Blazing fast acquisition systems optimized for ScanImage
If you need a system that can handle everything ScanImage throws at it, Vidrio has you covered.
Get the hardware designed to maximize ScanImage performance
Have us build one for you. We pre-install and test ScanImage to certify the machine, and we’re happy to customize for your particular application.
Budget
Wallet friendly
- i5-4690K 3.5 GHz CPU
- Z97 or H97 Mini-ITX Motherboard
- 8 GB of RAM
- 500 GB SSD for the operating system
- 1 x 2TB hard drive for data
- 550 watt modular power supply (Cooler Master V550)
- Cooler master Elite 130 - Mini-ITX case
Fast and small, but budget friendly.
Workhorse
Our recommended build
- i7-8700K 3.7 GHz CPU
- Socket 1151 compatible motherboard
- 16 GB of DDR4 RAM
- 500 GB M.2 SSD with Windows 10 (3200 MB/s read, 1800 MB/s write)
- 2 x 2TB hard drives in Raid 0 configuration. (>300MB/sec sequential write)
- Read/write DVD drive
- 650 watt modular power supply
- 4U rack mount case
Uses CPU integrated graphics, and includes a spare PCIe slot for further customization.
Thread Beast
For hard core users
- i9 10 core or greater CPU
- Socket LGA 2066 motherboard
- 128 GB of DDR4 RAM
- 500 GB SSD
- 2 x 2TB hard drives in Raid 0 configuration. (>300MB/sec sequential write)
- Read/write DVD drive
- 850 watt power supply
- GTX 1080 Graphics card
- 4U rack mount case
If you need power then this is for you.
ScanImage will run on a variety of standard off-the-shelf systems, though they will not be optimized for recording data from 2-photon microscopy experiments. For more demanding tasks, such as recording activity from hundreds of small regions of interest in a 3D volume (a new feature offered since ScanImage 2015), having one of these ScanImage-optimized acquisition systems is recommended.
What is Important for a ScanImage Acquisition System?
We get a lot of questions at Vidrio about the best system for running ScanImage. Of course, the best system is ScanImage-optimized and specifically customized for your setup!
We set out to build a machine with the fastest single thread benchmark score.
We’re continuously testing new hardware to see what’s best. As part of that, we do perform a few tests with systems built in-house.
Get the full report by entering your email below:
- ScanImage runs in Matlab, which is single-threaded. ScanImage does not depend on any Matlab toolboxes.
- There are two other threads that run in parallel: One that transfers data from the digitizer, and another that streams data to disk. Thus, a 4 core processor is sufficient for regular acqusition.
- Since most processing occurs in a single thread, the best CPU for the job should have the fastest single-thread performance.
- ScanImage needs fast operating system performance so the operating system should be installed on a SSD. We are now running Windows 10.
- Fast data storage is required to keep up with certain video streaming loads. We recommend streaming only to a SSD or a HDD RAID configuration.
- The required storage capacity also needs to be carefully considered so that you have plenty of room to capture big data files on disk.
- Sufficient RAM: we recommend using at least 8 GB.
