Kubb Clarifies Material of Custom Gold-Finished PC Chassis

French PC maker Kubb has clarified that a recently commissioned custom Fanless model does not feature a chassis made of 13 kilograms of pure gold, contrary to earlier reports. The company corrected the information with French media outlet Les Numériques.

Initial reports, citing FanlessTech, suggested the casing was constructed from 24-carat pure gold, which would have valued the chassis alone at approximately $1.7 million USD. Kubb has now confirmed that the unit's exterior is a CNC-machined base material with a gold plating applied by French luxury artisans.

The Kubb Fanless is a compact, passively cooled mini-PC. The standard model measures 120x120x120 mm, features an aluminum heatsink structure, and weighs around 2.1 kg. It is available with processor options from Intel (Core Ultra 5 225H, Ultra X7 358H) and AMD (Ryzen AI 5 340), supporting up to 128GB of DDR5 RAM and one or two M.2 NVMe SSDs.

While gold does have higher thermal conductivity than aluminum, making it potentially beneficial for passive cooling, copper offers superior heat dissipation at a lower cost. The decision to use gold plating is therefore primarily for aesthetic and luxury purposes, rather than for optimizing thermal performance cost-effectively.