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I don't know that the form factor (mini PC) has much to do with power consumption. If anything, a small case probably obstructs airflow and makes heat dissipati

I don't know that the form factor (mini PC) has much to do with power consumption. If anything, a small case probably obstructs airflow and makes heat dissipation worse. This person had to add another fan. And that's 10W at idle, which is high compared to any laptop or tablet. It's more energy consumption than leaving a LED bulb on 24/7, and that's when it's not even doing anything. Even among desktops, it's more a matter of power supply efficiency (80 Plus or similar cert) and the ability of the CPU itself to throttle down a lot and/or use efficiency cores. If power really is a concern, having a more powerful server (like in a data center) split up among multiple tenants will be far more power-efficient. Serverless funcs or hosted CI/CD pipelines even more so. At home, things like a Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone or old laptop/tablet will use less power. Even a Mac Mini will use less power (about half at idle, much less at max). If you just want a small-chassis desktop, well, this fits the bill. It's gonna use a lot of power as soon as any work ramps up, though. That CPU has a TDP of 65W and maxes out at 150W.

sofixa 2y ago
> I don't know that the form factor (mini PC) has much to do with power consumption. If anything, a small case probably obstructs airflow and makes heat dissipation worse They're usually related - small form factor means suboptimal cooling and not a lot of space for a very powerful power supply, which means you won't put a Threadripper inside. It's not that you can't put an extremely power efficient setup in an ATX case; it's that usually, a small case means a power efficient setup.
NewJazz 2y ago
Everything you compared either has less processing power (rpi, lightbulb), worse thermals (laptop, tablet), dogshit reparability (Mac mini), or some combination of all three. These things can go up to 64 GB of RAM and 12 TB of storage at probably half the price you'd pay for your soldered down / on-die Mac mini. And what happens when a drive fails, or a memory module fails? Throw out the whole 3k board and start over? Not to mention the pain of getting proxmox or something similar running smooth.
- solardev 2y ago
  Sure. But the title and article are about a "power-efficient VM host", not a powerful general-purpose repairable desktop. This is probably not the best (or worst) way to host a VM using minimal power.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    You didn't suggest a better way (for at home). I explained why. VM hosts need processing power, good thermals, and reparability.
    - solardev 2y ago
      I thought I suggested many? I think it depends on what you're using the VM for. A used laptop or Mac Mini can easily host a dev environment. A hosted cloud CI/CD pipeline is better (power-wise) for compiles. A simple shell environment can be on anything. NAS etc can run on Raspberrys or routers. On the other hand, if you're doing constant 24/7 GPU-intensive training, this thing is going to get loud, hot, and power-hungry, and it will be difficult to find GPUs to fit in there. If you're gaming, GeForce Now is going to be more power-efficient (datacenter cards with shared tenancy) than having your own on hot-standby all the time but most idling. Maybe there is some in-between use case that really calls for a local desktop CPU? But usually I think using a recent laptop CPU would provide sufficient performance with a much lower power consumption. Repairability was not a concern discussed in the article, but yes, it's a good thing to keep in mind if you're DIYing it. I was more concerned about the power usage scenarios.
      - NewJazz 2y ago
        It may be different for Intel, but at least this AMD CPU (actually an APU) is pretty much identical to the equivalent laptop chip, when you restrict power to it (which can be done in UEFI on my older deskmini). And again I'll point out the improved thermals of asrock's deskmini case vs a typical laptop, and now that I have the chance the lower cost!

sofixa 2y ago

> I don't know that the form factor (mini PC) has much to do with power consumption. If anything, a small case probably obstructs airflow and makes heat dissipation worse They're usually related - small form factor means suboptimal cooling and not a lot of space for a very powerful power supply, which means you won't put a Threadripper inside. It's not that you can't put an extremely power efficient setup in an ATX case; it's that usually, a small case means a power efficient setup.

NewJazz 2y ago

Everything you compared either has less processing power (rpi, lightbulb), worse thermals (laptop, tablet), dogshit reparability (Mac mini), or some combination of all three. These things can go up to 64 GB of RAM and 12 TB of storage at probably half the price you'd pay for your soldered down / on-die Mac mini. And what happens when a drive fails, or a memory module fails? Throw out the whole 3k board and start over? Not to mention the pain of getting proxmox or something similar running smooth.

solardev 2y ago
Sure. But the title and article are about a "power-efficient VM host", not a powerful general-purpose repairable desktop. This is probably not the best (or worst) way to host a VM using minimal power.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  You didn't suggest a better way (for at home). I explained why. VM hosts need processing power, good thermals, and reparability.
  - solardev 2y ago
    I thought I suggested many? I think it depends on what you're using the VM for. A used laptop or Mac Mini can easily host a dev environment. A hosted cloud CI/CD pipeline is better (power-wise) for compiles. A simple shell environment can be on anything. NAS etc can run on Raspberrys or routers. On the other hand, if you're doing constant 24/7 GPU-intensive training, this thing is going to get loud, hot, and power-hungry, and it will be difficult to find GPUs to fit in there. If you're gaming, GeForce Now is going to be more power-efficient (datacenter cards with shared tenancy) than having your own on hot-standby all the time but most idling. Maybe there is some in-between use case that really calls for a local desktop CPU? But usually I think using a recent laptop CPU would provide sufficient performance with a much lower power consumption. Repairability was not a concern discussed in the article, but yes, it's a good thing to keep in mind if you're DIYing it. I was more concerned about the power usage scenarios.
    - NewJazz 2y ago
      It may be different for Intel, but at least this AMD CPU (actually an APU) is pretty much identical to the equivalent laptop chip, when you restrict power to it (which can be done in UEFI on my older deskmini). And again I'll point out the improved thermals of asrock's deskmini case vs a typical laptop, and now that I have the chance the lower cost!