The Mini PC You SHOULD Be Looking At

SSD I Used (Affiliate Link):

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Music (in order):
"If You Want To" - Me
"Town Groove" - Me

"VULF JAMS" - GARRISON
"The Butterfly Nose" - GARRISON
"Voodoo Groovez" - GARRISON

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Gear I Use: (affiliate links)

Recording Gear

Servers and Networking
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Timestamps:
0:00 I love pis and desktops, but...
0:40 stay curious using skillshare
1:46 Why this video
2:32 This PC
3:06 Specs
5:14 Cleanup
6:39 Windows and Benchmarks
7:40 Power Consumption
8:05 Game streaming and PS2 emulation
8:36 Using this as a server
11:00 eBay Deals

[josiahhums]

Fun Fact:
These are the Mini PCs that Chick-fil-A uses for their in-store POS Servers. They're getting upgraded right now so there might be a lot flowing into the market soon.

[kraio-sfu]

It’s worth noting that any of these mini PCs with vPro on the CPU badge can be remotely managed and monitored, allowing you to remotely turn it on and off among other things. Just make sure the MEBx hotkey is enabled in the BIOS (this is what it is called in my unit), and press Ctrl+P while it is booting to enter the Intel AMT configurator.

[TerraMagnus]

A single one of those 1L PC’s could run a whole homelab for many of us.

[senspartech]

As someone who uses MicroPCs *extensively* in a variety of projects, I use MiniPCs almost as much for general use. They are absolutely fantastic for low power consumption daily drivers, nodes, etc. Due to their widespread use in enterprise applications, they are frequently offloaded for great prices.
In thinking about it just now, I cant even remember the last time I did something like use one of my rPis in a similar application. Ive long recommended MiniPCs to anyone who has mentioned to me that they are looking at getting an rPi as a "cheap computer."

[mjfvasmer]

I think, Xeon didn't work not because of TDP limitation, but because of compatibility. Since Skylake generation, Intel started to restrict the use of server CPUs on home chipsets

[scottgardener]

I have two of these. When I realized I had a desktop in my home office out of habit but only used it for web browsing and light tasks like word processing and occasional video conferencing, I pulled out the bulky tower in favor of a low profile mini box. We have a second one upstairs available for use as a media server, for playing archived video and audio files as well as streaming off of web services that don't have traditional smart TV apps.

[ColinUniverse]

I actually just ordered a Dell Optiplex 7040 Micro with an i5-6600T (same form factor as the guy in your video) for $89 last week! I also got 32 GB DDR4 2400 MHz for only $36. Going to be using it as a power efficient home server to run my Minecraft server and other things. Oh yeah, and great video by the way! :)

[nathanbarker]

I did exactly this as I wasn't prepared to pay pi scalpers almost double for a model 4. I ended up getting a Dell Optiplex 3046 with a 6th gen I5, 16Gb RAM and a half decent ssd for about £80. Does a great job and runs everything I've thrown at it so far.

[kalark]

I picked up one of these elitedesk mini g4 mini earlier this year for around 140 and that one included a ryzen 2400g. It's been a fantastic mini pc!

[psylentut]

A company I worked for had a couple of dozen of these delivered right before covid hit. They became suddenly "useless" as all staff were very quickly issues laptops.

A couple of years later, they were still sitting in storage, unused. Our IT guy gave me a couple of them and they're brilliant. I've got one set up in as HTPC in the living room. It's decent enough to play older games, and stuff that's not too demanding like Dead Cells. It streams from my gaming tower via Parsec flawlessly.

[applzpiefatalities]

This is the computer i use as my proxmox server. I have quite a lot of services running on docker. around 15+- LXC containers and 1 VM. 0 issues so far with it. Why i love it is because its so tiny, u can buy 2 more and have a cluster. I kinda paid a bit more than 50$ tho :P (250 euros) All in all i would recommend it

[TribbleBot]

A couple of months ago I spent a bit more for a refurbished one to replace the Pi 400 my wife had been using for a couple of years. It worked out so well I decided to step up to the next largest size (the 800 G3 SFF) for a dedicated Plex server. After installing Ubuntu, dropping in our existing 8 TB media drive, and copying over our existing Plex configuration, it was up and running easy peasy lemon squeezy.

[phucnguyen]

These tiny PCs are quickly getting more popular, I love it!

[PrymalInstynct]

I have been running a 5 node k8s cluster on the Elitedesk 800 g3. I installed a 256gb nvme and 128gb SSD in each and use the SSD as a boot drive and the nvme with rook/ceph for distributed storage. It has been an awesome experience.

[ShawnMcNaughton]

You monster! I've been looking at building a K8s testbed with these for the last week or so, and was finally closing in on the price sweet spot, and now they're going to go up again! :D

But seriously, these are great. I have one dedicated to Home Assistant, and it's excellent. 6th gen Intel is the oldest I would go - any older and the power/efficiency isn't there, especially with spectre/meltdown mitigations - as well as NVMe support.

You can also look at thin clients, like the HP T640 (with a Ryzen Embedded R1505G) and Dell Wyze 5070 (Pentium J5005/J4105, limited to 8GB RAM). Furthermore, don't sleep on the SFF machines - they aren't quites as compact as the Mini/1L PCs, but some have standard internal power supplies, better cooling/performance and can take a low profile graphics card and full-size RAM.

Either way, these can have a surprising amount of 'oomph' for small, used, low-power hardware.

[heyjustj]

I used to buy Pi’s for so many projects back when they were always $35. Now I feel like they don’t make much sense anymore when I cam buy these older mini PCs for less than a raspberry pi with all the accessories needed to get it up an running. Unless I need something that very specifically requires a Pi, I’m going with a mini pc every time.

[KameraShy]

I have been using these mini PC's (Lenovo) for a number of years now and they work great. One is in daily driver mode at one location and performs perfectly for things like video watching. Easy to work on. I recently picked up a batch for about $50 each including power supplies. One thing to watch out for is whether the hd caddy is included. Those can be a pain to source independently. It varies.

[l.a.]

The reason I use an RPi 4 is for portability my portable ham radio outfit, my son got me a mini PC that runs on 12 volts, but its kinda rough to run from battery ( voltage drop ) but im really interested with using one of these little rigs for my home radio station, desk space is a premium for me. Thanks for the good info! Keep up the research!

[GrzegorzCichocki]

I had hp 800 Mini G3 with the same processor for almost 10 months. It worked great with YunoHost as a server. Nextcloud, home assistant and other apps worked very nicely

[TheBassistPhilosoper]

The HP elite 800 g3 (and newer) are one of my absolute favorite 1L PCs to work with in my homelab. Great to see others picking up on this fantastic little box!