10 ms·

The MiniPC Revolution

193 points by ingve 1y ago

mcny 1y ago
My minisforum mini PC died within two years seemingly our of the blue. Support won't return my emails.
- brk 1y ago
  Mine has been going for about 4 years now, no issues.
- layer8 1y ago
  That’s unfortunately typical for Minisforum. They issue batches of products in a fire-and-forget manner, with hardly any after sales support.
- fckgw 1y ago
  Same issue here. Just no power at all.
  - mcny 1y ago
    Reddit threads suggest MOSFET problems are common among mini PCs. Any ideas? This is especially frustrating because I have an ancient dell optiplex and dell precision with i3-2100 and i3-5xx that still work. I occasionally need to open the box to reseat the ram for whatever reason after a power failure but by an large these machines are over ten years old!
- jauntywundrkind 1y ago
  Minisforum is also one of many mini-pc vendors that basically doesn't release bios updates. They might release a couple early on, to try to get systems stable, but after that don't expect any bios updates. AMD will release plenty of updates, & you'll be stuck on whatever it was your system came with. Different kind of support concern from yours, but also noteworthy. Really unfortunate. I still have an old HP EliteDesk (i5-8600t) that is my one reliable 24/7 system, still runs fine. Also no bios updates, so I guess there's that. Mini-PCs to me started more as a way to buy cast-off business gear, these small affordable small business systems, even cheaper second hand. It's amazing and great seeing this new market rise up to make interesting mini-pc's, and the value is often still pretty good, but it's a very different character from where the trend started.
  - scrlk 1y ago
    I’d be very surprised if your EliteDesk never got any BIOS updates. In my experience, business grade PCs from the major vendors (Dell/HP/Lenovo) usually have a pretty solid software support lifecycle. If it’s an EliteDesk G2 Mini, the last BIOS update was released in May 2024.
    - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
      You're totally right! Small distinction: my unit is smaller than the Mini (a weird in between size), it's the 1-liter-ish DM 35W. I thought it would be moot, because I vaguely remember HP starting to require support contracts for bios updates. But I guess that only applies to HP Enterprise gear? Yuck, what a pox.
  - LeoPanthera 1y ago
    Are there any mini PC vendors that do provide BIOS updates?
    - mrheosuper 1y ago
      Big players like HP, Dell, Lenovo do.
Havoc 1y ago
> So you mean to tell me you’ve been using your torch to take a shit this last week because your light bulbs don’t work without the PC you watch Netflix on? This made me laugh. I’ve currently got a home assistant controlled floor standing light in my bathroom because all the old school switch ones in ceiling are dead and landlord is being well a classic landlord
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
  What does a "dead light" mean in this context? Your landlord isn't changing your bulbs? I've mostly lived in 100+ year old homes with old janky wiring and have never had a light fixture die, just bulbs.
  - giardini 1y ago
    It likely means the OP has poor handyman skills and wisely has chosen not to learn by him/her self due to safety hazard. After all, these circuits are usually ~110 volts and there is almost always an unintended ground nearby (a water or gas pipe, a wet bathtub, etc.).
    - ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
      Learn how to change a lightbulb? Is that a handyman level skill?
      - giardini 1y ago
        Sadly yes, b/c even the simplest things can go wrong quickly. E.g. people sometimes change light bulbs w/o turning off the power. Have you ever experienced a dead (or good, for that matter) bulb coming apart as you twist it out of the socket? Would you trust a naive person to properly handle that situation? With power off(easy case)? With power on(difficult)?
        kjkjadksj 1y ago
        If they can set up a light with home assistant they can screw in a lightbulb. Come on.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
Would benefit from one or two small pictures. I guess MiniPC means like a Mac Mini or an Intel NUC? > You can expect average power draws of 20-50W in usage and 6-12W in idle. > Put that in perspective with high-end machines with hardware concerned with performance and not power draw, that can easily idle at 100W. Have you measured that? I think my full ATX desktop only idles around 30 watts. (With a bunch of apps running ofc) I took out the GPU to reach that, something was wrong with the power saving, feels like bad drivers. That said... I'm not totally disagreeing. I have a mini PC running a couple web and P2P services. I'm trying to unburden my ATX so it can shut down at night to save power and do maintenance. And having more computers would shift me away from my "kitten" habits, so I'd abstract over hardware better.
- loloquwowndueo 1y ago
  A beelink mini pc will draw about 5w when idle (measured with a watt meter the pc was plugged into). It’s smaller than a NUC (I think!) - it’s slightly bigger than a raspberry pi with a case. Not exactly this model but it cost about us $150. https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-eq14-n150?_pos=4&_sid=5fa9ae9bf&_ss=r https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-eq14-n150?_pos=4&_...
- CharlesW 1y ago
  Mac mini power consumption and thermal output (BTU): https://support.apple.com/en-us/103253 https://support.apple.com/en-us/103253
- justincormack 1y ago
  Intel no longer makes NUCs. Asus bought the rights. But there are lots of other form factors. Search for n100 or n150 minipc and brands like topton and cwwk. More router like than the classic nuc.
kccqzy 1y ago
> You can get MiniPCs with 4-6 internal M.2 slots that are great for building a NAS with. Where can I find that? My current Intel NUC has two M.2 slots and a SATA connection. If I were to relax the definition of a MiniPC to include mini ITX then yes I can find these, but given how the author talks about being all-in-one, I doubt the author is talking about mini ITX builds.
- goosedragons 1y ago
  They're pretty rare, but there's some. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/mini-nases-marry-nvme-intels-efficient-chip https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/mini-nases-marry-nvme... You can also get larger ones like the Asus Flashstor that can do 12.
- LeoPanthera 1y ago
  They're all fairly new. "Mini PC NAS" seems to be the magic Google words. One example is the "Beelink ME mini", which has 6 m.2 slots.
  - politelemon 1y ago
    What are people doing with 6 M2 slots?
    - kjkjadksj 1y ago
      Installing 6 m2 drives.
      - geerlingguy 1y ago
        Or three or four for now, and expanding to more later :)
    - BizarroLand 1y ago
      If you keep an eye out you can sometimes find 4tb nvme drives for ~$200, so you could build an eye watering 24tb raid0 array in one of those that would saturate a 25gb nic for less than $1,500. Or make it a 5x1 parity for a smidge of redundancy.
clueless 1y ago
what are some hardware people would recommend (specifically looking for power efficiency)?
- BirdieNZ 1y ago
  Dell/HP/Lenovo all have huge amounts of ex-corporate mini PCs constantly coming onto the second hand market as they reach the end of Windows 10 licensing, or are depreciated out, or mass upgraded. Some popular models to get due to having a full size PCIe slot are the Lenovo M920q, M720q, or P330. They idle at maybe 10-15W with no optimisation attempts, and you can put a 10G network card in for example, or a bunch of M2/nvme SSDs. RAM can be upgraded to at least 64Gb. CPUs can be swapped out, there are 3D printable rack mounts, backplates and so on in abundance.
- seemaze 1y ago
  I've had luck replacing Raspberry Pi's with Dell Wyse 5070's. They're not screamers, but they are relatively recent fanless hardware with low idle power draw and plenty of oomph to push every service I self host.
- klipklop 1y ago
  At the moment a good low power mini PC is anything with an Intel N150.
  - n150_lp 1y ago
    I've been using one for a few months for home video consumption, it works quite well and is quiet.
- shadowpho 1y ago
  N100/n97/n150 are all perfect (about the same perf). 6-10w idle (similar to rasp pi) but 4-10x more perf.
  - Catbert59 1y ago
    Up to n100 you still can cool the passively (see TopTon on Aliexpress). Above that they need a fan.
LeoPanthera 1y ago
Yes indeed, I'm running Proxmox on an Asus NUC Pro... thing. Can't remember the exact name. I initially was recommended a "Minisforum" thing, which I did buy, but it absolutely hated Debian for reasons I don't understand. It would boot, but not reboot, so you'd have to power cycle it every time. Not practical. The Asus also came with its own issues - it only supports one stick of RAM unless you do a BIOS update, so you have to be careful not to put both sticks in until after the update. Slightly crazy.
cdkmoose 1y ago
I have repurposed retired laptops for my tech lab at home. They no longer keep up with the current software bloat for wife and kids usage, but make reasonable linux servers. Currently serving up 3 databases on one, kafka and networking on another and services/applications on a third. They take up very little space under my desk.
- j45 1y ago
  A good way to keep the laptops operating as well. It reminds me I have a few old macbooks with decent specs that should be at least running.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  Just for curious, why would you need 3 databases ?
ibaikov 1y ago
I agree and already got two minipcs I selfhost a lot of stuff now. I just now realized it is basically the future Gabe Newell predicted and wanted to make with Steam Machines [1], but he was wrong by targeting gamers and a little too early (perhaps?). Maybe they will succeed precisely because of this revolution. I got soooo tired setting up a gaming system for parties on my projector. There are so many various problems and tweaks, gamepads disconnecting if you put a hand between the gamepad and the pc/playstation etc. BSODs on windows, driver problems and stupid obscure things varying from pc to pc. I want plug and play, but consoles have their own problems and limitations. I am too old to debug this stuff to play a game for so little time, I would rather not. I didn't really believe in steam machines at the time, but now I sort of do, especially with game streaming and local LLMs that might be hosted there now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer)
- wishfish 1y ago
  Looks like they'll be trying out the console / small box form factor again. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Valve-Fremont-Upcoming-console-spotted-on-Geekbench-with-last-gen-AMD-hardware.1091967.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Valve-Fremont-Upcoming-console... I'm glad they are. There's probably a sizeable market for a console that runs PC games smoothly at 1080. And could double as a PC. If they get it to the size of an XBox Series S or smaller, I would probably get one.
  - ibaikov 1y ago
    Wow that's cool, Gabe is an underrated CEO. Thanks for posting this since I do not follow anything gaming anymore. I hope they'll fix their rumored team wars inside the company.
  - slipperydippery 1y ago
    That's a dream come true... provided they fix multi-accounts and game visibility/accessibility in the Steam UI. I already have a Steam Deck that I can't let my kids touch, which is stupid. I can't hook something like this up in a shared space of any kind without improved parental controls, including ability to toggle visibility of game library entries, and (ideally, but not strictly necessary) the ability to say "do not show this user's entire library to anyone else on this machine, or on the network, nobody with a different login"
Normal_gaussian 1y ago
