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

Simon Lewis
Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
edited June 2020 in New Ideas
I am currently building a new house after buying some land last year to move us further away from Christchurch which is experiencing a shift in populous after the earthquakes.

One of the fun challenges of that is I get a new shack and new antennas/towers. So I have been working towards building a modern shack that will sustain me over the coming years. 

My main interests are DXing at HF, VHF-SHF, Moonbounce and contesting and the remote location we bought suits all that.

Building a new house and shack is an interesting in that you get a chance to really start from the ground up. Normally you don't get to choose the boundary of the house, it's orientation and location of rooms etc. And that combined with where I can site the shack and new towers is really fun!

As part of the new shack layout I decided that I wanted to ensure that I can provide racked space for amps with vented air into the roof space to keep my shack cool in summer ... its can get warm out on the Canterbury plains and we have had some hot, dry summers due to El Nino.

I also decided that I want to minimise cabling etc and have been looking to IP radio connections, antenna switching, rotators etc as much as possible and bury network cables out to the towers etc.

As part of the new strategy I also decided to look at the layout of the desks and station positions. My room is big enough for 2 larger positions and at a squeeze, 3 positions for contests. Plus I have the ability to run an operating position in the workshop on the garage and an external position in my shipping container room that currently is used on site as a shack.

Thinking about these new positions I decided on 2 x Flex 6500's .. one for HF/VHF DX and one for HF/EME. As part of the new shack I decided on reducing space for peripheral devices. For example I have bought a Wavenode system and will run this with remote mounted sensors - this will allow integration into Flex and also means that a PC and screen can be used at each op position for monitoring.   To drive all this I also wanted to reduce PC space. Normally I have been using simple desktop PC's but the fans drive me mad and in the middle of the night during EME skeds the less noise the better.

To fit in with the reduced space reduce noise concept I started looking around at PC options but wasn't finding much in a reasonable price bracket. Intel NUC type boxes are great but they are extremely expensive in NZ but then by chance I stumbled across an article by lee W9OY on this experiences with fanless PC's.

So with this in mind I spent some time researching these devices and set out to find myself a new PC or 3!

For those who are not familiar with them, these PC's are usually small form factor (SFF) cased units that do not have fans for the CPU but rely on conduction cooling to the case. They also normally also rely on external 12V supplies and use low power components so these don't need a huge PSU. Of course this comes at a trade off. Size is tight so usually uses small 2.5" drives and SODIMM laptop memory. But I can say this does not come at a reduction in interfaces, my fanless PC described below has 8 USB slots!  These device are usually lower power spec machines too so usually rely on mobile chip sets and processors similar to those found in laptops.

Looking at the market for these fanless PC's you can find 100's of them in all sorts of specs, so how do you choose. I broadly set out the specs as:

- Needs to be Windows 10 capable
- Minimum of an i5 processor and at least 2 GHz or better
- reasonably later chipset version - broadwell or better 
- 8GB min ram
- 250 GB of disk space
- reasonable graphics performance
- As many USB slots as I can muster!
- Small case


With this in mind I started shopping and in the end chose this barebones PC.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Hot-sale-5th-Gen-Core-i5-5250U-processor-Mini-PC-Windows-10-4K-HD-int...

image


This offered pretty much the best of all worlds, plus a decent spec with an i5 5200U chipset and Intel 5500 graphics processor.

This also supports a couple Msata drives, a SATA3 interface (cable supplied in the box) and 2 x SODIMM's. Plus dual LAN ports, Dual HDMI connectors, 4 x USB2 slots, 4 X USB3 slots, and the normal 12V in and speaker/mic connections etc.

You can buy i7 versions if you need something more powerful but of course the cost jumps. My experience using a cheap nextbook tablet suggested this i5 would be more than capable.

The PC  has all named brand chipsets, so its a standard Intel chipset, broadwell drivers, AC93 audio etc etc So all the drivers are in Windows 10 off the bat - no messing trying to find driver disks!  In fact the only driver I had to update was the Wavenode which has a kooky installer but that's not a Windows problem more a dev issue!

Shipping was reasonably quick and great comms from the seller. I was able to use paypal and protect my purchase too, so I felt comfortable with the buy from China.

The only things I can say is the model in the picture is slightly different from the supplied one. the supplied model has no RS232 ports anymore. I was a bit miffed by that but Hystou sent me 2 x USB - RS232 adapters for free (and yes with FTDI chipsets!) so cannot complain about that really :)

Shipping took about 10 days with a holiday weekend slowing things down.


