- Apr 15, 2014
- 2
- 0
- 4,510
To begin, this is my first post here, so I sincerely apologize in advance if this is not the correct place to post this, or if I do not follow forum conventions.
Background:
So last week I had a bit of an incident that put my MSI GT60 out of commission for a while (has anyone else ever had their HDMI port burst into a pint-sized but still very hot fiery inferno upon plugging in the cord?). So since I'm not exactly planning on seeing her back for a while, and it was for all intents and purposes my only computer, and since I use it primarily for developing and testing robot navigation algorithms in Ubuntu, I figured I might as well do a build while I'm waiting. (Sorry for that terrible run-on sentence)
More background:
Prior to the incident just about everything I wrote was developed and tested on hardware with my MSI book which, to be honest, was rather inconvenient due to the enormous nature of the GT60 (and to think I almost went with the GT70!). I have for a while now recognized that I need something better/smaller/dedicated to test algorithms on hardware, however it took burned fingertips to really get the ball rolling. After some reading, well a lot of reading, along with experience in the past working with Mini-Box brand sff pc's running headless Ubuntu, I believe that a sff pc is what I am looking to build. There's just one issue, I am finding it very difficult to find information on the subject that is both relevant (as opposed to strictly for a gaming pc or htpc) and recent (I find it hard to believe that articles from 2003 are too helpful in this case).
My question:
My question for you, the kind users of this forum who possess far more knowledge than myself on the subject, is: does anyone out there have any advice for me, or can anyone point me in the right direction?
My requirements:
Here's where I am going to start listing off a set of requirements, but really these are just the things that I am hoping to be able to accomplish. I understand that one cannot have their cake and eat it too, so please help me learn more by explaining why certain things are not possible if that ends up being the case!
here goes:
-Looking to build a sff pc.
-Needs to be able to both hold and process large amounts of data (at the minimum data inputs from several sensors including no less than two high res lidar at any given time). So I am definitely going to need pretty high memory capacity.
-Needs to be able to run off of 12vdc, I know minibox sells adapters for cars so it must be possible. If necessary this is not a hard requirement as both lidar sensors require 24vdc.
-Preferably something that will not require a LOT of cooling if any.
-Preferably something that will be small, yes, I understand what sff stands for, but there are cases out there that are relatively huge!
-preferably something that I can upgrade.
Up to this point I could probably handle the build without asking... here's where I get lost...
-I would really like to be able to reconfigure whatever I build to run both headless and with graphics. This is kind of important (I think, correct me if I am wrong), the reason being that this is going to be my first dedicated testing pc. What I mean is that although eventually I will need it to be running strictly headless to conserve resources/power, initially I would like it to be able to function as a normal linux pc with graphics. That being said, the quality of the graphics isn't super important to me.( unless of course it should be, while using it with graphics it will be required to process some really resource expensive visualization software, so if you think I should care more about graphics then I can) I am not 100% when it comes to understanding the different graphics options, since I've read that sff pcs often require special sff gpu's, so explanation of this would be extremely helpful.
-If at all possible, I also could really use something with multiple built in serial ports or the possibility of adding a card of some sort to add additional.
If I think up any more I will add them...
As you can see I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to a sff build. Unfortunately the throes of developing nav algorithms has caused me to focus much more on the software side of things and I have not kept up my knowledge of hardware. (Which is despicable seeing as I am a mechanical engineer!) So if you even made it this far, share some wisdom, or better yet links or answers, but I'm not going to get my hopes up. Thank you in advance for your help and please, if there are any other questions that you have in order to better help me please ask.
Also, one last thing, I forgot to mention, budget isn't a super huge issue, though I would like to keep it reasonable, I can be flexible!
Thanks,
Joe
Background:
So last week I had a bit of an incident that put my MSI GT60 out of commission for a while (has anyone else ever had their HDMI port burst into a pint-sized but still very hot fiery inferno upon plugging in the cord?). So since I'm not exactly planning on seeing her back for a while, and it was for all intents and purposes my only computer, and since I use it primarily for developing and testing robot navigation algorithms in Ubuntu, I figured I might as well do a build while I'm waiting. (Sorry for that terrible run-on sentence)
More background:
Prior to the incident just about everything I wrote was developed and tested on hardware with my MSI book which, to be honest, was rather inconvenient due to the enormous nature of the GT60 (and to think I almost went with the GT70!). I have for a while now recognized that I need something better/smaller/dedicated to test algorithms on hardware, however it took burned fingertips to really get the ball rolling. After some reading, well a lot of reading, along with experience in the past working with Mini-Box brand sff pc's running headless Ubuntu, I believe that a sff pc is what I am looking to build. There's just one issue, I am finding it very difficult to find information on the subject that is both relevant (as opposed to strictly for a gaming pc or htpc) and recent (I find it hard to believe that articles from 2003 are too helpful in this case).
My question:
My question for you, the kind users of this forum who possess far more knowledge than myself on the subject, is: does anyone out there have any advice for me, or can anyone point me in the right direction?
My requirements:
Here's where I am going to start listing off a set of requirements, but really these are just the things that I am hoping to be able to accomplish. I understand that one cannot have their cake and eat it too, so please help me learn more by explaining why certain things are not possible if that ends up being the case!
here goes:
-Looking to build a sff pc.
-Needs to be able to both hold and process large amounts of data (at the minimum data inputs from several sensors including no less than two high res lidar at any given time). So I am definitely going to need pretty high memory capacity.
-Needs to be able to run off of 12vdc, I know minibox sells adapters for cars so it must be possible. If necessary this is not a hard requirement as both lidar sensors require 24vdc.
-Preferably something that will not require a LOT of cooling if any.
-Preferably something that will be small, yes, I understand what sff stands for, but there are cases out there that are relatively huge!
-preferably something that I can upgrade.
Up to this point I could probably handle the build without asking... here's where I get lost...
-I would really like to be able to reconfigure whatever I build to run both headless and with graphics. This is kind of important (I think, correct me if I am wrong), the reason being that this is going to be my first dedicated testing pc. What I mean is that although eventually I will need it to be running strictly headless to conserve resources/power, initially I would like it to be able to function as a normal linux pc with graphics. That being said, the quality of the graphics isn't super important to me.( unless of course it should be, while using it with graphics it will be required to process some really resource expensive visualization software, so if you think I should care more about graphics then I can) I am not 100% when it comes to understanding the different graphics options, since I've read that sff pcs often require special sff gpu's, so explanation of this would be extremely helpful.
-If at all possible, I also could really use something with multiple built in serial ports or the possibility of adding a card of some sort to add additional.
If I think up any more I will add them...
As you can see I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to a sff build. Unfortunately the throes of developing nav algorithms has caused me to focus much more on the software side of things and I have not kept up my knowledge of hardware. (Which is despicable seeing as I am a mechanical engineer!) So if you even made it this far, share some wisdom, or better yet links or answers, but I'm not going to get my hopes up. Thank you in advance for your help and please, if there are any other questions that you have in order to better help me please ask.
Also, one last thing, I forgot to mention, budget isn't a super huge issue, though I would like to keep it reasonable, I can be flexible!
Thanks,
Joe
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