Low Cost Mini PCs - Readit News

This is great! The one thing I'd say is that the market is rife with non-mainstream brands. As an example "Beelink" [0] and "Minisforum" [1] are very commonly referred to and have a lot of great models, but they're not well represented here and often times offer better value depending on what the buyer is looking for. My recommendation would be to expand the vendors into the popular non-mainstream brands. Easy ask, but harder to execute on your side - so I get it.

Also, AMD is crushing this market - but AMD is pretty under-represented here. There are also some great N-series Intel machines that are highly popular and you can get on AliExpress [2]. Or even more US focused brands under this umbrella like Protecli [3]

[0] https://www.bee-link.com/ [1] https://www.minisforum.com/ [2] https://www.servethehome.com/fanless-intel-n200-firewall-and... [3] https://protectli.com/

squarefoot · a year ago

> The one thing I'd say is that the market is rife with non-mainstream brands.

Brands in the far east are quite different and less important than in western markets; to me it seems there are say 5 manufacturers that build OEM products that 30 will relabel with their brand and put into their box, then give to 1000 sellers, each one running like 30 shops on Aliexpress, Ebay and Amazon. Numbers are totally made up of course, the point is that the name isn't that important over there as the very same product can be (and often is) rebranded in many different ways.

internet101010 · a year ago

Love my Minisforum MS-01. 3x m.2 slots, supports 96gb ram, 2x 10g ports, 2x 2.5g ports, and has a pcie slot for things like external hba or small gpu.

A lot of people buying mini pcs would rather go with AMD but are stuck with Intel due to the need for Quick Sync in order to transcode Plex.

aynyc · a year ago

Might be nitpicking, but that's a $600 piece of equipment. Most people think of mini-pcs as low cost system. Yes, beelink makes very good product. They actually listen to consumers. They iterate fast and release product lines very fast. I just worry about long term support.

metadat · a year ago

Does AMD really not have anything comparable?

This is the first I've heard of Quick Sync (and admittedly I could always be clueless, I'm surprised to only encounter it now).

newdee · a year ago

Don’t forget the dual Thunderbolt/USB 4.0 ports which can also do point-to-point networking at about 40Gbps. Planning on building a 3 node Proxmox cluster using TB as the fabric for Ceph and cluster traffic.

Truly fantastic machines.

windexh8er · a year ago

Exactly this. I'm stuck on Intel QuickSync for home media and local NVR. The N200 is also packaged up nice for home firewall / edge compute. I'm running Proxmox on one with hardware passthru of NICs for OpnSense firewalling. Supports 32GB of RAM and allows for a ton of containers or LXC on the edge.

LeoPanthera · a year ago

I have a Beelink and the build quality is impressively good, but my word their website is terrible. They recently redesigned it and it somehow actually got worse.

They make no attempt to explain the difference between the various model names, leaving to you go through them one by one until you figure things out. It's so bad.

JamesSwift · a year ago

Had good experiences with a few beelinks, but recently picked up a minisforum and have had a bunch of weird BIOS issues (and their BIOS is a really bizarre custom UEFI thing).

Waiting to RMA now, but I've seen a lot of similar "weird BIOS bugs" after searching for help on my issue.

tonymet · a year ago

I took a risk on a Beelink and so far it's been the best piece of hardware I've owned. Affordable, quiet, reliable, excellent performance, versatile for development & light gaming.

I did a thorough audit for bloat- spam- & mal-ware due to their reputation, and it came up much cleaner IMO than my HP.

Given that they compete in price with Raspberry pi with far more capability, everyone should have one.

biomcgary · a year ago

The daily driver I am using to write this post is a Beelink with Linux installed. Very happy with it. Switched out the original 128GB SSD with a 1TB SSD. FFMPEG and light gaming run fine. My only minor regret is not starting with more memory, but I could probably switch that if I was motivated enough.

pks016 · a year ago

I'm using Beelink SER 6 pro from the last couple of years. It has been great; no issues so far. Got it for cheap in one of the sales.

astrostl · a year ago

I use a Beelink N100 as a local Docker Compose host for various doodads, inc. and esp. smart home software. I am blown away by what a high-quality value it is. My only complaint is that it defaults to stay off after a power loss, and the setting to reverse that is confusing in the BIOS - quite the nit pick.

sam2426679 · a year ago

Agreed! Using a beelink as an htpc, and its been phenomenal.

snowAbstraction · a year ago

Two months in and I'm a happy Beelink customer too. My kids mostly use it for Minecraft.