I have a homelab which is a zimaboard, a dumb netgear switch, and six mini-pc's (5560U/16GB/500GB). The zimaboard runs pfsense & an nginx reverse proxy, then all six of the mini-pcs run proxmox. 4 mini-pcs run k8s clusters (talos) and the other two run home services and selected one-offs (home-assistant, plex, bookstack, build-tools, gitea, origin servers for a subset of projects). It was a lot easier to set up than I had expected. Its was still a massive PITA though. I got what I wanted out of it work-wise, and its a nice little novelty. I've been thinking about ditching most of it for a while; I like the idea in the article about breaking it up - move one under the TV, one into the office, one under the stairs, and the remaining 3 + zimaboard I'm tempted to sell. I'd keep running proxmox on them, but I wouldn't link them up. The key thing that needs to happen for this to make sense is using something like cloudflare to route domains. The part I never sorted properly was storage. It has 3TB of storage, but getting that storage into k8s for proper dynamic allocation without giving random nodes CPU perf issues was a too-long-for-one-session task which meant it never got finished. I was tempted to add a NAS, but most NAS's are horrid.
- D13Fd 1y ago
  This does sound like a massive PITA. what is the point of it? What are you using it for?
  - usagisushi 1y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Proxmox/comments/s92fk7/my_wife_is_pregnant_and_goes_to_bed_early_i_stay/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Proxmox/comments/s92fk7/my_wife_is_... A man can turn the means into the purpose.
    - Normal_gaussian 1y ago
      yeah that is exactly what came after the work use case
  - Normal_gaussian 1y ago
    Initially I needed a lab to practice deploying & upgrading & disrupting on-prem talos linux for k8s, and design benchmarks around it. So 4 machines does that. The zimaboard in front with pfsense (which is a PITA by itself) and nginx is a good way to make it pick-up-and move (ie. internal networking config). For <£2k the set up is very cheap for what is being tested. It meant I didn't have to go and sit on the other side of a security checkpoint for most of the work. It was cool to keep around as its trivial to make the lab guests unable to see my home network and vice-versa. Now I often have the 4 k8s hosts off. But use them maybe once a month.
LarMachinarum 1y ago
having had quite a bunch of MiniPCs, mostly from reputable brands (Intel NUC series back when Intel had those, then Gigabyte Brix series, then some cheapo china ones), I have moved away from those, because every single one of them (independently of the brand) ended up dying spuriously not long after warranty end and in any case far sooner than any µATX desktop would (in fact I've very rarely had any of the latter die; they usually live far beyond their phase out / replacement) Even without wanting to attribute that to any malicious planned obsolescence, my impression is that the very small size of mini PCs makes it almost impossible for the manufacturer to ensure proper thermal management for keeping all components constantly at a temperature low enough for device longevity.
- glitchc 1y ago
  Yeah a Mac Mini seems to be the only one that can go the distance.
- CharlesW 1y ago
  My 2008 Mac mini is still running, so it can be done. I'm shocked that Intel NUCs weren't more reliable for you.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    Only one of my rpis ever broke, the 1st one I ever bought.
  - sys_64738 1y ago
    I had one NUC fail due to CPU failure. Intel RMA'd it without any issues.
- al_borland 1y ago
  I bought a cheap Beelink mini pc to tinker around with. It didn't take long before something went wrong. It still technically works, but I can't simply reboot it anymore. I have to unplug the power, let it sit for 10-20 seconds, plug it back in and then boot. It's too annoying, so it's basically trash at this point. I tried a new PS, but that didn't help. I assume there is a bad capacitor in there or something. I've had great luck with Mac minis over the years. I've had many of them. I'll probably go that route in the future if needed. I know there are better quality x86 options out there, but the prices go up fast, and I find them hard to justify for what I'd be doing with it. The Mac is really price competitive, which makes it even harder to justify those other options.
kylemaxwell 1y ago
These look like fun technology, but I don’t even know what the use cases would be anymore. I don’t need something to control my lights: I have an actual light switch for that. I don’t have endless terabytes of media that I need to serve within my household, so I just don’t know anymore what I would use this stuff for. Twenty or thirty years ago, I loved having a home lab, but these days I’m just not sure what I would do with it.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- LtWorf 1y ago
  How ableist of you :) The thing is that once lights are computer programmed, you can program them. For example I had made a program to stop playing music after I leave home because I hated to put the music off and then walk out, but I also didn't want the music to play all day while I was out.
  - kylemaxwell 1y ago
    That's not much of a disability-related use case to insult me about.
    - LtWorf 1y ago
      You can't imagine a disabled person might have difficulties to get up and reach a light switch?
      - kylemaxwell 1y ago
        Absolutely, but you suggested that it was because you hate to turn off music and then walk out.
        LtWorf 1y ago
        I did no such thing; that was a non-disabled use case just to show you it has use for everyone.
rkagerer 1y ago
Counterpoints: - Specs are too limited for my needs (storage capacity for backup / home NAS purposes; compute power for local AI work; throughput for local high speed network traffic shaping; etc) - can't upgrade over time (right now I'm averaging 15 years for my boxes, with incremental upgrades like storage, RAID adapters, memory, CPU etc, and I don't need to go through the days-long hassle of reformatting, reinstalling and reconfiguring OS's, services and software). - less supported over time (I can still download driver upgrades in some cases, and find solutions if I run into something unexpected as the vendor is still in business and supporting the legacy model). Full sized machines aren't difficult to build, and I've had great luck with second hand enterprise-targeted parts (eg. for a long time years back, used Mellanox Infiniband cards were dirt cheap on eBay because universities were upgrading to later generations, they were an order of magnitude faster than NIC's available at competing price points at the time, and as a bonus had lower latency). Older Areca RAID cards were great for SATA drives, easily upgradeable to new models, and I still have a few kicking around in production today. Meanwhile neighbors have thrown out piles of ewaste and wasted time after their commodity junk failed unexpectedly.
- vorpalhex 1y ago
  Power consumption matters. You can also run a single storage box and then just pop over network (10gbe, thunderbolt, etc). One big box of spinning rust and tons of cheap compute. Most folks are running proxmox and your OS installs are automated. Use ansible. I like docker swarm on top of a fleet of cattle vms on proxmox.
- lostmsu 1y ago
  I'm thinking of a beefy mini-PC + USB-C 8+ hard drive enclosure. I feel like I rarely upgraded anything except GPU and storage. And GPU's are not needed for a server. Enclosure means easy storage upgrade and I can always reattach the enclosure to another machine quickly. Might even install OS on the enclosure, then the whole setup will survive compute upgrades until the predominant architecture changes.
  - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
JKCalhoun 1y ago
Not a home lab, but I have one mini-PC dedicated to driving a CO2 laser (that needs Windows). Another one dedicated to StepMania (an open DDR clone). They're cheap enough that I don't mind dedicating one (or two) for specific tasks.
mrbluecoat 1y ago
Intel chips dominate this space (with a far better price per GHz ratio than ARM or RISC-V); sad to see their slow downfall. Agree with others that you need active cooling to avoid premature burnout.
- justincormack 1y ago
  Its funny that Intel is the supplier of choice for cheap Chinese mini pcs, how the mighty have fallen.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    While we laugh, Intel keeps getting money, yeah really funny.
burnte 1y ago
I recently did a 180 in my homelab. I had been getting better and better equipment, enterprise level, and I found that it took a lot mroe work and was a lot less fun than doing things the way I used to, which had been maximize small low cost systems. I enjoyed the jank, and going enterprise equipment eliminated jank. So I sold all the high end stuff and went back to miniPCs. My main VM host now is a Lenovo P3 Ultra with lots of RAM and storage, and I have a handful of other Dell Optiplex 3090 machines and a bunch of Raspberry Pis to run everything from. I enjoy it more, it's actually more stable, less expensive, quieter, and cheaper.
- karmakaze 1y ago
  That's a beefy machine, small in dimension not so much in volume or price. Good expansion space though. I'm seeing 2,669 and 3,502 CAD.
  - burnte 1y ago
    True, I got it used for $1400 and added RAM and disk.
RankingMember 1y ago
Anyone have recommendations for a particular mini that'll run Fusion 360 acceptably? I know that's generally an app for "main machine" use but I'm curious if any of these have started straying into the performance zone that might make it doable.
- bdcravens 1y ago
  Funny enough over the weekend Fusion kept crashing on me, and I have an M3 Max with 36GB of RAM. I've run it on a slightly less machine (but not by much - an Elite Book with a Ryzen processor and 32GB of RAM). Honestly I'm kind of afraid to put it on much less.
  - RankingMember 1y ago
    Ha, thanks for the data point. I figured it might still be out of reach. I was running it at what could best be described as "sort-of acceptably" (random crashes for seemingly low-lift functions) on a Ryzen 5 desktop with a GeForce 1060 and 32GB RAM.
bdcravens 1y ago
You can get MFF Dell/HP/Lenovo refurbs from Microcenter (and elsewhere) for 200-300 USD. Typically 9th or 10th gen i5 processors and 16 or 32 GB of RAM. You can fit them into 10 inch racks you can 3d-print (often with matching 3d printed brackets for a proper fit). We've been using them to replace some of our utility servers that we pay way too much for in the cloud (obviously that's a trade off of dollars for being concerned with security/management). We're treating them like cattle, deploying via K3S.
BizarroLand 1y ago
I find the idea of a pc being "cheap and replaceable" a negative. PCs take a lot of resources to make. We shouldn't encourage throw away culture any more than is necessary. Just my opinion, though.
- BirdieNZ 1y ago
  If the mini PC is second hand then using it until it dies is already a much better recycling culture than it going straight to the landfill. I much prefer that than buying these high spec brand new Beelink/Minisforum/Aoostar mini PCs.
- anticorporate 1y ago
  This sounds good in principle, but I think it would be helpful to have some real numbers to look at in terms of lifecycle management before deciding. Are mini-PCs actually more likely to have a shorter lifespan? Does the smaller physical footprint contribute to a smaller ecological footprint than a full-sized machine? Does the smaller energy consumption offset the manufacture footprint in a meaningful way? Personally, I found that I've been more likely to donate older mini-PCs to local nonprofits who repurpose them than I am full-sized machines, which I tend to keep around for "just in case" parts scavenging that in practice I rarely actually do. Meanwhile, having a lower cost mini-PC available has made me more likely to start out with a low power machine for a dedicated task with them promise I can always replace it with a "real" machine if the need ends up requiring it. To date, though, the mini-PC has always ended up proving to be "enough" and I've never actually needed to replace one for performance reasons. But this is just anecdotal. Like I said, I'm curious if there's any real data pointing one way or another.
