Mini PCs Database

by crosschainer • 2 years ago

65 50 2 years ago

porphyra• 2 years ago

Great minimalistic web design but it only has 65 mini pcs on it and doesn't have a lot of popular ones like the Minisforum ones or Lenovo Thinkcentres. So it is hardly the "ultimate resource for everything Mini PCs".

mjhagen• 2 years ago

I think Beelink alone has more than 65 mini PCs :)

k_roy• 2 years ago

oops.. looks like someone forgot about natural ordering on some of those sorts.

ochoseis• 2 years ago

This is a great idea. It would be even better if there were a column for warranty details, power consumption, and slot/port counts.

blacksmith_tb• 2 years ago

Fan / no-fan would also be useful to many people (myself included).

martini333• 2 years ago

Power consumption would make sense

axelfontaine2• 2 years ago

My current favorite is Cirrus7: 100% passively cooled in a great compact custom case: https://www.cirrus7.com/

BossingAround2• 2 years ago

Wow, this looks awesome for a low-usage home server (since it makes no noise). Does it handle load well though?

axelfontaine2• 2 years ago

The primary bottleneck is the PSU. Limit the current draw to 65W (also during turbo boost) and you've got yourself the perfect workstation at a very reasonable price!

Fnoord4• 2 years ago

Minisforum MS-01 is way better since it can function as a router and NAS / server with high uplink. It sports 2x 2.5 gbit, 2x SFP+, and all of these are decent Intel NICs (i226-LM, i226-V, X710). The X710 supports SR-IOV. It also has a PCIe slot you can use, for example to add another 10 gbit NIC or two 2.5 gbit. And it has an on-board WLAN (which you can remove). Actively cooled, which is IMO what you want. It has 3 NVMe slots, though you could also use that PCIe slot for another one.

PennRobotics• 2 years ago

This looks awesome for music recording as well. Connect to a fanless USB interface and you'd be set for totally* noiseless recording.

* assuming no coil whine or PSU clicking

layer82• 2 years ago

It depends on the CPU, the load, and the selected case option. The CPU will throttle when the load gets too high. They are using mobile/low-power CPUs. It’s generally fine if you don’t plan to have long-running heavy all-core loads. There is really no alternative to such cooling-fin cases in order to have a 100% silent PC.

For more processing power, a large case with quiet fans (e.g. Noctua) and a massive CPU cooler is the way to go, but isn’t completely silent (depending on load and environment noise level), and you’ll have to build it yourself.

trte9343r4• 2 years ago

Did you actually try to run this thing? It will overheat and be very unstable. With modern mini-PCs you need active cooling even on DDR5 and SSDs!

BossingAround2• 2 years ago

I liked the idea of mini PCs, but for my usecases, they weren't powerful enough. In the end, I went with what I'd call "medium PC" - Intel NUC 13 extreme. Desktop-level components in a small form factor. At the time, I couldn't fit more powerful components into similar SFFPC. Of course, I paid premium price for it.

In the end, Intel gave up on the whole idea and sold NUCS to Asus, which means I'll never have another NUC, sadly (I wouldn't support company with as bad customer service as Asus).

jelicicm• 2 years ago

Thank you for this. Love the simple design. I hope this DB keeps growing! One note: Sorting on Ram Size column seems to be string sorting (e.g. descending order gives 96, 8,...,7.34,64), when it obviously should be numerical.

c2h5oh• 2 years ago

CPU/memory/performance are nice, but not the only things I'd care about, e.g.

- number and speed of ethernet ports - if you want to build a opnsense router for example

- number and kind of video outputs - if you want to build a media pc

- MSRP

- passive vs active cooling

- power draw

- USB ports and USB version

- m2 nvme and sata connectors

- m2 lte (key b) connectors

all of those could be filters - see pcpartpicker as an example of good ui

drewg1232• 2 years ago

I came here to say a lot of this.

