CF-H2 Any Good ?

Hi All,

I'm currently using a CF-30 mk2 for car diagnostics and wanted to look at something more portable. What's the CF-H2 like (seen the older CF-H1 and it's the ram size that's a bit low on that).

Anyone have any experience of the CF-H2 ?

Also anyone know any good sellers who don't charge the earth to ship to the UK ?

 

CF-H1 sucks,slow and very dim screen. CF-H2 is a core i5 with a brilliant screen and it has USB ports,with an SSD it's pretty darn fast. Hot swappable battery's also. I had one that was all beat up I would literally frisbee it across the room onto a concrete floor as a sales demo ,battery door might pop open but no damage. Might also look at a CF-C1 and I have a Getac V100x core i7 1200 nit screen the size of a CF-19.

 

Thanks for the reply safn. Only ones I can find of the H2's without BIOS passwords are in the USA. But the shipping charges are stupidly high on them. Surprised that after 90 views yours is the only reply.

 

That would be hard to find. I stopped selling overseas because all the shippers have raised there rates so high that it just was not worth it any more.

Well I think why its because safn did a good job explaining the pro's and cons of the H2. I agree with him.

 

Honestly I would just grab a used CF-C1,they are cheap and fast and can be used as a tablet. You should be able to get a decent one for $120-140 US. Shipping to the UK should be in the $70 range.

 

Being in Australia I sympathise about the shipping costs! I often use a freight consolidator/forwarder in Nevada; several companies that they use will ship 2 Toughbooks with batteries together for a reasonable price.

I had a couple of H1s that I wasn't all that impressed with but the H2 I got recently is fast and much more user friendly with USB and a better screen.

 

Maybe it's not too late to reply on this thread but I can also recommend the H2. Mine is upgraded to 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD and 4G LTE. I have the MK1 version.

Some things to note for H2. When I dismantled the unit to upgrade the memory one of the RAM slots is on the other side of the main PCB and I had to remove also the CPU heatsink to make it professionally and not curve the board too much. Once the CPU heatsink was removed I noticed the thermal paste was very dry and cracked so I replaced that also. The unit runs around 23°C cooler now and doesn't throttle under load. Before the CPU temp was high and unit was staying at 800MHz frequency even in medium load.

Another mod that can be easily to achieve is for GPS. If you use a new 4G card with the 3rd antenna connector you can connect an additional antenna to that one and with an AT command run in terminal you can tell the modem to not share the RX antenna port but to use the dedicated one. Since the H2 outer shell is ABS plastic a new antenna can be fitted anywhere and it doesn't get blocked. This way you can have the GPS function with dedicated antenna very cheap.

 

How many hours did it take to get the thermal paste that dry?
Philip

 

I don't know, didn't check the hours but I used the tablet in summer with some Java apps and the CPU was at 80~100% for long periods of time in the docking so maybe that's why it got dry.

 

how long is thermal paste good for ?
it depends on :
quality of paste
ambient temperatures
overall cooling efficiency
cpu/vpu duty cycle

i have seen machines that were used in very similar environments (say , a business office)
a couple of the machines showed signs of the cpu running hot while other machines a few feet away were just fine (some were much older) .
i suppose my personal experience of thermal paste that looks like a dried up mud puddle would be 1 year to 12 years .
getting some of those heat sinks loose took some careful prying .

 

Hi,
I 'm in a similar situation as the OP, i have/had a cf-29 to map car ecu (emerald k6) and the screen died so i went for a cf-h2 (ebay).
I d like to upgrade the RAM from 2 to 8gb as i tend to run ecu software, large pdf and various internet stuff while working on the car (the cf 29 used to freeze).
How difficult the swap is?
Do you really need to remove the heatsinks?

Thanks

 

as long as you are in there adding some ram ...
clean and re-goop the heatsinks , cheap insurance .

if it has a spinner drive in it , grab a ssd and clone the hdd .
muuuuch faster .

 

How do you regoop the heatsinks? what material do you need?

Yes, I would consider doing that but cost (approx. £100) and extra 8gb of Ram would cost as much as the device itself.

Do I really need a ssd or is a spinner good enough for the usage (I'm not running Solidwork or NX on this cf-h2)?

 

If you never done this before then I would leave it . You could do more harm

No you don't need it but it will be a lot faster. If I had a choice between ram or ssd I would pick the ssd.

 

Ssd rather than RAM, that s interesting.
So, Ssd instead of spinner makes it faster than an extra 6gb of ram???

If so and if swapping HDs is easier than ram, than it would be a "no brainer"

 

What OS are you running?

Win7 32 bit =4gb is the perfect spot
Win7 64bit =6gb -8gb is what you want

For me, I run 4gb and a SSD in everything I own.
The CF 53 screams with 4gb/SSD and Zorin on it.

 

you can get a ssd at sneezebay ... used ... for around 40 bucks for a 128 gig .

 

Win 7 32bits

 

You want 4gb ram and a SSD

 

Well I fitted a 256Gb SSD and bought both Windows 7 32bit & 64bit recovery discs from Panasonic UK. Awaiting a replacement 64bit disc as first disc kept coming up with a winload.exe error on install.

Tried Win 7 Ultimate 64bit and that works fine. Not got round to upgrading the Ram yet as with only 2Gb installed it wasn't that slow anyway.

 

Update. I'm trying to use the CF-H2 as a vehicle diagnostic PC. But am having trouble setting up the software, what PORT is the side USB known as ?

 

NVM, I'd forgotten to install the FTDI driver ... lol