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The MiniPC Revolution

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Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#151

Post by jeffbee »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #88

> 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.…

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.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#152

Post by [deleted] »

cdkmoose wrote: post #11

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.

[deleted]

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#153

Post by justincormack »

mrbluecoat wrote: post #38

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.

Its funny that Intel is the supplier of choice for cheap Chinese mini pcs, how the mighty have fallen.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#154

Post by omnimus »

nerdix wrote: post #145
kogasa240p wrote: post #140

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.

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

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.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#155

Post by kogasa240p »

ibaikov wrote: 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…

The biggest problem with making a "gaming" miniPC is new games being very unotpomized, but other than that the hardware is already there, I'd wager that we'll probably see a new Steam Machine within the next 3-5 years.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#156

Post by dontlaugh »

lostmsu wrote: post #144
dontlaugh wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The point here is exactly allowing to upgrade compute independently of storage.

I considered that, but it doesn't make sense price-wise. You can get the storage bays for very little along with your compute, certainly cheaper than separate hard drive enclosures.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#157

Post by pedalpete »

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?

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#158

Post by justincormack »

BizarroLand wrote: post #74
politelemon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are people doing with 6 M2 slots?

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.

These machines sadly dont have a 25gb nic though!

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#159

Post by cmrdporcupine »

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.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#160

Post by kogasa240p »

nerdix wrote: post #145
kogasa240p wrote: post #140

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.

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

Oh wow I never knew that, very good to see.
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