The Quiet PC FC8 Fanless Mini PC media PC shares many features with Chillblast's Vacuum Mini 2. Most obviously, they both use the same Streacom fanless box. The Quiet PC system therefore shares the all-black extruded aluminium construction and matt sandblast finish.
They also both use a low power quad-core Intel Core i7-3770T processor which is here able to deliver very fast overall performance. The Quiet PC FC8 Fanless Mini PC manages to eke out a little more performance than Chillblast, achieving an overall PCMark 7 score of 5928 points with 5317 score in the Entertainment sub test. See also: best media PCs.
Gaming performance isn't the Quiet PC FC8 Fanless Mini PC's strong point, but with much reduced quality settings, many titles should be playable.
The Quiet PC FC8 Fanless Mini PC relies on heat pipes and passive external heatsinking, so no fans are required, justifying the Quiet PC name. However, in a rare move from the quiet-computing specialist, this system isn't entirely silent because a 1TB Samsung hard disk has been added to a 120GB KingSpec Challenger SSD. It can be heard gently whirring away – admittedly very quiet, and if you avoid installing any apps on it, power management settings will let it spin down when not in use, to restore an entirely silent system.
Two channels of Freeview HD can be received simultaneously through the Quiet PC FC8 Fanless Mini PC's internal TBS 6280 tuner card; but you won't be playing high-definition Blu-ray as only a DVD burner has been included. That's a shame considering the high price of the PC.
A good selection of connections is available, including four USB 3.0 ports, optical S/PDIF and HDMI along with separate analogue 5.1 audio connections.
The Quiet PC FC8 Fanless Mini PC comes with Gigabyte's GK-KM7580, a spill-resistant wireless keyboard and mouse combo. While offering useful media shortcut keys, you can't easily operate from the sofa as there's no built-in mouse/trackpad device. A Streacom wireless remote control is also included.
