Terryza GK3V

[idaharry]

I have a Terryza GK3V and it has 256MB hard drive and 8GB of RAM. Have used it for a year, it has worked pretty well.
I a looking at a possible upgrade but before I do, I have a few questions:

1) when I open up the hard drive cover on top there appears to be a USB-C connector. Has anyone looked into this? It is not really accessible, it just sits on the motherboard on the side and faces up.

2) next to my power switch there is no port for a micro SD card. I have seen many youtube videos featuring this PC, mostly 128MB units that have this slot. Has anyone looked into a way to add a microSDHC port to a GKV3 that does not have it?

3) after 1 year of use my system is starting to freeze, and it seems to be related to overloading the cpU when I have a lot of tabs open.
Also hot weather affects it. Core-temp shows that I am operating in the 65c to 70 range so the system seems to not be getting to hot it would do damage. If this continues to happen I might wipe out windows and use a less intensive OS like linux on it.

4) the fan comes on quite load, but then goes off, then comes on loud, it cycles too much. Has anyone figured out a way to make the fan run on a more continuous basis? I bet if the fan software were smarter it would know to stay on at a medium speed and not get too loud. I did not see a bios setting that would allow this.


Thanks for your help.

[Gabe]

idaharry,

1. As you saw in the other thread, the connector is for the add on storage carriage used in AK1 type cases.

2. I've never seen any posts on here about adding a slot. I imagine it could be done, but would likely take quite a bit of modding and an adequate knowledge of the circuitry to properly connect it. In the end, it's probably easier to just get a USB card reader, and there are a couple of advantages to the USB reader as well. One is that it tends to be faster than the built in slot. The other is the ability to boot from a card when using a USB card reader, which the built in slot on units that have them doesn't support.

3. I would try a clean install of Windows to see if that helps. However, before doing so it would be a good idea to save your driver folder on a USB flash drive or something similar. The driver folder can be found in C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository. It's the File Repository folder that you want to save, as it contains all of the drivers in the system and can be used after reinstallation to install any drivers that aren't included with Windows itself. The folder tends to be anywhere from about 1.5GB to 2.5GB in size. And, of course, make sure to save any important files too.

There are Windows installation files offered in this forum, but I don't use them personally. I use the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft to create W10 or W11 USB installation media, then use that for the clean install, then the saved driver folder for any drivers still needed. I've done it this way with every system I have from this company, save for my AMR5, which I haven't had for very long. But that's just me.

4. I'm not sure about the fan. Hopefully someone with more knowledge on it can give some helpful advice.

[idaharry]

I know it is a year later but I have an update.

The Terryza is still vulnerable to hot weather so I retired it from my office and I am finding other users for it. I did reinstall Windows, and I have not gotten as many crashes but the Throttling CPU is still an issue so I probably won't be able to use it for Web Browsing in Windows. With limited memory there is a lot of swapping of files and combined with the junk on many web pages the computer heats up processing all the javascript. Then the heat causes the CPU speed to throttle and bring the machine to a crawl.

My eventual solution was to replace Windows on the main M.2 drive with Linux Mint 21. I have to say, this is a great Linux Mint machine driving a 4K monitor, which is actually my Samsung TV. The machine is capable of running Plex on Linux and also host a USB RAID drive to act as shared file storage. Also the machine runs CUPS, which is a print server and that can work with older USB printers that Windows 11 has issues with.

I think that it is risky for me to continue with the original M.2 SATA, so I am simply going to upgrade it to a brand new M.2. Maybe that will help the thermal issues, if the newer M.2 is able to run cooler. The thermal issues are almost certainly caused by the CPU, and Linux doesn't seem to throttle the machine as much. But as the summer heat is arriving I will double check the heat sink on the CPU when I open up the machine to replace the internal drive. By the way here are my specs, generated by the System Info app on Linux Mint:

==========
System: Kernel: 5.15.0-71-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.3.0 Desktop: Cinnamon 5.6.8
CPU: Info: quad core model: Intel Celeron J4125 bits: L1: 224 KiB L2: 4 MiB
Graphics: Device-1: Intel GeminiLake [UHD Graphics 600]
Network: Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver:
Bluetooth: Device-1: Intel Bluetooth wireless interface type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
Drives: ID-1: /dev/sda model: SBe M2 SSD size: 111.79 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s
ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 EVO 500GB size: 465.76 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s
==========

The second hard drive is a Samsung EVO in the 2.5 inch drive bay and I have a clone of Windows running there. Windows is useful to have because I can use Partition Magic 10 to clone a boot drive when I am swapping out the existing boot drive.

For daily use you are better off with a Beelink SER4 or SER5 in my opinion. I have one of these and it is 3 to 4 times faster than the Terryza.
Still the Terryza should be a great media console!

-idaharry

[Gabe]

Linux Mint is a great OS. I use it on a couple of my minis as an optional, secondary OS. It's a LOT less resource hungry than Windows, that's for sure, and it runs perfectly with both systems on which I have it installed. I also have it as a Live USB on a micro SD card in a USB adapter when I need to use Linux with a mini on which it's not already installed.

Unfortunately, my GK3, which is an AK3 on the sticker but is identical to a GK3 of the same time period, uses eMMC storage, which is significantly slower than an m.2 SATA drive. That makes using Linux Mint even more important, as it runs so much better on that eMMC storage than does Windows. I do have Windows 10 Pro on an add on 2.5" drive, which is a 250GB Samsung 840 EVO, and it runs significantly better from that than the eMMC.

Mine gets pretty darn warm as well. I ended up replacing the aluminum shim that's used with a copper one, and I used Arctic MX-4 for thermal paste. It helped bring the temps down about ten degrees or so, but it's still one of the warmest mini PCs I have. I've never had it hit so high that CPU throttling kicked in, but I've seen it hit the high 80s under heavy load when using Windows. I'm not sure what it hits under Linux, as I don't have anything running to monitor it, but I'm sure the temps would be lower than with Windows.

The SER4 and SER5 are a completely different class of mini PC than the J4125 GK3. I've also got a GK3 Pro, and it runs circles around the J4125 GK3/AK3. It's got the N5105, 16GB of RAM and an NVMe drive, though the m.2 drive it came with was SATA. Funny enough, it actually cost less than what I originally paid for the GK3/AK3. It wouldn't compete with either of the Beelinks mentioned, but it's great for an every day PC.