Starnet Hardware Requirements

[Doc817]

Hi, can someone please help, I know my laptop hardware is too old to run starnet, but what I find hard to get info on is what minimum requirements is needed to run it when I'm looking for a second hand laptop. Can anyone help point out a few key specs I should be including in my search?  Its going to be a windows OS I'll be looking for and using the cmd line, Thanks

Edited August 24, 2022 by Cornelius Varley
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[Grant Fribbens]

When looking for a replacement you need to look for the best cpu, the most amount of ram and decent amount of storage space that you can get for your budget rather than the minimum. You may also want to consider the screen as well as this needs to be good but an external monitor could be used. You should be fine with Windows 10 but you might want to check if the second hand laptop can be upgraded to Windows 11 just incase MS decide to no longer support Windows 10 which currently is October 14 2025.

[Pompey Monkey]

The CPU needs to be modern enough to support AVX instructions in the starnet code. 

I think youll be fairly safe with a modernish cpu, but you can check to be sure. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Vector_Extensions

GPU accelleration is reportedly impressive with nvidia's cuda cores, but personally I can't justify the price of a new one just to save 10 minutes every now and again.

More CPU cores, RAM and fast SSDs would give you more bang for the buck, especially for pre-processing the increasingly numerous and large subs that we all seem to be generating with modern CMOS cameras...

Edited August 24, 2022 by Pompey Monkey
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[Doc817]

@Pompey Monkey so a dedicate GPU is not essential then?

[Pompey Monkey]

53 minutes ago, Doc817 said:

@Pompey Monkey so a dedicate GPU is not essential then?

I guess it depends on what software you'll be using. I just assumed PI (apologies if I'm incorrect) and that does not currently* have GPU acceleration built-in. AFAIK, only the Starnet++ script has the GPU acceleration working. This is because it is calls it's own external executable that is independent from PI. 

I don't know if other processing packages support GPU acceleration.

*Apparently it's "in development", but I'm not holding my breath...

[Doc817]

Hi Paul, thanks I'd be running it from cmd prompt or the GUI that's available as I do not have PI.  So like you, Im not worried about having to wait for it to remove stars within minutes.  Just broadens my options for a replacement laptop if its not required.

[Clarkey]

I don't know the minimum to run it, but you definitely don't need a GPU. I have Stanett run on a very basic laptop without issue.

[The Lazy Astronomer]

Any half decent CPU from the last 10 years should support AVX instructions. Before I upgraded my processing PC, I used to run starnet on a 10 year old i5-750 with 4gb RAM and a basic SSD. It wasn't particularly quick (about 5 or so minutes), but it got the job done.

[Doc817]

@The Lazy Astronomer @Clarkey @Pompey Monkey @Grant Fribbens Thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated

Edited August 25, 2022 by Doc817

[Doc817]

Ended up buying a new one from dell as the price was near what older good spec second hand ones are going for, just a wee RAM and SSD upgrade required at some point. Thanks again for the help @The Lazy Astronomer @Clarkey @Pompey Monkey @Grant Fribbens

[Clarkey]

Looks quite good value - more than enough for some image processing too. I would say get a large non-SSD drive and use the SSD supplied as a working area. Then store all the images on a much cheaper disk. Thats what I do and is much cheaper than SSD. Bit more RAM is always good....

[The Lazy Astronomer]

I second what Clarkey said, and is what I do too. In fact, my C:/ drive is the same size as the one above, and I have a much larger (and much cheaper!) regular HDD for file storage. 

[Doc817]

It's got 2 m.2 slots so was just going to put a 1tb in the second one as they're not that expensive and around same price as a good external ssd. Staying clear of hdd as my 2tb has just failed from a small knock