Cheap new computer
RDL2004
Posts: 2,554
I've been wanting some kind of dinky little computer for a while. Last week there was a sale and I couldn't resist. I bought a Gigabyte Brix. It came with a 2.0 GHz quad core processor and I put 4 GB of RAM and a 120 GB SSD in it. Total cost was around $185. I'm not sure it'll do everything I want, but it might.
1280 x 720 - 499K
Comments
Those are cool, however I'm waiting for later this month on Black Friday to pick one up.
Same with a decent 1440p monitor.
Intel's USB 3.0 drivers are giving me a hard way to go at the moment. The Realtek Bluetooth installer included a bunch of junk besides the actual driver, which is pretty much normal for them. Surprisingly, their WiFi install was driver only, no useless bloatware.
Performance is not bad at all. Time from pushing the power button to the Windows desktop is about 18 seconds.
note that these ratings are on a scale of 1.0 to 7.9
Edit: Never mind. I see that the AMD version is over $50 more expensive and also a little bigger. On the other hand, it has two SODIMM sockets so it can take up to 16gb of memory. What I like about these is that they have an mSATA slot. I have an mSATA SSD that I bought a while ago and never used. This looks like a good way to give it a home! :-)
There's a NUC with more features, but less processor than this one, for about the same regular price, but then the Brix went on sale at Newegg as a "Shellshocker" special. I didn't think it could ever get much cheaper, so I bought it. SSDs aren't likely to go down much more in cost either.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856164027
When I first placed my order, I chose the 2807 model because it was on sale. Two days later the 1900 was a Shell Shocker Special for even lower cost, so I ordered one of those thinking I'd just send the 2807 back for refund. Now I'm tempted to open it and try it out. It's said to be fanless, but for some reason I can't find that info from any official source. The 2807 processor is slightly slower, and "only" dual core, but after seeing how quickly the 1900 runs I'd bet the 2807 would be plenty good enough as a light duty machine.
Computer production in Taiwan is flatlining and the country seems to be accepting that it will be officially in recession come Jan 1. So computer deals may just be beginning to get cheaper.
Never understimate what a decent, cheap aftermarket fan can do to reduce noise.
Or, toss a resistor on that fan and lower it to 9-7v, or whatever it will reliably startup at.
For a simple browsing machine, the Rpi2 seems more than adequate, cheap as chips.
Haven't used it for any serial apps, however haven't heard of anyone having problems there.
Running a slim Diet-Pi install, with some tinkering around with TinyCore. Will have to see if there is a Libre Office for TC and check that out.
Really just want something to stick out on the DMZ, and so far the Rpis haven't gotten Free/Net/Open BSD really solved yet. Not sure I want to stick Linux out there, unless there is some sort of SE Linux for RPi that I've missed.
www.cubieboard.org
http://cubieboard.org/
Try the CubieTruckPlus and look for an enclosure that will accomodate a SATA hard disk. and complete PSU.
I looked at that CubieTruck. It's a pretty neat device, somewhat similar in price and features to the Brix 2807 model, but intended for different uses.
I checked power consumption this morning. AC adapter, plugged in but not connected to the PC, was 0.0 watts. After plugging in the Brix it was 0.9 watts. During boot it varied from 8.0 to 10.3 watts. After Windows was loaded and settled down, it idled at 5.7 to 6.0 watts. I re-ran the WEI assessment and power consumption was basically the same as during boot.
I'm going to re-install Windows because I didn't like how some of the drivers installed. I didn't bother using the enclosed driver disk. I went directly to Gigabyte's web site and downloaded what they had there, but apparently even those were not the latest available. I might see if Bluetooth drivers can be downloaded through Windows Update, if so hopefully it won't include all the useless bloatware. I'm not sure what I would need Bluetooth for anyway. I've already downloaded the latest video and USB 3.0 drivers direct from Intel.
edit: Windows 7 along with chipset, video, wireless, and USB 3.0 drivers all re-installed. No error messages from the newer USB drivers. This time during the WEI assessment power usage peaked at over 16 watts during the 3D video part. I also checked it in sleep and hibernate mode and those are 2.1 and 1.6 watts respectively.
Just looking at newegg and found this with the Broadwell i3 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167091
Not bad for $120 if you need Windows.
You really have to shop around because there's a lot of options to choose between. Number and type of video and USB ports, single or dual channel RAM, processor type, and so on. Watch for the base frequency vs, burst frequency on some processors, you can guess which gets advertised. Since I only paid $99 for mine, I'm pretty happy with it. Other than the fact that I spent most of yesterday trying to get some version of Linux to install.
