Cortex PC Recommendations?

[tizwaz]

Morning, my Cortex PC a Win XP that's been sitting in my garage working flawlessly for 8 years popped its power supply last week, I replaced it. Then yesterday the hard drive died... fortunately I had a spare drive!

Reckon it's time to replace it. Please can I have you your recommendations/suggestions on a new PC please? It needs to be small lower power consumption with a RS232 com port, as that's my current connection, and obviously capable of running 24/7

Thank you, Chris

[Gumby]

I am using a Jetway 323 from Mini-ITX: Jetway JBC323 Quad Core with Dual Intel LAN. I am using USB, but it does have a COM port on the front. Running Win 10, been rock solid with almost 0 attention since May. I did prevent Windows from auto-installing updates. Good service from Mini-ITX as well.

[Alexc]

Chris, I decided to build one myself. I used an Asus Intel PRIME H270M-PLUS LGA 1151 mATX Motherboard (now discontinued, but cost £69), chose an i3 processor and 8GB ram, and so I was able to add a decent PSU that should last. I also used an existing SSD that I had, and a HDD as a backup.

It works really well and cost in the region of £300 (I had some bits and pieces). I got a licenced W10 pro from a company providing volume licensing (I presume that's how they do it, but it worked anyway).

The PC runs Cortex and Plex at the same time.

Alex

[chris_j_hunter]

when our MiniITX / XP machine gave up the ghost a couple of years ago, we went for a Zoostorm - lots & lots of options, enticing prices, and it has been fine - so worth a look ...

only issues have been, with our particular one, that Win8.1 is prone to running out of memory all of a sudden (ie: memory usage, fine for months, climbs steeply and the machine, after some days, locks up - this happens every six to eight months, or so), and the power supply fan very occasionally starts to drone a little (the power unit seems to be installed upside-down, intentionally, and we might be unlucky in that our particular one has its fan mounted not quite tight-enough on its spindle - the cure being simply to push gently on its case, in-situ, to drive it back home) ...