MiniPC vs Servers in the Home Lab in 2024

Mini PCs have exploded in popularity over the past few years used as home lab servers. Explore the differences between mini PCs and enterprise servers. We look at processing power, hybrid CPUs, power consumption, server racks, noise, and generally what to expect with both.

Introduction - 0:00
Mini PCs are very popular for home labs - 0:33
Power consumption driving mini PC adoption - 1:00
Talking about power consumption of MS-01 - 2:13
Limitations of mini PCs in expandibility - 2:44
System memory is a major limitation with mini PCs - 3:22
Memory is generally the limitation in virtualized environments - 4:24
Mini PCs use hybrid (P and E Core) CPUs - 4:49
Hypervisor issues with hybrid processors - 5:19
Dell PowerEdge and HPE servers - 6:11
Enterprise servers can run large memory configurations and multiple CPUs - 6:50
Out of band management on enterprise servers is superior - 7:04
Second-hand enterprise servers are super cheap - 7:25
Double-edged sword with enterprise servers - 8:02
Server racks may be needed for enterprise servers - 8:41
Comparison of mini PCs vs servers - 9:09
Pros and cons of both minis PCs vs Servers - 9:31
Wrapping up the comparison and choosing the right tech for home labs - 9:50

[hotrodhunk]

And here I'm just using two e waste laptops...

[igorshubovych]

It would be cool if some of this cheaper brands can release something like HPE MicroServer, the middle ground between mini PC and server.

[robotredkitten]

Thanks for that video. I am looking for a mini PC I think. I'm a bit a nerd for arm and risk-V cpu. What do you think would be the best home server with a risk-V or maybe a arm possessor?

[vikasv]

I don't understand where is this video coming from but there's no comparison. Both are for different purpose and environment.

[zyghom]

Although I agree with everything you said, I am wondering why you are putting the title: "... in Home Lab..." yet you talk entrprice solutions. Is this video a comparison between home and enterprice? or was it supposed to be: "what to use in Home Lab?" - if the latter then you should have skipped unnecessary description of what companies use - the audience here is home users. Unless I am wrong ;-)

[scotttrongkaew]

For Out-Of-Band Management, Mini PC like Dell and HP Lenovo are built in with vPro Technology (with i5 or higher) which allow IT admin to manage and control machine under the bios such as a power on system and I guess Mini Forums do so, It could be replace the choice for choose mini pc instead of server.

[bitpickersplace]

I moved from a Dell R730 server to the MiniForums MS-01 last week. While I love my Dell, power usage was just too much. I watch both videos on the MS-01 and the Trigkey S7 mini PC's . I went with the MS-01 because of the networking capabilities. I got the I-9 processor and 32GB of memory. In my testing, I ran Windows 11 and a Debian machine with a desktop along with about five other linux server vm's. Remote Desktop accessed both the Windows vm and Debian Desktop nlike a dream. Much better than the Dell server did.

Now, it MiniForums would produce an AMD version of MS-01 mini with a high end Ryzen processor, they would have a perfect machine. As it is, I've very happy with the change.

All I have to do is to find a buyer for my Dell.

[geekinasuit]

I bought a Mini PC with an AMD Ryzen 8c/16t CPU. It has 64Gb RAM, 2Tb NVMe storage (I can add a second NVMe card), and 4 Ethernet ports. I've connected 2 Eth ports for external access, and 2 for my internal LAN. It's running 2 dozen or so LXC containers, and can easily run 2 dozen more. It's quiet and takes up a lot less space than my AsrockRack server, but the Asrock server has 16c/32t CPU, 40Tb storage (32Tb RAID 5), and 128Gb RAM, so not quite the same thing. I use the miniPC as an Internet gateway server. The Asrock is for my home lab and storage system. The miniPC keeps Internet access working when doing experiments and maintenance on the Asrock server, and it can take over the role of the miniPC gateway server when I'm doing maintenance and experiments on the minPC, it’s really nice to have the easily swappable redundancy.

[ewenchan]

It REALLY depends on what you're running.

My main Proxmox load average right is somewhere around 18-20 (out of a 32-core/64-thread system) (and also has 256 GB of DDR4-2400 ECC Reg RAM).

