Category: Know How

To find this out, you first need the serial number of the warranty seal beginning with “SB”, which can usually be found on the underside of the PC. This allows you to assign the system to the delivery bill and match the time of purchase with the warranty period (standard warranty is two years, extended warranties up to five years).

If you do not have the corresponding delivery bill to hand, you are welcome to contact us by e-mail or telephone. We will then check the warranty period and help you with the next steps.

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Active cooling

This variant is the most common cooling solution. Active cooling of a PC is when the hardware is cooled by one or more fans via an airflow. The faster the fan speed, the cooler the hardware. Thanks to “SmartFan”, the ventilation adapts to the PC’s workload and rotates faster or slower as required.

Advantages of active cooling:

• Even though the air must be able to circulate in the system and therefore requires some space in the interior, actively cooled PCs are generally slimmer than passively cooled ones.
• Good cooling results are achieved even with particularly powerful hardware.
• The more cost-effective solution.

Disadvantages of active cooling:

• As the fans are most likely to be affected by wear and tear, they have a relatively shorter service life, depending on how much they are used.
• The noise level: A fan will always be audible, even at low utilization.
• When the system is heavily loaded, it becomes correspondingly louder.

When does active cooling make sense?

Active cooling usually makes sense for a PC if the surroundings of the place of use allow exhaust air to circulate so that no heat build-up occurs. This is the case, for example, when an embedded PC is installed in racks, cabinets, tables and the like. Active cooling is also useful when resource-hungry applications, such as in the digital signage sector, cause the processor and graphics chips to experience an above-average rise in temperature.

Passive cooling

The most striking difference to active cooling is that a passive solution does not use a fan. Heat sinks built into the system, such as heat-conducting metal, dissipate the heat generated to the outside via fin-like cooling fins on the PC housing.

Advantages of passive cooling:

• Silent operation with simultaneous use of an SSD (see also “HDD or SSD?“).
• Robustness thanks to more solid PC housings and more compact designs.
• Long service life of the systems.
• Systems are often completely closed and not susceptible to dust, sawdust, etc.
• Extended temperature range.
• The above points favor both outdoor and vehicle installations.

Disadvantages of passive cooling:

• performance of the systems is limited (compared to actively cooled PCs of the same size), as high performance also requires larger heat sinks.
• environment must allow a certain amount of waste heat, otherwise heat build-up can also occur here.
• The more expensive solution.

When does passive cooling make sense?

There are so many possibilities here that we don’t really know where to start. A large area of application is harsh working environments, such as factory halls, production rooms or workshops, as the fanless computers are less susceptible to dust or similar. They can also be installed, for example, in  rooms, walls or in the open air, where it can be a little colder than usual, but the PCs must not let you down. Not to mention in open-plan offices, where  every little noise minimization is a blessing for the employees, the passively cooled PC systems are a welcome sight.

Conclusion

If you value increased durability and robustness of your product, we recommend spending a little more money and opting for a passively cooled solution. However, if you don’t want to compromise on the performance and size of your Mini PC, classic active cooling is also the best option.

Actively cooled spo-comm PCs

Passively cooled spo-comm PCs

What does HDD actually mean?

The term HDD stands for “hard disk drive”. Literally translated, this means “hard disk drive”, but for the sake of simplicity it is often referred to as a hard disk. An HDD consists of many individual mechanical parts. During the storage process, the data is written to the surface of one or more rotating magnetic disks. A read head moves back and forth – similar to a record player.

Hard disks have been around since the 1950s and are still often installed as a standard storage medium in PCs today. This has changed with the advent of SSDs. In the early days, these were still extremely expensive and were only used for very special applications. In the meantime, however, they have become much more affordable and are increasingly being used for private purposes due to their advantages.

What is an SSD?

The term SSD stands for “Solid State Disk” or “Solid State Drive” and is referred to as a semiconductor drive or solid-state drive. An SSD is not a mechanical but an electronic storage device. Instead of rotating disks, semiconductor components from solid-state physics are used. This type of memory is also used in USB sticks.

What advantages does an SSD offer?

Probably the best known advantage is that an SSD boots and works much faster because it works electronically and does not have to constantly move a read head back and forth. Although it is faster, the SSD also has a significantly lower energy consumption than a conventional hard disk. If you want your PC to run completely silently and therefore choose a passively cooled system, you should also opt for an SSD. Thanks to the absence of moving parts, it operates completely silently.

But that’s not all: it is also much more robust, as the mechanical disks of an HDD break very easily when dropped. It can also withstand an extended temperature range. Thanks to its robustness, the SSD can continue to run even if it is shaken: Hard disks often have a protective mechanism that causes them to stop working as soon as the running PC is moved. For example, if you carry your laptop around or if a PC is installed in a vehicle, as is often the case with our MOVE series. To prevent the read head from hitting the disks, the HDD stops its operation immediately as a precaution. This cannot happen with an SSD. As it does not contain any moving parts, it also works without any problems in such cases.

Discover our MOVE series

What actually is BIOS?

The abbreviation BIOS stands for “Basic Input/Output System”. It is the firmware of a PC – software that is permanently built into the hardware. The BIOS is stored on a small chip in the computer’s mainboard and is always pre-installed. Some mainboards have a second chip that acts as a backup. The BIOS forms the link between software (operating system) and hardware components such as hard disks, keyboard, mouse and printer. The BIOS can only be operated via the keyboard.

And what is this UEFI?

The successor to the BIOS is UEFI, which stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, i.e. a standardized extensible firmware interface. UEFI looks like an operating system, but – unlike BIOS – can be operated with the mouse and is able to run programs.

Good to know: What is UEFI?

What is the function of the BIOS?

The main tasks of the BIOS are a self-test and the initialization of the hardware as well as the communication between the operating system and other components. When a computer is switched on, the BIOS starts up immediately and prepares the PC for booting. The power-on self-test (POST) is carried out first. The computer checks one after the other whether the basic hardware components, such as CPU and RAM, are working. If errors are detected, the BIOS indicates this with special tones or, if the graphics have already been successfully checked, on the screen.

After this self-test, it’s time to boot. To do this, the hardware must know from which component the operating system is to be started. The BIOS therefore searches the available drives (hard disks, USB, DVD) in a specific order according to the operating system. As soon as it finds a software, the PC is started automatically. The order of the drives on which the operating system is searched for can be defined in the BIOS as required. For example, if you want to delete the existing operating system and install a new one via DVD, it is necessary to set the DVD drive to the first position. Other BIOS tasks include managing the date and time and monitoring the temperature of the processor and mainboard.

How do I get into the BIOS?

To access the BIOS, a specific key must be pressed immediately after switching on the PC and before starting the operating system (several times in succession!). Which button it is differs depending on the manufacturer. As a rule – and also with all spo-books – you can access the BIOS by pressing the “F2” or “Del” key.

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