While this was in shipment I set about looking at hard drive options.

I settled on a Solid State Disk for the new PC due to power needs, fast access and also noise .. no spinning components. But this comes with a warning!  SDD's have a HUGE amount of info on them on the net. Trying to find out what was best buy, price and performance was incredibly difficult but I can sum it up pretty easy!

- There's a lot of hoodoovoodoo about SSD's - some of the tech talk on them is quite
   questionable - so skip the bit that I did and focus on finding a reasonable priced one !
- Buy a well known brand - there are a lot of no name - no idea brands out there
- Buy a recent model one - technology has moved on quickly ... look for something modern
- Performance for this application is really a mute point - anything reasonable will do ... aim for   
  something in the 500mb/sec WR times - anything will be be
- Don't panic about extreme, PRO models etc. Look for something that has a good balance of
  price vs performance. It's not a gaming machine so does not need to squeeze every Ms of 
  performance out!

I finally settled on a 240 GB model as a balance of disk space and price. The Windows 10 install and basics like SSDR, N1MM, FLDigi, SDRbridge, CW Skimmer, DDUTIL etc comes in at about 30 GB. You could get away with a 120GB device to save a few $ but to be honest the few dollars saved might bite you later! I chose this disk which came in at about 170 NZD. 

https://www.sandisk.com/home/ssd/ultra-ii-ssd

image

You can of course choose an Msata drive if you want something smaller but larger sized Msata drives are still pricey. I chose the SATA 3 as a best option for $.


RAM is another wide area of choice. I chose a named brand 8GB SODIMM from Kingston and the fastest the board will support is 1666 MHz - it is a low power RAM slot - so just watch that. 

Oh...  one of the nice things about this PC is that it has WIFI built in and 2 antennas - one less box and you can connect external antennas to the two SMA ports!

 

Installing the parts in the case was easy .. 5 mins with a small screwdriver and that's it done!

They are nice and compact - just remember don't take the board out as its bonded to the case!


image




I installed Windows 10 and tried to upgrade with a Window 7 key but I didn't realise that this upgrade path is not supported. If you're upgrading from Windows 7/8 you need to install this first and then select the upgrade installers from the Windows 10 site. This worked perfectly!

Here's a tip too.... if you're building a new PC and don't have a spare W7/8 licence you can legitimately buy Windows 7/8 OEM licences on Ebay. You can grab these for like $25 install that key and then upgrade to Windows 10 for free. But be quick you can only do this inside the first year of Windows 10 and this will cut off at some point!  

Installing Windows 10 was super quick due to the SDD! That really flies.

I also installed the SSD monitoring software that SanDisk supply which can help manage SSD's and alert to any issues. All pretty painless.

After that I set about installing updates etc and then left the PC running overnight while it installed all the latest patches and updates.

BTW ... the SSD is a MUST!   I can boot from cold to a Windows 10 screen in 11 seconds! Recovering from sleep ... well a blink of the eye!  Definitely a huge advantage!

Next day I installed SSDR 1.5.1 and connected up one of the Flex 6500's.

Run up SSDR and .. bam ... perfect!  The PC supports all the normal windows resolutions and even 4K!  The display was sharp and crisp and despite using system RAM, does not use too much system memory.

Running a single slice barely tickles the box running at about 13% CPU. Even running 4 slices consumes about 40% CPU. The case is barely warm even running 4 slices. Power consumption was about 15W running 4 slices!

DAX ran straight out of the box ... no issues with drivers, no issues with LAN etc SSDR/Flex Control all work out of the box without issue.

Performance even for such a small box is quite amazing. I ran up a couple slices, plus N1MM, CW skimmers, SDR bridge, TELNET for DXcluster and it was running about 35%. A doddle for a this box.

So mission accomplished. Total cost under $450 USD for an i5, 240GB, 8GB machine. 

So far nothing I have done with this PC has been an issue. It's a comprise in space, i.e. no card slots but what you gain in size reduction, power needs, speed and noise reduction is great!  

I am pretty impressed so far. Will see how the box runs over the next months but I am already looking at an i7 for the main PC in my office and get rid of annoying fan noise.  It really is quite spooky to hear the lack of noise when you press the power button! Not even hearing the hard drive spin up ... hmmm very odd!

So there you have it ... I'll keep you posted on progress but thought someone might find the experience interesting and useful as I learnt some new tricks and there's some pitfalls you can avoid during the build, whereas I learnt them the hard way :)

Happy to answer questions!

