GMKtec, Beelink, ASUS, ACEMAGIC, HP, anyone running mini pc's as more than a NAS server? What Mini PC brand you guys recommend for actual use as an http/streaming server with ubuntu? Any i7-i9 mini pc's?
>>106716882reddit e-wastejust build a micro atx
I paid like $150 I think for a GMKtec one with N150. It was fine for what I needed. Handled a 2k monitor at 120hz during regular desktop browsing, youtube playback etc. Light gaming (in particular MTG Arena which is terribly optimized anyway) required going to 720p low/med to get 60hz. Or just run it on 800x600 medium to get to like 90fps.My only hickup was the USB-C port could only be used with a proprietary power input that wasn't USB-PD. I will probably buy another if I can find one with more USB-C ports and "real" USB power input.>>106716898You can make an argument for ITX, but ATX is definitely obsolete at this point.
>>106716882- asus pn51 as a mini server / nas mostly running dockers- OG intel nuc i3 5thgen running home assistant. I fear it will die soon but it keeps on working
>>106716882yes
>>106716882>buy minipc with n100>set up proxmox>throw in a bunch of services on it>don't think about it any furtherIt's good enough for just about every reasonable usage (live av1 recoding isn't reasonable). Brand doesn't really matter.
>>106716898a micro what?
which one would be good if I just wanted an emulation station (for older games, ps3 at most)? or does it not matter
>>106716882I was daily driving DeskMini X300 until not too long ago
>>106717030>but ATX is definitely obsolete at this point.Maybe if you're requirements are super low or you have an insane amount of trust in the manufacturer/brand.
i just use steam decks
>>106716882i run a rpi3b for a seedbox, NAS and webserver(for local services). i'm putting coyparty on it this afternoon.it does everything, uses no power, and cost 15 bucks on ebay.
>>106719809oh my DNS + main docker bootloader is a 40 dollar used thinkcentre 910q i got on ebay.
>>106716882Tiny mini micros are nice but really they are a hack because the PSU is often nearly the same size as the computer. So really it takes two objects of approximate equal size for whatever performance you're getting. The photo of the tiny pc doesn't show the enormous wall wart. >>106716898this>>106719809torrenting is horrible on a pi 3
These have built in malware from China in the BIOS that you can't remove
>>106720726>torrenting is horrible on a pi 3works for. i don't consume goyslop jewish media though.
>>106716882>GMKtec, Beelink, ASUS, ACEMAGIC, HP, anyone running mini pc's as more than a NAS serverThey are pretty bad for NAS stuff as they have at best 1 sata connection, you can build a small pc for the same price. If storage isn't needed and it's just about compute they're fine
>>106716882>>106719104Using an AWOW AK10 (N100) for a Batocera Emulation Station. I'm able to play everything up to Wii. (Tried PS3, but unfortunately it gives up there).https://wiki.batocera.org/usff_nuc_mini_pcs#awow_mini_pcs
>>106721309Eh, I built an old Optiplex for half the price that’s gotta be several times more powerful. It would be pretty cool if it came with a decent warranty, though, I admit.
>>106720871The IO is shit and there is so little cpu power. Here in the JEWSA we have to use a vpn when pirating anything. >>106716882>>106721309Get one with an N305 or better.
>>106721569i live in jewsa and use spectrum. i pirate all the time. they send me notices once a month but have never done anything in the last 10 years.
>>106716882>use as an http/streaming server with ubuntu? Any i7-i9 mini pc's?system76 makes their Meerkat minis with i3,i5,or i7 options, and you can get it with ubuntu pre-installed. They used to be just rebadged Intel NUCs, but I don't know if they're rebadging another manufacturer now or not. They're quite a bit more expensive than most of the mini's you mentioned, though.
