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The MiniPC Revolution

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Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#191

Post by Numerlor »

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…

When I was thinking about this k came to the conclusion you need a high specced mini pc, route out oculink from it and run an external GPU. For daily you'll have a powerful CPU with a decent igpu, and gaming will go to the external dgpu.

Otherwise you're stuck with lower performing gpus, as normal ram at least in its current state won't be able to approach the bandwidth necessary to keep up with a full fat high end gpu. And nobody is making mini pcs that work like laptops with normal dgpus so you're stuck with igpus with the normal solutions

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#192

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

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…

You want mini ITX. The T1 is a good starting point if you want to explore options: https://formdt1.com/

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#193

Post by dathery »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #99

Has anyone here managed to get USB4 networking (USB4NET) working with an AMD mini PC (specifically ones from Minisforum)? I'd love to have a 40Gbps backlink for a Ceph cluster.

I am doing this between two UM890 Pros. It was easy to set up and I have had no issues over many months, but I "only" get ~11.6 Gbps between them. This seems to match other reports e.g. https://fangpenlin.com/posts/2024/01/14/high-speed-usb4-mesh...

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#194

Post by ThatPlayer »

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.

I've found the Pi video decoder chips pretty weak, but still usable. I've got a Pi 2 displaying a 4x720p stream perfectly fine. Would struggle with anything more.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#195

Post by kylemaxwell »

LtWorf wrote: post #32
kylemaxwell wrote: post #30

These look like fun technology, but I don’t even know what the use cases would be anymore. I don’t need something to control my lights: I have an actual light switch for that. I don’t have endless terabytes of media that I need to serve within my household, so I just don’t know anymore what I would use this stuff for. Twenty or thirty years ago, I loved having a home lab, but these days I’m just not sure what I would…

How ableist of you :) The thing is that once lights are computer programmed, you can program them. For example I had made a program to stop playing music after I leave home because I hated to put the music off and then walk out, but I also didn't want the music to play all day while I was out.

That's not much of a disability-related use case to insult me about.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#196

Post by micromacrofoot »

RandomBacon wrote: post #174
micromacrofoot wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

gfci will do you the courtesy of flipping instead of killing you

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#197

Post by AngryData »

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #77
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a "dead light" mean in this context? Your landlord isn't changing your bulbs? I've mostly lived in 100+ year old homes with old janky wiring and have never had a light fixture die, just bulbs.

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…

If it wasn't suspended in the air I would say give it a go, household wiring isn't like some movie style electrocution hazard and is fairly easy to test for live. If you are dry and not grounded even if you get shocked it would hurt and singe some skin but would be freak accident to die from and you should have the breaker off anyways.

But with it up the top of a set of stairs and in the air requiring a ladder or something to stand on I wouldn't recommend it for a first time because if you did get shocked, not knowing what is coming (and possibly even if you did), you would jerk or jump away and possibly fall down the stairs which is way worse.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#198

Post by chaosharmonic »

freetime2 wrote: post #177
bsimpson wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The (smaller) laptop mainboards, on the other hand...

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#199

Post by aeve890 »

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 have a beelink gti14 with the ex pro docking station with a 4090 mounted on it. Basically a gaming PC on mini-itx-ish form factor. The loudest thing is of course the graphics card. It does the job as a gaming PC alright.

Re: The MiniPC Revolution

#200

Post by mycall »

ibaikov wrote: post #122
zem wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OCuLink is superior for external GPUs and is basically the standard with PCIe 4.0 bandwidth. It works well given a good enough eGPU and power supply.
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