Zidoo M9 Mini PC Review – Part 1: Unboxing & Teardown

Zidoo M9 Review

Over the years, Zidoo has made TV boxes for the consumer market, and digital signage players for businesses. The recently announced Zidoo M9 aims at both markets, plus other applications such as IoT, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Zidoo M9 is either sold as a board or a complete TV box reference design with a case, as it exposes all the usual ports of a TV with HDMI, USB, and Ethernet. But you can do more with internal connectors for cameras, PCIe interfaces, SIM card slot, MPI DSI and eDP connectors, and so on. The company has sent me a review sample, so let’s first check out the accessories provided with the box, and have a look into the hardware design today, before testing the Android firmware in the second part of the review. Zidoo M9 Unboxing The package makes it clear Zidoo M9 “mini PC” looks like a TV box, […]

Beelink T45 Review with Windows and Linux, and Tweaking BIOS Power Limits

beelink t45 temperature

[Update December 23, 2019: We’ve been informed by Beelink that the T45 has been updated to the 6W Celeron N4200 processor instead, and the system is now cooled with a fan. The model reviewed in this post is the fanless version with a 10W Intel J4250 processor, which was never sold] [Update January 30, 2020: We’ve now posted a review of the new model at Beelink Gemini T45 Pentium N4200 Mini PC Review] Beelink have further extended their ‘Gemini’ range of mini PCs by adding the T45. This is a passively cooled mini PC that is effectively a companion to the J45 as it again uses the slightly older Apollo Lake Intel Pentium J4205 CPU which is a quad-core 4-thread 1.50 GHz processor boosting to 2.60 GHz with Intel’s HD Graphics 505. Although the T45 is a ‘NUC’ style mini PC physically consisting of a 119 x 119 x 17.7 […]

UP Xtreme Edge (UPX-Edge) Embedded Computer is Built around UP Xtreme Whiskey Lake SBC

UPX Edge Embedded Computer

AAEON UP Xtreme SBC was launched last June with a choice of 15W Whiskey Lake processors, namely Intel Celeron 4305UE dual-core processor, Intel Core i3-8145UE dual-core 4-thread processor, Intel Core i5-8365UE / Core i7-8665UE quad-core 8-thread processors. The company has now launched a complete embedded computer built around UP Xtreme SBC named UP Xtreme Edge Computing System, or simply UPX-Edge for short, that’s a slight variation of the fanless chassis offered for the SBC during the Kickstarter campaign. UPX-Edge specifications: SoC (one or the other) Intel Celeron 4305UE dual-core processor @ up to 2.2 GHz with 2MB cache, Intel UHD 610 graphics Intel Core i3-8145UE dual-core 4-thread processor @ up to 2.1 GHz / 3.9 GHz (Turbo) with 4MB cache, Intel UHD 620 graphics Intel Core i5-8365UE quad-core 8-thread processor @ up to 1.6 GHz / 4.1 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, Intel UHD 620 graphics Intel Core i7-8665UE quad-core […]

Ubuntu 18.04 on Beelink Gemini J45 Mini PC (Fix and Review)

Windows Mini PC Benchmarks Comparison

When I recently reviewed the Beelink J45 (aka Beelink Gemini J), a mini PC that uses the slightly older Intel Apollo Lake Pentium J4205 processor, whilst Windows 10 Pro ran fine it was unsuitable for Ubuntu because after installation the system became unstable and problems were encountered when running anything that loaded the system. The main issue was that when connected via wired-ethernet performing a command like ‘sudo apt upgrade’ would cause the ethernet to drop after which only a reboot would restore the connection. At the time it, was unclear what the cause was however a solution to the issue was posted by ‘gambetta’ on the Beelink forum. Basically it consists of installing the r8168 module which is the Linux device driver released for RealTek RTL8168B/8111B, RTL8168C/8111C, RTL8168CP/8111CP, RTL8168D/8111D, RTL8168DP/8111DP and RTL8168E/8111E Gigabit Ethernet controllers with PCI-Express interface. To paraphrase the ‘README.Debian’ file, you use ‘r8168-dkms because the in-kernel […]