One thing you didn't mention that I'd like to see is what, if any, PCIe slots there are. This is pretty rare in mini PCs, and I've only seen it on the Minisforum ms-01 (https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-01)

Fnoord4• 2 years ago

HP MicroServer Gen 10 isn't a mini PC, but it it is quite small form factor and comes with 4x 1 gbit NIC (I350, supporting SR-IOV). 4 SATA 3.5" slots, allows for iLO and PCIe (I use a PCIe to NVMe there). It draws a lot of power though, as it is a Xeon processor. Sadly PiKVM wouldn't fit in the iLO spot.

A Minisforum uses far less power and can be decked with some (3) NVMe. It also has TB4, and a PCIe slot, which can also be used for NVMe/SSD, as well as the one where the WLAN is in (miniPCIe?). Thinking of putting my Coral accelerator in there, though it probably gets quite hot. I suppose the TB4 you could use to attach a bay of SATA drives to the machine, or to use a TB4 case for a NVMe.

NelsonMinar2• 2 years ago

If you're looking to tinker the Amazon Prime sale has some reasonable deals on N100 mini-PCs right now, at least in the US. Popular models like BeeLink and Minisforum are down from $200 to $160.

metadat2• 2 years ago

How is this better than an i7-8k series from Ebay with 16GB ram and a 256GB SSD for $150 USD or less?

NelsonMinar2• 2 years ago

It's new? it's smaller and quieter? It runs under 10 watts? You get 16GB + 512GB for $160, or did in the sale.

Also it's cuter.

buildsjets• 2 years ago

These are all outdated and old. I have a Beelink with an Intel N100, that's over a year and a half old CPU, and has been super common on the market this year. They only list 3 brands with an N100 on here, and I have never heard of any of them. Looking at the Beelink PCs they do list, they all have CPUs from 2016-2017

layer82• 2 years ago

This is lacking most of the useful specs you’d want to search/filter for, like internal and external connectors, Wifi/Bluetooth capabilities, passive vs. active cooling, dimensions, and so on.

Meekro• 2 years ago

I would add appearance and noise level (if any).

jauntywundrkind• 2 years ago

Whether or not there are any bios updates available!

darknavi• 2 years ago

And any pricing information. I know it's hard to keep up to date but that's what makes shucks.top amazing. (or made it amazing, it seems to be down...)

Krastan• 2 years ago

No tiny mini micro PCs? That's what I'm running for my home server and it is the best bang for buck imo

metadat2• 2 years ago

It's missing all of the HP mini's which have been extremely popular for more than a decade.

Examples:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c07588846 — HP EliteDesk 800 G8 (Intel 13th gen)

https://support.hp.com/ee-en/document/c06045012 — HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Desktop Mini (Intel 8th gen)

Also discussed recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40867709 — The Cheapest NAS (sigwait.org) — 2 weeks ago, 298 comments

haunter2• 2 years ago

Not just HP but Lenovo and Dell too. They all use the same case and motherboard design. x86 so every Linux and BSD distro will work, upgradable CPU, RAM, and HDD etc. I can vouch for them.

jsheard2• 2 years ago

Parky Towers has a decent index of those thin clients, with information about how they can be upgraded

https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hware/hardware.shtml

haunter2• 2 years ago

That's not the same. Thin clients are a different category than small form factor micro PCs.

LargoLasskhyfv• 2 years ago

Err. Via Eden&Nano? SiS? NS/AMD Geode? Transmeta Crusoe? Jurassic Atoms & Celerons?

