A $300 PC and SGP

Sequence Generator
21

I would avoid the Celeron models if possible. 3 years ago I bought an NUC on ebay with an i3, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM for $270. Here’s the same model I bought with slightly different hardware.

My point is simply that there are lots of these out there for sale and you can find a good used one for significantly less than the cost of new. My NUC has been chugging along great for 3 years. The only thing I would say buying used is to do a clean install of Windows 10 and under no circumstances update the wifi driver. The only problem I ever had with my NUC was dropping wifi connections that I traced to a recent driver update. Rolled back to the stock driver and no problems since.

22

Buying used can be a great way to save some money on a PC. My company always bought “refurbished” HP servers and saved thousands of dollars over their new price. It helps when you know you can trust the seller to provide good systems.

Charlie

23

Based on Charlie’s opening post, I purchased a NUC identical to his. It has worked perfectly. I have the NUC mounted on my pier and run the whole setup from inside my house over our internet network.

I have one thing to add to this conversation. I live in Las Cruces and during the spring and fall I take trips intro the Gila mountains to get really clear skies. There is no internet where we camp (Cosmic Campground). I just purchased a fantastic product called a “Hoo Too Tripmate.” ($39) It creates a local area network which I can use anywhere. It has more than met my expectation. I am using a free version of Teamviewer to connect my MacBook Pro to my NUC over the Hoo Too network.

Hoooo
Hoooo.jpg1000×1000 86.6 KB

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@Robert_Kimball

A very interesting device that I was not familiar with. Thanks for the info.

Charlie

25

Just noticed this post - on the old Core I5 Nuc 54250 WiFi - I found the little Intel 7260 WiFi board to be terrible and many folks on various forums agreed. I bought a used Atheros dual band PCI-E board for $20 and it has been utterly reliable.

26

I’m pretty sure I have the Intel 7260 board. Like I said since rolling back the driver to stock I haven’t had any issues or dropped signals. However the range could be better. Do you have a sense that the range is any better with the Atheros board?

27

And which specific Atheros board?

28

Joel - yes the range is certainly better with the Atheros - I will have to take it apart to read the version, it is a dual band 2.4/5 Ghz with bluetooth 4.
My Intel M3 stick on my portable setup has a limited WiFi range. I extended it using a tiny TP-Link TL-WR802N travel router.

29

Doesn’t it say under device manager which model it is? There are several
different models out there with the same characteristics. Thanks for the
heads up. These are cheap in Ebay.

30

@joelshort
@buzz

Since most PCs and laptops have very small, internal WiFi antennae, their range can be limited. Simply going from the house to the backyard may be too far from the broadcasting antenna. An “access point” can be a reliable and inexpensive way to get a strong WiFi signal to the computer.

Like Buzz, I have used a “Range Extender” from TP-Link to provide good WiFi access to my Intel NUC. This product has an external antenna that connects to the primary WiFi signal and then provides a strong, local WiFi network for your PC to use. However, it has a second feature that I like even better. It allows a standard Ethernet cable to be run from the Range Extender to your PC. Using the Ethernet cable, your PC is connected to the original WiFi network, not the secondary, local one. I simply plug it into an AC outlet in my observatory and connect up the Ethernet cable.

TP-Link Extender

$20

Charlie

31

Of course - it is a AR946x

32

Thanks Buzz. From what I can tell that is equivalent to AR5B22 which is
what I was finding.

33

This is a follow-on to my original posting about building an Intel NUC to run SGP, PHD2, etc.

One way to keep the cost of the NUC down is to download and install the free version of Windows 10 Pro 64bit. This is a two step process: download the Microsoft “Media Creation Tool” and then use that program to build a bootable USB drive that will install Windows 10 Pro. This is completely legal to do.

Once Windows 10 Pro is installed, you will have a “non activated” version on your NUC. This install of Windows 10 Pro is fully functional and will properly update with all the Windows updates that come out. However, it has the limitation that you cannot “personalize” it. This resulted in not being able to change the Windows “Title Bar” color and having a water mark displayed in the lower right corner of the screen.

Without being able to change the Windows Title Bar color, both the active window and all inactive windows had white title bars. This was a bit confusing since it was not obvious which window was active. The water mark was also a bit annoying. These were small prices to pay for not having to spend $200 for a Windows 10 Pro license!

But things have changed. Yesterday I needed to build a new NUC and went to run the Media Creation Tool and it told me there was a newer version I would have to download. So, I did and proceeded to build the USB installation drive. After installing Windows 10 Pro, I immediately noticed the active window title bar is now blue with the inactive windows title bars are still white. Yeah!!

Next I decided to see if there was a way to remove the water mark text and YouTube to the rescue. Multiple videos on how to edit the registry to remove the water mark. So, here is the simplified version:

  1. Run regedit
  2. Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
  3. Expand SYSTEM
  4. Expand CurrentControlSet
  5. Expand Services

Under the Services folder, there is a long list of sub folders. Scroll down until you see a folder named “svsvc.” Then click on that folder. You will see a series of items in the right hand pane. You are interested in the one named “Start”:

image

It probably has a value of “3”. Right click on it; then select Modify:

image

and change the value to 4.

Close the registry editor and reboot. The water mark will be gone.

At this point you will be hard pressed to know you are using the free version of Windows 10 Pro.

Charlie

34

That’s interesting Charlie, thanks for posting this. I didn’t know there
was a free version.

I wonder if something changed with Microsoft regarding windows 10.
Recently I needed to update a work computer to Windows 10 from Windows 7.
Since it was well past the free upgrade time period I was prepared to buy a
new license, but decided to install Win10 first without buying a license
first. After installing, to my surprise Windows was activated with a
digital license without me doing anything.

35

@joelshort

Microsoft’s policy on the free upgrade to Windows 10 included the ability to use an existing Windows 7 license with Win 10. If you actually did an in-place upgrade to the PC, the Windows 10 installer saw your registered Win 7 license and honored it for Windows 10.

If you are building a Win 10 PC from scratch to replace a Win 7 PC, you can first use the Win 7 PC to de-activate its license key and then when when building the new Win 10 PC, enter the Win 7 license key and it will honor it.

A situation that can be problematical is when you purchase a Windows 10 license from a legal, on-line vendor, such as Newegg.com, CDW, etc. Sometimes these “OEM” licenses work just fine but sometimes Win 10 will refuse to authenticate it. Microsoft support can help. Use Microsoft’s “Chat” support – not telephone support. Tell the support person your Win 10 license key won’t authenticate. They will take it from there and (eventually) they will get your PC to authenticate. The Chat support was very responsive. I was only “on hold” for about 5 minutes before I was assigned to a tech.

Charlie

PS – if using Chat, be sure you are using the PC that needs to be authenticated.

36

In the year that has passed since I started this thread, the pricing of the Intel NUC has gone down and the performance has gone up. Newegg.com is now selling a NUC bundled with memory, SSD and a Windows license for $369.99:

Intel NUC @ Newegg.com

This is the NUC7PYJH (quad core Pentium), 8 gig RAM, 256 gig SSD and a Windows 10 Pro license. I use a NUC7PYJH in my observatory and it is a great package that runs SGPro, ANSVR and PHD2 quite well. I even run PixInsight on it when I want to do some preliminary evaluations of my subs.

Charlie

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