  - BizarroLand 1y ago
    You're right. My response also overlooks PC recycling. I don't know if anyone is making good use of that other than to occasionally repurpose old tech or to cannibalize it for parts, but there may be some reclaimable value there that I'm not accounting for as well.
butz 1y ago
MiniPC must either charge from USB-C or have an internal PSU. Those external power bricks are so annoying when you start adding more PCs to the cluster.
- jauntywundrkind 1y ago
  I definitely think USB-C would be a pretty good option! Another option is getting a dedicated power supply. Mean Well makes a HEP-600-20, with 560W of 20V power. You can power quite a cluster off that! It sucks that they don't take 24v: there's so many 24v power supplies, but 19/20V is quite rare! I have quite handful of hard drives in toaster-style carriers: having a single high efficiency rugged 12V power supply felt better than dealing with a sea of questionable-efficiecy power bricks.
- dahrkael 1y ago
  GMKTec mini PCs are powered via USB-C, the included charger is quite manageable
- wpm 1y ago
  That's one of the things the Mac mini has going for it: the built-in PSU. I'm surprised the Chinese manufacturers haven't just ripped off the design of those yet.
jauntywundrkind 1y ago
> Put that in perspective with high-end machines with hardware concerned with performance and not power draw, that can easily idle at 100W. I've been trying to optimize my desktop's power consumption. At the beginning of the year I put the kill-a-watt on it and was shocked to see it was using 115W idle! I got it to 90W pretty quickly with some minor Linux tuning but was still pretty unhappy to see so much idle load. Recently though, I've got it idling at 57W, which makes me feel much better about it (although more than I'd want for a 24/7 load). 5700X cpu and RDNA4 9070XT video card. Dialing down unnecessary cooling helped more than I would have guessed. Under-volting the GPU -30mV may have helped but I'm not sure. Adjusting every governor I could find to powersave helps of course, and doesn't feel noticeably different. A lot I think is just that the new tuned daemon is way way way better at it's job than previous solutions like tlp was. I did have some problems with my Crucial P3+ NVMe drive not liking "powersupersave" PCIe Active State Power Management (aspm), but most improvements were a kernel setting away, and tuned really seemed to do . One of the thing I really love about modern computing is that I can just dial in power consumption under load. With the new RDNA4 video card, I was seeing 450W power consumption when gaming. But I can open CoreCtrl and tell it, no, use 70W, and for surprisingly little FPS hit my system is now down to ~155W. (Still looking for more control in Linux for the CPU!) It is lovely that there are all these mini-PC's, many of which will idle at ~10W! But definitely worth noting that power consumption on desktop is much more configurable than it used to be.
- robotnikman 1y ago
  I basically did the same thing for my recent SFF PC build. I underclocked the max clock speed of the CPU in the BIOS and set the max wattage to 65. I then set the power limit of the GPU to 70. The fans barely run even when gaming and it stays nice and cool, not affecting the room temperature during the summor.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  Is it the GPUs that are causing this? Even a very powerful PC need not draw much at true idle. The trick is getting to to a "true idle" which can be inhibited by lots of unexpected situations and broken hardware. One very common issue is that Realtek NICs prevent deep sleep states because either they are broken or their Linux driver is broken. Any kind of ethernet is worse than wifi in terms of energy consumption. Keeping a display attached to the box can greatly increase power consumption and might not be needed on a server. I have a fairly power Alder Lake-based server with 3 NVMe SSDs and 12 SATA devices, that draws < 15W from the wall when it's on but inactive.
syntaxing 1y ago
Hot take, N100 is the best CPU Intel made this decade. Easily one of the best x86 CPU for cost, performance, and energy efficiency.
coffeebeqn 1y ago
Unfortunately the article doesn’t really explain what is a MiniPC. Is it any small SoC system? Is there a specific size or price point? Is it these Ali express things?
- ThrowawayR2 1y ago
  This STH article might be helpful https://www.servethehome.com/perfect-project-tinyminimicro-pushing-a-1l-pc-as-a-server-concept-intel-hp-sabrent-crucial/ https://www.servethehome.com/perfect-project-tinyminimicro-p...
- freetime2 1y ago
  This is basically the form factor: https://a.co/d/1Mll2aH https://a.co/d/1Mll2aH Price can vary significantly from under $200 for an Intel N150-based system all the way up to Ryzen AI Max+ 395 systems costing $2000. A lot of the mini PC makers have gotten pretty legitimate recent years, and some makers like Minisform can even charge a bit of a premium based on their brand name. More "traditional" hardware makers like Asus and ASRock also sell Mini PCs. And of course Apple is also a significant player in the Mini PC world with the Mac Mini. So definitely not just an Ali express thing - although Mini PCs can certainly be purchased there as well. These refurbished 1L "tiny" desktops from big vendors like Lenovo, HP, and Dell are also popular with the Mini PC server crowd. https://a.co/d/g1mgUnl https://a.co/d/g1mgUnl
  - bsimpson 1y ago
    The Verge just wrote a love letter to the new Framework Desktop, running SteamOS on the thing as a gaming PC.
    - freetime2 1y ago
      IMO the Framework Desktop is too large to be considered a Mini PC due to its 4.5L case size. I'd call it a Mini-ITX tower. It looks nice, though. I'm impressed they were able to get 11W idle power consumption with a 400W power supply (most mini pcs have much smaller power supplies, which are supposed to be more efficient with smaller loads). [1] [1] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/i-clustered-four-framework-mainboards-test-huge-llms https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/i-clustered-four-fram...
SonnyTark 1y ago
100% agree. Mini PCs in my opinion are the only modern PCs designed to stay on for decades. Sort of like those old server towers with SCSI drives that still run many legacy online things to this day. I bought my forever box on impulse, it was only $130 for a whole mini PC! (with my own ram+storage) I thought surely it'll join the group of devices collecting dust... I was very wrong. Turns out this PC is meant to be the most utilized of all my computers. It basically has been up 24/7 for 7 years and I really have no excuse to upgrade it yet. While its processor is nothing to look at (even an N100 is a meaningful step up), on paper it roughly matches a Phenom II X4 955 BE CPU, which was my Windows 7 gaming CPU for many years! so it holds a special place in my heart. It was also my entry to the world of self-hosting docker containers which empowered me to replace the paid/enshitified services I depended on before.
d3Xt3r 1y ago
Has anyone here managed to get USB4 networking (USB4NET) working with an AMD mini PC (specifically ones from Minisforum)? I'd love to have a 40Gbps backlink for a Ceph cluster.
- dathery 1y ago
  I am doing this between two UM890 Pros. It was easy to set up and I have had no issues over many months, but I "only" get ~11.6 Gbps between them. This seems to match other reports e.g. https://fangpenlin.com/posts/2024/01/14/high-speed-usb4-mesh-network/ https://fangpenlin.com/posts/2024/01/14/high-speed-usb4-mesh...
  - d3Xt3r 1y ago
    Perfect, thank you! That link has pretty much all the info I was after. Pity it doesn't reach anywhere close to the theoretical speeds though, but hey at least it's better than 10GbE. :)
aborsy 1y ago
Does anyone have recommendation for a mini PC with min 2 sata ports for two 3.5” HDDs, min 2 NVMe for ssd storage, one ssd or eMMC for OS, and 64GB of RAM, with the ability to power up the HDDs from the miniPC (not requiring external power source)? The HDDs are installed in a case externally. An external PCIe slot to support those 4 mixed drives via an adapter would work too. I tend to avoid usb HDDs enclosures, since usb connection doesn’t work well with ZFS. That would be a cool ZFS NAS.
- Havoc 1y ago
  You do get ones with up to 6 nvme slots, but they'll be running at reduced speed. Generally X1 gen3
  - aborsy 1y ago
    Yeah I know, like Beelink 6 NVMe. But NVMe storage is not affordable at high capacities. So, I want two +14 TB HDDs for cold slow storage, and two 4 TB for fast warm storage for VMs, containers, databases, and applications. I also need a lot of RAM for proxmox VMs and containers. The CPU in my experience need not have many cores. I mean truenas itself virtualized demands 8GB of RAM.
    - Havoc 1y ago
      If you want lots of nvme, lots of sata, lots of ram and lots of ability to power drives then you're not looking at a minipc anymore. Would suggest you do the same I did - climb onto ebay and look at the AM4 systems that gamers are dumping. AM4 is aging out of gaming space but for NAS/proxmox duty they're aging like fine wine. Look for one that has is X570 and has bifuraction support on the X16
- goosedragons 1y ago
  That's a NAS. Just get a 2 bay NAS.
  - aborsy 1y ago
Agingcoder 1y ago
I want one for gaming , that is silent, provides high end graphics, and takes little space ( Mac mini or studio size ideally ). I’m essentially willing to pay extra for a specced up gaming console. I still haven’t been able to find something that fits the bill - the hardest part to get information on is noise, since most people don’t seem to care about it or just play with headphones. I understand that such a product is hard to build, with a direct tension between power, space and noise. What has never been clear to me is whether such a market even exists and I’d tend to say no, even if the market seems to be changing rapidly with amd apus ( we’re far from a 5080 , but it seems to be a step in the right direction ).
- layer8 1y ago
  Silent, high-end graphics and small form factor is not possible. You can pick at most two of the three. (Silent and high-end-graphics is still difficult.)
- cortesoft 1y ago
  You are going to be limited by your GPU, I think. The power and heat requirements for a high end GPU are going to be hard to fit into a small enough form factor.
- Nextgrid 1y ago
  If you don’t mind to DIY, consider assembling a mini-ITX PC.
- pnw 1y ago
  IMHO it's basically impossible to build such a PC. The small size plus high thermal load of a modern GPU means it cannot be cooled quietly. Intel's line of NUCs had some gaming models back in the day (e.g. Skull Canyon), but the graphics were the Intel midrange GPU and they had tiny noisy fans. Anything approaching Nvidia 4070 or 5070 series and you've got up to 300 more watts TBP heating up the system on top of the CPU etc. My last small form factor gaming PC was an Origin Chronos. It was great but it was definitely not quiet. The larger Origins offer liquid cooling but I'm guessing it can't be done in that small form factor.
Havoc 1y ago
Been running a variety of them (+SBCs) for years, but recently decided it's time for a full sized build too. For stuff like setting up virtualized k8s cluster via terraform my oldish minipc style setup was struggling noticeably with deploying lots of VMs in parallel. So either buy one of these new very fancy minipc (ms-01 etc) or DIY. End up landing on 2nd hand AM4 hardware but with 2nd hand enterprise SSDs and optanes. And that's been perfect. Competent at virtualization (5700X) and the hybrid enterprise ssd/optane array will take endless punishment. That said not abandoning the minipcs & SBCs. 3 raspberries for HA k8s controlplane, low power minipc to keep home assistant and adguard live 24/7 etc.