Cheers


Simon ZL4PLM

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Comments

  • Jim Gilliam
    Jim Gilliam Member ✭✭
    edited July 2017

    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
    Steve W6SDM Member ✭✭✭
    edited July 2017
    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
    Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    Hi Steve .. yup I should do .. might tart it up a bit and send it in :)

    I owned 2 Shuttle PC's and both mainboards died within a couple years and within a few months of each other. Not sure if its the dreaded dried caps but I left them alone for the past 4 years or so.

    This was a chance to get back to SFF PC's with reduced risk - the Shuttle PC's are not cheap here either and hard to get hold of unlike when I lived in EU :)

    Hardware Serial ports .. I have kind of been hoping to move away from them - The spec on this PC had 2 serial ports but seems they not longer supply with them as that would have been the icing on the cake!  Must have a look see if there is an add on box.

    I need to ask if they have anything at the same store ... there is some internal slots for other stuff on the board.

    Enzo IW7DMH was looking at something too around that as an add on using Arduino and SSDR CAT. 

    I'll have a hunt and report back if I can find anything !

    Thanks Steve

    Cheers

    Simon


  • EA4GLI
    EA4GLI Member ✭✭✭
    edited July 2017
    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
    Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    Hi Salvador - if you supply a 4K monitor I will gladly try it :)

    My stepson invests heavily in the gaming market for graphics cards but he can spend as much as a 6300 on a card alone! The other problem of course is the power supply, his monster cards generate huge amounts of heat ... and therefore noise.

    I think I like the quiet PC :)

    I did see some screen extension software that allows you to extend the same screen over multiple monitors .. not sure what kind of stress that would have on graphics cards but I can try and see what it does!

    So you need my address for the 4K monitor HI :)

  • EA4GLI
    EA4GLI Member ✭✭✭
    edited November 2016
    On its way! I addressed it to the cool ham nerd in NZ. Post office should know. Lol
  • Steve W6SDM
    Steve W6SDM Member ✭✭✭
    edited November 2015
    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
    W9OY Member ✭✭
    edited July 2017
    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
    Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    Thanks Salvador :) I tell you when it arrives  ROFL!
  • Simon Lewis
    Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    Hi Lee

    ohh great ... at least wasn't me then with the Shuttles .. A colleague in Germany had the same problem in the same time with his Shuttles as well!

    Been super happy with the fanless PC... now I will build a second one :)

    The serial ports never materialised! The PC they sent no longer has them but Hystou were good and offered a couple of USB adapters :)

    But the i5 is fast for sure!

    The i7 will be for the office PC :)  I think I will end up with an i5 for the other station position too

    Thanks for the help Lee .. Cheers!

    Simon
  • Peter K1PGV
    Peter K1PGV Member ✭✭✭
    edited June 2020
    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
    Jim Gilliam Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015

    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
    Steve W6SDM Member ✭✭✭
    edited November 2015
    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
    Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    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
    Jim Gilliam Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    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
    Jim Gilliam Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015

    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
    Walt - KZ1F Member ✭✭
    edited November 2016
    I definitely agree with Steve.
  • Simon Lewis
    Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    you can do it a number of ways depending on what licence you have already?

    1. If you have a Windows 10 licence or will buy a new one - just download and install it off a USB stick - the PC will boot from USB ok

    2. If a windows 7/8 upgrade then install Win7/8 from USB DVD or from install from USB stick

    3. If Win 10 via upgrade you install 7 then enter the Win 7 key and then go to the win 10 site and install the local upgrade app .. it will do the rest!

    Yes the Windows installer formats the drive before loading windows ... real painless!

    Cheers

    Simon  
  • Jim Gilliam
    Jim Gilliam Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    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
    Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    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
    Jim Gilliam Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015

    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
    Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    Yup USB keyboard/mouse. I think its the DEL key on boot .. it was easy to get into :)

  • Jim Gilliam
    Jim Gilliam Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    Is this a 32 bit or 64 bit machine? Need to know this to order installation DVD from eBay.
  • Simon Lewis
    Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    64 bit i5 5200U chipset
  • W9OY
    W9OY Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    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
    Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    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
    Jim Gilliam Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    What is the Wavenode, what problems did you have?
  • Simon Lewis
    Simon Lewis Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    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
    W9OY Member ✭✭
    edited November 2015
    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
    Norm - W7CK Member ✭✭
    edited February 2017
    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!

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