and the size of a router, but uses commodity plastic hole vents which would be wholly inappropriate in industrial settings but would be suitable as a living room htpc. The OnLogic system gets close to 80c peak on the case; one would hope for the sake of longevity that they used high temperature components throughout and that would be the reason for the high price.Potential improvements are obviously a finer process node like Tiger Lake or one of the Zen 3 laptop chips, a low-power specialized fab node... but all that R&D takes time and $$. The world isn't perfect and we don't have infinite population.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 21, 2021 - link
‘how much more can you expect’I expect parts to match the capability of the cooling versus putting too-demanding parts into a box and relying on throttling. If the parts need a larger heatsink box then use that or choose less demanding parts.
The only exception is turbo that is designed to safely ‘overclock’ a chip if the cooling is better than the norm. That is a good feature.
Wrs - Tuesday, September 21, 2021 - link
As far as I can tell the parts match very well. All the CPU choices for the little box top out at 35w. Obviously the 138w momentary draw came from turbo; there is no separate GPU. The review found the junction temperature under sustained load hit 98C which is just under the throttling temp of 100C. A 15w chip would have undersold the capabilities of the design, and a 65w+ desktop part would have been throttled under sustained load unless perhaps operating out of Antarctica…That’s not to say some won’t take issue with the incomplete seal, or that there might be component longevity issues down the road which is where a warranty comes in.
Jonny314159 - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
Any VRM cooling on this? I think I see a thermal pad for the SSD, but the VRMs will be a long term point of failure running in a sealed box with no conductive path to the heatsink.