ilaksh 1y ago
Also a good option for experimenting with local AI: GMTec AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ 395 --EVO-X2 AI Mini PC
ChuckMcM 1y ago
Back in 2022 I bought a 'case' of discarded NUC machines that some business had scrapped for $100 (it was like 35 computers in there) Roughly 1/3 had WiFi, none had storage (it had been removed before scrapping). Mix of CPU ranges but I keep finding uses for them. Hard to keep the ones powered up, up to date. If anyone has a good orchestration system for minipcs sitting on a network in terms of patching etc would love a pointer.
- RossBencina 1y ago
  > If anyone has a good orchestration system for minipcs sitting on a network Have you looked at Proxmox? It will give you centralised management at least. Maybe puppet? https://help.puppet.com/core/current/Content/PuppetCore/puppet_overview.htm https://help.puppet.com/core/current/Content/PuppetCore/pupp...
  - ChuckMcM 1y ago
    Puppet is currently closest to what I think I want.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  Make a floppotron of NUCs
kogasa240p 1y ago
As much as I like the idea of miniPCs my biggest issue is that almost everything in miniPCs are soldered down, if you could replace the RAM/CPU/Storage I'd have zero with them. But for now, I'm skeptical in that the current push for miniPCs are a clandestine way to get more technical people onboard with unrepairable devices.
- nerdix 1y ago
  There are plenty of miniPCs with replaceable RAM and storage. Some of the newer ones based on the Ryzen Ai CPUs have soldered RAM but most don't. Replaceable CPU is harder to find. However, there is the Minisforum MS-A1 which has an AMD AM5 motherboard with replaceable CPU. https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-a1 https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-a1
  - omnimus 1y ago
    Worth noting the AMD APUs dont have ram soldered on a board cannot be replaced even with soldering. The ram is inside the chip and is shared between the cpu/gpu.
    - gc9 1y ago
      No, maybe you're thinking of Intel Lunar Lake.
  - kogasa240p 1y ago
    Oh wow I never knew that, very good to see.
- giantrobot 1y ago
  I've got a couple N95 miniPCs and they have replaceable RAM and m.2 slots to upgrade the storage.
- PhilipRoman 1y ago
  Weird, every mini PC I've used has had normal SODIMM slots and removable SSD. CPU is mostly soldered though.
jmyeet 1y ago
I'm a big fan of mini PCs starting with the (now abandoned) Intel NUCs. Yes, some have soldered down parts but a lot don't. For ~$500 you can get a decent CPU, 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and something like a Radeon 780M, which is no desktop GPU but it's surprisingly useful. Some even have Oculink connectors for external GPUs although I'm not sure how many people end up using this. You will find wildly varying networking connectivity like Wifi 6 vs 7, 1 or 2 Ethernet connectors that can be anything from 1GbE to 10GbE and a wide variety of different USB connectors and speeds. At $500 I really just don't care if it lasts forever. You can go more expensive and get a beefier CPU and/or GPU or go cheaper by going cheaper on both. I'm personally so over assembling PCs. I just want something that works.
pedalpete 1y ago
I've been thinking about going this route for my work PC at the office. Currently I drag my laptop with me back and forth from the office. It's small and light, so not a huge issue. I also use Resilio Sync to sync my data between a few different laptops I use, plus github, and the amount of work which is just in the browser now, I have almost nothing that isn't accessible from anywhere. The only reason I'd need a laptop at the office is for when I go into a zoom meeting and need a device in one of our breakout rooms. Sure, I could just use my phone for that, but not quite the right experience. Anyone have suggestions for this?
cmrdporcupine 1y ago
I've got one of those Minisforum UM790 Pro Ryzen mini PCs and I loved it for the first 8 months -- very fast, worked well -- and then the fan started making noises. Took it apart, tightened things up and cleaned it, and the fix lasted a few days before it started being noisy again. But the problem is.. custom non-replaceable parts. I realistically don't see a way I'm going to be able to fix the problem so I have to live with the noise. So basically another disposable consumer appliance. But it wasn't cheap. This is frankly the problem I see with these little things. They're just too custom and the brands not mainstream, with no retail supply chain into Europe or North America to support the product.
Felger 1y ago
MiniPCs... Have seen hundred of chinese ones fail. More than half failed between 1 and 3 years. As stated by others, issues are mainly and very commonly with the power stage / power management of the mainboard. Also, soldering quality issues leading to failures. Far less issues with good brands like Dell and HP (had a few hundred of desktop mini g2/3/4). Even tinys from Lenovo do perform quite well compared to their entry level laptops (also quite bad). Industrial computers form factor are also generally quite good but quite expensive, even second hand ones. Currently don't have enough feddback on the Asus ones nor enough volume to draw conclusions, but so far they performed well with minimal issue, even with models back from i3/i5 8th gen series.
- throw5g432y 1y ago
  I have the opposite experience as you. I have seena lot of failed Dell and HP mini desktops, but all the Beelinks and Minisforum PCs have been very reliable.
  - srcreigh 1y ago
    Why do you need a throwaway account to say this?
ocdtrekkie 1y ago
The ewaste problem is not a problem, actually: Consider what you replace in a full tower: The SSD, RAM, Wi-Fi card, power supply. All of these are replaceable in a mini-PC (the power supply is an incredibly standard laptop charger brick usually). Yeah you can't change the processor or motherboard out, but generally those sit in "new computer" territory anyways.
bsimpson 1y ago
It makes sense since the cost of computing has come down, but it's funny to see the cyclical nature of it all. The web was run on beefy SPARC and NeXT workstations until Google came along and sharded it out onto cheap off-the-shelf hardware. Then containerization/virtualization started replicating individual machines as VMs to try to give you root-access control on timeshared hardware. Now computing is cheap, and the OP is advocating for "just make each container its own device."
- Jolter 1y ago
  Your larger point is well made, but a nitpick: between the NeXT workstation (the early 90's) and cheap COTS server hardware (the late 00s) was the era of big heavy servers, not workstations. Sun made some really amazing server hardware and we should not forget the abomination that was the Dell Blade server!
giantrobot 1y ago
I've been buying miniPCs since the days of Intel and Microsoft subsidizing shitty Bay Trail compute sticks. Even those were plenty powerful running a bunch of terminals connected to other machines doing hard work. I used to have one stuffed behind my monitor. They're also were laughably bad under Windows but pretty amazing under Linux. Modern ones with Intel N95 CPUs are actually fairly impressive for the price. The N95 is roughly the equivalent of a Sandy Bridge era i5 which is plenty of power for what I'm using them for. They've also were under $150 IIRC. My N95 systems have SODIMM slots for RAM and m.2 slots for storage. They're also got two Ethernet ports I set as a bonded interface so they get ~2Gbps to each other (and my NAS) on the same switch. My unofficial tips: - Get miniPCs with barrel adapters for power rather than USB. A lot of cheap ones like the old Bay Trail sort used microUSB for power and that's just terrible (sorry Raspberry Pis) - You'd be surprised at how powerful an N95 or AMD equivalent APU actually is these days. Outside of compiling, 3D rendering, or AI inference such machines are rarely CPU-bound. - Get black tape to put over stupid lights and front LCD screens that can't be controlled in Linux. - Avoid Windows on such machines and just go with Linux. Ubuntu and Mint fly on them out of the box, lighter DEs fly even faster. As servers they can host an impressive number of services that aren't compute-bound. Hardware video encoding means even stuff like Jellyfin is really light.
YegoBear 1y ago
I never got the point of these, since they’ve always got huge power bricks. I definitely love Mac Minis/Studios and have also built a bunch of custom SFF PCs around cases like the Ghost S1/NCase/Dan Case, etc. I don’t think they’re better than consoles, not even close since Windows is clunky and the Xbox has quick resume and plays 4K Blu-ray’s, but they’re great for keeping your desk organized.
- rcarmo 1y ago
  Many of the N-series machines support USB-C power delivery and can run off minuscule wall warts.
littlecopperpot 1y ago
Cheap and replacable. I found this wasteful. You said "I don’t worry about this too much: they are fully solid state machines, running on low power and low-ish temperatures, thus making their rate of degradation much slower than some beefy machine churning 24/7". How coyld this be measured vs just wishful thinking?
pjmlp 1y ago
> Cheap and Replaceable We must be looking into different kinds of MiniPCs, because I don't consider 300 euros cheap, and those models are a joke in specs. To have something usable it is more like reaching the 500 euros. Also I don't want replaceable, I want repairable. Last year I had to throw one away that barely worked, and I am not getting one ever again.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
  What brand/model was your one? (So that we can avoid)
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Replied in another thread, Gigabyte Brix, more precisely Barebone GB-BRR5H-4500.
    - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
      Thanks. I'm surprised as I thought Gigabyte were a well known brand (previously bought their motherboards which seemed great). I've bought a few no-name minipcs and the only issue that I've encountered was when a supplied SSD stopped working.
NoPicklez 1y ago
MiniPC's are absolutely fantastic and better yet you can often find ex-government machines for cheap, they use hardly any power, take up minimal space and the majority of people are more than enough for your standard server with Proxmox, Unifi, PiHole, Plex etc I'm not sure how much I agree with "just buy another host", definitely use cases for that but having one machine running everything works very well
theshrike79 1y ago
What I want is the equivalent of a PS5 or Xbox Series X, but a PC. Like a big boy Steam Deck with no display or controller. Preferably in the same price range, definitely under 1000€.
rthnbgrredf 1y ago
Used ThinkPads from eBay, especially the smaller models from the X-Series, can make surprisingly cost effective "MiniPCs". If you need multiple devices, as mentioned in the article, you can even stack the laptops and build a small tower of "MiniPCs" all with different purposes. Another advantage is that they already come with a built-in screen and keyboard allowing for quick debugging, without needing to connect external peripherals.
deviantintegral 1y ago
What about MiniPCs that support serial console or network connectivity for BIOS / UEFI access? When I looked for a new router, I couldn't find any of the usual "cheap" suspects that supported that. As well, most didn't have anything better than 1 GBit network ports. I ended up going with a more expensive mini-PC style vendor, but I was surprised there didn't seem to be a ton of competitors.

