Let’s compare Mini-PC performance with desktops for running Software Defined Radio applications in your radio room.
Last week, I compared performance running two SDR applications on a very low-end Mini-PC versus my existing i5-4670 desktop. Both SmartSDR and SDRconnect ran fine, but CPU utilization was much higher on the Beelink N100 unit.
After reading the specs, I am now comparing CPU performance versus price for ten popular Mini-PC on Amazon, versus a bunch of modest gaming towers I can buy locally. This is shown above, with CPU performance indexed to my old i5 – shown as 1X with the smiley face in the lower left!
What stands out is my ability to get three to five times performance improvement at about half the price. Not to mention the 95% savings in physical space and perhaps 80% savings in power consumption.
When you compare Mini-PC performance, you will find they generally have 8 core CPU the same as most modest gaming computers. On average, I can get a 4X improvement with the Mini-PC even though their clock speeds are lower.
And with the lower clock speeds, I am not sure that you can run several cycle-hungry applications concurrently as you can with the desktops. That could be important for many ham and SWL users.
Compare Mini-PC Performance – CPU, GPU and APU
Now, here’s the question. Is a modest desktop gaming machine, with dedicated CPU and separate GPU better for SDR than a Mini-PC with an APU? An APU, or Accelerated Processing Unit from Ryzen combines CPU and integrated GPU (iGPU) on one chip. This means that the CPU may not have as much performance on heavy number crunching, like we see in digital signal processing.
And, even though Ryzen iGPU provide OpenCL, I have no idea whether they can be engaged for parallel SDR signal processing, like you get with a dedicated GPU in the desktops. Since most of the better Mini-PC use Ryzen chips, I need to check this out.
Even a low-end NVIDIA dedicated GPU will significantly outperform an iGPU, if your software can harness CUDA or OpenCL for improved parallel processing.
Any experience you have would be welcome.
My go-to for this task is used (“refurbished”) Lenovo ThinkCentre M910Q or M910Q Tiny Desktop Computers i.e. https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkCentre-M910Q-3-Monitor-DisplayPort/dp/B08MMQH98H or https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkCentre-M920q-DisplayPort-Bluetooth/dp/B09T5H99RJ. Just $200 or so a pop so right near your N100 Mini PC price point but a much more capable system in terms of CPU, memory bandwidth, and storage bandwidth, with a more-than-adequate graphics subsystem.
Amazon has a great return policy. Test it for a couple weeks, if anything is wrong, send it back. There are so many of these available they will send you a new one upon receipt. The specs vary so do search around if you want more memory, storage space, etc. And if you want a new one, they only go $650-$850 depending on specs.
These PCs have an internal GPU, but it is more than fast enough for SDR work. I run Smart SDR on my 910Q and it is more than fast enough. The frame rate is tiny compared to a video game so a gaming GPU is not needed. Also in the Flex architecture the waterfall is built on the radio not the PC whereas with a video game the PC is constructing the game on the PC polygon by polygon with the GPU doing rendering with appropriate lighting, texturing, anti-aliasing etc , which are much more mathematically complex thus they need a GPU.
In the Flex architecture the radio creates the waterfall and it sends it as a video to the client (PC or phone or tablet) as a video stream. All the client side does is render the video, which is something they are all highly optimized to do. There are a bunch of talks on the net by Steve Hicks, N5AC, on how all this is done. I can dig one up if wanted. I have also run pretty much everyone else’s SDR stack and none of them need the advanced features of a gaming GPU.
Most of the SDR apps don’t bother to list the minimum specs for the PCs needed to run their apps, but when they do, they are incredibly low-end specs. See https://community.flexradio.com/discussion/8025654/recommended-computer-specifications for the actual recommendations and a discussion. It’s more important to buy enough RAM to run Windows and the other SDR apps you want to run than it is to buy a GPU.
I’ve also done a lot of open-source Linux SDR development on another one of these boxes, and they are more than fine for the task. If anything I’d update my PC just to get more processor and memory bandwidth for software development work, but I am more than happy with the 910Q. Given it is so low cost and so powerful I’d rather spend my money on more SDRs!
John, I run several mini-PCs remotely at my Masset DX site. Initially, I purchased new, a couple of Intel NUC mini-PCs. They cost about $1000 Cdn each. About a year ago, I wanted to convert as much of my shack to 12VDC and was able to locate older NUC i5 models that ran on 12VDC. I was able to purchase them at less than $200 each. They now run JaguarPro software with my Perseus SDRs. No issues at all, and they run 24/7.