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Compact fanless firewall appliance offers 6x 2.5GbE ports for $230 and up

KingNovy has introduced a small fanless firewall appliance powered by an Intel Celeron J4125 Gemini Lake Refresh processor, equipped with six 2.5GbE ports through Intel i225-V Rev 3 Ethernet controllers, and selling for as low as $230 for the barebone model. The system supports up to 32GB RAM, mSATA and 2.5-inch SATA storage, features HDMI output and four USB 3.0/2.0 ports, plus an RJ45 console port, and is said to work with pfSense 2.5.x, OPNsense 22.1, OpenWrt, ROS7, ESXI, Proxmox, CentOS, and more. Specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core Gemini Lake Refresh processor @ 2.0 / 2.7 GHz (Turbo) / 2.4 GHz (Turbo all cores) with Intel UHD Graphics 600 @ 250/750 MHz; 10W TDP System Memory – Dual-channel Memory DDR4 (2400MHz) supporting up to 32GB RAM in total Storage – 1x mSATA socket, 2.5-inch SATA bay for SSD or HDD Video Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4K […]

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Higole F7G Plus Review – An affordable rugged tablet tested with Ubuntu 20.04 & Windows 11

Ruggedized industrial-use PCs are typically expensive so it is refreshing to see Higole F7G Plus, an Intel Gemini Lake Refresh tablet, being offered at an affordable price. Higole kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at functionality and performance running on Ubuntu and also its Windows performance. Hardware Overview The Higole F7G Plus is a 10.1 inch IPS touch screen rugged industrial fanless tablet that uses Intel’s 14 nm Gemini Lake Refresh N4120 processor which is a quad-core 4-thread 1.10 GHz Celeron processor boosting to 2.60 GHz with Intel’s UHD Graphics. Designwise, meeting the MIL-STD-810G standard which is the de facto ‘ruggedized’ standard for consumer products and covers whether the device can work in a broad range of environmental conditions including surviving dropping, is evidenced by the thick protective shell around the tablet. To ensure its IP67 Certification for waterproofing each of the ports are covered by detachable rubber […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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LattePanda 3 Delta SBC combines Celeron N5105 SoC with Arduino (Crowdfunding)

LattePanda 3 Delta is the new version of the x86 + Arduino board introduced in 2015 with an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 processor, and followed by LattePanda Alpha/Delta in 2017 with respectively Kaby Lake and Gemini Lake processors. The new LattePanda 3 Delta brings some serious performance boost with an Intel Celeron N5105 quad-core Jasper Lake processor that doubles the CPU performance, triples the GPU speed, and enables smooth 4K HDR video playback. Plus no vaccine is required that for that delta variant! 😉 LattePanda 3 Delta specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N5105 quad-core Jasper Lake processor @ 2.0GHz / 2.9GHz (Turbo) with Intel UHD graphics 605; 10W TDP System Memory – 8GB LPDDR4 @ 2933 MHz Storage 64GB eMMC flash M.2 M Key socket for NVMe SSD M.2 B Key socket for SATA SSD MicroSD card socket MCU – Arduino Leonardo compatible Video Output HDMI 2.0 DisplayPort via USB Type-C […]

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ODROID-H2+ SBC discontinued due to supply shortage

Hardkernel has just discontinued ODROID-H2+ single board computer based on the Intel Celeron J4115 Gemini Lake Refresh processor, which followed ODROID-H2 SBC itself being discontinued shortly after Intel decided to phase out Intel J4105 and other Gemini Lake processors. The reason given is the “uncertain situation of main component supply”, which could mean Celeron J4115 processor is hard to get (or expensive), or the Realtek RTL8125B chipset provides 2.5GbE networking. That means Hardkernel does not offer any x86 SBC at this time. That’s a shame before ODROID-H2+ was a well-supported SBC running Linux or Windows, and great value for money at $119, especially for people interested in the two 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports found on the board (and upgradeable to six), not to mention support for SO-DIMM memory and M.2 NVMe SSD. Update: There were multiple components with very long lead times that must have contributed to the situation as […]