193 points by ingve 1y ago

mcny 1y ago

My minisforum mini PC died within two years seemingly our of the blue. Support won't return my emails.

brk 1y ago
Mine has been going for about 4 years now, no issues.
layer8 1y ago
That’s unfortunately typical for Minisforum. They issue batches of products in a fire-and-forget manner, with hardly any after sales support.
fckgw 1y ago
Same issue here. Just no power at all.
- mcny 1y ago
  Reddit threads suggest MOSFET problems are common among mini PCs. Any ideas? This is especially frustrating because I have an ancient dell optiplex and dell precision with i3-2100 and i3-5xx that still work. I occasionally need to open the box to reseat the ram for whatever reason after a power failure but by an large these machines are over ten years old!
jauntywundrkind 1y ago
Minisforum is also one of many mini-pc vendors that basically doesn't release bios updates. They might release a couple early on, to try to get systems stable, but after that don't expect any bios updates. AMD will release plenty of updates, & you'll be stuck on whatever it was your system came with. Different kind of support concern from yours, but also noteworthy. Really unfortunate. I still have an old HP EliteDesk (i5-8600t) that is my one reliable 24/7 system, still runs fine. Also no bios updates, so I guess there's that. Mini-PCs to me started more as a way to buy cast-off business gear, these small affordable small business systems, even cheaper second hand. It's amazing and great seeing this new market rise up to make interesting mini-pc's, and the value is often still pretty good, but it's a very different character from where the trend started.
- scrlk 1y ago
  I’d be very surprised if your EliteDesk never got any BIOS updates. In my experience, business grade PCs from the major vendors (Dell/HP/Lenovo) usually have a pretty solid software support lifecycle. If it’s an EliteDesk G2 Mini, the last BIOS update was released in May 2024.
  - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
    You're totally right! Small distinction: my unit is smaller than the Mini (a weird in between size), it's the 1-liter-ish DM 35W. I thought it would be moot, because I vaguely remember HP starting to require support contracts for bios updates. But I guess that only applies to HP Enterprise gear? Yuck, what a pox.
- LeoPanthera 1y ago
  Are there any mini PC vendors that do provide BIOS updates?
  - mrheosuper 1y ago
    Big players like HP, Dell, Lenovo do.

Havoc 1y ago

> So you mean to tell me you’ve been using your torch to take a shit this last week because your light bulbs don’t work without the PC you watch Netflix on? This made me laugh. I’ve currently got a home assistant controlled floor standing light in my bathroom because all the old school switch ones in ceiling are dead and landlord is being well a classic landlord

ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
What does a "dead light" mean in this context? Your landlord isn't changing your bulbs? I've mostly lived in 100+ year old homes with old janky wiring and have never had a light fixture die, just bulbs.
- giardini 1y ago
  It likely means the OP has poor handyman skills and wisely has chosen not to learn by him/her self due to safety hazard. After all, these circuits are usually ~110 volts and there is almost always an unintended ground nearby (a water or gas pipe, a wet bathtub, etc.).
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
    Learn how to change a lightbulb? Is that a handyman level skill?
    - giardini 1y ago
      Sadly yes, b/c even the simplest things can go wrong quickly. E.g. people sometimes change light bulbs w/o turning off the power. Have you ever experienced a dead (or good, for that matter) bulb coming apart as you twist it out of the socket? Would you trust a naive person to properly handle that situation? With power off(easy case)? With power on(difficult)?
      - kjkjadksj 1y ago
        If they can set up a light with home assistant they can screw in a lightbulb. Come on.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago

Would benefit from one or two small pictures. I guess MiniPC means like a Mac Mini or an Intel NUC? > You can expect average power draws of 20-50W in usage and 6-12W in idle. > Put that in perspective with high-end machines with hardware concerned with performance and not power draw, that can easily idle at 100W. Have you measured that? I think my full ATX desktop only idles around 30 watts. (With a bunch of apps running ofc) I took out the GPU to reach that, something was wrong with the power saving, feels like bad drivers. That said... I'm not totally disagreeing. I have a mini PC running a couple web and P2P services. I'm trying to unburden my ATX so it can shut down at night to save power and do maintenance. And having more computers would shift me away from my "kitten" habits, so I'd abstract over hardware better.

loloquwowndueo 1y ago
A beelink mini pc will draw about 5w when idle (measured with a watt meter the pc was plugged into). It’s smaller than a NUC (I think!) - it’s slightly bigger than a raspberry pi with a case. Not exactly this model but it cost about us $150. https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-eq14-n150?_pos=4&_sid=5fa9ae9bf&_ss=r https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-eq14-n150?_pos=4&_...
CharlesW 1y ago
Mac mini power consumption and thermal output (BTU): https://support.apple.com/en-us/103253 https://support.apple.com/en-us/103253
justincormack 1y ago
Intel no longer makes NUCs. Asus bought the rights. But there are lots of other form factors. Search for n100 or n150 minipc and brands like topton and cwwk. More router like than the classic nuc.

kccqzy 1y ago

> You can get MiniPCs with 4-6 internal M.2 slots that are great for building a NAS with. Where can I find that? My current Intel NUC has two M.2 slots and a SATA connection. If I were to relax the definition of a MiniPC to include mini ITX then yes I can find these, but given how the author talks about being all-in-one, I doubt the author is talking about mini ITX builds.

goosedragons 1y ago
They're pretty rare, but there's some. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/mini-nases-marry-nvme-intels-efficient-chip https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/mini-nases-marry-nvme... You can also get larger ones like the Asus Flashstor that can do 12.
LeoPanthera 1y ago
They're all fairly new. "Mini PC NAS" seems to be the magic Google words. One example is the "Beelink ME mini", which has 6 m.2 slots.
- politelemon 1y ago
  What are people doing with 6 M2 slots?
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    Installing 6 m2 drives.
    - geerlingguy 1y ago
      Or three or four for now, and expanding to more later :)
  - BizarroLand 1y ago
    If you keep an eye out you can sometimes find 4tb nvme drives for ~$200, so you could build an eye watering 24tb raid0 array in one of those that would saturate a 25gb nic for less than $1,500. Or make it a 5x1 parity for a smidge of redundancy.

clueless 1y ago

what are some hardware people would recommend (specifically looking for power efficiency)?

BirdieNZ 1y ago
Dell/HP/Lenovo all have huge amounts of ex-corporate mini PCs constantly coming onto the second hand market as they reach the end of Windows 10 licensing, or are depreciated out, or mass upgraded. Some popular models to get due to having a full size PCIe slot are the Lenovo M920q, M720q, or P330. They idle at maybe 10-15W with no optimisation attempts, and you can put a 10G network card in for example, or a bunch of M2/nvme SSDs. RAM can be upgraded to at least 64Gb. CPUs can be swapped out, there are 3D printable rack mounts, backplates and so on in abundance.
seemaze 1y ago
I've had luck replacing Raspberry Pi's with Dell Wyse 5070's. They're not screamers, but they are relatively recent fanless hardware with low idle power draw and plenty of oomph to push every service I self host.
klipklop 1y ago
At the moment a good low power mini PC is anything with an Intel N150.
- n150_lp 1y ago
  I've been using one for a few months for home video consumption, it works quite well and is quiet.
shadowpho 1y ago
N100/n97/n150 are all perfect (about the same perf). 6-10w idle (similar to rasp pi) but 4-10x more perf.
- Catbert59 1y ago
  Up to n100 you still can cool the passively (see TopTon on Aliexpress). Above that they need a fan.

LeoPanthera 1y ago

Yes indeed, I'm running Proxmox on an Asus NUC Pro... thing. Can't remember the exact name. I initially was recommended a "Minisforum" thing, which I did buy, but it absolutely hated Debian for reasons I don't understand. It would boot, but not reboot, so you'd have to power cycle it every time. Not practical. The Asus also came with its own issues - it only supports one stick of RAM unless you do a BIOS update, so you have to be careful not to put both sticks in until after the update. Slightly crazy.

cdkmoose 1y ago

I have repurposed retired laptops for my tech lab at home. They no longer keep up with the current software bloat for wife and kids usage, but make reasonable linux servers. Currently serving up 3 databases on one, kafka and networking on another and services/applications on a third. They take up very little space under my desk.

j45 1y ago
A good way to keep the laptops operating as well. It reminds me I have a few old macbooks with decent specs that should be at least running.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mrheosuper 1y ago
Just for curious, why would you need 3 databases ?

ibaikov 1y ago

I agree and already got two minipcs I selfhost a lot of stuff now. I just now realized it is basically the future Gabe Newell predicted and wanted to make with Steam Machines [1], but he was wrong by targeting gamers and a little too early (perhaps?). Maybe they will succeed precisely because of this revolution. I got soooo tired setting up a gaming system for parties on my projector. There are so many various problems and tweaks, gamepads disconnecting if you put a hand between the gamepad and the pc/playstation etc. BSODs on windows, driver problems and stupid obscure things varying from pc to pc. I want plug and play, but consoles have their own problems and limitations. I am too old to debug this stuff to play a game for so little time, I would rather not. I didn't really believe in steam machines at the time, but now I sort of do, especially with game streaming and local LLMs that might be hosted there now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer)

wishfish 1y ago
Looks like they'll be trying out the console / small box form factor again. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Valve-Fremont-Upcoming-console-spotted-on-Geekbench-with-last-gen-AMD-hardware.1091967.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Valve-Fremont-Upcoming-console... I'm glad they are. There's probably a sizeable market for a console that runs PC games smoothly at 1080. And could double as a PC. If they get it to the size of an XBox Series S or smaller, I would probably get one.
- ibaikov 1y ago
  Wow that's cool, Gabe is an underrated CEO. Thanks for posting this since I do not follow anything gaming anymore. I hope they'll fix their rumored team wars inside the company.
- slipperydippery 1y ago
  That's a dream come true... provided they fix multi-accounts and game visibility/accessibility in the Steam UI. I already have a Steam Deck that I can't let my kids touch, which is stupid. I can't hook something like this up in a shared space of any kind without improved parental controls, including ability to toggle visibility of game library entries, and (ideally, but not strictly necessary) the ability to say "do not show this user's entire library to anyone else on this machine, or on the network, nobody with a different login"

Normal_gaussian 1y ago

I have a homelab which is a zimaboard, a dumb netgear switch, and six mini-pc's (5560U/16GB/500GB). The zimaboard runs pfsense & an nginx reverse proxy, then all six of the mini-pcs run proxmox. 4 mini-pcs run k8s clusters (talos) and the other two run home services and selected one-offs (home-assistant, plex, bookstack, build-tools, gitea, origin servers for a subset of projects). It was a lot easier to set up than I had expected. Its was still a massive PITA though. I got what I wanted out of it work-wise, and its a nice little novelty. I've been thinking about ditching most of it for a while; I like the idea in the article about breaking it up - move one under the TV, one into the office, one under the stairs, and the remaining 3 + zimaboard I'm tempted to sell. I'd keep running proxmox on them, but I wouldn't link them up. The key thing that needs to happen for this to make sense is using something like cloudflare to route domains. The part I never sorted properly was storage. It has 3TB of storage, but getting that storage into k8s for proper dynamic allocation without giving random nodes CPU perf issues was a too-long-for-one-session task which meant it never got finished. I was tempted to add a NAS, but most NAS's are horrid.

