The Scooter Computer

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39

Ok, got me the same machine, only with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD. I like it a lot. Notes:

  1. There’s an 3rd slot for SSD, marked as something with “pcie” (the unlabeld purple square in the OP MB picture). Presumably, it’s for “Mini SATA PCI-e” parts, whatever that is.

  2. SSD: Mine came with a different one - TOSHIBA THNSNH256GMCT, which performs about the same:

  3. OS: The machine came with a preinstalled Windows 10 Enterprise - probably pirated, with some Chinese-language homepage and links. I proceeded to nuke it from orbit, of course.

  4. Stability: At first, the machine would hang after a few minutes of operation, including after the first boot of a blank Windows 10 installation. However, after I changed some BIOS settings (disabled a bunch of stuff I recognized as not needed), it’s been stable, including an overnight Prime95 run.

  5. Throttling: Indeed, the machine kept at 2.5GHz throughout the Primt95 run. It did however issue this event log - don’t know what it actually means:

Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Processor-Power
Description: The speed of processor 0 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 71 seconds since the last report.

  1. The HDMI output caused overscan on my LG TV, which I fixed with this.
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my parent’s PC is up for a replacement…

would one of these (specced with 16GB RAM and a 128GB SSD) be up to the challenge of email, internet browsing and general office document work?

i would have thought so…

i was thinking about getting a NUC, but these look like great value…

if i wanted to add a 2.5" SSD as well, i assume that all i would need to add is four motherboard mounting screws for the SSD?

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It comes with the screws (and the specialized power/sata cables), so all you need to do is mount the 2.5" drive to the case and attach the cables.

I did end up buying four more of these and all of them tested out fine. I ordered them without disks or RAM, and opted to install my own SSDs, though, so I could get the slightly newer Phison controller.

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thanks, mate…

would the MSATA drives that come with these things be OK? i can get 2.5"
SSD’s, but the price for the MSATA drive seems OK…

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You can do slightly better buying your own SSDs; you can scroll up to see my results. Depends how much you care about disk perf. Is the stuff they include “good enough”? I think for most uses it is. But you can do a bit better for not much extra :dollar:, if you want to squeak out a bit more disk perf.

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thanks again, mate…

i’ll probably get my own msata and ssd drives…

keep up the good work. these types of write-ups are excellent… :slight_smile:

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@codinghorror Jeff which NUC would you recommend for the lowest power draw? Ideally i5, possibly i3, could you link me to an AliExpress item/seller? Thinking of possibly replacing my Raspberry PI Blog server

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For lowest possible power draw? Something with Intel Atom, but it won’t be super fast.

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Has anyone had any luck getting these things to boot up when power is applied? (Maybe a “Restore from AC power loss” option?)

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Enter BIOS, find

Chipset > PCI Express Configuration > Restore from AC power loss

restore-from-ac-power-loss.jpg667×501 170 KB

It is very hard to find – I had to ask the vendor!

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That works perfectly – thank you so much!

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Would the same model still be recommended?

I’m looking for something to initially start out as my home router. I’m also interested in something like this for the living room?

50C at stress is fine, but what would their temperatures be around for normal use?

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Sure, these or something very much like them would be great. Get a Skylake CPU if you can though, should be available now, and make sure it is passively cooled with no more than a 15w TDP. The vendors that stuff 30w or even 40-60w TDP CPUs into passive enclosures are nuts.

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Will this boot without an mSATA drive? I’m thinking of installing only a SATA drive and leaving the mSATA/mPCIe port empty.

Regarding your recommendation to get skylake: it seems the vendor sells that now (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Fanless-i5-Mini-PC-Windows-Barebone-PC-Broadwell-Intell-Core-i5-5200U-2-7GHz-4K-HTPC/32366202925.html)

The spec sheet shows a “Configurable TDP-up” of 25w at 2.4ghz. Is this something to be worried about? Will this run too hot to be passively cooled, when it’s under load?

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Should be fine on all counts. Out of box tdp is 15w.

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Does anyone know why the Kaby Lake refresh of this fanless computer is slower than the Broadwell one?

Even the faster Kaby Lake i7 7500U is significantly slower than the i5 5257U that’s currently in my system.

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-5257U-vs-Intel-7500U

I’m experiencing some issues with sound lag while watching a 1080p 60 fps Youtube video and expected better performance from the newer models.

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I suspect that would be a video or sound driver issue more than CPU. What does Task Manager say when viewing the video, for CPU usage?

Make sure you download the latest Intel video drivers (for onboard video).

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I ordered the Kaby Lake i5-7200u version of this box for testing. Same exact processor, just 2 generations ahead. Should be around 20% faster factoring in the additional clock speed and Skylake architectural improvements.

tie-shuttle-kaby-lake-internals.jpg1631×1426 949 KB

There’s only one network port in this model, the VGA port replaced the 2nd network port. If you remove the wireless card (as I did in the above picture) you can in theory install a mini pci express network card. Otherwise it’s about the same design.

32GB RAM does work, but you need DDR3 SODIMMs of 16GB size which are quite expensive! I stuck with 8GB + 8GB.

I can definitely verify it sticks to fairly high clock speeds, even with 1 thread fully loaded with MPrime

sysbench – 17.4s (multicore) 24s (single core)
4 thread → 2.8 GHz (36w)
2 thread → 2.9 Ghz (40w)
1 thread → 3.1 Ghz (23w)

I also have the same box with the Kaby Lake i7-7500u versus the i5-7200u:

sysbench – 15.5s (multicore) 21s (single core)
4 thread → 3.3 GHz
2 thread → 3.4 Ghz
1 thread → 3.5 Ghz

The peak power is a little concerning as the i5-5200u box only went to 26w in the same circumstances… but due to the AVX2 optimization in MPrime, I’m trusting it a little less as a real baseline of potential CPU load power usage these days…

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Just a quick note for anyone who comes this way in future:

Mine has an i5-5300U @ 2.30GHz. Recently I started getting hardware errors like this:

$ sudo mcelog --ascii < crash2
Hardware event. This is not a software error.
CPU 0 BANK 4 
MISC 7fc35d266dc2 ADDR 7fc35d266dc0 
TIME 1485201141 Mon Jan 23 19:52:21 2017
MCG status:
MCi status:
Uncorrected error
Error enabled
MCi_MISC register valid
MCi_ADDR register valid
Processor context corrupt
MCA: Internal Timer error
STATUS be00000000800400 MCGSTATUS 0
CPUID Vendor Intel Family 6 Model 61
SOCKET 0 APIC 0 microcode 0

or like this (roughly):

kernel panic --not syncing --not all cpus entered broadcast exception handler

They seem to have gone away after I installed the intel-microcode Ubuntu package, which keeps the CPU’s “firmware” up-to-date.

Hopefully this saves someone else the time and panic it took me…

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One thing to note, in the Kaby Lake i7 version of this box, the auto-boot after power loss setting got renamed:

IMG_4282.JPG1716×1169 727 KB

It is in roughly the same place as it was on the Broadwell box in the BIOS settings, but it’s now called

State after G3

and you want it set to

S0 state

Pretty confusing terminology there…