Buying new mini pcs is usually retarded when you can go on ebay and buy 8th gen intel office shitboxes for sub 100 dollars. Unless of course you need more modern feature sets for something, but you generally don't. Yeah the new stuff uses less power. So? For the price of many of these micro pcs, it'll take a literal decade of continuous use before you break even on that. Plus, the office shitboxes typically have room for a random drive or two and/or a small pcie card.The main reasons I can see to buy the latest things are>Need AV1 video encoding (which is also solved by throwing the cheapest ARC gpu in)>built in 2.5G networking. Admittedly a valid case, but 10Gb nics are dirt cheap on ebay (as long as you avoid the counterfeits).>Higher memory capacity.... why the fuck you need 96 gigs of ram in a system with an n305 is beyond me, but you are going to be limited to 2x32GB in 90% of those office boxes.The n305 has similar performance to a 7700T in a lot of cases, which is admittedly pretty impressive considering the retarded low power budget it has, but most n305 systems will set you back several hundred. You can find 7700T systems on ebay for a fraction of the price. N100/N200 systems have considerably less compute power than that. If you don't need it, you don't need it, but you are still paying more for one of these new systems than you would with a more powerful old system. Also note that an n305 isn't the latest and greatest and doesn't have AV1 video encoding support, so you aren't even getting that. Most micro systems with latest processors are still well over 500 dollars.>b-but old stuff is old and is more likely to breakI trust an office shitbox from dell far more than I trust some random chinesium thing with a brandless fan. Everything will break eventually, but the enterprise stuff is built to be left on and covered in dust because that's far from uncommon, and they don't want to be swapping machines out every 3rd Tuesday with a 5 year warranty.
>>106716882I have two NUCs, one with an i7 8th gen (4c8t), and one with an i7 10th gen (6c12t). I use the 8th gen one as my main PC and the 10th gen one to do any long running computation that I don't want to slow down my main PC with such as encoding a long video or running LLMs/other ai shit
>>106723186Forgot to mention, I use the 8th gen one as my main because it has a significantly better iGPU. I think it's actually the most powerful iGPU from Intel until 11th or 12th gen. I can play most non-AAA games on it no issues.
>>106723186meh, if you want an actual desktop those things suck. get a proper mini itx build or mac mini m4 which btfo's everything else available and costs like $500mini PCs are perfect for wagieslaves that don't need much in the way of performance and for home servers that run all day
>>106716882>Any i7-i9 mini pc's?>intel for mini PCsNot too bright are you?
>>106716882I use this to run a small backup NAS with jellyfin and everything for when power goes out.
>>106723247incel tends to be a better deal for mini PCs unless you include macs or modern, high end AMD like the muh ai ryzen 395 lgbtbbq+++ edition or however it's called (but those are like $1500+)
>>106716882all of those are trash chinese garbage which will never get BIOS updatesget a Radxa X4 or an Odroid H4-series. either that or a mac mini m4, none of these other mini PCs are worth a shit.
anybody use MeLE stuff? This new N150 looks cool, the heatsink is actually some kind of plastic which is wild and it uses a PD input for power instead of those shitty DC adapters.
>>106716882I just have a shitty N100 Alder lake running my network monitoring and password vault.
>>106723261AMD does low voltage chips better was my point.
>>106723313>AMD does low voltage chips betterhuh? I always thought that AMD is shit at idle / low voltageit's only their high performance chips that gain an edge and the higher you go the bigger the gap between housefire intel 14900 and whatever amd has now that runs on like 125W
>>106723297>the heatsink is actually some kind of plastic which is wildthat sounds immensely retarded, plastic isn't even remotely as good at transferring temperatures as metal>it uses a PD input for power instead of those shitty DC adapters.I wonder why it isn't more common
>>106723282>which will never get BIOS updatesoh no, not the bios updates!
