ulfn Posted January 19 Posted January 19 So here I’m going to continue my story of the petite PC, branded StoneStorm in my case. Not ON my case 😉 there’s no logo or branding visible. I believe it’s sold under another name also. More of that, later. I started this story under ”Customer Lobby” but found it time to move in here. You could use the size of the ethernet ports and USB ports in the attached picture, to appreciate how small this one is. Amazon is a reseller of this brand in the US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DG8LX6M6?ref=nav_custrec_signin&ref_=cm_sw_r_cso_cp_apin_dp_ARXRNNSBNATMWSN38KC2&social_share=cm_sw_r_cso_cp_apin_dp_ARXRNNSBNATMWSN38KC2&peakEvent=4&starsLeft=1&skipTwisterOG=1&th=1 For me amazon. com didn’t work since they do not ship to Sweden, where I’m from. I got it here instead: https://ipc.net/products/4-bay-nas-pocket-pc-dual-2-5gbe-i226-v-lan-ports-12th-gen-n100-n305-with-ddr5-max-48gb-4-m-2-nvme-2280-dual-4k-display-2-usb3-2-10gbps-for-micro-firewall-router-nas-mini-computer?variant=44328463630494 Shipping worked perfectly. Delivered by FedEx in about a week, or so. Now it’s time to take the lid off, as in the second picture. There are two notches for your fingers, and the lid just snaps out. Of course ”snaps” in my country, here in the vodka belt, means something totally different. On the underside of the lid, you can see that it’s used as a heat sink, with four contact points for the NVMe drives. The case is totally made of aluminum, which makes it very solid., and heavy. No plastic here… More will come when I’m ready. Just a comment: I happened to press the Quote button above without meaning to, and repeated it to see if that helped in removing it. So, it didn’t 😉 Quote Quote Quote Quote
Dylan Posted January 24 Posted January 24 I'm really beginning to grow an appreciation for the SFF devices. The power/performance that can be squeezed out of these types of devices are really fun to DIY with. Quote
Mawson Posted January 25 Posted January 25 Aww... it's adorable! Pretty amazing how much compute and functionality can be put in such a small package these days. Quote
ubergeek Posted January 25 Posted January 25 I use to use the NUC platform alot, and they rock USFF is fun Quote
Dylan Posted January 25 Posted January 25 1 hour ago, Mawson said: Aww... it's adorable! @Mawson Makes me feel like were looking at dude's new baby pics. 😆 Quote
ulfn Posted January 25 Author Posted January 25 @Dylan @uberggek @Mawson. So the question was, when I left this story by Christmas, where to put an OS disk?. Pictures from their support teams show something that looks like a type of industrial SSD, just the chip, without the outer case. Industrial SSD:s aren’t easily available to Joe, the customer. I contacted a seller in Europe, who told me they only sell to corporative clients. I found some videos online that show you how to get into the inner part of this beauty. YouTube is your friend! I’ll post them in due time. Life seems to be more than HexOS, who could believe?! And about the industrial SSD, there might be be a solution to that problem, also. Found another video… Quote
Dylan Posted January 26 Posted January 26 @ulfn your tagging doesn't appear to be working. Does it look right to you when viewing your posts above? Quote
ulfn Posted January 26 Author Posted January 26 Only thing is, I misspelled the ubergeek username, and corrected that in next post. I’ve not used this tagging, before you. Actually I don’t know what it does 😉 Seen it on this forum…. And I’ll be back with more mini-NAS stories, you know. Quote
DomSmith Posted January 26 Posted January 26 The product page does hint to there being an m.2 slot on the motherboard. It is visible in the picture: it also seems to mention it here: I'd guess that you'd be able to put a regular m.2 SSD in here to boot from. I'd also be interested to know if the board even supports booting from the four slots on the top... I'm very interested in the n305 version for another project involving VMs running legacy game servers... ...keen to know how you get on with this. Which CPU version did you get? Quote
ulfn Posted January 26 Author Posted January 26 So, I went for the N305 with 32GB of RAM, About the M.2 slots. There are four slots available, which I would use for storage only. IF I can get to grips with the Industrial SSD to use for the OS (well in this case of course HexOS). I will come back to that. I wrote about this under ”Customer Lobby” in December. The specified hard drive - my choice was a 512GB one - turned out to be one of the four NVMe slots occupied for this drive. And it was connected correctly to the motherboard. It could be seen, using DrParted on an USB-stick for booting. I got four NVMe drives for storage, separately, and plan to use this 512GB for external extra storage. You could get this mini as a barebone also, but then I guess you would get to buy the memory stick of your choice. I believe this motherboard could take up to 48GB of RAM. Quote
ulfn Posted January 26 Author Posted January 26 On first boot I came to a screen saying something like ”Welcome to the ProxMox virtual environment”. I’m not familiar with ProxMox, YET, so didn’t explore that further. Quote
ulfn Posted January 26 Author Posted January 26 The industrial SSD called for, would have to be something like this: This picture is from the ipc.net, (where I got this mini) support team. Quote
DomSmith Posted January 27 Posted January 27 21 hours ago, ulfn said: The industrial SSD called for, would have to be something like this: This picture is from the ipc.net, (where I got this mini) support team. Ok I recognise that straight away, mentioned it in someone else's post about getting everything to fit... 1 Quote
DomSmith Posted January 27 Posted January 27 https://hub.hexos.com/topic/2026-1st-idea-didnt-work-2nd-has-potential/#comment-12390 1 Quote
ulfn Posted January 27 Author Posted January 27 Yes, thank you.. I have somewhat come to the same conclusion. I’m on that track and I’ve got as SSD to work with. Found a video too, that I will refer to in a future post. Quote
DomSmith Posted January 27 Posted January 27 Unless I've misunderstood, this just raises more questions for me. There is no mention of SATA connectivity on the product page, so where would you be connecting that? Does the m.2 slot on the board exist? How do the 4 m.2 slots on the expansion board connect? Can you share a link to the teardown video you found please? Quote
ulfn Posted January 27 Author Posted January 27 So, another picture from the ipc.net support team. I had to ask them questions, this information wasn’t in the user manual. I’ve also shown this under Customer Lobby in December. Video coming later, about how to get inside this petite PC. Quote
ulfn Posted January 27 Author Posted January 27 My story under ”Customer Lobby”. Now continued here: Quote
DomSmith Posted January 27 Posted January 27 Ah more clues, what fun... That looks like a sata ssd alright, using a custom header from the mobo. In pics on the product page it looks like there might be 2 of those headers... You can also see in your pic a 'riser' card in the m.2 slot on the mobo, this presumably passes the 1x4 up to the expansion board where it's then presented as 4x1. Quote
ulfn Posted January 27 Author Posted January 27 With the riser card, do you mean an M.2 drive could be used there? I’m not that much into M.2 slots. I bult computers with classic SATA connection for drives. Quote
ulfn Posted January 27 Author Posted January 27 Well, I might have been a bit optimistic there. You did say ”this presumably passes the 1x4 up to the expansion board where it's then presented as 4x1.” Quote
ulfn Posted January 27 Author Posted January 27 So, for anyone interested in this mini on ipc.net where I got mine, in December. There is still "New arrivals 10% off". I paid 477USD, no shipping charged, even though they state "only $323 away from free shipping". Of course you could get on on amazon.com but maybe not with all choices for configuration? Quote
ulfn Posted January 27 Author Posted January 27 (edited) And I paid of course custom fees and tax before delivery. In fact AFTER!, FedEX sent a bill that I got after delivery. Edited January 27 by ulfn Quote
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