D13Fd 1y ago
This does sound like a massive PITA. what is the point of it? What are you using it for?
- usagisushi 1y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/Proxmox/comments/s92fk7/my_wife_is_pregnant_and_goes_to_bed_early_i_stay/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Proxmox/comments/s92fk7/my_wife_is_... A man can turn the means into the purpose.
  - Normal_gaussian 1y ago
    yeah that is exactly what came after the work use case
- Normal_gaussian 1y ago
  Initially I needed a lab to practice deploying & upgrading & disrupting on-prem talos linux for k8s, and design benchmarks around it. So 4 machines does that. The zimaboard in front with pfsense (which is a PITA by itself) and nginx is a good way to make it pick-up-and move (ie. internal networking config). For <£2k the set up is very cheap for what is being tested. It meant I didn't have to go and sit on the other side of a security checkpoint for most of the work. It was cool to keep around as its trivial to make the lab guests unable to see my home network and vice-versa. Now I often have the 4 k8s hosts off. But use them maybe once a month.

LarMachinarum 1y ago

having had quite a bunch of MiniPCs, mostly from reputable brands (Intel NUC series back when Intel had those, then Gigabyte Brix series, then some cheapo china ones), I have moved away from those, because every single one of them (independently of the brand) ended up dying spuriously not long after warranty end and in any case far sooner than any µATX desktop would (in fact I've very rarely had any of the latter die; they usually live far beyond their phase out / replacement) Even without wanting to attribute that to any malicious planned obsolescence, my impression is that the very small size of mini PCs makes it almost impossible for the manufacturer to ensure proper thermal management for keeping all components constantly at a temperature low enough for device longevity.

glitchc 1y ago
Yeah a Mac Mini seems to be the only one that can go the distance.
CharlesW 1y ago
My 2008 Mac mini is still running, so it can be done. I'm shocked that Intel NUCs weren't more reliable for you.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  Only one of my rpis ever broke, the 1st one I ever bought.
- sys_64738 1y ago
  I had one NUC fail due to CPU failure. Intel RMA'd it without any issues.
al_borland 1y ago
I bought a cheap Beelink mini pc to tinker around with. It didn't take long before something went wrong. It still technically works, but I can't simply reboot it anymore. I have to unplug the power, let it sit for 10-20 seconds, plug it back in and then boot. It's too annoying, so it's basically trash at this point. I tried a new PS, but that didn't help. I assume there is a bad capacitor in there or something. I've had great luck with Mac minis over the years. I've had many of them. I'll probably go that route in the future if needed. I know there are better quality x86 options out there, but the prices go up fast, and I find them hard to justify for what I'd be doing with it. The Mac is really price competitive, which makes it even harder to justify those other options.

kylemaxwell 1y ago

These look like fun technology, but I don’t even know what the use cases would be anymore. I don’t need something to control my lights: I have an actual light switch for that. I don’t have endless terabytes of media that I need to serve within my household, so I just don’t know anymore what I would use this stuff for. Twenty or thirty years ago, I loved having a home lab, but these days I’m just not sure what I would do with it.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
LtWorf 1y ago
How ableist of you :) The thing is that once lights are computer programmed, you can program them. For example I had made a program to stop playing music after I leave home because I hated to put the music off and then walk out, but I also didn't want the music to play all day while I was out.
- kylemaxwell 1y ago
  That's not much of a disability-related use case to insult me about.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    You can't imagine a disabled person might have difficulties to get up and reach a light switch?
    - kylemaxwell 1y ago
      Absolutely, but you suggested that it was because you hate to turn off music and then walk out.
      - LtWorf 1y ago
        I did no such thing; that was a non-disabled use case just to show you it has use for everyone.

rkagerer 1y ago

Counterpoints: - Specs are too limited for my needs (storage capacity for backup / home NAS purposes; compute power for local AI work; throughput for local high speed network traffic shaping; etc) - can't upgrade over time (right now I'm averaging 15 years for my boxes, with incremental upgrades like storage, RAID adapters, memory, CPU etc, and I don't need to go through the days-long hassle of reformatting, reinstalling and reconfiguring OS's, services and software). - less supported over time (I can still download driver upgrades in some cases, and find solutions if I run into something unexpected as the vendor is still in business and supporting the legacy model). Full sized machines aren't difficult to build, and I've had great luck with second hand enterprise-targeted parts (eg. for a long time years back, used Mellanox Infiniband cards were dirt cheap on eBay because universities were upgrading to later generations, they were an order of magnitude faster than NIC's available at competing price points at the time, and as a bonus had lower latency). Older Areca RAID cards were great for SATA drives, easily upgradeable to new models, and I still have a few kicking around in production today. Meanwhile neighbors have thrown out piles of ewaste and wasted time after their commodity junk failed unexpectedly.

vorpalhex 1y ago
Power consumption matters. You can also run a single storage box and then just pop over network (10gbe, thunderbolt, etc). One big box of spinning rust and tons of cheap compute. Most folks are running proxmox and your OS installs are automated. Use ansible. I like docker swarm on top of a fleet of cattle vms on proxmox.
lostmsu 1y ago
I'm thinking of a beefy mini-PC + USB-C 8+ hard drive enclosure. I feel like I rarely upgraded anything except GPU and storage. And GPU's are not needed for a server. Enclosure means easy storage upgrade and I can always reattach the enclosure to another machine quickly. Might even install OS on the enclosure, then the whole setup will survive compute upgrades until the predominant architecture changes.
- jauntywundrkind 1y ago

JKCalhoun 1y ago

Not a home lab, but I have one mini-PC dedicated to driving a CO2 laser (that needs Windows). Another one dedicated to StepMania (an open DDR clone). They're cheap enough that I don't mind dedicating one (or two) for specific tasks.

mrbluecoat 1y ago

Intel chips dominate this space (with a far better price per GHz ratio than ARM or RISC-V); sad to see their slow downfall. Agree with others that you need active cooling to avoid premature burnout.

justincormack 1y ago
Its funny that Intel is the supplier of choice for cheap Chinese mini pcs, how the mighty have fallen.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  While we laugh, Intel keeps getting money, yeah really funny.

burnte 1y ago

I recently did a 180 in my homelab. I had been getting better and better equipment, enterprise level, and I found that it took a lot mroe work and was a lot less fun than doing things the way I used to, which had been maximize small low cost systems. I enjoyed the jank, and going enterprise equipment eliminated jank. So I sold all the high end stuff and went back to miniPCs. My main VM host now is a Lenovo P3 Ultra with lots of RAM and storage, and I have a handful of other Dell Optiplex 3090 machines and a bunch of Raspberry Pis to run everything from. I enjoy it more, it's actually more stable, less expensive, quieter, and cheaper.

karmakaze 1y ago
That's a beefy machine, small in dimension not so much in volume or price. Good expansion space though. I'm seeing 2,669 and 3,502 CAD.
- burnte 1y ago
  True, I got it used for $1400 and added RAM and disk.

RankingMember 1y ago

Anyone have recommendations for a particular mini that'll run Fusion 360 acceptably? I know that's generally an app for "main machine" use but I'm curious if any of these have started straying into the performance zone that might make it doable.

bdcravens 1y ago
Funny enough over the weekend Fusion kept crashing on me, and I have an M3 Max with 36GB of RAM. I've run it on a slightly less machine (but not by much - an Elite Book with a Ryzen processor and 32GB of RAM). Honestly I'm kind of afraid to put it on much less.
- RankingMember 1y ago
  Ha, thanks for the data point. I figured it might still be out of reach. I was running it at what could best be described as "sort-of acceptably" (random crashes for seemingly low-lift functions) on a Ryzen 5 desktop with a GeForce 1060 and 32GB RAM.

bdcravens 1y ago

You can get MFF Dell/HP/Lenovo refurbs from Microcenter (and elsewhere) for 200-300 USD. Typically 9th or 10th gen i5 processors and 16 or 32 GB of RAM. You can fit them into 10 inch racks you can 3d-print (often with matching 3d printed brackets for a proper fit). We've been using them to replace some of our utility servers that we pay way too much for in the cloud (obviously that's a trade off of dollars for being concerned with security/management). We're treating them like cattle, deploying via K3S.

BizarroLand 1y ago

I find the idea of a pc being "cheap and replaceable" a negative. PCs take a lot of resources to make. We shouldn't encourage throw away culture any more than is necessary. Just my opinion, though.