>>106723313they don't though, even alder lake chips are betterintel hasn't released the U-series chips for 14th gen though because of the whole rust issue. their yields are dogshit. I was hoping to have a U300-based machine by now
>>106723350bios updates are way more important on mini PCs than on your normal desktophalf the issues you're likely to run into on a mini PC end up fixed by bios updates due to how tightly coupled everything is
>>106723340its a thermally-conductive plastic so the whole unit is formed from one piece around the board and I imagine a bracket. it's cheaper than aluminum, they're apparently confident enough in the thermal performance of the plastic to set PL1 at 10wi'm going to get one if it goes on sale and benchmark it
>>106723282>Radxa X4hardly a beacon of manufacturer support, they release three new options for wildly different purposes every month while the old ones languishwould be a great product line if they trimmed down the releases by 75%
>>106716882Beelink for me. My AMD chiplet can run cyberpunk on 720p.
>>106723382the fragmentation is only on the ARM side, they've updated the X4 alone multiple times and fixed a bunch of stuffyour point stands for any of their ARM computers, I sold my Pi 5B. anything ARM I recommend the Libre Computer stuff because at least you can get UEFI images to work with them and they commit to upstream their shit.
>>106716882I bought a MS-A2 for mining. if it don't work out I might just buy a gpu dock and see and turn it into a gaming rig. If it had a built in PSU it'd be perfect but alas. Overall I do like the form factor.
HP ProDesk USFF with a 6700T, 16gb ramRunning proxmox with a few services like vpn, dns, game server, file host (chibisafe), eventually jellyfinI need storage but since the consensus is to avoid usb drives (and I'm not building a whole other pc), I'll probably end up getting a ugreen NAS.The 2-4 usb drive enclosures don't seem very reliable and I'm otherwise out of options
>>106721683they will shut down your internet. you got lucky i guess. i torrented something a couple weeks ago, half an hour later spectrum noticed me and shut down my internet.
>>106716882I have 2 SSD's hooked up to one of these for my Jellyfin server, so I can stream high res movies and flac music to all of my devices. It's pretty good.
>>106716882very happy with my chinkbox homeserver desu
>>106716882i have a bananapi r3 mini
>>106723760change your router mac and reset your modem. they don't block based on the account for some reason.
>>106726096>for some reasonfor an ISP it's good to be perceived to care about copyright, not to actually care about copyright. You ban somebody for pirating Marvel Sluts XXX 4k webrip and he stops paying monthly fee
>>106716882Mini PCs are a psyop
>>106716882I run two of these. One is for game servers like Minecraft. The other hosts ~15 hobby/personal websites and a couple dozen services like Vaultwarden, local DNS, Headscale, etc., I replaced 3x R420s in my rack with these two little mini servers.
>>106716882i travel for work and after years of using a laptop in the hotel, i now use an older beelink with wireless keyboard and mouse hooked up to tv with hdmi. every laptop i've ever had broke down after a few years, so far this hasn't yet. and since i don't really need it to be portable outside of carrying it in my bag it works well. it can play skyrim tier games no sweat. which is fine, all i mostly use it for is to watch youtube and other streaming. i think the current gen of mini pc's can't quite run ie cyberpunk or fallout 4 at 1080p 60+ fps, but maybe in a couple years they will
>>106722816>Buying new mini pcs is usually retarded when you can go on ebay and buy 8th gen intel office shitboxes for sub 100 dollars.No, nobody wants your full tower power drain bullshit, that's the opposite of these things. Shut the h*ck up, you dum*y.
>>106716882how do people use them as nas-es? how many storage can you realistically shove into these?
I have a 5800g, 32gig ram,and 1TB SDD in a Beelink eqr5 and the coolest part is that doesn't have a power brick. Just plug it in like normal and it's ready to go. It was only $260 on sale when I got it. Little thing is great.
Everything is on sale. Must resist.
>bought a Beelink SER5 MAX Mini PC>AMD Ryzen 7 6800H (8C/16T,up to 4.7GHz)>32GB LPDDR5>1TB M.2 PCIe SSDI can't believe this thing has trouble opening Firefox then load youtube/twitch webpage instantly like my 13900k does. I regret buying it.
