During its Snapdragon Summit 2025, Qualcomm released an exceedingly wild new reference design: a saucer-shaped mini PC that can run the upcoming Snapdragon X2 Elite chip. It is flat and circular, extremely thin (under half an inch) and slightly larger than a teacup saucer. None of the fans can be seen--AirJet cooling by Frore Systems does it. That solid state module receives air flow in a heatsink with the help of thermoelectric vibrations. Its peripheries are lined with several USB-C ports, a headphone terminal, and power; vents are simply placed under it, similar to those of a Mac Mini.
The engine that drives such an idea is the Snapdragon X2 Elite (with its Extreme version). Most important features: new maximum of 18 cores (12 prime and 6 performance), peak clock speeds of approximately 5GHz, enormous memory bandwidth (as much as 228GB/s with the highest-end models), and an NPU is capable of 80TOPS. The fact that Qualcomm has partnered with Taiwanese OEMs, hence, a spillover of such designs could potentially make it to the market.
Conjecture: the way this might influence the future desktop PC / SFF (small-form-factor) specifications.
Innovation in thermal design: AirJet or other solid-state active cooling might allow you to make machines that are as slim and as quiet and even fanless, under typical conditions, maybe. This may drive the SFF world towards very small coaster-style rigs rather than tower-shaped or boxy rigs.
Component packaging/power efficiency: To power these thin toys chips will have to offer high performance without being high power. It is headed in the direction of golden gains in Snapdragon X2 better efficiency, more NPU juice, higher clock. The next generation PCs will tilt towards the low to moderate power efficiency curves.
Form-factor flexibility: OEMs were allowed to experiment with display-dock units with circular, or puck, like references, base-attach unit or even to insert the monitor into the puck. Puck-like units of embedded all-in-ones may become the mode.
trade-offs Use cases: These are likely not to scale to sustained high workloads such as gaming or 3D rendering. Raw power will remain won by traditional units of SFF with fans. However, to be a daily worker, in the media, AI-related stuff, a silent, thin, desktop on a puck might be an attraction.
Cost vs. practice: Solid-state cooling technology is expensive. To be adopted on a mass scale, prices will be forced to be reduced. Maintenance- Repair, upgrades are hard in these miniatures and therefore you will find some moderate RAMSSD options, not fully modular.
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