BirdieNZ 1y ago
If the mini PC is second hand then using it until it dies is already a much better recycling culture than it going straight to the landfill. I much prefer that than buying these high spec brand new Beelink/Minisforum/Aoostar mini PCs.
anticorporate 1y ago
This sounds good in principle, but I think it would be helpful to have some real numbers to look at in terms of lifecycle management before deciding. Are mini-PCs actually more likely to have a shorter lifespan? Does the smaller physical footprint contribute to a smaller ecological footprint than a full-sized machine? Does the smaller energy consumption offset the manufacture footprint in a meaningful way? Personally, I found that I've been more likely to donate older mini-PCs to local nonprofits who repurpose them than I am full-sized machines, which I tend to keep around for "just in case" parts scavenging that in practice I rarely actually do. Meanwhile, having a lower cost mini-PC available has made me more likely to start out with a low power machine for a dedicated task with them promise I can always replace it with a "real" machine if the need ends up requiring it. To date, though, the mini-PC has always ended up proving to be "enough" and I've never actually needed to replace one for performance reasons. But this is just anecdotal. Like I said, I'm curious if there's any real data pointing one way or another.
- BizarroLand 1y ago
  You're right. My response also overlooks PC recycling. I don't know if anyone is making good use of that other than to occasionally repurpose old tech or to cannibalize it for parts, but there may be some reclaimable value there that I'm not accounting for as well.

butz 1y ago

MiniPC must either charge from USB-C or have an internal PSU. Those external power bricks are so annoying when you start adding more PCs to the cluster.

jauntywundrkind 1y ago
I definitely think USB-C would be a pretty good option! Another option is getting a dedicated power supply. Mean Well makes a HEP-600-20, with 560W of 20V power. You can power quite a cluster off that! It sucks that they don't take 24v: there's so many 24v power supplies, but 19/20V is quite rare! I have quite handful of hard drives in toaster-style carriers: having a single high efficiency rugged 12V power supply felt better than dealing with a sea of questionable-efficiecy power bricks.
dahrkael 1y ago
GMKTec mini PCs are powered via USB-C, the included charger is quite manageable
wpm 1y ago
That's one of the things the Mac mini has going for it: the built-in PSU. I'm surprised the Chinese manufacturers haven't just ripped off the design of those yet.

jauntywundrkind 1y ago

> Put that in perspective with high-end machines with hardware concerned with performance and not power draw, that can easily idle at 100W. I've been trying to optimize my desktop's power consumption. At the beginning of the year I put the kill-a-watt on it and was shocked to see it was using 115W idle! I got it to 90W pretty quickly with some minor Linux tuning but was still pretty unhappy to see so much idle load. Recently though, I've got it idling at 57W, which makes me feel much better about it (although more than I'd want for a 24/7 load). 5700X cpu and RDNA4 9070XT video card. Dialing down unnecessary cooling helped more than I would have guessed. Under-volting the GPU -30mV may have helped but I'm not sure. Adjusting every governor I could find to powersave helps of course, and doesn't feel noticeably different. A lot I think is just that the new tuned daemon is way way way better at it's job than previous solutions like tlp was. I did have some problems with my Crucial P3+ NVMe drive not liking "powersupersave" PCIe Active State Power Management (aspm), but most improvements were a kernel setting away, and tuned really seemed to do . One of the thing I really love about modern computing is that I can just dial in power consumption under load. With the new RDNA4 video card, I was seeing 450W power consumption when gaming. But I can open CoreCtrl and tell it, no, use 70W, and for surprisingly little FPS hit my system is now down to ~155W. (Still looking for more control in Linux for the CPU!) It is lovely that there are all these mini-PC's, many of which will idle at ~10W! But definitely worth noting that power consumption on desktop is much more configurable than it used to be.

robotnikman 1y ago
I basically did the same thing for my recent SFF PC build. I underclocked the max clock speed of the CPU in the BIOS and set the max wattage to 65. I then set the power limit of the GPU to 70. The fans barely run even when gaming and it stays nice and cool, not affecting the room temperature during the summor.
jeffbee 1y ago
Is it the GPUs that are causing this? Even a very powerful PC need not draw much at true idle. The trick is getting to to a "true idle" which can be inhibited by lots of unexpected situations and broken hardware. One very common issue is that Realtek NICs prevent deep sleep states because either they are broken or their Linux driver is broken. Any kind of ethernet is worse than wifi in terms of energy consumption. Keeping a display attached to the box can greatly increase power consumption and might not be needed on a server. I have a fairly power Alder Lake-based server with 3 NVMe SSDs and 12 SATA devices, that draws < 15W from the wall when it's on but inactive.

syntaxing 1y ago

Hot take, N100 is the best CPU Intel made this decade. Easily one of the best x86 CPU for cost, performance, and energy efficiency.

coffeebeqn 1y ago

Unfortunately the article doesn’t really explain what is a MiniPC. Is it any small SoC system? Is there a specific size or price point? Is it these Ali express things?

ThrowawayR2 1y ago
This STH article might be helpful https://www.servethehome.com/perfect-project-tinyminimicro-pushing-a-1l-pc-as-a-server-concept-intel-hp-sabrent-crucial/ https://www.servethehome.com/perfect-project-tinyminimicro-p...
freetime2 1y ago
This is basically the form factor: https://a.co/d/1Mll2aH https://a.co/d/1Mll2aH Price can vary significantly from under $200 for an Intel N150-based system all the way up to Ryzen AI Max+ 395 systems costing $2000. A lot of the mini PC makers have gotten pretty legitimate recent years, and some makers like Minisform can even charge a bit of a premium based on their brand name. More "traditional" hardware makers like Asus and ASRock also sell Mini PCs. And of course Apple is also a significant player in the Mini PC world with the Mac Mini. So definitely not just an Ali express thing - although Mini PCs can certainly be purchased there as well. These refurbished 1L "tiny" desktops from big vendors like Lenovo, HP, and Dell are also popular with the Mini PC server crowd. https://a.co/d/g1mgUnl https://a.co/d/g1mgUnl
- bsimpson 1y ago
  The Verge just wrote a love letter to the new Framework Desktop, running SteamOS on the thing as a gaming PC.
  - freetime2 1y ago
    IMO the Framework Desktop is too large to be considered a Mini PC due to its 4.5L case size. I'd call it a Mini-ITX tower. It looks nice, though. I'm impressed they were able to get 11W idle power consumption with a 400W power supply (most mini pcs have much smaller power supplies, which are supposed to be more efficient with smaller loads). [1] [1] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/i-clustered-four-framework-mainboards-test-huge-llms https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/i-clustered-four-fram...

SonnyTark 1y ago

100% agree. Mini PCs in my opinion are the only modern PCs designed to stay on for decades. Sort of like those old server towers with SCSI drives that still run many legacy online things to this day. I bought my forever box on impulse, it was only $130 for a whole mini PC! (with my own ram+storage) I thought surely it'll join the group of devices collecting dust... I was very wrong. Turns out this PC is meant to be the most utilized of all my computers. It basically has been up 24/7 for 7 years and I really have no excuse to upgrade it yet. While its processor is nothing to look at (even an N100 is a meaningful step up), on paper it roughly matches a Phenom II X4 955 BE CPU, which was my Windows 7 gaming CPU for many years! so it holds a special place in my heart. It was also my entry to the world of self-hosting docker containers which empowered me to replace the paid/enshitified services I depended on before.

d3Xt3r 1y ago

Has anyone here managed to get USB4 networking (USB4NET) working with an AMD mini PC (specifically ones from Minisforum)? I'd love to have a 40Gbps backlink for a Ceph cluster.

dathery 1y ago
I am doing this between two UM890 Pros. It was easy to set up and I have had no issues over many months, but I "only" get ~11.6 Gbps between them. This seems to match other reports e.g. https://fangpenlin.com/posts/2024/01/14/high-speed-usb4-mesh-network/ https://fangpenlin.com/posts/2024/01/14/high-speed-usb4-mesh...
- d3Xt3r 1y ago
  Perfect, thank you! That link has pretty much all the info I was after. Pity it doesn't reach anywhere close to the theoretical speeds though, but hey at least it's better than 10GbE. :)

aborsy 1y ago

Does anyone have recommendation for a mini PC with min 2 sata ports for two 3.5” HDDs, min 2 NVMe for ssd storage, one ssd or eMMC for OS, and 64GB of RAM, with the ability to power up the HDDs from the miniPC (not requiring external power source)? The HDDs are installed in a case externally. An external PCIe slot to support those 4 mixed drives via an adapter would work too. I tend to avoid usb HDDs enclosures, since usb connection doesn’t work well with ZFS. That would be a cool ZFS NAS.

Havoc 1y ago
You do get ones with up to 6 nvme slots, but they'll be running at reduced speed. Generally X1 gen3
- aborsy 1y ago
  Yeah I know, like Beelink 6 NVMe. But NVMe storage is not affordable at high capacities. So, I want two +14 TB HDDs for cold slow storage, and two 4 TB for fast warm storage for VMs, containers, databases, and applications. I also need a lot of RAM for proxmox VMs and containers. The CPU in my experience need not have many cores. I mean truenas itself virtualized demands 8GB of RAM.
  - Havoc 1y ago
    If you want lots of nvme, lots of sata, lots of ram and lots of ability to power drives then you're not looking at a minipc anymore. Would suggest you do the same I did - climb onto ebay and look at the AM4 systems that gamers are dumping. AM4 is aging out of gaming space but for NAS/proxmox duty they're aging like fine wine. Look for one that has is X570 and has bifuraction support on the X16
goosedragons 1y ago
That's a NAS. Just get a 2 bay NAS.
- aborsy 1y ago

Agingcoder 1y ago

I want one for gaming , that is silent, provides high end graphics, and takes little space ( Mac mini or studio size ideally ). I’m essentially willing to pay extra for a specced up gaming console. I still haven’t been able to find something that fits the bill - the hardest part to get information on is noise, since most people don’t seem to care about it or just play with headphones. I understand that such a product is hard to build, with a direct tension between power, space and noise. What has never been clear to me is whether such a market even exists and I’d tend to say no, even if the market seems to be changing rapidly with amd apus ( we’re far from a 5080 , but it seems to be a step in the right direction ).

layer8 1y ago
Silent, high-end graphics and small form factor is not possible. You can pick at most two of the three. (Silent and high-end-graphics is still difficult.)
cortesoft 1y ago
You are going to be limited by your GPU, I think. The power and heat requirements for a high end GPU are going to be hard to fit into a small enough form factor.
Nextgrid 1y ago
If you don’t mind to DIY, consider assembling a mini-ITX PC.
pnw 1y ago
IMHO it's basically impossible to build such a PC. The small size plus high thermal load of a modern GPU means it cannot be cooled quietly. Intel's line of NUCs had some gaming models back in the day (e.g. Skull Canyon), but the graphics were the Intel midrange GPU and they had tiny noisy fans. Anything approaching Nvidia 4070 or 5070 series and you've got up to 300 more watts TBP heating up the system on top of the CPU etc. My last small form factor gaming PC was an Origin Chronos. It was great but it was definitely not quiet. The larger Origins offer liquid cooling but I'm guessing it can't be done in that small form factor.