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QNAP TVS-675 NAS features Zhaoxin KaiXian KX-U6580 x86 processor

QNAP has been trying something different in several in their new NAS recently. Last month, we covered QMiroPlus-201W that combines an Arm router and Intel NAS into one device, and now the company has announced another x86 NAS, but not based on Intel or AMD processor, but instead Zhaoxin’s 2.5 GHz eight-core KaiXian KX-U6580 processor. QNAP TVS-675 NAS comes with 8GB RAM by default, six drive bays for hard drives or SSD’s, two M.2 2280 slots for SATA or NVMe storage, as well as two PCIe 3.0 x4 slots for networking, storage, or other expansion cards. The NAS also features 2.5GbE wired connectivity and an HDMI 2.0 to connect a display. QNAP TVS-675 specifications: SoC – Zhaoxin KX-U6580 8-core/-thread 64-bit x86 processor @ 2.5GHz with FPU, AES-NI accelerator, 8MB L2 cache, ZhaoXin C-960 Graphics; 16nm process System Memory – 8 GB DDR4 single-channel; upgradable to up to 64GB dual-channel memory […]

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MeLE Quieter2 Review – Windows 10, Ubuntu 20.04, and eGPU

MeLE has recently released a passive mini PC called the Quieter2. What is particularly interesting is that whilst it only has a low-powered Intel Celeron CPU it also supports an M.2 2280 NVMe SSD drive which theoretically makes using an eGPU possible. MeLE provided a 99% discount coupon so that I could purchase one for review and the results from various testing are detailed below. Hardware Overview The Quieter2 physically consists of a 131 x 81 x 18.3mm (5.16 x 3.19 x 0.72 inches) rectangular plastic case with a metal base plate. The top half of the case is finely grooved to mimic the fins of a heat spreader but is made of plastic rather than metal to allow reception to the WiFi antennas as one is directly connected to it. As a passively cooled mini PC, it uses Intel’s 14 nm J4125 Gemini Lake Refresh processor which is a […]

AAEON Intel Arc
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The 5 best Intel & AMD single board computers for makers

A few weeks ago, we wrote a list of what we consider to be the top 5 most powerful Arm SBC’s and development kits, and this time around we’ll cover x86 SBC’s powered by Intel or AMD processors. But this time around, instead of focusing on the most powerful x86 single board computers which would lead to unaffordable, industrial Xeon SBC’s, we’ll be looking into the 5 best boards designed for makers. That means affordable pricing, I/O headers, and community support. The list is in no particular order. Rock Pi X – x86 on the cheap If you ever wanted the cheapest possible x86 board, Atomic Pi SBC $35 price tag was hard to beat, but it was only cheap because it was sourced from a failed robotics project, and not very convenient to use. But now in 2021, the cheapest x86 SBC that can run Windows is clearly Rock […]

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ODYSSEY-X86J4125 SBC gets a faster Celeron J4125 SoC and a price increase

ODYSSEY-X86J4105 is an Intel Gemini Lake SBC designed for makers with Arduino compatibility thanks to a Microchip SAMD21 microcontroller, as well as Raspberry Pi headers. We reviewed the board and enclosure last year both with Windows 10 Enterprise and Ubuntu 20.04, and we also successfully tested the Arduino and Raspberry Pi GPIO headers with the latter. But the Intel Celeron J4105 quad-core Gemini Lake processor has been scheduled for discontinuance since last year, and the last order on January 22, 2021, and the final shipment on planned for July 9, 2021. So Seeed Studio had to find a replacement, and they’ve now launched ODYSSEY-X86J4125 single board computer with the same features, but switching to a slightly faster, and still available, Intel Celeron J4125 processor. ODYSSEY-X86J4125800 SBC specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core Gemini Lake Refresh processor @ 2.0 / 2.7 GHz (Turbo) / 2.4 GHz (Turbo all cores) with […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC