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The MiniPC Revolution

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Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#171

Post by wishfish »

slipperydippery wrote: post #126
wishfish wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had never thought of multiuser (or the lack of) with SteamOS and the Deck. That would be quite the problem with kids.

I wonder if a stopgap solution would be something like Bazzite on the Deck. Then you could have true multiuser while retaining the Deck's ease of use. But I could see other problems.

I'm sure you've probably already tried this or something similar. I just couldn't resist thinking out loud. It's an interesting problem.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#172

Post by ChuckMcM »

RossBencina wrote: post #137
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...

Puppet is currently closest to what I think I want.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#173

Post by aborsy »

goosedragons wrote: post #111
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…

That's a NAS. Just get a 2 bay NAS.

But a two bay NAS is typically maxed out at 16 GB of RAM, see UGREEN or QNAP. The CPUs are also dog slow for non-NAS tasks, like running VMs and containers.

Zimaboards come close. Two sata ports and 1-2 NVMe via PCIe. I heard the board may not be able to power all these drives. RAM is limited to 8-16 GB.

I guess I should separate HDD storage in a proper NAS and use a miniPC for VMs and containers only.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#174

Post by RandomBacon »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #87
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plugging a floor lamp into a bathroom electrical socket is going to reduce your danger?

code requires a GFCI socket in a bathroom, which if functioning would be safer than mucking around in an unknown wall receptacle, but YMMV

You're trusting that someone will follow the law about one receptacle, but expecting them to not follow the law about another nearby receptacle?

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#175

Post by giantrobot »

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.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#176

Post by lostmsu »

dontlaugh wrote: post #156
lostmsu wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Aoostar top one actually looks pretty good for what it provides (sus really, $700 for a NAS with 2x2.5G E and 2x10 SFP). But still, the compute options are very limited.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#177

Post by freetime2 »

bsimpson wrote: post #167
freetime2 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically the form factor: 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 s…

The Verge just wrote a love letter to the new Framework Desktop, running SteamOS on the thing as a gaming PC.

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-fram...

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#178

Post by giantrobot »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #166
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an iterative process. Valve launched Steam Machines with their own OS and started shipping a version of Steam on Linux with predictable library versions. At the same time, they started working with the Wine project and shipping things which is now called Proton but is actually the cumulative results of their own patches. This paved the way for the success of the Steam Deck when adequate material became available…

>I don’t think it makes sense to call the Steam Machine a misstep because there was no Proton. There would be no Proton nor Steam Deck without the ground work started with the Steam Machines. I’ve written before about how I think the Steam Deck is one of the best v1 products in recent memory, in large part because Valve learned so much (and so well) from the failures of the Steam Machines. I don’t know if I would cal…

I have a Steam Machine, one of the Alienware ones. You're completely correct. SteamOS as shipped on those machines sucked. The controllers sucked. The PC hardware wasn't bad and could play games alright but the experience sucked. I made it into a Linux desktop I used for years and it worked much better for that than as a dedicated games console. But the SteamDeck very plainly incorporated lessons learned from Steam Machines.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#179

Post by justsomehnguy »

giardini wrote: post #78
micromacrofoot wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you've just excluded at least half of america from voting, however smart you think most people are... the reality is significantly worse

Can I now take it as confirmation from the two of you (justsomehnguy and micromacrofoot) that at least half of Americans who vote should not be allowed to vote? If so, this may be the first time an important political question has been resolved without a light bulb turning on (figurative or otherwise).

Does the name R. Heinlein rings any bells?

Not what I would support it made that way...

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#180

Post by justsomehnguy »

giardini wrote: post #85
tenacious_tuna wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but I'm in a similar situation: I have a two-way switched pair of lights on my stairwell, one light at the base, one at the top. The one at the top does not work. We've tried replacing the bulb, we've tried fiddling with the cable for it (it's a suspended lamp). It hasn't worked since we moved in. We've told the landlord twice, he said he'd call his guy, his guy hasn't shown up. I would like to have a light i…

Been there, seen that. Some notes: - the two-way switched lights may have never worked as intended. So no matter what you do with the endpoints it may never work. - doing it yourself is a waste of time and money. You'll learn nothing of value and will toss it all in the end. -Proper solution is to hire a certified electrician who is familiar with two-way lights to fix/replace the current wiring. If you rent, pay the…

> turn it on and leave it on all the time

Or just get a motion activated one.

They have their own shenanigans, but...

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