Passively Cooled i7-6700 Skylake System

There are tons of Skylake systems available these days, but not many that feature passive cooling and a small form factor. Lini PC offers a line of SFF passively cooled systems. They sent out their latest system, the 1SL Black Widow for testing. Check out the video below for my full impressions.

Build Quality

The P.H.T FLM-7 Case is made entirely of aluminum.  It is around 5mm thick and gives the system a solid feel.  The internal and external screws are large enough to take repeated assembly and disassembly which is more than I can say for most cases.

The entire case has a rough feel too it, almost like fine grit sandpaper.  Usually aluminum cases have been brushed to have a smooth finish.  The 1SL is a finger print, dust, and dry skin magnet.

Performance

The Black Widow performed admirably.  You would think passively cooling an i7-6700 would result in thermal throttling, thankfully it did not.  The CPU never went above 75C, even under the extreme load of Prime 95.  The case definitely got warm to the touch, bordering on hot under load.  You need to make sure you have adequate airflow around and above the 1SL.

Features

The biggest feature this system offers is its passive cooling.  Aside from that it is a standard PC featuring the Asrock z170 Gaming Mini-ITX motherboard, 16-32GB of G.Skill DDR4 RAM, and a Samsung 850 EVO SSD.  You could add a low profile, single slot GPU and more drives if you saw fit.  Heat may be an issue if you do so however.

Value

With a starting price of $1,199 the 1SL Black Widow may be a bit too expensive for a non gaming machine.  However it would be an excellent office or home theater PC.  If you need complete silence and a lot of compute power, then the 1SL is for you.

Learn More

I linked all of the components below if you wanted to build your own 1SL and save some cash. Check out the video for more info as well.

Build Part List