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The MiniPC Revolution

jadarma.github.io

121–130 of 261 posts

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#121

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…

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.)

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#122
post #97
post #13

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 proble…

I would honestly love a steam machine like thing that I could just plug into my laptop. I'm carrying my laptop around anyway, if I could plug in a small gaming system and have the laptop act as the input/output that would be ideal.

I liked the idea of type-c GPUs but there are so many problems again that it's just useless. It also should be something better than just a GPU tho, have HDMI eARC etc.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#123
post #84
post #13

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 proble…

> I want plug and play, but consoles have their own problems and limitations. How so? A console is literally a gaming PC. I can see the point of “need multiple consoles because game X isn’t on console Y” or “I’d like to play an RTS/MMO that isn’t on a console” but since you mentioned gamepads that point mostly dies. I also haven’t ever had a PS5 or Switch controller lose link from a console because someone walks or s…

PCs are different for a few reasons, for me.

One big part's the library. I can still play Steam games I bought when the Gamecube was current. My Gamecube games do not work on the Switch. My Dreamcast games certainly don't! The library for the PC is enormous and generally you don't have to re-buy old games to keep playing them, even after major hardware upgrades. Hell I got like a few hundred games on Itch.io years ago for so little money they may as well have been free, and sure they're mostly short "jank" games and art games and stuff, but that's still games and I like them! You can't get that kind of thing (with that kind of "OMG I may never even get through all these..." magnitude, I don't mean jank or art games, both exist on consoles, even if they're not well represented) on a console.

To do anything similar with consoles, you need, like... a dozen consoles, or more, with keeping that number down requiring putting a lot of money and time into careful curation and selection. A single PC does the trick, though.

Another's longevity & archiving (not unrelated to the library thing, but not exactly the same thing). The PC is my platform of last resort for console game archiving. Consoles don't really fill this role at all. Even a "hacked" console (if it's hackable) is on borrowed time. The hardware dies, and eventually the only ones left are in museums or crazy-expensive private collections. Meanwhile I play freeware PC games I downloaded in the 1990s, sometimes, like the exact same binary (to the degree it's "the same", which it isn't, but I just mean I didn't have to go download it again) that's been shuffled from one disk to another ever since. They're not gone. And thanks to PCs, neither are old console games (this is a state of affairs that's on life support, for newer consoles, but not quite dead yet)

Another's the controls. I don't really want a console at my desk (and there's gonna be a PC regardless, so that's nothing extra) because I definitely want one on my TV, and I don't want two of the same console. I don't really want to use a mouse & keyboard on my couch, I've done it, the best solutions I've found take up a bunch of space, look bad, and are still a worse experience than a desk. Some games that I love, I have no interest in playing them if it's not with a mouse and keyboard (and for plenty of others, a controller is better! I like tons of games that are best played with a controller, but for some, it's mouse & keyboard or I'll simply not play them).

Another factor's modding. I've gotten hundreds of extra hours out of games I've bought, thanks to mods. 50+% of my time in the Half Life and Source engines has been in total conversion mods. I'd probably only have put about a quarter as many hours into Morrowind or Skyrim as I have, without mods. I never touched the base game of Rome: Total War again after I discovered the Europa Barbarorum mod, which I sunk probably a hundred or more hours into. All for free, and you don't get that on consoles, the closest you get are things like level designers, sometimes, in LittleBigPlanet or what have you... and those all die when the game servers die.

FWIW I have... a lot of consoles, I don't hate them or anything, and these days most (90%?) of my gaming is on consoles. But they're not a gaming PC.

(Really, if gaming PCs were more-stable, less-janky, and didn't have such a hard time consistently pairing with and juggling multiple BlueTooth controllers [even the SteamDeck fails to live up to "real" consoles, on any of those fronts] I'd probably not bother with consoles at all, but that's such a crippling issue for PC hardware that instead I have a bunch of consoles, and have even re-bought games 3 or 4 times just for the convenience of being able to play them on one of the small set of real consoles currently connected to my TV)

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#124

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…

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.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#125

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…

Nintendo Switch

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#126
post #13

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 proble…

Looks like they'll be trying out the console / small box form factor again. 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.

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"

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#128

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…

> "... Intel NUC ..., then Gigabyte Brix series, then some cheapo china ones ..."

That's the mistake. Secondhand Dell, HP, or Lenovo mini PCs would probably have served better. They're cheap when second hand and the ones I've had have lasted a decade because the big OEMs are experienced in building office PCs.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#129

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?

This STH article might be helpful https://www.servethehome.com/perfect-project-tinyminimicro-p...

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#130

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…

That would be neat. But sadly thermodynamics gets in the way. I did see a minipc where the graphics card was being cooled by a liquid cooler that had the cooler unit under the desk but its not really a "mini" pc at that point, its a disaggregated pc with separate compute and cooling :-).
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