Logs:
#1 - Initial Commit - 15-Nov-18
#2 - Power Design - 19-Nov-18
Introduction:
This bulldog covers the development of my personal work-station. It’s a project I’ve thought about for a long time and had to get going very spontaneously.
I'll keep the main post as the introduction while maintaining the current state of the project at the bottom.
The current Use Case:
I’m on the last year of my studies, and I’m writing my thesis for Revolve NTNU, a Formula Student team at the Norwegian Institute of Technology and Science. The thesis will (hopefully) cover the development of an embedded system, starting at schematic design and ending at a working programmed board deployed and tested in the race-car.
This mostly involves working with Altium Designer (Windows only) for PCB-design and then Vivado (Windows/Linux) to generate code for said board. Altium does render PCB designs using DirectX although most actions seems to be taxing on CPU and memory while Vivado is used for logic synthesis («compilation» of a HDL such as VHDL or Verilog) which is extremely computationally heavy.
Other than that it’s use cases such as *intense* browsing, writing code (literally text editing) and casual work in Lightroom, Photoshop, SolidWorks and FreeCAD and I need to do all this on at least two 1080p monitors.
The future Use Case:
I figured that my future «professional» use case will somewhat reflect the current considering that it covers what I’m educated in as well as what I want to work with in the future.
I do also plan to game on this thing so it’s important that I can add a graphics card later. I’ve always used a GTXx60-sometimes-Ti, and if I were to add a card it would be one of that calibre.
Finally once 4K movie torrents and super fast internet becomes a thing It should be able to handle that.
I’ll update these use cases if I identify something that is not already covered.
The Catch:
I’ve always been really into the process of building computers and once you’ve done it a few times it becomes easy unless you attach some catch to it. I’ve already been down the custom water-cooling path with hardline copper tubing and in my experience really complex things rarely become very practical.
This time the design should be minimalistic and super small form factor while staying practical.
My Solution:
Simple; an i5 in an ITX board powered by separate AC-DC and DC-DC power supply units.
Current State (19-Nov-18):
#1 - Initial Commit - 15-Nov-18
#2 - Power Design - 19-Nov-18
Introduction:
This bulldog covers the development of my personal work-station. It’s a project I’ve thought about for a long time and had to get going very spontaneously.
I'll keep the main post as the introduction while maintaining the current state of the project at the bottom.
The current Use Case:
I’m on the last year of my studies, and I’m writing my thesis for Revolve NTNU, a Formula Student team at the Norwegian Institute of Technology and Science. The thesis will (hopefully) cover the development of an embedded system, starting at schematic design and ending at a working programmed board deployed and tested in the race-car.
This mostly involves working with Altium Designer (Windows only) for PCB-design and then Vivado (Windows/Linux) to generate code for said board. Altium does render PCB designs using DirectX although most actions seems to be taxing on CPU and memory while Vivado is used for logic synthesis («compilation» of a HDL such as VHDL or Verilog) which is extremely computationally heavy.
Other than that it’s use cases such as *intense* browsing, writing code (literally text editing) and casual work in Lightroom, Photoshop, SolidWorks and FreeCAD and I need to do all this on at least two 1080p monitors.
The future Use Case:
I figured that my future «professional» use case will somewhat reflect the current considering that it covers what I’m educated in as well as what I want to work with in the future.
I do also plan to game on this thing so it’s important that I can add a graphics card later. I’ve always used a GTXx60-sometimes-Ti, and if I were to add a card it would be one of that calibre.
Finally once 4K movie torrents and super fast internet becomes a thing It should be able to handle that.
I’ll update these use cases if I identify something that is not already covered.
The Catch:
I’ve always been really into the process of building computers and once you’ve done it a few times it becomes easy unless you attach some catch to it. I’ve already been down the custom water-cooling path with hardline copper tubing and in my experience really complex things rarely become very practical.
This time the design should be minimalistic and super small form factor while staying practical.
My Solution:
Simple; an i5 in an ITX board powered by separate AC-DC and DC-DC power supply units.
Current State (19-Nov-18):
- CPU: i5-8400
- MB: Gigabyte B360N WIFI
- RAM: 2x HyperX 8GB 2666MHz DDR4.
- POWER: KMPKT Dynamo Mini + Mean Well UHP-200R-24.
- COOLING: Noctua NH-L9i + cold Norwegian mountain air.
- CASE: Wood + 4 screws.
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