To do the same with the MS-01, I would need four of them, and even the, one of one of them might be able to fit my RTX A2000 6 GB GPU in there, whilst another would have to take my 100 Gbps Infiniband NIC.

And my main Proxmox server also manages 36 HDDs, which the MS-01 won't really be able to do, unless another one of the four that I would need to get, would then take the SAS RAID card, and then I would connect that up to a disk shelf, to be able to physically host the data, and it is unlikely that the disk shelf would be any more power efficient.

Therefore; as you can see, when you add it all up, having four MS-01s might still not be the best option despite it's capabilities as a mini PC server.

(I think that at last count, I was running something like 23 LXC containers, and I'm now down to about 5 or 6 VMs (as more Linux VMs are being migrated over to LXC containers).)

It'll be some time before Mini PCs would be able to displace my main Proxmox server as modern desktop and laptop CPUs don't have enough PCIe lanes for all of the add-in cards that I am running.

[powertoker]

The electricity I use for my server directly goes to keeping my basement dry in addition to the computational capacity

[gregorydelapierre]

It really boils down to the technology you want to learn and where you host your lab, and of course the budget you want to allocate.

[tdragon]

I just gotta ask. Did you experience any issues with your MS-01? Mine keeps freezing, no errors, nothing. Required hard reset.
Now got a "test" bios update from Minisforum to try out. Not enough time to come to a conclusion.

My config with as much info is:
Updated Microcode and latest Proxmox updates
13900H
96GB Cruacial CT2K48G56C46S5
ZFS Raid 1 with 2 x WD SN700
Booting VMs of NFS
Got SR-IOV on the two 10GB nics

Running both containers and VMs

[howardleen]

Solid video idea - I'll be watching this later.

[cedwardsmedia]

I currently have three Poweredge servers in a rack in my lab. I'm actually considering changing their roles around. Planning to add a few mini-pcs to the lab to handle most containers and VM tasks and leave the servers to true "server" tasks. My TrueNAS machine will be getting a huge storage and RAM upgrade soon so it'll stay on true server hardware. Another server is handling VMware while another handles containers. These tasks will likely be moved to mini machines.

I think a hybrid setup is best for almost anyone. That way you can have a true server while not breaking the bank.

[praetorxyn]

My long term plan is to get a MS-01 to use as a Proxmox host, and eventually to put in a rack and build a rack server, or maybe just get a 45Drives HL15, to use as a storage server with TrueNAS Scale, with proper 10G switches and such to make the most of both. Hopefully I can limp along with my Synology NAS until then.

[g.s.]

personally I have 2 esxi server, one on a miniPC AMD with many docker and few vm, while the other is a used workstation dual processor XEON where I have an NVIDIA card and where I virtualize high demanding workloads.

[html]

It honestly depends on your use case. If you plan on running extremely intensive services in your network/homelab than getting a traditional server may suit your needs. However if you are just starting out a raspberry pi or dell optiplex is great way to start running some services. I currently have a raspberry pi that I run a couple of docker containers for a homepage dashboard, pihole, minecraft bedrock server, and a couple of local apache servers and it is very low power running 24/7. You don't need an enterprise server for running just a couple of services. I do however want to get a dell poweredge r620 in the future to run esxi on.

[Trains-With-Shane]

It is worth mentioning that Proxmox is working diligently on support for intel's "Big Little" architecture. It already mostly works from what I understand so this makes them an even more compelling argument as opposed to used enterprise gear. The power savings of a mini PC is excellent as you really don't lost much versatility if you don't need banks of 3.5" hard drives for massive storage. Now that being said another plus to enterprise gear is that the initial buy in is inexpensive but replacement and upgrade parts are as well. If something stops working on any of these mini PC's it's likely going to necessitate replacement of the entire unit.

[moonlightsoldier]

Yeah depends on use case to me personally my homelap when complete will be a gaming pc a server I'm going to deckout for ai crypto and rendering then a Nas for software development and my laptop

[JasonsLabVideos]

I still love my Lenovo St550 with dual scalale xeon cpu's. Can't get 256gigs ram and tons of storage in a small box. Good video Brandon ..