New Mini PC for 2022

Is anyone aware of a proven to work with linuxcnc mini pc that's readily available? This is for a Mesa 7i96 build.

If not, what about a mini itx board that's available? I seem to remember about a year ago people were excited about the odroid h2+ but it looks like it's discontinued.

This is cheap, would this (probably) work? www.amazon.com/Computer-Celeron-J3455-Pr..._id=13896591011&th=1

Looks like a nice little piece of kit. The eMMC & tf slot are a good addition.

Yeah the chip shortage seems to have killed the H2, which is a shame.

I used a Asrock board with a J3355 (dual core version of the J3455) and had not a single issue. The OS I used was Mint 19.2 XFCE and a 4.19.105 kernel. This was connected up to a 7i92 7i76 & 7i73.

So going on the specs of the machine and my experience with the dual core Asrock board you should do ok.

If I had the spare cash I'd grab one just cos.

It seems most of the Asrock mini-itx boards with integrated celeron cpu are hard to find nowadays. Personally I would gamble on any celeron, dual or quad, with base frequency above 2 GHz and 8 Mb memory, wifi plus lan, and many usb (3) ports. I wouldn't go with the linked box because of 1.5 GHz base freq, but there are other candidates around 200 usd. When using a mini-ITX board one need to add a picopsu, memory, disk, usb wifi so a ready system in a box cost about the same and comes in a box for easier mounting.

I have tended to use this style of fanless pc for a while.

my first one was an n3150 (smaller version of the one shown below)

my current one is an i7 5550u, with dual Ethernet ports

￡170.30 30%OFF | Fanless Industrial Mini PC Dual NIC LAN 6*COM Core i7 5500U i5 4200U Celeron J1900 Mini Compute Windows 10 Pro HD WIFI 6*RS232
a.aliexpress.com/_vO7CQT

all work with Mesa / linuxcnc RT OS

I like fanless as it stops all dust blowing through the units.

I would only get an Intel CPU , and if I was to upgrade I would look towards an i5 (quad core), instead of an i3 or i7 (dual core).

I also tend to look at the single thread performance to compare CPU performance

www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

I look at the single thread performance as with the RT OS you need to disable all the virtualization, c states and hyperthreading so it shows you a more true comparison in my opinion between CPUs.

I am on Robert's side here. I use something similar with 4 gb RAM. It has dual NIC's, twin serial ports and twin external wifi antennas.
J1900. I think with the newer OS builds, maybe a higher spec as he says with 8 gb Ram.

It is a shame the Odroid H2+ was canned as the faster J1415 Celeron CPU is a better candidate. You could still use one of these fanless PC's as I have done here with the Odroid.

 

 

 

nice and neat setup.

I also came across this company a while ago as an alternative, they were not priced that badly (compared to other new offerings). Yes you can get something cheap and old on ebay / elsewhere too.

www.impulse-embedded.co.uk/products/embedded-systems.htm


I have also thought about using these compact type thin clients (avoid the AMD ones!!!!!).
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284588202213?hash=ite...5:g:jvcAAOSwfqphzHlN

They are available in many processors, but I would aim for an i5 such as the one in the link which has VERY good (imo) single thread performance and may prove to be quite a good linuxcnc / RTOS system. (but I've never tried one so you'll have to pays your monies and take your chances on the roulette wheel).

here is a comparison, again in my opinion check out the single thread performance because you will need to turn off all the performance enhancing features that mask the real performance
www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i5-45...31vs2749vs2546vs3679

Maybe the base frequency isn't a very good value to select from. The J4115 is a lot better than the J1900 in those benchmarks, despite being at 1.8 GHz and the J1900 is at 2 GHz.
Anyways, a J1900 runs linuxcnc just fine, an i5 doesn't add anything to that. What it does add to is the user experience, the hmi works faster and it is a bit more joyful to work with the display. I have a J1900 and an i3 6100 (3.7 GHz) and it is nicer to work with the display, windows pop up that quicker, loading and displaying 10.000s lines of G-code is quicker etc.
I was shopping for a new board recently and in the tradeoff between performance and price, performance lost and I got myself another J1900.

Hi,
Cheap computers on aliexpress will be available for sale in a month:
1. x86 Intel Pentium n6000 (10nm)
ark.intel.com/content/www/pl/pl/ark/prod...-up-to-3-30-ghz.html
2. ARM Rockchip RK3588 (8nm)
wikimovel.com/index.php/Rockchip_RK3588

Edit.
Intel n5105 (10nm) Jasper Lake has just hit the market. The memory is two-channel!
www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001921619318...gatewayAdapt=glo2pol
www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products...ons.html?wapkw=n5105

 

I had 3x Q1900-ITX and they worked well with the old rtai kernel. However they have quite bad latency with the newer os so no-go for an upgrade.
Fortunately I found a couple of WADE-8012 industrial boards (13-2100, dual nic, 4Gram). These seem to work well, the only downside is that a fan is needed.