07-13-2022 at 06:29 AM#62
Modifications possible with this build
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* The motherboard size is likely mini ITX. Meaning if you are adventurous, you can relocate the motherboard to another case, and get more bays in the process.
* System has 2 SODIMM slots. One is empty, another is occupied with 4Gig. It is possible to install 2x8Gig for a total of 16 Gigs. Regardless what Intel and Acer says, 16 Gigs (2x8) appears to work fine. This is the 8 Gig I used in mine. 8 Gig Team Memory [amazon.com]
*The system has a single SATA full length power connector. If you wish to connect a second drive that needs a full SATA power port, you will need a splicer, something like this.
SATA Power Splitter [ebay.com]
* Depends on how drives you install and what type of drives you install, the temperature in the case could be higher than desired. I modded the case to take a 140mm and spliced the 3 pin CPU fan connector. It would be useful to disable fan control in BIOS so it runs at high speed at all times. *spliced fan header [ebay.com]140mm fan [amazon.com]
* The system as shipped accommodates 1x3.5 above and beyond the DVD drive installed. If you want to change the DVD bay to accept 2.5 inch HDD< you will need something like this *a DVD caddy 3.5 9.7mm bay [amazon.com].
With all above modification, my system draws about 25Ws at peak.
Copied suggestions below for various uses.
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Desktop replacement, Rating: Medicore
This is a mediocre use case as a desktop replacement because the limited CPU capability and memory. The system comes with 4Gig standard which will mean a lot of swapping on Windows 10 in default configuration. If you can up the memory to 8Gig, I think the use case becomes fair. It is a reasonable system for lite web page browsing, spreadsheets, email, YouTube and Netflix at 1080P. ie, this is a good system for your grandparents if usage case isn't aggressive.
Gaming setup, Rating: Poor
Expansion slot is half height, power supply is 65W, there is only a CPU fan. ie, if you want to game other than minesweeper, you should look for a beefier system, such as the one with I3 and 250W power?. Again, if you go that route, maybe Acer small form factor shouldn't be what you should consider. For reference, my current game setup has a 850w ps and about 7 fans.
NAS, Rating: Good
This thing draws less power and is quieter than my Synology 2 bay. CPU will be more powerful than my Synology with more possibility of expanding via standard PC peripherals. A two bay Synology is about $200 right now which means you can use this thing at about half the cost. With this said, there are only 2 SATA ports and no additional cooling fans and will only accommodate 1 3.5" and 1 2.5" drive without additional engineering. If you are okay dropping in a 10TB 3.5 WD Red Plus and call it good, you have an excellent use case here. If you are desperate, I suppose you can always use external USB 3.0 enclosures for additional drives. Hardware transcoding via Plex for a single 4K stream shouldn't be a huge issue since this Celeron has a UHD600 onboard.
pFsense, Gateway replacement, VPN server, PiHole etc, Rating: Excellent
What this system really excels is as an always on, minimal power, minimal noise internet relay device. I listed a couple use cases above. I am thinking moving my VPN server (both up and down streams), PiHole, and Firewall server into this thing. As given the system has more than enough resource to run Debian or BSD, never sipes more than 15Ws, generates no heat, and is virtually silent, I can see this thing sitting next to my cable modem and be the consolidating gateway machine that is currently being taken up by a Synology, a number of Rasperberri Pis. For $100, this is just a bargain you can't find equivalent elsewhere. Now the only decision is to buy another one as a backup in case this breaks. :-)
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Installed this Crucial 32GB set [a.co] and did not notice any slowness. The only thing that happened was a delayed FIRST POST after installing the sticks, beyond that, so far so good. Screenshots below:
WIN10_SYSTEM [imgur.com]
USERBENCHMARK [imgur.com]
HWINFO1 [imgur.com] | HWINFO2 [imgur.com]
CPUZ_MB [imgur.com] | CPUZ_MEM [imgur.com] | CPUZ_SPD1 [imgur.com] | CPUZ_SPD2 [imgur.com]
10-min stress test with CPU Smart Fan feature turned off [imgur.com]
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Top Comments
This 88 dollar PC is not a powerful PC. That is correct. I'm not being duped into thinking this is a POWERFUL PC!
This is a laptop PC who's motherboard has been placed in a tiny tower case and can run windows 10/11, and you can add more ram, and comes with NVMe, with external power supply that laptop's use! So very, very low power 24/7 machine 6 watts idle.
It has bluetooth/wifi,ethernet port, 4 usb 2 ports, 2 usb 3 ports. 2 year warranty, intel 600 internal graphics, hdmi and vga port,
You know that Walmart currently is selling this at 299 dollars with good user review average.
I object to the word "duped" in your post. There are 2-3 threads on this device on slickdeals , with things people are doing with it.
Like the Raspberry Pi, it is hobby device, and cheaper than Pi,( if you were to buy Pi plus all the extra's you need to buy to complete Pi package).
Hopefully, people read YOUR post, and read posts from others that discuss the positive aspect of this device, so they know what they are buying and not buying. Alert heard, sir. . Your mission is accomplished. Torpedoes away. Next target!