A Look at Ubuntu on MINIX NEO G41V-4 and J50C-4 Mini PCs

Mini PC Comparison

MINIX Technology Limited recently released two new Gemini Lake mini PCs running Windows 10 Pro namely the MINIX NEO J50C-4 actively-cooled mini PC with an Intel Pentium Silver J5005 processor and the MINIX NEO G41V-4 fanless mini PC powered by an Intel Celeron N4100 processor. Whilst each mini PC comes with 64GB of eMMC with pre-installed Windows 10 Pro together with 4GB of RAM they also support the addition of an optional 2280 M.2 drive and the MINIX NEO J50C-4 allows optional memory upgrades. Prior to testing their performance under Ubuntu, I established a comparison baseline by updating Windows to version 1903 and then running my standard set of benchmarking tools first with the default configuration of each mini PC and then repeated having installed the official MINIX 2280 M.2 240GB drives for each device together with adding an extra 4GB RAM to the MINIX NEO J50C-4. The results can […]

EEPD Launches AMD Ryzen Embedded NUC Boards & Mini PCs

EEPD SBC Profive follows embedded NUC Standard Electronic Equipment Production and Distribution, also known as EEPD, has just released its latest Embedded SBCs based on the AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 and V1000 platforms. Respectively they are the SBC Profive NUCR and NUCR both designed for industrial uses. The NUCv has 4 variants with 2 different V1000 series CPUs to choose from, while the NUCR has two R1000 variants. eNUC and Integrated Graphics All variations and types of SBCs and BoxPCs use the embedded NUC standard utilizing the AMD Ryzen embedded platform and series with Radeon Vega Graphics integrated into the system. SBC Profive NUCR specifications AMD Series R1000 Processors – R1606G / R1505G Integrated GPU – AMD Radeon Vega 3 Graphics Up to 32 GB dual-channel DDR4 memory 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports (Intel I210 with IEEE1588) 1x MicroSD card slot 3x M.2 Type B, Type E, Type M sockets M.2 SATA […]

Somebody made a Tesla Cybertruck Case for Intel NUCs

CyberNUC Cybertruck Case for Intel NUC's

Let’s start the week on a light note… So last week, Tesla announced the Cybertruck, the first electric SUV from the company, and to be honest, at first I had to check whether I was reading the Onion or Babylon Bee because of the unconventional design of the chassis. But it’s real. Mass production is expected for the end of 2020, beginning of 2021, but you can have a miniature version (sort of) much earlier, as MyElectronics designed the CyberNUC, a stainless steel case for all 4″x4″ NUCs that closely follows the shape of the Cybertruck. We even have some specs for the CyberNUC: Compatible with  NUC 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 families Stainless steel body Two screws to fit your NUC in the case Weight – 1 Kg Dimensions – L 266 x W 149 x H 88 mm You might ask: “but why?”. And indeed it […]

Hacarus Embedded AI Computing Kit Leverages Sparse Modeling Technology

Hacarus AI Computing Kit Sparse Modeling Technology

AI training often requires thousands of samples to become accurate, and it can be costly and time-consuming, for example, if you want to train a model to detect manufacturing defects you’d need to provide images with both defective samples and good samples. Japanese AI experts at Hacarus have been working on a solution called Sparse Modeling which requires about 50 samples or even less for training, and worked with Congatec to provides an embedded AI computing kit leveraging the technology. Sparse Modeling Technology Hacarus does not go into great detail but explains Sparse Modeling technology is using a data modeling approach that focuses on identifying unique characteristics, in a way that humans recognize friends and family without having to look at everything from feet to head. That means algorithms based on Sparse Modeling do not need as much data as traditional AI solutions, leading to much smaller AI footprint suitable […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC