Great Little PC!! HAS M.2 2242 SLOT TOO!!

[John J Scarrott]

I bought this to remotely control my Telescope and Astrophotography Camera, Motorised Focuser, Guide Camera, etc.

This PC has the Celeron J4105 which is a step up from their other PC's which have a J3455 CPU. It also has more RAM, as the others have 4GB. And it has the biggest eMMC hard drive at 120GB.

You can see from the attached pictures that I have added an M.2 2242 nVME SSD (no, it's not SATA, it's PCI-E nVME!). As I could see that other product from this manufacturer had M.2 slots, but this product doesn't list it, so I took it apart to check and found it had the slot. I then looked for a suitable M.2 2242 SSD, and found the Sabrent Rocket Nano (pictured!), bought it, installed it, and it works fine!

You'll see two-speed test pictures, the slower one is the 120GB eMMC drive, which is actually quite fast compared to a traditional hard drive. The picture with the faster speeds is the Sabrent Rocket, which gives much faster times, which I will need for capturing the images from my telescope camera.

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To install the M.2 SSD, undo the screw restricting the lid release button. Flip the lid release button and remove the lid. Turn the case over and peel off the rubber feet. Put a small crosshead screwdriver into the holes where the feet were, and remove the 4 screws. Turn the case back over and remove the gold surround. Undo the 4 screws retaining the circuit board. Turn the case over and allow the circuit board to fall into your hand, being very careful as there are wires connected to other parts in the case and need to be left attached. Lay the circuit board down with the case standing up, as per my pictures. Remove the M'2 screw, insert the SSD, insert the screw. Then reverse the procedure to put it back together.

I can't say if the M.2 works as a boot device as I really don't think it needs to be set up that way, as the eMMC 120GB is best left with the OS on it, and use the M.2 SSD for data, and if you have big programs to install.

[Gabe]

Which model is that? I have the GK1 with the J4105 CPU, and it's a great unit. Very responsive. I installed a 250GB SSD and have everything running off of that, but I may install an NVME drive one of these days. I also have a T8, and this GK1 rolls right over it.

The only models I can find with the J4105 all come with 4GB/64GB of RAM and eMMC storage, respectively. I see a lot of models with the J3455 CPU that come with 6GB or 8GB of RAM and up to 120GB of storage, though.

It sounds like you got a fantastic unit. I wish mine had 6GB or 8GB of RAM. It would be that much better.

BTW, your speed test pics didn't post for some reason.