I am looking to buy myself a Mini-PC as a second computer, for when I visit my family (mainly so I don’t have to use my laptop when I am over there). I have a fairly specific usecase and I am not completely sure what to buy. My use/requirements are as follows
Since this “replaces” my laptop, it should have a fairly similar amount of power (my Laptop has an i7-8565U and 16GB of RAM so nothing too crazy). A bit more or a bit less is fine too. I mainly use it for some light coding and Uni-work
I want to this thing to be able to run 24/7 (not necessarily): this means that it should consume very little power; a low peak power draw is great, but idle power should also be low. Additionally it should be quiet, since I will probably be sleeping in the same room at some point; passive cooling would be great, but I am not sure if this is even possible on a machine that is running constantly
Every once in a while, I might want to host a small Minecraft Server on it or misuse it as a little media server. These definitely are not its main purpose but it should be able to handle these (especially the former)
I really don’t want to spend more than 500€ for the whole package including RAM and SSD (preferrably less). If I can save some bucks by buying my own RAM and SSD I’ll gladly do that
It needs to work well with Linux
I’ve been looking at some models from Minisforum and they look quite tempting, especiially since they even seem to have a 5-year-anniversary sale right now) and the models from Geekom also look pretty good.
I’d appreciate some thoughts and thanks in advance!
I had not heard of Beelink before, but their models look rather tempting.
Also, ETA Prime seems to have just what I’m looking for, so thank you for that recommendation!
If you care about security, aftermarket support and thermals just go with Intel NUC, Gigabyte Brix, Asus PN-series or a rebuilt by Fujitsu, Lenovo, HP, Dell etc.
Thermals are the only thing I really care about out of those things.
Regarding the ASRock box, I see that i3 has 8 e-cores and only 2 p-cores. I’m not really that up-to-date on modern intel chips, how usable are those e-cores, specifically under Linux. Last thing I heard, those things were still a bit difficult under Linux?
Also, small adjustment to my requirements: While I was initially looking for Mini-PCs, I’ve come to the realisation that I can probably also live with something slightly bigger if it gets me something really quiet (although a small size is of course still appreciated)
Rephrase it to something sensible? Are you asking how broken ancient Linux kernels are running on new hardware in general? I don’t really track Linux kernel development but anything relatively recent works fine in general.
Unless you go for the cheap chinese stuff there’s in ~98% of all times a setting in bios to toggle noise over performance.
I meant performance-wise in general: how good is my multicore performance going to be when most of my cores are e-cores. And specific to Linux: how good are recent Kernel versions at scheduling P- and E-Cores? In the past, the scheduler had some issues selecting the right cores (at least from what I have heard anyway)
Think of it from this perspective. When you run Linux, it’s just running the OS. Windows runs so many monitoring and oversight processes that you lose a significant portion of CPU clocks just to keep the mothership updated.
Linux idles when doing nothing. Windows is always active doing something behind your back.
Hmm, good point. After doing a bit of research, the big.little stuff is actually looking quite compelling, although I think I’d go for a CPU with 4 p-cores just to be safe.
I’m even considering the NUC at this point because it’s drastically better value than I initially thought. Which NUC did you get for your wife and how has it been in terms of power draw and noise?
I really like the NUC Pro models with the i5-1240P/1340P but I heard they get fairly noisy under load…
At this point I am really leaning towards Minisforum’s UM 560 XT, especially because of their pre-sale (prices are ranging from 299€ for a barebones model to 429€ for one with a 1TB SSD + 32GB of RAM).
However, I to Intel’s i5-1240P (or similar); the NUC and the ASRock are just a bit too expensive and noisy (at least from what I’ve seen anyway).
