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Where can I find these mini PCs? I am trying to find hardware for an upcoming project and I’m considering the Pi but would love to see some alternatives.
by chalsprhebaodu 3y ago
Where can I find these mini PCs? I am trying to find hardware for an upcoming project and I’m considering the Pi but would love to see some alternatives.
- alskdj21 3y agoYou can check some Beelinks or some other Chinese brands over Amazon. Note that I haven't used any of them tho I'm considering getting one.
- zimpenfish 3y agoMain home server/NAS is a Ryzen 7 Beelink with 64GB. Works a treat. Fan is audible when you're hammering the CPU (doing a large backup, unpacking downloaded media, running a Minecraft server with multiple users) but other than that it's not audible from ~5ft away.
- nyadesu 3y agoThis, I've been pretty happy with it as well, it's so much easier to set up as a kubernetes node than a RPi.
- doubled112 3y agoI've been fairly impressed by a couple of Beelinks Mini S12 I purchased a couple of weeks back. Intel N95 CPU, 16 GB RAM, 500GB NVMe. More than enough for checking email. One was immediately wiped and I installed Debian 12. The other was wiped and I installed Windows 10 Pro. Both seemed to just work. Hard to beat for less than $200 CAD.
- dboreham 3y agoI have a few of these that we use to test "low hardware resource" deployment scenarios, running Ubuntu. So far so good.
- tommerjones 3y agoI’ve purchased a few HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Minis (refurbished) for about $125 on Amazon. They even come with Windows 10 if you’re looking for that. They’re a deal considering the Pi’s extra expenses like power, case, storage, etc.
- gmac 3y agoSimilarly, I got a ThinkCentre M73 (8GB/128GB, Win10) on eBay for £125 3 years ago. It's great.
- vladvasiliu 3y agoI love the principle of the mini elitedesks, but some have a terribly annoying fan. It's not firmly attached to the chassis, so it rattles while spinning (and it spins all the time). The heatsink uses a proprietary 3 point attachment, so you can't use a big aftermarket cooler instead (even though it wouldn't fit in the case, I would have accepted the compromise). Not sure about the <=G3 and >=G7, but the G4 and G5 have the issue. The G6 seems to have the fan attached more firmly, but I've never tested one in a quiet room.
- hypercube33 3y agoHp Elitedesk and prodesk are the two 1L available models they have you want to hunt for. Lenovo has M700, M75q (AMD) and a bunch others ranging from thin client to workstation performance. Generally new ones are awesome at about $700 but older ones are absolutely capable for upgrading ram, disk, wifi whatever. there are modules for up to 10g and other things too. Servethehome on YouTube has a bunch of guides.
- wdfx 3y agoSome Dell Optiplex models are also much like this. I have a refurbed one I got for <£200 running services here at home (core i5, 16GB).
- Damogran6 3y agoThere is also a general improvement in code support by sticking with x86. I bought a similar 10 year old i5 based workstation dell and so many little things just work _better_. I didn't realize just how much of my battles were based on hardware architecture issues.
- sagacity 3y agoTopTon is a fairly popular brand on AliExpress for these PCs, they come in nice fanless enclosures, support 2.5gbit ethernet, etc.
- suprjami 3y agoeBay. I've picked up thin clients for $50 which take 16G RAM and M.2 SSD.
- jacquesm 3y agoI'm always on the lookout for the beefier chromeboxes, they're pretty small physically and pack a lot of punch for such a little box. Asus chromebox 3/i7 is my favorite so far.
- jcuenod 3y agoYes! I picked up a 4GB Acer chromebox with a celeron for $20. This is much better value to me than an RPi because I don't have to worry about ARM. Obviously RPi serves a different use case of tinkering with embedded dev, but tons of people are trying to put docker on these things...
- _ugfj 3y agoJust an example https://www.newegg.com/p/2SW-003Z-00008 https://www.newegg.com/p/2SW-003Z-00008 but countless examples on amazon,newegg,aliexpress
- stavros 3y agoI got a 2018 Intel NUC for 100 EUR and love it. It's so damn fast and small, I immediately bought another one in a fit of impulse.
- ja27 3y agoI just stalk eBay's Buy It Now. Got an i7-7700T w/32GB RAM and a 256GB NVMe for $163 shipped+tax. Previously got an i7-6700T with 1 stick of 16GB RAM so it was cheaper to match that for 32GB total. If you can get friendly with local electronics recyclers or auction buyers you might do way better.
- LTL_FTC 3y agoAgreed. Or if one lives near large research universities, they often sell off the equipment they no longer need for a solid deal. Sometimes they do sell computers, servers, monitors and such by the pallet, however, and I’m not sure anyone really needs a cluster that large at home haha
- fullstop 3y agoI use a Qotom q750g5 for my router / firewall with OpenWRT. It is absolutely fantastic, and replaced an aging Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite 3.
- focusedone 3y agoLenovo Thinkcentre Tiny on eBay. The M600 model is about the slowest / cheapest available and you're looking at $60ish, often with an SSD. Unless you need the GPIO or have a pi-specific purpose, used thin clients or tiny PCs make more sense for a home server now IMO.