EXPIRED fanless Intel® i3 Kaby Lake mini PC for $74.83

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Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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Any other OS options? Ubuntu 16.04 is not going to cut it.
 

Fritz

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Given the nature of this beast I wouldn't be surprised if the OS was non upgradeable for one reason or another.
 

WANg

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Jun 10, 2018
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Given the nature of this beast I wouldn't be surprised if the OS was non upgradeable for one reason or another.
Well, it's hard to say - the Cisco/Moderro IEC-4650s were EOLed back in mid-2018 with last-support happening in Summer 2022, and I don't see CIsco cross-promoting the 4660 in the recent documentation. That being said, the 4650 documentation is much more extensive than the one for the 4660, and it details the use of SODIMMs and M.2 NVMe (Key M) in the chassis. I don't expect the 4660 to be significantly different. That of course leaves the probable specs in question - and once, Cisco gave us useful insight in their IEC client comparison, namely, i3-5010U in the IEC4650 (not the bottom with the i3-5005U), so if I have to guess what CPU they use, it's probably the i3-7100U or the i3-7130U (more likely the latter), its GPU (UHD620) and its overall size (188x185x48, so roughly 1.6L). All of them sits in the 15 Watt TDP. The 4660 looks potentially competitive versus the Dell Wyse 5070 and the HP t540. Assuming i3-7130U, dual DDR4 SODIMM slots (64GB RAM ceiling), NVMe SSD, quad USB3.0 ports and a decent Wifi/BT card on a M.2 key A+E slot, it can be an interesting little box. I am not sure if it's TPM kosher and Microsoft is being wishy-washy with Kaby Lake for Windows 11 (they want Coffee Lake as a mimmum...?), so you might want to make this a Linux-only machine.

I ordered one just to play with it, and if I don't like it, I can always expense it as a digital signage box for off-site demos.
Let's see what we have...
 
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Markess

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May 19, 2018
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Extended Security Maintenance programs (which Ubuntu 16.04 entered in May) are free to individuals for up to 3 machines.

Commercial use, and any personal use beyond 3 machines, are supposed to be on a subscription basis. Subscriptions (if needed) start at $25 for desktops, and go up to $1500 for all the bells and whistles including 24/7 phone/ticket support.
 

zack$

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Aug 16, 2018
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Nice deal, would have picked up one had this not sold out.

Can't wait to get the usual write-up from @WANg on this aka thin client guru :cool:
 
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Fritz

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Seller just canceled shipment after issuing a tracking number. Haven't heard from him or eBay yet.
 

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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Mine has arrived. It's designed to be tamper proof. Can't get into the BIOS. Can't get past the setup screen. I can open a terminal but there's a SUDO password.

Still hunting for info but there appears to be damn little of it out there. :(
 

WANg

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Just got mine as well. Photos will be up shortly, but here's some facts:

a) It's pretty easy to get into (clue: look for the 2 silver Philips screws front-side on the bottom, and the Torx T8 covering the internal USB bay) - once you get the screws off pull the cover forward until the plastic tabs clear the metal catch.
b) Once you open up, it's 6 Philips screws to lift the top metal cover, the cover is just a heatsink connected via thermal paste to the CPU, and conductive putty connected to the drive underneath.
c) Soldered BGA CPU, i3-7100U (roughly the same CPU thoroughput as the RX427BB, but 15w instead of 45)
d) 2 DDR4 SODIMM slots
e) 1 M.2 Type M slot
f) Intel i217 Gigabit ethernet, no other network devices (the wifi version is called the IEC-4660W)
g) 4w idle consumption off the tap, 14-17w running stress-ng with default hardware. Temperature hovers around 67-70C with no active airflow after 2 hours on stress-ng, so a very competent little passive box - Maybe good as a low duty ESXi 7 test machine.

Was able to swap the 32GB SSD for one of my NVMe 256GB SSDs running Proxmox.
Next would be to test ability to boot SD7 and M.2 SATA.
 
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Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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Just got mine as well. Photos will be up shortly, but here's some facts:

a) It's pretty easy to get into (clue: look for the 2 silver Philips screws front-side on the bottom, and the Torx T9 covering the internal USB bay)
b) Once you open up, it's 6 Philips screws to lift the top metal cover, the cover is just a heatsink connected via thermal paste to the CPU, and conductive putty connected to the NVMe drive underneath.
c) Soldered BGA CPU, i3-7100U (coughly the same CPU thoroughput as the RX427BB, but 15w instead of 45!)
d) 2 DDR4 SODIMM slots
e) 1 M.2 Type M slot
f) Intel i219 Gigabit ethernet, no other network devices (the wifi version is called the IEC-4660W)
g) 4w idle consumption off the tap, 14-15w running stress-ng. Temperature hovers around 70C, so a very competent quiet box. Maybe good as a low duty ESXi 7 test machine.

Was able to swap the 32GB SSD for one of my 256GB SSDs running Proxmox.
Next would be to test ability to boot SD7 and M.2 SATA.
Any idea how to get into the BIOS?
 
Aug 19, 2015
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Any idea how to get into the BIOS?
Default hotkey for bios is F2, I think. Default timeout was set to 0s on mine. I removed the 32GB SATA M.2 straight away and put in another drive. System booted to the Windows troubleshooting menu with an unformatted drive and from there you can trigger a reboot to the bios also. Pretty impressed so far, this looks like a nice little box for my use, I am going to need more memory though.
 
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Aug 19, 2015
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I apologize - the Windows bootloader was present on my replacement drive. I too am having trouble accessing the bios using the F2 key, even after setting the timeout to 3s and enabling both splash screens. Spamming F7 does seem to do the trick and F5 will bring up a boot menu.

Didn't want to boot to SATA M.2 on my first try. Haven't looked at much in the bios yet.