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The MiniPC Revolution

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Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#131

Post by akho »

al_borland wrote: post #93
LarMachinarum wrote: post #18

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…

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…

As an alternative experience report: I have two beelink mini s12s, and administer another one that lives under my mom's tv. All work fine (though I wouldn't be bothered by your issue as much — I reboot maybe once every few months?).

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#132

Post by ChuckMcM »

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.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#133

Post by dontlaugh »

lostmsu wrote: post #51
rkagerer wrote: post #33

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, reinstal…

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.

There's some with both hard drive bays and fairly powerful CPUs. Aoostar and Ugreen make varying sizes.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#134

Post by nerdix »

Agingcoder wrote: post #113

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…

Depends on what you mean by "high end graphics"

The Ryzen Max+ 395 is in the ballpark of a RTX 4060 (but I believe it's starts to massively fall behind when ray tracing is enabled). It's an iGPU so I would imagine noise is greatly reduced (though probably not silent) compared to machines with dGPUs. However, that's going to cost roughly $2000 so it won't be cheap and will be vastly outperformed by a $2000 desktop pc.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#135

Post by Havoc »

aborsy wrote: post #107
Havoc wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do get ones with up to 6 nvme slots, but they'll be running at reduced speed. Generally X1 gen3

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.

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

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#136

Post by m463 »

Agingcoder wrote: post #113

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…

I've tried this.

My best solution by far turned out to be long cables going through the wall to a pc in the next room over.

When I was younger, I had a KVM in my bedroom going through the wall to two computers under the sink in my bathroom. lol. But it worked. silence.

Second best recently was a zotac magnus. More for compact though than noise. Bought a noctua replacement fan. works well with headphones.

I do have a silent/fanless zotac server. It works well, but it does fileserving, not cpu-intensive anything.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#137

Post by RossBencina »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #132

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 lov…

> 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/pupp...

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#138

Post by dontlaugh »

aborsy wrote: post #101

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, sinc…

A bunch of the mini pc manufacturers make 2 bay NAS variants, notably Aoostar and Ugreen. I recently looked into this to get a 4 bay variant.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#139

Post by rkagerer »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #76
rkagerer wrote: post #33

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, reinstal…

Sometimes size matters, tho. I came into MiniPCs from a Raspberry Pi solution. Our Pi's had to display multiple videos onscreen and weren't fast enough (I think the standard at the time was RP4), so we switched the critical ones to MiniPCs but they had to be small & light enough to hang off the back of a VESA mount on a TV suspended above a gym floor.

Yep, I can't knock the benefits of the small form factor.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#140

Post by kogasa240p »

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.
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