mini pc News - Page 42 of 145 - CNX Software

December 13, 2021December 13, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Cincoze DI-1100 is a fanless embedded computer with an optional external fan

Fanless embedded computer with external fan

Cincoze DI-1100 is a rugged, modular embedded computer powered by an Intel Whiskey Lake processor that comes in a fanless metal enclosure with heat dissipation fins, but the company also offers an external fan that clips on top of the metal case for additional cooling when using high-power peripherals such as PoE cameras. Designed for autonomous robots, in-vehicle use, environmental monitoring, and other industrial applications, the computer supports -40 to 70°C wide temperature range, 9 to 48 VDC input voltage range, and comes with plenty of I/Os including two Gigabit Ethernet ports, six USB ports, two RS232/422/485 interfaces, as well as mini PCIe sockets, and CFM and CFI expansion modules. Cincoze DI-1100 specifications: Intel Whiskey Lake SoC (one or the other) Intel Core i7-8665UE quad-core processor up to 4.4 GHz with Intel UHD Graphics 620; 15W TDP Intel Core i5-8365UE quad-core processor up to 4.10 GHz with Intel UHD Graphics […]

December 10, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

The cheapest Jasper Lake mini PC so far: JK01 for $140 and up

Intel Jasper Lake N-Series Celeron and Pentium processors were formally introduced at the beginning of the year as the successors of the Gemini Lake (Refresh) processors, and we’ve seen several mini PCs and motherboards so far from lesser-known Chinese manufacturers to more established brands like ASUS, GIGABYTE, and ECS. The previous generation Gemini Lake mini PCs would usually sell around $150 to $200, but now with the JK01 barebone computer, we’ve got an inexpensive Intel Celeron N5095 Jasper Lake mini PC selling for about $141 including shipping. CYX JK01 mini PC specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N5095 quad-core Jasper Lake processor @ 2.0GHz / 2.9GHz (Turbo) with 4MB cache, 16EU Intel UHD Graphics; 15W TDP System Memory – 2x SO-DIMM slots for up to 16GB DDR4 memory Storage – M.2 2280 socket for NVMe or SATA SSD, 2.5-inch SATA drive bay, MicroSD card socket Video Output – 1x HDMI 2.0 […]

December 9, 2021December 9, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

ECS LIVA Z3 & Z3E mini PCs to ship with up to Pentium Silver N6000 Jasper Lake SoC

ECS has introduced the LIVA Z3 and LIVE Z3E mini PC equipped with an Intel Jasper Lake processor, either Pentium Silver N6000, or Celeron N5100/N4500, and designed for office, home entertainment, online learning, business applications such as digital signage, self-service kiosk, and more. The mini PCs support up to 16GB DDR4 dual-channel RAM, ship with up to 128GB eMMC 5.1 flash, which can be expanded with an M.2 PCIe 2280 SSD or/and a 2.5-inch SATA drive. ECS LIVA Z3(E) also comes with HDMI 2.0 and mini DisplayPort 4K video outputs, Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 6 connectivity, as well USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB-C port. ECS LIVA Z3 specifications: Jasper Lake SoC (one or the other) Intel Celeron N4500 dual-core processor @ 1.1GHz / 2.8GHz (Burst frequency) with Intel UHD graphics; 6W TDP Intel Celeron N5100 quad-core processor @ 1.1GHz / 2.8GHz (Burst frequency) with Intel UHD graphics; 6W TDP Intel […]

December 2, 2021February 28, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Tribulations with Linux on Zidoo M6 Rockchip RK3566 mini PC

After our review of the Zidoo M6 mini PC with Android 11, we’ve installed Linux on the Rockchip device, and we did boot to a Linux Qt user interface built with buildroot. Let’s try to see what we can do with the image, and then try Ubuntu from a competing mini PC to check out if that can work. Since there’s no package manager to install a screenshooting program, I tried to use the usual method to take a framebuffer screenshot.

cat /dev/fb0 > screen.raw

1	cat /dev/fb0 > screen.raw

It generated an 8MB file which looked good, but the content was just comprised of zeros.