I got a Beelink S12 pro back in December during a sale. It's ok for light desktop work or even as an improvised media player, but at the end of the day it's just a crappy N100 celeron.I use it mostly for studying when I want to avoid the distractions in my main PC.
>>106719809curious, what kind of storage do you have attached and through what interface?
>>106726481Do the math. Assume you pay 25 cents/kwh, which is pretty damn high relative to the averages in the US and Canada.Idle power consumption is within a couple of watts on a smaller dell system with a 7700T vs an n305. I tested idle consumption on half a dozen of them and it was 2-4 watts depending on the exact model of dell/lenovo. Loaded is obviously higher on the 7700/7700T system, but any home nas/media/server use for these is going to spend most of its life idling. Lets just call it 5 watts of difference to round up on the idling and account for some degree of periodic loading. With 5 watts of difference it'll take 200 hours to save you a quarter. 800 hours, or more than a month, to save you a dollar. After 5 years you'll have saved about 55 dollars.If you assume the average difference is 20 watts because you're putting it under a lot of load, you'll save about 219 dollars over 5 years. If your electricity is 10 cents and the difference is 20 watts, it's 500 hours to save a dollar. That's about 87 dollars after 5 years.An n305 system costs upwards of 300 dollars with memory. Meanwhile you can find 7700/7700T systems on with 16-32 gigs of ram for under 100 dollars if you don't need to buy one today. Ebay is littered with them. Barebones 1 and 1.5L systems without drives or memory can occasionally be had for under 50 dollars if you aren't in a rush. For that you get a system with a bios that's not some random Chinese hackjob, more raw compute power, some expansion capacity, and you still come out ahead after 5 years even if you buy two of them "just in case" one of them blows up.
>>106727690None of this was tested or measured in any capacity. Imagine typing up all this nonsense to feel like you've won an argument.
I was thinking of getting a mini pc to run OpenBSD and put it between my modem and openwrt AP. Then get a second one for proxmox self-hosting.
>>106727741hundreds of people have measured the idle consumption of various mini pcsThe fucked up thing is that sometimes the old Lenovo/Dell mini PCs are better than generic N100 shitboxes
>>106727848why not do both on one?
>>106727690>within a couple of watts on a smaller dell system with a 7700T vs an n3057700t is 12w idle, 50w load. n305 is ~10w idle, ~25 sustained load>2-4 watts depending on the exact model of dell/lenovoabsolute nonsense. you'll be lucky to get 2W out of the most underpowered raspberry pi, much less anything with a real cpu, storage that isn't an SD card etcI kind of agree with your overall point but your arguments are tarded and wrong
>>106727862Segregating router/firewall seems cleaner and OpenBSD is meant to run on metal. I know a lot of people like to run Opnsense in Proxmox though.
>>106727857>People online!Shut the fuck up, retard, where's my proofs.
>>106727741I run my shitbox dev test cloud cluster on 7 7th and 8th gen dells.I plugged a friends n200 into a killowatt tester. Same thing with another friends N150 mini nas with no drives in it. I plugged my assorted dells into the same tester. Idle load of everything was within 2-4 watts of the small form factor dell shitboxes I have. There was an outlier lenovo that idled at around 35-40 watts, but I didn't use that because it needed some bullshit adapter to plug a pcie card in, and I wanted everything running on 10gbit nics. Even testing power at the wall with my current clamp showed a peak difference of about 4.5 watts at idle. The wireless access points in my house use more energy than the entire cluster does on average.But sure, go ahead and waste 300 dollars so you can larp about how much money you save on electricity.