What distro(s) and version(s) were you having trouble with?
The Debian installer locked up several times configuring dpkg and had complained before starting about the Realtek WiFi chip (not "free" software needed, I had to get a driver package first). I switched to the "live" disk and by skipping the network setup, it finally installed. Unfortunately I found the KDE desktop I had chosen to be, ah, not to my liking.
Mint generated a bunch of error messages about not being able to open one of the USB ports and complained of a bad cable or disk before starting to install and then the installer invariably locked up at some point. I finally got it to work by switching from the USB 3.0 to a USB 2 port. After I let it update, nothing could connect to the internet even though it claimed to have a good connection to the WiFi. So much for Windows Update being bad. I reinstalled it, the internet came back, and so I left it alone at that point.
The first Windows install had one minor error message using the Gigabyte provided version of the Intel USB 3.0 driver. Getting the most recent one direct from Intel fixed that.
That doesn't seem too encouraging. Did you try Ubuntu or do you consider that too bloated for such a small machine?
@RDL2004 How is that? I'm always curious as to why someone likes this desktop or that, in case I'm missing something
This post coming to you from a high speed catamaran ferry in the middle of the Irish sea. Great stuff this satellite powered WIFI
I just presumed it was a damaged install disk, but now I am not so sure.
Desktops can be changed after installation by downloading another desktop configuration and you can even switch between several or have one user use one and another user use a different one. I think the only problem is that this may build up some clutter in hidden files in the /home/<user> directory
The first time the KDE desktop appeared when Debian finally started, all the icons and the clock on the taskbar were light gray on an even lighter gray background. It was all but invisible. Yeah, that's fixable I guess, but why? Was it too difficult to make it legible to start with? What is Konquerer for? Some universal replacement for...everything? I dunno. It think deserves another chance though.
Mint, this new version, is better than what I was using before but still far from perfect. At least it was easier to get rid of most of that ugly slime green color they're so fond of. The user interface still needs work. I probably only find it tolerable because I've been using the previous version for the last year.
I don't understand why the people that design this interface stuff often seem unable present things clearly. You would think it was at least slightly important. Which is not just a Linux thing at all, Windows is full of stupid, confusing stuff.
I need to get a bunch of cheap flash drives so I can play around with this stuff more, running from DVDs is aggravatingly slow, not to mention archaic.
Another idea would be Kubuntu to give you Ubuntu stability with the KDE desktop right out of the box.
Somewhere this morning (early) I was reading some reviews and there were complaints about eh USB3 not being properly recognized or available at boot time. I think the solution was to go into BIOS and set ports as USB2, install OS and then back to BIOS to reset to USB3.
Might be worth a shot.
Heater, probably not. However recently read about some giant Linux bot-net somewhere being used to DDOS sites at 150Gb....Xor DDoS botnet . I guess these are hosts which did not "PermitRootLogin no" ?
Right now, it's playing a movie streaming at full 1080p over the WiFi from my Windows Home Server while drawing less than 12 watts. I noticed one time when it dragged a bit, but no problems other than that. It's quite a peppy little machine actually.
I have used Linux Mint, but I personally feel, xubuntu is a better fit. I am starting to like xubuntu better than kubuntu.
Ray
I can certainly load up xubuntu, but I have a hard time imagining any Linux not running fine on this machine. Once you get past any installation hassles that is.
Okay, I'm shocked. I just looked at the WEI score on the 3.0 GHz Core2Duo I'm using right now (which I built it 2008 as a gaming machine), and this little Brix outscores it in all but one category!!!
Okay, neither the video card or RAM are what the C2D had originally, but still...
Whatever desktop it uses looks fine. Good default colors and easy to see and read text. The file system browser didn't see my network though. Only thing there was an icon for "Windows Network". Clicking it gave nothing but an error message: "Failed to retrieve share list from server. No such file or directory." Mint was able to see every machine on the network right off. Firefox connected to the internet with no problems. For some reason on all these Linux systems, the web browsers seem to always have a bit of delay when connecting.
I am still keeping an eye on the Brix with the AMD processor, where Newegg is selling for $159.00, but I am very wary about the processor speed.
Ray
I'm sure the "Failed to retrieve share list from server." error is just some service or something that's not set right by default on xubuntu but is on Mint. If one can work right, so can the other.