$ ls -lh screen.raw
-rw-r--r-- 1 jaufranc jaufranc 8.0M Nov 13 15:08 screen.raw
$ hexdump screen.raw
0000000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
*
07e9000

$ ls -lh screen.raw

-rw-r--r-- 1 jaufranc jaufranc 8.0M Nov 13 15:08 screen.raw

$ hexdump screen.raw

0000000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

07e9000

I asked Zidoo for a method to take screenshots in their Linux image, but I was told there weren’t any at this time… No worries, let’s try some of the applications in the Qt interface starting with the Multivideoplayer: It starts well with 9 videos of Big Buck Bunny playing simultaneously, […]

November 23, 2021April 17, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 24 Comments

Phytium D2000 ARMv8 Mini PC runs Linux, supports gaming with Box64 emulator

Dragonbox is now taking pre-orders for a “Phytium D2000 ARMv8 Mini PC” with an octa-core 64-bit Arm processor, 16GB RAM, a 512GB NVMe, and an AMD Radeon RX550 GPU that makes it powerful enough to play older PC gaming like Crysis through Box64 x86_64 emulator, the 64-bit version of Box86 x86 emulator compatible with Raspberry Pi and other 32-bit Arm platforms. If the Dragonbox name sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the community that developed the Pyra handheld Linux game console/PC, except now they are offering a mini PC based on Phytium D2000 processor based on the same FTC663 Armv8 cores as found in the earlier Phytium FT2000/4 processor, with both Pythium SoC specifically designed for desktop PCs, contrary to most other Arm SoCs on the market. Phytium D2000 mini PC specifications: SoC – Phytium D2000 ARMv8 octa-core custom Armv8 (FTC663) desktop processor @ 2.3 – 2.6 GHz with 8MB L2 […]

November 22, 2021January 24, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

International Black Friday 2021 Deals

We’ve been listing Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals available internationally since 2014, going beyond the US-centric Amazon Black Friday deals for instance. So let’s do it again this year from the usual suspects like Aliexpress and Banggood, as well as direct deals from manufacturers. Arduino Black November The maker board manufacturer offers discounts on eight products until November 29, namely the Arduino Starter Kit, the Arduino UNO board, the Arduino Nano Arduino Micro, Oplà IoT Kit, Arduino Due, Portenta H7 machine vision bundle, and the Arduino Mega. The company also offers discounts on Arduino-branded gears from T-Shirts to pens. Khadas 20% discount Khadas has an upcoming deal on the Amazon US store that will run for only 24 hours from 25th November 12:00 am to 26th November 11:59 pm (Pacific Standard Time). As I understand it, they ship internationally too, and you’ll be able to get 20% off the […]

November 19, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Jetson EX1 and SUB mini PCs put Xavier NX SoM into metal enclosures

Seeed Studio has just unveiled another Jetson Xavier NX mini PC with the Jetson EX1, plus some metal enclosures for the Jetson SUB mini PC announced last month with the official NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX developer kit, a 128GB SSD, and the Re_Computer case comprised of an aluminum frame and a plastic cover. Jetson EX1 mini PC The Jetson EX1 mini PC has a different design with a custom carrier board offering dual Gigabit Ethernet and support for four MIPI CSI cameras, a 256GB NVMe SSD, and an aluminum enclosure designed to help with cooling, albeit the computer is not completely fanless since a 5V fan is included in the design as well. Jetson EX1 specifications: NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX module CPU – 6-core NVIDIA Carmel ARMv8.2 64-bit processor with 6 MB L2 + 4 MB L3 cache GPU – NVIDIA Volta architecture with 384 NVIDIA CUDA cores and 48 […]

November 19, 2021December 29, 2021 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 7 Comments

Using MangoHud to check FPS, CPU & GPU usage on a ‘hackendeck’

Previously I followed Valve’s documentation to build a ‘hackendeck’ using a mini PC to emulate their highly anticipated Steam Deck. Interestingly the ‘hackendeck’ uses a Linux OS, specifically Manjaro, as whilst Valve based their earlier version of Steam OS on Debian, they have now switched to being based on Arch. If the ‘hackendeck’ had just been Steam on Windows then to review gaming performance I’d just use MSI Afterburner. Until now, however, for Linux, I’ve always had to estimate the average FPS as I’ve not been aware of a good reliable equivalent. Fortunately several ‘commenters’ recommended using MangoHud, a Linux open-source Vulkan/OpenGL overlay for monitoring FPS, CPU/GPU usage, and temperatures similar to MSI Afterburner. So now I’ve been able to capture the average frame rate for the games I previously tested and I’ll present them below. MangoHud Installation and configuration The installation of MangoHud was extremely simple. First I installed […]