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I would remove the word "inexpensive". Many alternatives cost less. I know people buy Intel for brand, quality and warranty but definitely not price.
by o1y32 3y ago
I would remove the word "inexpensive". Many alternatives cost less. I know people buy Intel for brand, quality and warranty but definitely not price.
- lostlogin 3y agoI bought for price - a max mini would have been better but ludicrously expensive.
- senttoschool 3y agoI think the poster above you meant other mini PCs by non-Apple manufacturers.
- SSLy 3y agoWhat would be some of the alternatives? I don't even need a gpu. It will be a home server.
- unlimitive 3y agoTuring pi 2
- fomine3 3y agofor who accept used PCs: https://www.servethehome.com/tag/tinyminimicro/ https://www.servethehome.com/tag/tinyminimicro/ for who accept Chinese brands (and suspicious Windows license): Beelink, Minisforum, etc the rest: ECS Liva or ASRock DeskMini?
- minimaul 3y agoI’m a big fan of the ASRock deskminis for low power servers - dual 2.5” SATA bays, some have dual NVMe too. Very nice little platforms with low power draw, and low noise! I’ve got one of the DeskMini X300 on my desk atm with a 5750GE in it - 8c16t of Zen3 in 35W. It’s competitive with M1 Pro for performance and power draw.
- alias_neo 3y agoWe've used both NUC and Gigabyte BRIX at work and the BRIX are far more capable per $ compared to the NUC. Intel NUC is the BMW of mini PCs, certainly not "inexpensive" compared to the alternatives, even if we ignore the off-brand stuff.
- Arnt 3y agoI found NUC+monitor+mounting inexpensive compared to the alternatives about a decade ago. The NUC could be mounted on the back of the monitor, which made mounting cheap and simple. Two cables from the ceiling, one device fixed to the wall, done.
- alias_neo 3y agoWe use them as servers to be honest, so we've never had to worry about additional hardware. We deploy infrastructure on them as portable machines to take to conferences/demos etc which previously was done using in-house built ATX computers. NUC and their ilk were a game changer and I'm glad to see a way for them to continue.
- lhl 3y agoI'd suggest checking out ServeTheHome, which has been reviewing tons of mini PCs or CNX Software or Liliputing which cover all the SBCs and minipcs that get announced/launched. There are way too many options to list and it largely depends on your exact needs. Personally, I bought a cheap fanless Chinese (Topton) router (N5105, 4xi225v3) system from AliExpress running OPNsense that's worked flawlessly for the past year or so, but I'd recommend ordering your minipcs through a vendor where you can easily return it (like Amazon) if it's DOA or otherwise doesn't meet your expectations. I'd also skip the small Chinese vendors if warranty support is something you need. Go with a manufacturer that has a local office/support. Also, depending on what you want your server for, if you want ECC, your minipc options will be extremely limited (a couple Xeon options when I looked). Personally, I went with an desktop Ryzen + ASRock Rack mini-ITX board in a slim case that was still pretty small since I wanted ECC for ZFS.
- tracker1 3y agoRunning one of those same routers myself, been great. Setting up a friend with a topton N305 box that will host proxmox, about half resources going to OPNSense for routing, while also running pihole and wireguard... it may also share a usb connected HD for file sharing if/until he gets a separate nas. I do wish there were one of them that included even two 3.5" drive bays so it can run as a forbidden home server doing all the things.
- viraptor 3y agoUsed NUC, optiplex or others from eBay. If you need just "a" server for home, look for one of those small PCs on the used market. They often appear at very low prices after some company refreshes their office desktops. Replace the storage with something decent and you've got a perfect server.
- UnixSchizoid 3y agoI’ve gotten used Lenovo ThinkCenters for $30 on eBay. Sure they’re used and have a 3rd generation i3, but it’s the best budget home server option out there! They can easily replace whatever done on a pi and even more.
- kingrazor 3y agoYep ThinkCentres, Optiplexes, and Elite Desks go for pennies on eBay.
- UnixSchizoid 3y agoGot to love used office equipment! I’m a big Optiplex fan and I use one as my daily personal pc for everything. I use ThinkCenters for most of my Homelab due to the fact that I’ve found them the cheapest, but I use Optiplexs when I need something stronger. But I’ve never used an Elite Desk in a homelab, how do they compare to Optiplexs and ThinkCenters?
- kingrazor 3y agoI've never been a big fan of HP, but they seem to be roughly equivalent to the Optiplexes. The lab I used to work in had dozens of them and they seemed to run just fine without complaints.
- UnixSchizoid 3y agoThat’s good to know, I guess that the shitty HP build quality only applies to consumer intended products. Just another example of why refurbished or used enterprise equipment is the way to go.Thanks!
- tracker1 3y agoDepends on your needs, I've been using a Minisforum HX90 for a couple years now. AMD 5900HX, 32gb ram, 2tb nvme drive. Runs great, relatively low power in standby.
- dacryn 3y agoat those form factors, they were quite price competitive. Yes many alternatives cost less, but if you want to tape them to the back of a TV that generates heat and has to be turned on 24/7 to display advertisements, video,..., they were cheapest by far. Or in meeting rooms to display zoom/teams, ... A raspberry pi just doesn't handle those scenario's
- tracker1 3y agoAn RPi actually can handle those scenarios in many usecases. A Chromecast devices with a server feed can as well.
- merlyn 3y agoI've found in the long term, it can not. In the short term, yes it does work. Perhaps my failure rate is just high, but micro-mini systems for that use case were much more reliable for me over long time frames.
- tracker1 3y agoI've fount the weakest link is usually the microsd cards... I've tended towards usb drives, but ymmv of course. I also switched to intel mini pcs, that offer a lot more when the gouging was happening over covid.
- thrashh 3y agoBut not as reliably. Especially the Chromecast. Paying extra for reliability is absolutely worth it.
- phpisthebest 3y agoI bought it for Price The Intel NUC Celeron systems could not be met for price if you also needed Windows. To beat the NUC Celeron on price you had to drop to ARM and use Linux but if the software you needed to run only supported Windows that was not an option. the Celeron NUC's where GREAT for Line of Business use cases where the computer was running a Screen, or Single windows Application
- mikecoles 3y agoNeeding that much horsepower for a screen or single application is a sign that anything requiring Windows should be automatically disqualified.
- tonyarkles 3y agoI used to feel the same way about kiosks, POS terminals, etc. but… if you have an organization whose bread & butter is C# desktop apps and Windows development and they’re looking for, say, qty 10 units, you’ll have a really hard time justifying the training and NRE costs to do anything but Windows. I 100% agree that it’s not the technically optimal solution. But don’t discount the idea that, given an existing set of people and skills, it can definitely be the local optima organizationally.
- faeriechangling 3y agoYup, exactly this. I tried deploying such system on low powered ARM systems that could technically do it. It was a nightmare from a support and compatibility standpoint. Also the vendor would support the hardware for significantly less time than Intel would support their NUCs. The maybe dozen NUC's I needed were not a very substantial hardware cost. You bought a Celeron NUC and they just worked even if you didn't have the most experienced staff supporting them or the best software running on them. If you're going to be deploying a thousand such systems, sure, of course you shouldn't use NUCs.
- tonyarkles 3y ago