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The MiniPC Revolution

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Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#181

Post by aborsy »

dontlaugh wrote: post #138
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.

Thanks!

AOOSTAR 2-bay AMD R7 5825U mini PC seems to check the boxes, for an entry-level storage + virtualization miniPC host. The CPU is similar to AMD R7 5800H in a Beelink SER5 Pro miniPC which runs proxmox very well.

It has a cpu with 8C/16T, up to 4.5GHz, and supports max 2x32gb DDR4 3200Mhz RAM, 2x4T PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMes and 2x2.5G NICs.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#182

Post by gc9 »

omnimus wrote: post #154
nerdix wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, maybe you're thinking of Intel Lunar Lake.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#183

Post by 9029 »

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…

Something like this? https://rog.asus.com/us/desktops/mini-pc/rog-nuc-2025/ No idea about the noise though, and personally I despise the design.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#184

Post by laidoffamazon »

wishfish wrote: post #31
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…

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.

I’m honestly skeptical of the utility of the Fremont as the specs currently appear. Seems like not enough horsepower compared to the competitor consoles - the Steam Deck was so good because price to performance to battery life is still hard to beat and only now encroached by the Switch 2, it simply didn’t have a console like competitor.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#185

Post by al_borland »

akho wrote: post #131
al_borland wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?).

The latest project I had for it was to host a radio station. I got a home FM transmitter and was going to load the Beelink full of music, set it to shuffle, and stick it in a corner for years. Then I could tune any radio in my home to the broadcasted station and have quick and easy music synced all over my house without and “smart” stuff. A $20 transistor radio would do the job. There were a lot of reboots during setup, and then after about 4 days the OS (mint) locked up and I needed another reboot. I think that happened a time or two after that, and I just gave up.

The whole idea was that I wanted it to be a simple flick of the switch, or turn of a knob, to play some music. The “smart” stuff and apps have more friction than I’d like when I just want some background noise. The random lockups and reboot issues created a different kind of friction.

A few old G4 Mac minis just came back into my possession. Maybe I’ll just use one of those. My main issue there is memories of old iTunes getting caught in a loop when shuffling. Do it do long and it starts to essentially play the same playlist it generated on repeat. But maybe for this I won’t care, that’s how most radio stations seem to operate anyway, and I’d have the power to force it to mix things up.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#186

Post by YegoBear »

I never got the point of these, since they’ve always got huge power bricks. I definitely love Mac Minis/Studios and have also built a bunch of custom SFF PCs around cases like the Ghost S1/NCase/Dan Case, etc. I don’t think they’re better than consoles, not even close since Windows is clunky and the Xbox has quick resume and plays 4K Blu-ray’s, but they’re great for keeping your desk organized.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#187

Post by dahrkael »

butz wrote: post #72

MiniPC must either charge from USB-C or have an internal PSU. Those external power bricks are so annoying when you start adding more PCs to the cluster.

GMKTec mini PCs are powered via USB-C, the included charger is quite manageable

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#188

Post by dahrkael »

geerlingguy wrote: post #106
shadowpho wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N100/n97/n150 are all perfect (about the same perf). 6-10w idle (similar to rasp pi) but 4-10x more perf.

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.)

it depends a lot if the RAM is DDR4 or DDR5, those Intels really like fast memory

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#189

Post by scrlk »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #65
mcny wrote: post #19

My minisforum mini PC died within two years seemingly our of the blue. Support won't return my emails.

Minisforum is also one of many mini-pc vendors that basically doesn't release bios updates. They might release a couple early on, to try to get systems stable, but after that don't expect any bios updates. AMD will release plenty of updates, & you'll be stuck on whatever it was your system came with. Different kind of support concern from yours, but also noteworthy. Really unfortunate. I still have an old HP EliteDes…

I’d be very surprised if your EliteDesk never got any BIOS updates. In my experience, business grade PCs from the major vendors (Dell/HP/Lenovo) usually have a pretty solid software support lifecycle.

If it’s an EliteDesk G2 Mini, the last BIOS update was released in May 2024.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#190

Post by burnte »

karmakaze wrote: post #48
burnte wrote: post #41

I recently did a 180 in my homelab. I had been getting better and better equipment, enterprise level, and I found that it took a lot mroe work and was a lot less fun than doing things the way I used to, which had been maximize small low cost systems. I enjoyed the jank, and going enterprise equipment eliminated jank. So I sold all the high end stuff and went back to miniPCs. My main VM host now is a Lenovo P3 Ultra w…

That's a beefy machine, small in dimension not so much in volume or price. Good expansion space though. I'm seeing 2,669 and 3,502 CAD.

True, I got it used for $1400 and added RAM and disk.
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