GK1 - small and efficient with a few flaws

[silme]

I'd wanted to get a small, very power efficient system powerful enough for a home Minecraft Bedrock server. Lucky for me I saw GK1 ACEPC J4125 / 4GB / 64GB eMMC in Amazon Warehouse deals. It worked *really nicely* for the intended purpose but there are pretty serious flaws that can degrade user experience.

1. Windows 10 gets stuck during initial account setup. I wanted to install Linux server on the system but since it came with Windows 10 I wanted to boot into Windows 10 first and make a backup just in case. I connected to my home network and I think entered my MS account and it went to get Windows updates and that was it - several hours later it was still stuck. I think it was due to the update size and limited eMMC size and installing a fresh copy of Windows would most likely work (or probably initialize it without network) but I didn't explore it to the end. I was going to use it with Linux so it was not too much of an issue for me. There were Amazon reviews from people exchanging and returning the computer exactly for this reason. You might want to post the official workaround somewhere on Amazon.

2. There is no option to disable Secure Boot - I came across it when I tried Monero miner - it needs to change MSR from 0x000001a4 to 0x000000000000000f to disable predictive prefetch but it is unable to do so. Supposedly disabling Secure Boot in BIOS may allow it but there is no option for it in GK1 BIOS. Could you post a BIOS update with more controls available?

3. There are ACPI errors in UBUNTU boot. I'm not sure if they affect anything important but the fix probably needs BIOS update and I'm not sure if it's going to happen. Here are the errors:
[ 20.264127] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Could not resolve symbol [\_SB.PCIO.SBRG.HEC.TSR4], AE_NOT_FOUND (20200528/PSARGS-330)
[ 20.264381] ACPI Error: Aborting method \_SB.SEN4._TMP due to previous error (AE_NOT_FOUND (20200528/psparse-529)
[ 43.092394] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Could not resolve symbol [\_SB.PCIO.SBRG.HEC.TSR4], AE_NOT_FOUND (20200528/PSARGS-330)
[ 43.092507] ACPI Error: Aborting method \_SB.SEN4._TMP due to previous error (AE_NOT_FOUND (20200528/psparse-529)

[admin]

Hello, we recommend that you install the latest 2004 version of the system, and we have integrated all drivers for you. This is the download link:
How to reinstall the system:
If you encounter PIN code problems during system boot, please refer to this video:

[silme]

Thank you! I'm running Ubuntu Server on it but if I need to go back to Windows I'll follow your advise.

Any chance there will be a BIOS with secureboot options?
Do you have Linux support? WiFi is not recognized in Ubuntu out of the box. I'm ok with wired connection so I didn't spend any time researching it but if someone in AcePC has already explore it I'd like to know.

[Gabe]

Do you have Linux support? WiFi is not recognized in Ubuntu out of the box. I'm ok with wired connection so I didn't spend any time researching it but if someone in AcePC has already explore it I'd like to know.

Though support for Linux distros on an ACEPC is pretty much limited to what you might find on this forum, they did create Ubuntu installation media for various models, including the GK1. You can get Ubuntu 16.04-Desktop 64 bit for the GK1 here...