Dead Comment

vlasky · a year ago

I can also suggest Morefine. I bought a couple of AMD Ryzen 5900HX mini PCs from them:

https://morefine.com/

kjs3 · a year ago

I have a Protecli 4-port firewall. It's the second one I've bought for this. It's really been excellent from a cost/performance standpoint.

windexh8er · a year ago

It is! I manage a bunch of these running Proxmox with virtualized firewall and edge compute via containers and LXC. Great platforms for the job and can manage them effectively via Tailscale without having to open anything up or leverage legacy VPN.

transpute · a year ago

With coreboot?

This is neat, although I have a word of caution (even if it might be a bit obvious): it's possible to find good deals, but you should be aware of power usage. There are modern mini PCs, such as those with Intel N100 processors, that are very cheap and consume very few watts while being useful for many purposes. I personally bought a brand-new CHUWI LarkBox X, and it's been great. It cost around 100 EUR on a deal. If however power usage isn't an issue for you and you don't care about other misc stuff (noise levels etc) then you can disregard this.

DCKing · a year ago

I wouldn't automatically prefer any random N100 mini PC over a nice second hand enterprise mini PC.

In home server use cases, mini PCs stay idle the vast majority of their runtime. So it's idle power consumption that is the most useful metric to look into. The N100 can have great idle performance in theory, but most data I can find about N100 boxes is them idling in the 12W-15W range. This is something that older enterprise mini desktops have no trouble matching or beating [1]. Especially since roughly the Skylake era (Intel 6th gen), idle power consumption for enterprise PCs has been excellent - but even before then it wasn't bad.

Enterprise vendors like Dell/HP/Lenovo have always optimized for TCO and actually usually use quite high quality power supply circuitry, whereas most N100 mini PCs tend to be built with cheaper components and not as optimized for low power usage for the whole system.

[1]: I recommend reviewing Serve The Home's TinyMiniMicro project, which often finds the smallest enterprise PC form factors to idle at 8 to 13W, even older ones. Newer systems can get below 7W! https://www.servethehome.com/tag/tinyminimicro/

switchbak · a year ago

One can also do things like undervolting to reduce the power draw even more. Modern BIOSs can give a lot of freedom for underclocking/volting, not just pushing things to consume more power.

SparkyMcUnicorn · a year ago

Power usage on these mini pcs is actually pretty decent.

I have a bunch of SFF computers (Dell 7060, HP 600 G4, etc) with i7-8700 or similar CPUs. They all idle around 12 watts.

Most of the mini pcs use the T version of the processors, which are usually 35w TDP.

Power usage will definitely be higher than an N100 (65W TDP vs 6W), but they're a lot more versatile since you're getting more than double the performance, 2-3x the threads, and an iGPU that can do things like transcoding for plex and accelerate ML models for Frigate/Scrypted.

some-guy · a year ago

N100's QuickSync has been good enough for me for Plex transcoding FWIW, though maybe your demands are higher than mine in terms of resolution

mkesper · a year ago

Reusing these boxes instead of having them thrown away and getting a new one built is better for the environment, though.

bizzleDawg · a year ago

Does anyone have any useful rules-of-thumb or heuristics for balancing this trade off of upfront cost v.s. power cost? e.g. how much does an N100 cost to run for a year v.s. say a i5-2400s (the CPU for the first row on the linked site)?

mpol · a year ago

I used to calculate costs of lightbulbs: 1 Watt running the whole year, at 0,28 eurocent/kWh costs 1 Euro per year. Until someone corrected me and it turned out that every 1 Watt 24/7 will be 2 Euro per year.

In the US electric power might be cheaper. And if it's running only part of the time, you should adjust the calculation.

My desktop/server runs 24/7, so I prefer having a CPU with 65W TDP over one that is 125W TDP. That might run up to 120 Euro per year difference for me (if it would be running at 100% CPU).

kstenerud · a year ago

My NUC13 with i3 has a nominal 15w TDP, but while idling on a KDE desktop with a browser open to reuters (1 tab) it hovers around 3 - 4w (5% CPU usage). If there's REALLY nothing going on (no desktop even) it's 1.0 - 1.3w (1% CPU usage).