Where to mount the disks? As previously mentioned, there's space for a 3.5" disk and a 2.5" disk if you removed the optical drive. Alternatively, you could remove the entire cage and replace it with something that'd accept two 3.5" disks [amazon.com] (I haven't actually tried it because I haven't received the computer yet, but it should work). Similarly, it should not be too difficult to put four 2.5" disks in the case. Use a cage if you want to be fancy. Velcro or duct tape if you just don't gaf. Or get a bigger case, but then you'd lose the cute little form factor.
Where to get the power? Y-splitters. Just don't overload the power supply.
Where to connect the data cables? Ah, now this is the fun part. See previous post regarding the limitations of the PCIe bus. If the goal is to install as many disks as possible, one way would be to put SATA controllers in the ×16, ×4, and ×2 slots. Yes, the M-keyed M.2 slot and even the E-keyed M.2 slot could probably be used for PCIe modules, including SATA controllers and Ethernet controllers.
Each lane of PCIe 2.0 provides 500 MB/s of bandwidth, just barely sufficient for SATA III's 600 MB/s. This is obviously not a problem for HDD, but could limit SSD performance. You might want to be... creative... with port selection, if you plan to use SSDs and HDDs together. For example, if you put a 2-port SATA controller in the ×2 slot, you might want to pair an SSD with a HDD on that same controller to optimize bandwidth usage.
Also remember the limitations of the DMI link. If you're using this machine as a NAS, your disks might be sharing PCIe bandwidth with your NIC. You could potentially install many disks and a lot of other stuff, but they'd compete for bandwidth. Proceed with caution.
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655 Comments
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currently running following VM
PiVPN
Win7 - bbs server
Win12 - prtg and syslog server
zorinos (linux) - for bittorrent d/l
would it be simple to port over to proxmox? (I'll get more ram for the system )
You should check the temperature of your drive. I have a 8 TB Red Plus which was running over 49 degrees. I added a case fan because I feel it is too hot. Now it never exceeds 34.
I happen to have a Crucial CT16G4SFD824A stick on hand and it works. Same stick you would get from the kit recommended on the wiki here. No slow downs, at least that is what memtest86+ and sysbench (on Linux) is telling me.
Edit:
Not working as in there is one continuous beep with no display whenever I power up the desktop. Quick search suggests that it means some issue with memory (missing or bad) for Acer computer
The sticks (Crucial CT16G4SFRA32A) that don't work on this desktop, work on a laptop that I have that takes DDR4.
For completeness, tried running Windows with the good stick (Crucial CT16G4SFD824A) to see if there are any slow downs. Windows runs just fine.
currently running following VM
PiVPN
Win7 - bbs server
Win12 - prtg and syslog server
zorinos (linux) - for bittorrent d/l
would it be simple to port over to proxmox? (I'll get more ram for the system )
Good luck and happy homelabbing
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On side note the motherboard does fit into a regular PC case as seen below. This will allow you to add more than 1 HDD without having to mod the existing case. And if any one is wondering, no, a gpu will not work. I tried a GT 1030 and RX 550 just for the heck of it and did not get any video output with either one. If there is a bios setting that would allow for it I'm not sure. It is possible the slot is 16x but is not fully 16x compliant. Maybe someone else can post if they were able to get a 16x card to work in it.
Seems like it might be a mini-DTX form factor board?
currently running following VM
PiVPN
Win7 - bbs server
Win12 - prtg and syslog server
zorinos (linux) - for bittorrent d/l
would it be simple to port over to proxmox? (I'll get more ram for the system )
BTW, "Win12" doesn't exist yet, welcome to future world!
Update...I did find the below command for linux and it shows x16 but not sure what it will take to get any GPU to work in it. Good luck to you.
$ sudo dmidecode | grep 'PCI'
PCI is supported
Designation: PCIE1
Type: x16 PCI Express 2 x16
Type: x1 PCI Express 2 x1
Thanks.
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Second tier is Acer i3-10th gen with pci-3rd gen slot, and 8 gb desktop ram ddr4, NVMe 250gb, intel 630 graphics, 300 watt power supply, windows 10/11 , and can handle more tasks and 2 year old chipset. There are SD threads for what this PC can do and not do. Look at that OPTION.
The top tier is the Acer i5-11th gen with pci-4th gen slot, for 299 dollars. intel 730 graphics, 500gb NVMe. Same as the i3-10th gen ACER but more powerful, and you could put in graphic cards that works using latest pci-gen4 option.
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I tried using WIFI, but for both units the speedtest.net download speed is terribly slow at 1mbps while upload is a more reasonable 30mbps. This was done in the same room a few feet away from my modem/router. Both units test at about 35 down/45 up when hard-wired. For comparative purposes, my Android phone has a test download speed of 20 mbps via speedtest.net.
One of the two Acer units I purchased came with a Hynix 4gb 3200 RAM stick. I installed an 8gb Silicon Power 3200 RAM stick but have been running into consistent BSD on the average of about once per hour of use. After doing some research, I downloaded/installed Memtest86 onto a bootable USB drive. An overnight test revealed around 1,500 errors with both RAM sticks installed. I then ran Memtest86 individually for each stick installed without the other, and both passed. I assume they will each work fine alone, but not installed together. One thought I have is to go ahead and buy a duplicate 8gb Silicon Power 3200 RAM which in theory should work since it would match the other. I was hoping to limit cost as much as possible and would have been fine with 12gb RAM.
Any thoughts?
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