3 ms·

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.
- geerlingguy 1y ago
  Just to adjust the numbers a little, the Pi idles at 2-4W (for similar RAM spec), and the N100/150 are only about 2-4x more performant (with a slight bit less efficiency), for most tasks, in real-world benchmarks. (Not saying they're not a good value, but you'd have to cherry pick a few benchmarks to say there's 4-10x performance.)
  - dahrkael 1y ago
    it depends a lot if the RAM is DDR4 or DDR5, those Intels really like fast memory
  - shadowpho 1y ago
    > the Pi idles at 2-4W (for similar RAM spec) At the wall? I measured mine and it was higher with gpu disabled. Real world benchmarks/usage is going to be dominated by sd card speed vs m2 perf. That’s why upgrading system is so much slower on pi vs n100…
vFunct 1y ago
Mac mini is the perfect. Its also the most power efficient.
- Bnjoroge 1y ago
  assuming you mean the newer ones you cant really run proxmox on them easily

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.
geerlingguy 1y ago
Just to adjust the numbers a little, the Pi idles at 2-4W (for similar RAM spec), and the N100/150 are only about 2-4x more performant (with a slight bit less efficiency), for most tasks, in real-world benchmarks. (Not saying they're not a good value, but you'd have to cherry pick a few benchmarks to say there's 4-10x performance.)
- dahrkael 1y ago
  it depends a lot if the RAM is DDR4 or DDR5, those Intels really like fast memory
- shadowpho 1y ago
  > the Pi idles at 2-4W (for similar RAM spec) At the wall? I measured mine and it was higher with gpu disabled. Real world benchmarks/usage is going to be dominated by sd card speed vs m2 perf. That’s why upgrading system is so much slower on pi vs n100…

vFunct 1y ago

Mac mini is the perfect. Its also the most power efficient.

Bnjoroge 1y ago
assuming you mean the newer ones you cant really run proxmox on them easily