Tranquil PC Abel B2 Fanless NUC Chassis

This British-manufactured monoblock aluminium chassis gives Intel’s 5th Gen NUC a whole new sense of style, solidity and silent operation through its unique fanless design.

Intel’s NUC (Next Unit of Computing) has taken the desktop PC market by storm in recent years, offering excellent performance in a tiny package. Its primary shortcomings are the fact that its plastic chassis can easily become scratched and also it can be acoustically noisy under computationally intense workloads because the speed of its cooling fan ramps up significantly.

Quality and Silence through Engineering

British manufacturer Tranquil PC aims to comprehensively cure these shortcomings through the latest incarnation of their fanless monoblock NUC chassis, the B2. This fanless case brings a whole new level of quality to the NUC and gives it the protection and cooling it really deserves. Because the entire chassis acts as one solid heatsink, the NUC’s whiny cooling fan can be dispensed with completely, allowing fully silent operation no matter how hard the processor is working.

Of course the usual NUC expansion options remain available, i.e. dual memory slots, M.2 and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card. Surprisingly for such a low-profile case, the B2 also allows a 2.5mm drive up to 9mm high to be installed on its baseplate. Effectively this gives the same functionality as the H-suffixed NUC kits, but in a chassis which is 4mm slimmer.

Front of case shown with NUC installed

Rear of case shown with NUC installed

Expandability

All the NUC’s built-in ports remain available, including two USB 3.0 ports plus audio and IR at the front. If you intend to install a wireless card into the NUC then please purchase the Tranquil Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Antennae Kit which brings the aerial connectors on the Mini PCIe card out to the rear of the chassis where SMA antennae can be attached. The use of internal antennae is not possible because the chassis is made entirely from metal alloy which provides electromagnetic shielding. Moreover, external antennae will give vastly superior signal strength and data throughput in comparison to Intel’s antennae which are built into the stock NUC case.

We do offer a pre-built system using these cases in form of the Quiet PC UltraNUC Pro Fanless but if you want to build your own system then please take a look at the configuration options available on that page to see which parts are compatible and which we recommend.

PLEASE NOTE: The chassis is not compatible with Intel i7 NUCs due to the heat output.

Please be aware that these Tranquil Abel B2 chassis are only compatible with Intel’s 5th Gen NUCs. There is no version of this chassis available that is compatible with the 6th Gen NUCs at this time, nor do we know when one will be available. Sorry for the inconvenience.