That seems interesting for retro-computing, but not really for anything current running on them. Be it for lacking instruction-sets, or peripheral ports.

bdcravens• 2 years ago

I assume this is a just a scrape from Geekbench? If so, shouldn't it be linked to see additional information?

wongarsu• 2 years ago

That's an unexpected selection. When I think Mini PC I think Lenovo ThinkCentre, Dell Optiplex Micro, maybe a USFF Fujitsu Esprimo or HP EliteDesk. Basically any USFF (Ultra Small Form Factor) model from a major manufacturer. Reliable, easy to source, and if you're fine with being a couple years behind the curve really cheap to buy refurbished because companies buy them by the truckload and then replace them every couple years.

nehal3m• 2 years ago

They’re perfect for home lab applications as well, I’ve used one as a firewall and another one as a NAS. A model with a decent amount of CPU cores can pull virtualization duty. They’re generally pretty power efficient, like a next step up from an rPi.

jeffbee• 2 years ago

Yeah, this is basically a list of off-brand junk that will never work right.

ww5202• 2 years ago

These cheap mini PC look nice on paper, but I have bad experience with them. They tend to break after a while. They got shut down due to overheat; their small form factor make ventilation difficult. BIOS was set to overclocking by default. BIOS settings got magically reverted back to default. Everything makes it look good on paper on benchmarks but bad for consumers.

OTOH, I got good experience with the Intel NUC boxes. Got good experience with HP and Dell's slim PCs, which have slightly bigger form factors and are good for heat dissipation.

winrid• 2 years ago

Yeah you can get a refurbished Dell Optiplex for about $100 w/ keyboard, mouse, and wifi adapter, and should have a passmark score of around 6k (for reference the i7 in thinkpad x1 carbons from 2018 has a passmark score of 8k). I got one of these setup for an event organizer that wanted to drive three displays w/ timing software on a budget.

schmookeeg• 2 years ago

+1! -- I use Optiplexes in my homelab for client/misc/fw duty, and I have a pair of Supermicro mini servers with Xeon-D chips for slightly heavier stuff. Both bulletproof and small/innocuous/inexpensive to run.

I keep wanting to upgrade to something shiny or attempt to consolidate since my Dells are on some hilariously old chips (4th gen LTS "T" series i7s) but man they just keep chugging along, it's hard to justify.

ww5202• 2 years ago

Yes. I have got a "used" HP 800 G4 DM on the cheap, which looks brand new still wrapped with plastic skin, as my camera NVR machine. It barely uses 2%~3% CPU processing 8 camera feeds and pumping out videos to 3 monitors. The mini PC did the same thing with 80%~100% CPU and got overheat easily. The HP is slightly bigger but flatter than the current mini PC form factor. I believe the design is great for heat dissipation.

the_snooze• 2 years ago

Old Intel NUCs make for nice home servers. Small footprint, low power, but has room to grow for standard storage and USB peripherals. You can pick one up on eBay for under $75, and it generally comes with everything you need (otherwise sold separately for Raspberry Pis): case, disk storage, power supply. Mine has a 5th generation Core i3 processor from 2015, but it more than handles everything I need: Ubuntu Server 22.04 and Docker containers for my self-hosted web services (e.g., Jellyfin, OwnCloud, Home Assistant).

paxys• 2 years ago

This list maintained by r/MiniPCs is infinitely better – https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SWqLJ6tGmYHzqGaa4RZs...

fuzzfactor• 2 years ago

The Minix name has also been appropriated years ago by a line of miniPCs which apparently have no relationship with the legendary Minix operating system.

Actually the early ones were not very good with the Windows 10 they had, and a fresh reinstall left you needing drivers that only came from their provided restoration images.

After about a year they were not useful for that any more with only 16GB of drive space and 4GB of memory soldered in.

After our IT guys replaced them with Dells, I repurposed by installing Windows 11 in Compact Mode from the command line and dedicating for spectrometer use which is not going on the internet.

Minix is still there with more powerful units which are quite a bit more expensive.

I would look closely at support downloads for little things like this, I still had to get some of the drivers for W11 from the (now externally saved) original W10 images from 2016.

conradev• 2 years ago

I only see 65 on this site – I usually browse https://minixpc.com/ for the latest mini PCs, or https://liliputing.com/ for reviews

Mini PCs Database

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