Looking for PC suggestions

Hi,

I’m currently in the process of looking at getting a dedicated weather computer. At present I use a Lenovo ideapad Z710 but it can be unreliable and suffers frequent HDD problems resulting in blue screen errors. This is not ideal as due to my work pattern it means it can be a whole day before I get the chance to fix it and as result my website can be showing out of date data for the day. Also this laptop is my primary computer so whenever I want to use any CPU / GPU intensive programs I have to shut down WD otherwise it hangs and stops retrieving data from my VP2. Again this is not ideal as it means my website is then out of date until I restart WD. Therefore it would be nice to have a dedicated machine solely for weather purposes and therefore ensuring up to date info is shown online.

Also I’m in the process of moving but the weather station would stay where it is therefore I would like a reliable low power PC capable of running the following programs:

Weather Display (creates multiple files, downloads and creates bloomsky video, uploads the usual files i.e testags, clientraw etc.)
WXSIMATE (run four times a day)
WXSIM (run four times a day)
WXSIM-Lite (forecast run four times a day, Analysis run once a day)
WRET (runs with programs above)
Autolearn (run once a day).

I would continue to do the web admin side of things from my laptop.

Has anyone got any suggestions?

Many Thanks,

Ross

I currently run mine on Gigabyte BRIX which is about 4x4x2 (inches) is size and runs all that you require. I got mine for

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for your reply. I have had a look at the Gigabyte BRIX’s on their website but can’t decide which CPU to choose. I would like a low energy pc but it has to be powerful enough to deal with the demands of the WXSIM software suite. Would it be possible for you to post the specs of your machine?

Many Thanks,

Ross

Mine was a Gigabyte Brix GB-BXBT-1900 2GHz VGA HDMI Barebone from Ebuyer.

Stuart

Hi,

Thanks for that Stuart.

I’m currently torn between getting one with an i3-7100U CPU or spending a bit more for a quad core CPU.

The i3 is a dual core 2.4GHz CPU and am wondering if this would be able to handle the WXSIM software suite.

What OS are you planning to run? IIRC some of the later Intel CPU’s are blocked from running W7.

My Brix handles WD and all the WXSim stuff no problem at all running W7 Home Premium 64-bit. It also runs a program called DSLStats which is a router monitor to upload line stats to a website every minute. I do on the odd occasion use Firefox on it as well if I dont want to turn on the big PC.

Stuart

Hi,

I would probably be looking at running Windows 10.
Also along with the programs mentioned above the PC would be running a program such as RDM+ or Teamviewer to enable remote access to the machine.
Does WXSIM work better on quad core processors or does it not make much difference?

Many Thanks,

Ross

windows 10 runs fine on lower spec pc’s

And the auto updates don’t screw it up?

been OK here for me low spec pc
one thing that can happen though with the auto updates is windows 10 thinks its too smart and loads a different driver for say a serial to usb adaptor
you can override that and select the driver you want

On my current machine I run Windows 10 Pro. The advantage of pro over home is that it gives you access to the Group Policy Editor enabling you to switch off auto restart. Before I disabled it Windows Update would ignore the fact that WD was running and restart regardless meaning I would have to retrieve the missed data and then edit the log file to remove duplicate data.

Good to know, thanks :smiley:

Hi,

I have been looking at the Intel i3 Tall Baby Canyon NUC (BOXNUC7I3BNH) with 4GB DDR4- 2133 RAM, 120GB SSD storage and Win 10 Pro OS. The CPU is a dual core, four thread 2.4 GHz processor.

I just want to confirm if this system will be capable of running WXSIM, WXSIM-Lite or Auto Compare at separate times alongside WD without causing WD to hang.

Many Thanks.

Link: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-7th-gen-barebone-nuc-kit-i3-7100u-ddr4-m2plus25-sata-gbe-wifi-bt-intel-hd-graphics-620-usb-31

Assuming 64 bit Win 10 I would increase the memory (if possible), CPU should be fine.

Should be more than capable. I run that config on a Gigabyte Brix with a 64 bit Celeron and have no problems at all, cost as barebones was pence under