Before I pull the trigger on the Minisforum PC, I will definitely try to find a good solution with the Intel chip, something AMD-based with dual NICs (other than the ASRock box), or something with either CPU in a bigger, passively cooled enclosure (if something like that even exists)
Just curious here, you’re guessing that the “Miniforum” will be more silent based on what? The CPU outputs noticable my heat by default, is slower, there are no reviews available at all and there have been numerous reports of Minisforums models overheating? I would also say that in general there’s much better support for Intel graphics compared to AMD…
Here’s a photo of the bottom showing power rating and model number. There really isn’t any noise as she uses it in the kitchen for recipes, social media and the odd Zoom call to friends. CPU averages around 25-35% once I turned off all the Win10 bloat. I have it mounted under a counter with a pull down LCD monitor to keep it safe from spills.
It boots off a 256GB NVMe drive with 16GB RAM and I fitted it with a second SSD for weekly backups and extra storage. Never had a whit of issue with it.
Based on reviews by ETA prime and ServeTheHome. While there are no reviews of this specific machine yet, one of those channels reviewed the very similar UM 560 (non-XT). That one has the 5625U, which obviously runs a bit cooler but it’s a similar CPU and cooler design and it’s the closest thing I’ve got right now. Overall the Minisforum seemed to be fairly quiet while the NUC (at least the Intel one) could get pretty noisy (the AMD system also seemed to draw less power)
As for the overheating thing, I had not heard about it but I will be looking into it. Thank you for pointing this out.
In what sense? My GPU performance standards for this thing arent very high but if it affects the power draw, that’s going to be a pretty big deal for me. Also I haven’t really had and problems with AMD GPUs under Linux in many years, but that was all with dGPUs. Are AMD’s iGPUs any different in that regard?
just get a Mac Mini. You can find 2018 i5 Intel models on eBay for about $400. Mine idles about 7W, full load is about 10W~ish, maybe a little more. iirc, the 2018 model has 8th gen Intel CPU so it should be in the same ballpark as the laptop described in the OP.
Want to run Linux? then just load up VirtualBox or even just a Docker container if all you are doing is running software. But for writing code and software developement, macOS is king. Though for the best experience you will want to snag a Magic Trackpad to go along with your mouse & kb to use for the touch gestures.
Also keep in mind that you can supplement any system you purchase with something like a cloud instance. For $25/month you can get a decent small VPS on DigitalOcean (smallest ones start at $14/month) and run whatever stuff you need. I had a game server running on the base tier $14/month DigitalOcean VPS for over a year without issues.
That idea does sound intriguing, however I see some problems with it: I have never really used macOS too extensively and I quite like running Linux natively (although that probably should not be an issue and I would love to fuck around with macOS). I also haven’t really found any good offers (yet); most are either over 500€, i3 models, or just under 500 but lacking in RAM. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty but the extra cost is a bit of a turn-off
Don’t know how much this is going to help you, but I just got a NUC 13 Pro for a small form factor appliance build. It’s only an i5 and I got the bare bones because I already had an NVMe m.2 and some Ram laying around. I was, at first, sticker shocked for what it was. But after all is said and done, it’s much nicer and more buttoned up more than some of those other small form factor machines from non-brand name companies. So its kind of a buy once cry once scenario for me. And yeah it’s obviously got some serious power for a small box. You can’t really go wrong.
A general update:
The aforementioned Minisforum PC still looks mighty tempting: right now it’s on a Mother’s Day sale and the barebones 5600H-powered model is going for 239€ (with the 32GB/1TB model going for 429€). At this point I’m really thinking about pulling the trigger and potentially sending it back if it’s no good but I’m afraid that’s going to be a major pain in the arse (and I am still worried about noise).
I’ve found a few other options though which may sound a bit odd or even outlandish:
this weird case or something similar. It’s a bigger passive case, capable of cooling Intel NUC boards (there is also one for 12th and 13th gen NUCs). There’s just two problems: first, if NUC boards are sold separately at all, they certainly aren’t sold near me. Second, I haven’t really seen any tests with newer NUC boards; I’d assume that something this size is in fact able to cool enough but I obviously cannot be sure (but if it does perform well enough, I would probably be willing to spend the extra money and just gut a NUC)
Splitting the workload and getting two cheaper (and potentially weaker) machines: one really quiet one as my work machine and one louder machine for all the other workloads. But I am not yet sure which machines that would be
