Jay Doscher's Latest Recovery Kit, the Ultra, Makes Full Desktop Hardware "Mostly Portable"
"Sometimes you need more than a Recovery Kit Nano, more than the Recovery Quick Kit, and even more than the Recovery Kit 2," Doscher says.
Maker and portable computing specialist Jay Doscher has unveiled a new variant on the Recovery Kit disaster-recovery portable setups — this time opting for desktop-class hardware, rather than a Raspberry Pi, to create the Recovery Kit Ultra.
"The series of Recovery Kits started in 2019 for me, with some of my earliest projects going back even earlier. Each Recovery Kit until now has been based on a Raspberry Pi, the little board that has powered so many cyberdecks," Doscher explains. "I had often wondered what a full PC build would like. For many PC users, the Raspberry Pi and Linux in general can be daunting, but the beauty of the general purpose computer is that you can use it for just about anything. The Recovery Kit Ultra is meant to be more than just a computer. It's meant to be a Mostly Portable system that acts as an anchor for a standalone network as well as a full functional PC."
The Recovery Kit Ultra started life as an attempt to squeeze a standard-sized 19" networking rack into a Pelican 1607 Air case — but went further to build what Doscher calls "a very modular, very DIY, and very over-the-top PC." The PC hardware is based on desktop-class parts, including a mini-ITX motherboard and a 16-core 32-thread AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, and a full-size ASUS ROG GeForce RTX 5080 OC graphics card. There's 8TB of solid-state storage, an integrated 2.5-gigabit-Ethernet switch with Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) support, and even a UniFi Cloud Gateway Max wireless access point.
Like earlier Recovery Kits, connectivity is brought out to a ruggedized panel at the front; unlike earlier Recovery Kits, the cooling system includes an all-in-one liquid cooler with 360mm radiator to keep that powerful CPU tamed. Everything is held together with a custom-designed combination of 3D-printed and laser-cut parts. The only thing Doscher hasn't shared: the weight, though his categorization of the device as "mostly portable" suggests something closer to a vintage luggable than previous featherweight Raspberry Pi-powered designs.
More details on the build are available on Doscher's website, with 3D-print and laser-cut files available to paid subscribers.