>>106727857Even worse, many of the mini pcs default to using eco mode on the ethernet ports in linux. This means that you can get random hiccups in performance, which can cause issues if you're trying to use them as a server/nas box. Disabling eco mode often adds another couple of watts to their idle. I'm sure some of the dells, hps, leneovos, or whatever have that on, but I've never personally run into one that did, so when properly configured, the gap gets even smaller.Low power states have been a solved issue for 10 years at this point. What matters is relevant feature sets and how long the machine will be loaded. If you're expecting to have a machine redlined for 10 hours a day, yeah, power efficiency may actually matter. If it's sitting idle outside of doing lightweight activities like running a plex/jellyfin server, it's all more or less the same.>>106727898>absolute nonsense. you'll be lucky to get 2W out of the most underpowered raspberry pi, much less anything with a real cpu, storage that isn't an SD card etcI'm talking differences here, not absolute values. The used office boxes idle at a handful of watts more than the n200/n100/whatever minis I compared them to. I don't recall the exact values offhand, but idle usage was typically in the the 10-15 watt range if memory serves. I want to say the lenovo floated around 37-39, but it's been 2 years since I tested that, so don't quote me on it.
>>106728148there are rumours that some yesteryear clamps do not know very well
>>106716882I wonder why fapple refuses to give the barest support to linux so it works on their hardware. I was setting up a pair of m4 mac minis for my family members (with the idea that it'll be harder for them to fuck everything up than win/linux) and this thing is blazing fucking fast while being hilarious 4W idle and ~35W under max load. I'd totally use one for my home server instead of a dinky N100 if I could get proxmox on it and simply use an external SSD through one of the TB4 ports it has... but lol no linux for you.Oh well, I guess I don't really -need- anything better than N100. Be nice to have it, tho.
>>106721683I had spectrum because it was my only option in the ghetto. My torrent client wasn't bound to my VPN because I'd never had an issue with it's built in kill switch. Shit fucked up for less than 10 seconds not only did they send a copyright email but they disconnected my Internet and wouldn't turn it back on till I called them.Literally got scolded on the phone for ten minutes till they agreed to turn it back on. Luckily my ghetto just got blanketed in fiber and I now get 5x the speed while being 20$ cheaper with a 10 year guarantee.
>>106728370Use the business package with cable providers. No data caps, and while support is still shit, it is better, and they don't care about bittorrent usage.Also, use private trackers if you're going to pirate anything recent.
>>106728414just buy a cheapo vpn if you're so cucked>private trackersfuck that noise I'm loading up on russian crypto stealers from tpb
>>106728367Why don't you use asahi on a Mac mini?
>>106728765asahi only works on m1 and m2 and if I'm paying apple prices I want m4 for the super-low power usage, tiny form factor and av1 hardware encoding/decoding
what’s the smallest one that can output video to my CRT tv? no, I don’t want to use a converter from hdmi to composite
>>106727898>absolute nonsense. you'll be lucky to get 2W out of the most underpowered raspberry pi, much less anything with a real cpu, storage that isn't an SD card etcOdroid H4 idles at 3W with a 2.5G NIC. Performance is around as high as a 4670k, I think.
>>106716882Fuck me I should've bought one of these tiny boys when I had the chance...
>>106720859Citation needed?
>>106720859better the chinks than CIA/Mossad. What's chang gonna do with my terrabytes of midget tranny porn?
>>106718625(it's his pp size)
>>106723340>I wonder why it isn't more commonmoney
>>1067276383 2X3.5 inch chink external USB2.0 bays. each bay in raid1, so 3 volumes total.bandwidth is ass but i'm not streaming 4k midget tranny porn from it. fast enough for an always on seedbox.
