Quiet PC Zeno HT-H67 Fanless PC review

£1319
Price when reviewed

As previous awards will testify, Quiet PC knows its stuff when it comes to making silent systems. We’ve already seen the Nofan IcePipe A43-H67, complete with a ludicrously oversized heatsink. For its next trick, Quiet PC introduces the Zeno HT-H67 Fanless PC – and, as you’d expect, it doesn’t make a peep.

It’s made from heavy-duty aluminium and, while it’s wider than your average Shuttle PC, it’s about half the height, so it will fit nicely under a TV. The brushed-aluminium front is sparse, with only a small Zeno logo, power button, hard disk LED and a Blu-ray reader – there’s nothing so useful as a USB port.

Much like the similar-looking Tranquil ixLS, the sides comprise aluminium fins that have just as much function as form. Undo four screws, remove the top, and you’ll see what we mean. The Intel Core i3-2100 processor is topped by a tall, thin heatsink, with two copper heatpipes carrying heat away to be dissipated by those imposing fins. Unlike the Tranquil, the Zeno’s fins are down both flanks for added effect.

QuietPC Zeno HT-H67 Fanless PC

The mini-ITX motherboard – Gigabyte’s H67N-USB3-B3 – is slotted into the base, and the optical drive and hard disk are stored in a caddy attached to the front of the machine. The space underneath the caddy is given over to cable storage, and past that bundle of wires is a daughterboard providing power to the drives. It’s a neat system, but you’ll have to remove the caddy entirely to access the two spare DIMM sockets below.

Upgrade room is, understandably, at a premium. The two vacant SATA 3Gbits/sec ports are rendered redundant by the lack of drive bays, and the one PCI Express x16 slot hosts a BlackGold BGT3600 hybrid DVB-T TV tuner – which is good for media purposes, but not so good if you want to add some light graphics or a Wi-Fi adapter.

The Quiet PC’s passive nature also limits the power on offer. The 3.1GHz Core i3-2100 is Intel’s lowliest full-fat Sandy Bridge processor and it’s missing a couple of features: there’s no Turbo Boost, only two Hyper-Threaded cores, and you get Intel’s lesser HD Graphics 2000 chipset rather than the HD 3000 core we’ve come to expect.

Warranty

Warranty2yr collect and return

Basic specifications

Total hard disk capacity1,000GB
RAM capacity8.00GB

Processor

CPU familyIntel Core i3
CPU nominal frequency3.10GHz
Processor socketLGA 1155

Motherboard

MotherboardGigabyte H67N-USB3
Motherboard chipsetIntel H67
Conventional PCI slots free0
Conventional PCI slots total0
PCI-E x16 slots free0
PCI-E x16 slots total1
PCI-E x8 slots free0
PCI-E x8 slots total0
PCI-E x4 slots free0
PCI-E x4 slots total0
PCI-E x1 slots free0
PCI-E x1 slots total0
Internal SATA connectors4
Wired adapter speed1,000Mbits/sec

Memory

Memory typeDDR3
Memory sockets free2
Memory sockets total0

Graphics card

Graphics cardIntel HD 2000
Multiple SLI/CrossFire cards?no
3D performance settingLow
Graphics chipsetIntel HD 2000
DVI-I outputs0
HDMI outputs1
VGA (D-SUB) outputs1
DisplayPort outputs0
Number of graphics cards1

Hard disk

Hard diskWestern Digital Scorpio Blue
Capacity1.00TB
Hard disk usable capacity931GB
Internal disk interfaceSATA/300
Spindle speed5,400RPM
Cache size32MB

Drives

Optical disc technologyBlu-ray reader/DVD writer combo

Case

ChassisZeno proprietary
Case formatsmall form-factor
Dimensions294 x 270 x 114mm (WDH)

Rear ports

USB ports (downstream)4
eSATA ports1
PS/2 mouse portno
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports1
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports1
Modemno
3.5mm audio jacks6

Front ports

Front panel memory card readerno

Operating system and software

OS familyWindows 7
Software suppliedArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre

Noise and power

Idle power consumption41W
Peak power consumption94W

Performance tests

3D performance (crysis) low settings26fps
3D performance settingLow
Overall Real World Benchmark score0.72
Responsiveness score0.85
Media score0.59
Multitasking score0.72

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