Havoc 1y ago

Been running a variety of them (+SBCs) for years, but recently decided it's time for a full sized build too. For stuff like setting up virtualized k8s cluster via terraform my oldish minipc style setup was struggling noticeably with deploying lots of VMs in parallel. So either buy one of these new very fancy minipc (ms-01 etc) or DIY. End up landing on 2nd hand AM4 hardware but with 2nd hand enterprise SSDs and optanes. And that's been perfect. Competent at virtualization (5700X) and the hybrid enterprise ssd/optane array will take endless punishment. That said not abandoning the minipcs & SBCs. 3 raspberries for HA k8s controlplane, low power minipc to keep home assistant and adguard live 24/7 etc.

ilaksh 1y ago

Also a good option for experimenting with local AI: GMTec AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ 395 --EVO-X2 AI Mini PC

ChuckMcM 1y ago

Back in 2022 I bought a 'case' of discarded NUC machines that some business had scrapped for $100 (it was like 35 computers in there) Roughly 1/3 had WiFi, none had storage (it had been removed before scrapping). Mix of CPU ranges but I keep finding uses for them. Hard to keep the ones powered up, up to date. If anyone has a good orchestration system for minipcs sitting on a network in terms of patching etc would love a pointer.

RossBencina 1y ago
> If anyone has a good orchestration system for minipcs sitting on a network Have you looked at Proxmox? It will give you centralised management at least. Maybe puppet? https://help.puppet.com/core/current/Content/PuppetCore/puppet_overview.htm https://help.puppet.com/core/current/Content/PuppetCore/pupp...
- ChuckMcM 1y ago
  Puppet is currently closest to what I think I want.
FirmwareBurner 1y ago
Make a floppotron of NUCs

kogasa240p 1y ago

As much as I like the idea of miniPCs my biggest issue is that almost everything in miniPCs are soldered down, if you could replace the RAM/CPU/Storage I'd have zero with them. But for now, I'm skeptical in that the current push for miniPCs are a clandestine way to get more technical people onboard with unrepairable devices.

nerdix 1y ago
There are plenty of miniPCs with replaceable RAM and storage. Some of the newer ones based on the Ryzen Ai CPUs have soldered RAM but most don't. Replaceable CPU is harder to find. However, there is the Minisforum MS-A1 which has an AMD AM5 motherboard with replaceable CPU. https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-a1 https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-a1
- omnimus 1y ago
  Worth noting the AMD APUs dont have ram soldered on a board cannot be replaced even with soldering. The ram is inside the chip and is shared between the cpu/gpu.
  - gc9 1y ago
    No, maybe you're thinking of Intel Lunar Lake.
- kogasa240p 1y ago
  Oh wow I never knew that, very good to see.
giantrobot 1y ago
I've got a couple N95 miniPCs and they have replaceable RAM and m.2 slots to upgrade the storage.
PhilipRoman 1y ago
Weird, every mini PC I've used has had normal SODIMM slots and removable SSD. CPU is mostly soldered though.

jmyeet 1y ago

I'm a big fan of mini PCs starting with the (now abandoned) Intel NUCs. Yes, some have soldered down parts but a lot don't. For ~$500 you can get a decent CPU, 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and something like a Radeon 780M, which is no desktop GPU but it's surprisingly useful. Some even have Oculink connectors for external GPUs although I'm not sure how many people end up using this. You will find wildly varying networking connectivity like Wifi 6 vs 7, 1 or 2 Ethernet connectors that can be anything from 1GbE to 10GbE and a wide variety of different USB connectors and speeds. At $500 I really just don't care if it lasts forever. You can go more expensive and get a beefier CPU and/or GPU or go cheaper by going cheaper on both. I'm personally so over assembling PCs. I just want something that works.

pedalpete 1y ago

I've been thinking about going this route for my work PC at the office. Currently I drag my laptop with me back and forth from the office. It's small and light, so not a huge issue. I also use Resilio Sync to sync my data between a few different laptops I use, plus github, and the amount of work which is just in the browser now, I have almost nothing that isn't accessible from anywhere. The only reason I'd need a laptop at the office is for when I go into a zoom meeting and need a device in one of our breakout rooms. Sure, I could just use my phone for that, but not quite the right experience. Anyone have suggestions for this?

cmrdporcupine 1y ago

I've got one of those Minisforum UM790 Pro Ryzen mini PCs and I loved it for the first 8 months -- very fast, worked well -- and then the fan started making noises. Took it apart, tightened things up and cleaned it, and the fix lasted a few days before it started being noisy again. But the problem is.. custom non-replaceable parts. I realistically don't see a way I'm going to be able to fix the problem so I have to live with the noise. So basically another disposable consumer appliance. But it wasn't cheap. This is frankly the problem I see with these little things. They're just too custom and the brands not mainstream, with no retail supply chain into Europe or North America to support the product.

Felger 1y ago

MiniPCs... Have seen hundred of chinese ones fail. More than half failed between 1 and 3 years. As stated by others, issues are mainly and very commonly with the power stage / power management of the mainboard. Also, soldering quality issues leading to failures. Far less issues with good brands like Dell and HP (had a few hundred of desktop mini g2/3/4). Even tinys from Lenovo do perform quite well compared to their entry level laptops (also quite bad). Industrial computers form factor are also generally quite good but quite expensive, even second hand ones. Currently don't have enough feddback on the Asus ones nor enough volume to draw conclusions, but so far they performed well with minimal issue, even with models back from i3/i5 8th gen series.

throw5g432y 1y ago
I have the opposite experience as you. I have seena lot of failed Dell and HP mini desktops, but all the Beelinks and Minisforum PCs have been very reliable.
- srcreigh 1y ago
  Why do you need a throwaway account to say this?

ocdtrekkie 1y ago

The ewaste problem is not a problem, actually: Consider what you replace in a full tower: The SSD, RAM, Wi-Fi card, power supply. All of these are replaceable in a mini-PC (the power supply is an incredibly standard laptop charger brick usually). Yeah you can't change the processor or motherboard out, but generally those sit in "new computer" territory anyways.

bsimpson 1y ago

It makes sense since the cost of computing has come down, but it's funny to see the cyclical nature of it all. The web was run on beefy SPARC and NeXT workstations until Google came along and sharded it out onto cheap off-the-shelf hardware. Then containerization/virtualization started replicating individual machines as VMs to try to give you root-access control on timeshared hardware. Now computing is cheap, and the OP is advocating for "just make each container its own device."

Jolter 1y ago
Your larger point is well made, but a nitpick: between the NeXT workstation (the early 90's) and cheap COTS server hardware (the late 00s) was the era of big heavy servers, not workstations. Sun made some really amazing server hardware and we should not forget the abomination that was the Dell Blade server!

giantrobot 1y ago

I've been buying miniPCs since the days of Intel and Microsoft subsidizing shitty Bay Trail compute sticks. Even those were plenty powerful running a bunch of terminals connected to other machines doing hard work. I used to have one stuffed behind my monitor. They're also were laughably bad under Windows but pretty amazing under Linux. Modern ones with Intel N95 CPUs are actually fairly impressive for the price. The N95 is roughly the equivalent of a Sandy Bridge era i5 which is plenty of power for what I'm using them for. They've also were under $150 IIRC. My N95 systems have SODIMM slots for RAM and m.2 slots for storage. They're also got two Ethernet ports I set as a bonded interface so they get ~2Gbps to each other (and my NAS) on the same switch. My unofficial tips: - Get miniPCs with barrel adapters for power rather than USB. A lot of cheap ones like the old Bay Trail sort used microUSB for power and that's just terrible (sorry Raspberry Pis) - You'd be surprised at how powerful an N95 or AMD equivalent APU actually is these days. Outside of compiling, 3D rendering, or AI inference such machines are rarely CPU-bound. - Get black tape to put over stupid lights and front LCD screens that can't be controlled in Linux. - Avoid Windows on such machines and just go with Linux. Ubuntu and Mint fly on them out of the box, lighter DEs fly even faster. As servers they can host an impressive number of services that aren't compute-bound. Hardware video encoding means even stuff like Jellyfin is really light.

YegoBear 1y ago

I never got the point of these, since they’ve always got huge power bricks. I definitely love Mac Minis/Studios and have also built a bunch of custom SFF PCs around cases like the Ghost S1/NCase/Dan Case, etc. I don’t think they’re better than consoles, not even close since Windows is clunky and the Xbox has quick resume and plays 4K Blu-ray’s, but they’re great for keeping your desk organized.

rcarmo 1y ago
Many of the N-series machines support USB-C power delivery and can run off minuscule wall warts.

littlecopperpot 1y ago

Cheap and replacable. I found this wasteful. You said "I don’t worry about this too much: they are fully solid state machines, running on low power and low-ish temperatures, thus making their rate of degradation much slower than some beefy machine churning 24/7". How coyld this be measured vs just wishful thinking?

pjmlp 1y ago

> Cheap and Replaceable We must be looking into different kinds of MiniPCs, because I don't consider 300 euros cheap, and those models are a joke in specs. To have something usable it is more like reaching the 500 euros. Also I don't want replaceable, I want repairable. Last year I had to throw one away that barely worked, and I am not getting one ever again.

ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
What brand/model was your one? (So that we can avoid)
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Replied in another thread, Gigabyte Brix, more precisely Barebone GB-BRR5H-4500.
  - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
    Thanks. I'm surprised as I thought Gigabyte were a well known brand (previously bought their motherboards which seemed great). I've bought a few no-name minipcs and the only issue that I've encountered was when a supplied SSD stopped working.

NoPicklez 1y ago

MiniPC's are absolutely fantastic and better yet you can often find ex-government machines for cheap, they use hardly any power, take up minimal space and the majority of people are more than enough for your standard server with Proxmox, Unifi, PiHole, Plex etc I'm not sure how much I agree with "just buy another host", definitely use cases for that but having one machine running everything works very well

theshrike79 1y ago

What I want is the equivalent of a PS5 or Xbox Series X, but a PC. Like a big boy Steam Deck with no display or controller. Preferably in the same price range, definitely under 1000€.

rthnbgrredf 1y ago

Used ThinkPads from eBay, especially the smaller models from the X-Series, can make surprisingly cost effective "MiniPCs". If you need multiple devices, as mentioned in the article, you can even stack the laptops and build a small tower of "MiniPCs" all with different purposes. Another advantage is that they already come with a built-in screen and keyboard allowing for quick debugging, without needing to connect external peripherals.

deviantintegral 1y ago

What about MiniPCs that support serial console or network connectivity for BIOS / UEFI access? When I looked for a new router, I couldn't find any of the usual "cheap" suspects that supported that. As well, most didn't have anything better than 1 GBit network ports. I ended up going with a more expensive mini-PC style vendor, but I was surprised there didn't seem to be a ton of competitors.