Question

What are the PC requirements for the uScopeGX?

Answer

The uScope Navigator software is a Windows application that requires one of the following:

• Microsoft® Windows 7 (64-bit),
• Microsoft® Windows 8 or 8.1 (64-bit),
• Microsoft® Windows 10 (64-bit).

In general, the PC used to run the uScope Navigator software must have the following capabilities:

• A High-Speed, Multi-Core Processor like the Intel i5, i7, or i9 families.
• At least 8GB RAM (16GB recommended).
• At least 20GB of available hard-disk space, 100GB or more is recommended depending on your imaging needs.
• A high-performance SSD (Solid State Drive) is highly recommended for image storage.
• 1920×1080 or higher resolution monitor.
• Mouse or other pointing device.
• Several available USB ports.

Note
Single-Core Processors will not adequately run the uScope Navigator software.

Processor Recommendation

We have found that Intel CPUs that are multi-core with hyper-threading work quite well since the software can take advantage of multiple execution threads. We have had good luck with the following CPUs:

• Intel Core i7-4790K
  This processor is a 4 core, 4 GHz CPU with a PassMark score of 11,175. It is a very fast CPU that is great for most applications.
• Intel Core i7-9700K
  This processor is an 8 core, 3.6 GHz CPU with a PassMark score of 17,251. It is an extremely fast CPU that is best suited for very large scans with lots of filtering and/or EDF image processing. The additional cores really improve image processing performance.

Refer to https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html for CPU benchmark comparisons.

Video Card Recommendation

If you wish to use the software with a 4K monitor, we strongly recommend a high-performance video card like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080.

Disk Drive Recommendation

Our test computers are outfitted with solid state drives (SSDs) which significantly improve the disk read/write performance.

• We have had very good luck with the Samsung 850 Pro SSD for computers with a SATA interface.
• Higher performance can be achieved with the Samsung 960 PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD that mounts to those motherboards that support an M.2 SSD.

USB PCIe Card Recommendation

If the uScopeGX whole slide scanner does not perform adequately with your PC's USB3 ports, you may wish to consider a third-party USB 2.0 plug-in card. We have had very good luck with the Startech 4-Port PCI Express USB 2.0 Card (part number PEXUSB4DP). This card is available from Amazon.com for a very reasonable price.