Re: [tlug] fanless pcs

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2018-07-04 01:09 +0900 (Wed), Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:

> I would love to see the Liva Z in action....

Any time, anywhere, really. It's considerably smaller and lighter than
my laptop.

On 2018-07-04 01:51 +0900 (Wed), Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:

> I usually have a bunch of tabs open with different pages of online
> documentation, forums, standards, github repos and wikis. This can
> easily reach 20 or 30 tabs.

Well, as I mentioned you almost certainly want 8 MB anyway, so this
won't be a big deal.

> What about vim?

I usually have a number of vim sessions open; they don't use any
significant memory AFIK. (Maybe 20 MiB unshared memory for each
process.)

> > One of the really nice things about them is the on-motherboard 32 GB
> > MMC solid-state drive.
> 
> Did you also install the OS on that drive?

Yes. A standard Linux OS desktop install is usually under 4 GB.

> I don't do gaming. I only want a large monitor so I can have
> multiple editing windows comfortably visible on the screen without
> having to ruin my eyes any further. Also, I find it very helpful to
> have documentation open and visible at the same time, ideally on a
> second monitor.

Do you use a 4K monitor? I've found since I started using one I'm
happy with just one monitor now (and appreciate the convenience of
dealing with layout on only one).

At this point I find FullHD (1920x1080) rather cramped and I wouldn't
want to do any serious work on less than a 2.5K monitor. 4K is large:
20% more screen real estate than a 2.5K monitor and a FullHD monitor
together (and twice a pair of FullHD monitors).

> In the worst case I could rededicate it to something else, like
> installing SIMH and running a VAX emulation with OpenVMS although I
> will probably do that on a Raspberry Pi instead.

Just for reference, a Pentium N4200 system is way, way beyond even a
Raspberry Pi 3 for both CPU and I/O. Even my Celeron N3550 is
considerably faster than my Pi 3.

> At that small size, when you don't have to worry about the space it
> takes up, there is always something else you can do with it. In fact
> this is part of the attraction of these small fanless PCs.

Right. It's worth mentioning that the Livia Zs have two Gigabit
Ethernet ports as well, so they are also handy for routers and certain
server applications as well.

> Indeed, at that price tag, I would probably consider the Aleutia R50 instead.

The R50 is a pretty sweet box, but it's _way_ more expensive than
anything we've been discussing so far and they are rather low-powered.
They're using mobile CPUs (the 'U' suffix) which simply don't compare
with desktop CPUs, such as the i3-8100 I mentioned. And the Liva Z
Plus with a better mobile i5 is less than half the price.

    System          CPU         PassMark    System Price
    Generic ITX     i3-8100     8057        ¥70k
    Liva Z Plus     i5-7200U    4676        ¥74k (¥54k + drive/mem)
    Aleutia R50     i5-6260U    4363        ¥160k
    Aleutia R50     i3-6100U    3610        ¥117k

That "generic ITX" could be a Liva Z One[1], by the way:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product/Product_SPEC.aspx?DetailID=1645&CategoryID=12&DetailName=Feature&MenuID=209&LanID=0

(Above info is now in <https://github.com/0cjs/sedoc/tree/master/hw>.)

By the way, speaking about a slightly different kind of system for a
momnet, if anybody's got any good clues about how to put together a
very compact gaming system with a real graphics card (GTX1060 or
similar), I'd love to hear your ideas.

cjs
-- 
Curt J. Sampson      <cjs@example.com>      +81 90 7737 2974

To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
    - L Peter Deutsch