Experiences and Ideas - Building a small form PC for dedicated Flex use as part of a new shack desig

Simon Lewis

Jim Gilliam

SSD's are super as the main drive. I LOVE, also, a terabyte SAT drive for Images. Reimaging between two SAT drives is just minutes. It is so easy to get corrupted these days and so easy to rectify it with image restoration.

Jim, K6QE

Steve W6SDM

Nice article, Simon.  You should really consider sending that to QST.  It would be useful to a lot of people.

I went through the same experience five years ago.  There weren't as many choices then. but I ended up building a Shuttle PC from the ground up.  I did pretty much the same thing you did as far as specifications.  I ended up with an i7 machine and a 256 GB SSD.  The boot up speed is phenomenal.

The only thing I would add to your configuration is a couple of hardware serial ports.  I use them for my LP-100A and my voice keyer.  Although you can work around them with USB converters, it's one of those mystical areas where stuff seems to go sideways, especially working along VSP Mgr or CAT.

Thanks for the article.

Steve

Simon Lewis

EA4GLI

Great post , thanks for taking the time to put it together. I would love to hear from you how it performs at 4k if you get a monitor that supports. My only concern would be not being able to add a more powerful video card.

Simon Lewis

EA4GLI

On its way! I addressed it to the cool ham nerd in NZ. Post office should know. Lol

Steve W6SDM

My solution to the video card problem was to run USB adapters for the video.  I use the DVI and HDMI ports for two 27-inch monitors.  I needed more real estate (at least I think I do) for things like cluster monitors, N1MM, keeping a browser up, etc., so I added three USB video adapters. 

They work okay - if I was doing this again I think I would opt for two really big monitors rather than five smaller ones. 

W9OY

Nice setup Simon.  I have the i-7 version of your rig in the shack and the i-5 version in my office running things remotely.  Fanless is the only way to go!  I also had some shuttles and they all died within a couple of years.  The only real advantage of the i-7 is when making youtube videos the 'puter has a little extra overhead.  Be happy your rig needed usb serial as the built in version did not work for me for my serial needs.  I use ethernet between the puters and the 6500/6300 and the lag is virtually zero.

Congrats

W9OY

Simon Lewis

Thanks Salvador I tell you when it arrives  ROFL!

Simon Lewis

Peter K1PGV

BTW ... the SSD is a MUST! 

If you use an SSD, just make sure you create regular backups.  Consumer-level SSDs have either very little or no failure protection (in the interest of keeping costs down).  There's a reason that Enterprise grade SSDs cost more than a thousand dollars each (for a 200GB drive), and Consumer grade SSds cost 20% of that.  Note that lots of Consumer class SSDs are now labeling themselves as "Enterprise" SSDs, which serves to confuse the matter further.

I'm not saying not to buy an SSD for your system... SSDs are great.  I'm just emphasizing the necessity of keeping a backup.

If you haven't considered online, constant, backup that might be something to look into.  I'd recommend something like CrashPlan.

Also, if you're looking at "directly attached PCIe SSDs" (such as NVMe -- which I do NOT yet recommend for home use) be absolutely sure you have the EXACT slots available on your system needed to support them (and be sure whatever SSD you buy is returnable).  Mainboard compatibility issues can be very tricky with these.

Peter
K1PGV

Jim Gilliam

I think back-ups are worthless with a corruption of the operating system. The only way to guarantee integrity is to make system images...period. Perhaps you are using the word back-up to imply making a system image.

Jim, K6QE

Steve W6SDM

Good advice.  SSDs are cheap enough that keeping a second one on hand with the operating system and the essential programs is also a good idea. 

Simon Lewis

no different to any consumer HDD - I lost enough HDD's over the years ... always have a system image tucked away and back up data regularly! A lesson painfully learned!

Jim Gilliam

I have at least two SATA HDD's in the computer one for OS and the other for backing up data and accruing image files. I find an image restore from SATA to SATA to be extremely fast compared to using an image restore from a USB drive. However, always have a USB image as an ace-in-the- hole. Been stung too many times to do otherwise.

Jim Gilliam

I am going to order one of the computers. How did you load windows into the SDD drive? Did you use a Windows installation disk on a USB DVD drive? Did the Windows Installation disk format the SDD drive or did you have to format it before loading windows?

Jim, K6QE

Walt - KZ1F

I definitely agree with Steve.

Simon Lewis

Jim Gilliam

Is there a BIOS on the computer and do you have to access the BIOS for it to boot from an external device such as a USB stick? Or does it auto boot as it comes out of the box to USB?

Simon Lewis

yes its a standard PC .. you can amend boot order as required and change bios settings as you would on a normal PC

Jim Gilliam

One last question...appreciate your patience...I assume that you need a USB keyboard to "talk" to the computer and the BIOS is accessed from the F8 key. This really sounds like a lot of fun to have an embedded PC with the SDR system.

Jim, K6QE

Simon Lewis

Jim Gilliam

Is this a 32 bit or 64 bit machine? Need to know this to order installation DVD from eBay.

Simon Lewis

64 bit i5 5200U chipset

W9OY

I get into my bios with "esc" but I think a couple other keys work also.  Make sure you have the vendor send you a driver DVD as well.  I did a fresh install of win 10 after the upgrade and the driver DVD came i handy.  

73  W9OY

Simon Lewis

didn't need the drivers but did ask and they did send me a disk .. my board seems to be standard chips - W10 managed all of them. The Wavenode was the problem child Cheers Simon ZL4PLM

Jim Gilliam

What is the Wavenode, what problems did you have?

Simon Lewis

Wavenode is a USB based power metering system - the driver is not signed and a PITA to install under W10 signed driver signature process ... you end up having to turn it off to install the driver  

W9OY

I'm using a mSATA for the OS/programs and a SATA3 drive for storage in the computer and a 2 tb usb 3 drive which catches system snapshots as backup in my office environment.  USB 3 is amazingly speedy for this need.   I've also started using some cloud storage for specific files that I need to access across platforms or want to keep independent of a disaster, like my DXCC logbook from DXLab.  A man has to have his priorities in order.  I have both Google drive and One Drive.  Each gives like 15gb of free storage which is a **** of a lot of storage for ham radio stuff.  

I decided to go with a 5 license subscription to office 365 since my wife and kids all need word processing on their computers/phones/tablets and they are into photography etc.  There is 1tb cloud storage with each of these licenses so it's very easy to store a LOT of data for not very much money, if not free.  

73  W9OY

Norm - W7CK

I agree with the importance of system images.  Makes restoration a snap. 

As far as SSDs go, I've used several Samsung SSDs.  I have 2 of them that have been in constant service for 3 years now and have never had an issues at all.  Its the only brand I'd go with currently.

Great article.  I've been wanting to do the same thing but have been dragging my feet.  I appreciate the inspiration.  Thanks!