>>106723340>>106730492Counterpoint, it's better from a "just works" perspective to have a dedicated power supply.USB-C is variable in not only it's capabilities but quality. Some USB PD supplies don't have very good electrical characteristics such as noise and ripple.They could make it work, it's possible to make a PC work off of a 5V USB-C supply but it would be so power constrained and the device would basically have to be rengineered to be able to operate with 5V even if it's just to show a BIOS screen that you need a better PD supply
>>106727690>Do the math.You can't "do the math" because doing the math assumes that electricity prices stay the same. It was pretty cheap over here in Europe too, until the war started and suddenly using cheap russian gas became a political stigma and we had to start importing LNG from the US via ocean tankers and suddenly electricity prices shot way the fuck up. If it wasn't for that I'd still be running a 80W server + 50W desktop 24/7 (both measured at idle). Instead I'm running a low end matx with igpu + odroid h4, and the the truth is it handles everything I do mostly fine.>>106727898You won't get those figures on a production server because they all rely on ASPM on and fully functional, and the most commonly used server hardware (LSI, NIC, etc) either does not support ASPM or has driver problems on NAS software or is pretty expensive even second hand.for ex. if you want a 10G NIC you can either get a X540 or X550 or X710 but they don't support ASPM plus they eat anywhere from 20W (X540) to 7W (X710, assuming you go fiber only, if you want RJ45 the transceivers add 3W per port). HBAs again use around 10-20W, you'd need to go into junk ASMedia chipsets and they are not as reliable.So with those your machine already uses lots more power, plus lack of ASPM means you'll be idling at 10-20-30W instead of 12W.Even the Odroid H4 can only reach 2W idle if you have ASPM on. If your OS does not support it, it'll idle at 6-7W.
>>106729566What device is that?
i'm going to buy a used mini PC to play old video games nd stream anime from streaming sites :)
>>106732131why can't you do that from the pc you already have
>>106717030>My only hickup was the USB-C port could only be used with a proprietary power input that wasn't USB-PD.That's just you running into different standards of power delivery over USB C, not truly proprietary but operating at a different voltage/amperage.If it's cable of running via USB A to C with you driving the correct V/A then it's not proprietary. You're running into a war of standardisation on a platform with poor standardisation.
>>106723297I am about to buy that model too. Nicer form factor than the tiny beelink boxes. And it’s for a tiny mobile setup which works for me better than a shitty raspberry pi bullshit
>>106716882why are these little shits so expensive? you can find fucking LAPTOPS for similar prices yet at least laptops come with displays
>>106730767It’s a minisforum em780, they came with a 7840u(basically the z1 extreme APU) and with 32gb of ram, sadly they're EOL, love these pocket sized mini pcs.https://youtu.be/iGlkWHwMGVg?si=4EEUAMJhOmxAQmCs
>>106732252Because it needs to be a maid pc
>>106723373>thermally-conductive plastic>5W/mKIf it's the same engineering plastic as their 4C model, that's still ~47x less thermally conductive compared to aluminum and ~80x less thermally conductive compared to copper
Bought this acemagic (5700U) pc for my workplaceOne of our pcs (intel gen 4) in the warehouse died, and I know for a fact that the IT department would have selected some overkill bullshit to replace itIt runs the single program it needs to run flawlessly
I have some intel n150 minipc as a jellyfin server.Another one as an opnsense firewall.Two $50 t740 thin clients as a virtualization hosts. One hp t640 as a frigate server with tpu.I used to have a threadripper workstation and virtualized everything on one machine. Lately I've moved into smaller pc's and separated devices. While the threadripper's "oomph" is now missing, I think these mini pc's require less power. Havent measured, tho
>>106732431I wish they didn't do power bricks.
>>106717030>but ATX is definitely obsolete at this pointit's really useful if you want a lot of pcie slots
>>106716882I'm using a TRIGKEY S5 Mini PC running Win11 as basically my NAS. I have two 18TB HDD's attached to it, one for my active storage the other as a backup drive. I run a robocopy script to perform a daily backup that's executed from task scheduler once every 24 hours.I also have a HP 600 G2 Micro Computer Mini Tower that I use as a dedicated Home Assistant server. I used to run Home Assistant from a Raspberry Pi 3, but the performance was fucking god awful. It runs like a fucking dream on the HP 600.
I love my little mini pcI use it on my tv or mini monitor for dashboard stuff
>>106735126is there a way to install linux on these things? I have a bunch of them but they all came with windows
>>106735565yea im running linux on it pretty surei put arch on it with xfce