Edit: I should note that there's no fan drawing power because I put it in an Akasa passively cooled case.

mjcurl · a year ago

I tried to find this out myself. All I could find easily was the TDP of different processors. But I'm not sure if it's a good measure of how much power it will use.

boredpudding · a year ago

If a Kwh of power costs $ 0,30, then 1 watt = $ 2,63 a year. (0.001 kwh * 24 hours * 365 days * $ 0,30).

So, it goes quite quickly. Savings of 20 watt save you $ 52 a year.

mjcurl · a year ago

Agreed, an N100 mini PC can be a great deal. They also tend to be smaller. I added a separate Intel filter that includes a lot of N100s. But it might be better to buy those new, not used.

mdasen · a year ago

Power consumption is definitely a big deal. I replaced an old PC that I'd been using as an always-on device with a tiny PC (i7-8700T) and it saved a ton of power. Given that power rates in New England are around $0.30/kWh, saving 50 watts means saving $128/year. I went from using around 60 watts to 10 watts at idle (and going from 110 watts under load to 50 watts).

The new computer cost me $240 back in late 2022 (with 32GB of RAM and WiFi) so it'll basically pay for itself in electricity savings - and it's 3x faster than what it replaced.

ServeTheHome has some good reviews: https://www.servethehome.com/tag/tinyminimicro/. The tl;dr is just that there's good options from Dell, HP, and Lenovo and the differences are kinda minor, but it's a good source if you care about specific information and teardowns.

It's a great little machine, takes up almost no space, it's almost silent, and it was basically free with the power savings - in fact, once I pass the two year mark, it was cheaper to get the new hardware than to keep running the old.

And you can put Proxmox on it as a hypervisor to run multiple OSs or containers.

BizarroLand · a year ago

If the system draws 65 watts and you pay 12 cents/kwh, then it will cost you right at $68.377 dollars a year to run it at full tilt.

Math: 1,000 watts /65 watts/hour = 15.384 hours per kwh. 365.25 days/year * 24 hours/day = 8766 hours/yr <=(accounting for leap days) 8766 hours/yr / 15.384 hours/kwh = 569.81 kwh/yr 569.81 kwh/yr * $0.12/kwh = $68.377/yr

For quick math where accuracy isn't very important, at $0.12/kwh it will cost you ~$1.05/year per watt (65w = $68.38/yr), so every watt you save per year is a dollar in your pocket.

Of course, there are ways to reduce the energy usage of a system, a computer rarely has to run at 100% 24/7/365 unless it is very underspecced for your use case, even things as simple as enabling C states and not utilizing all of the PC resources available will save you many dollars a year.

josefresco · a year ago

For those wondering (like me) the normal price for the CHUWI LarkBox X is about $190.

kjs3 · a year ago

The N100s are everywhere, but I think the N305 with 8 E-cores is the bomb for a home server at slightly more power consumption.

kjkjadksj · a year ago

Those are at the price point where other options like enterprise mini pc make more sense

xhrpost · a year ago

I've been loving the recent attention to mini PCs here. I've had hobby projects put off for a while as I tried to find the best R-Pi clone, only to buy one and struggle just to get it to boot. Then I pick up a used mini PC on ebay for like $42 shipped, power cord and everything and even a 500gb SSD. Now I have a server running at home and am actually working on projects again, oddly for probably less than what a Pi clone costs after you buy enough accessories to use it.

roflmaostc · a year ago

difference might be that a Raspberry Pi consumes < 10W.

An old PC draws easily 5-10 times more energy.

Depending on your location, the yearly cost of running a Pi is around ~10$. The big machine then 50-100$. So energy wise, a small power efficient machine might be more expensive but the running cost could be lower.

weweweoo · a year ago

Here's examples of idle power consumption of second hand mini-pc's i've tested, running Ubuntu, measured from the wall:

Dell Wyse 5070 with Pentium Silver J5005 ~ 5W

Fujitsu Futro S940 with J5005 as well ~ 7W

Dell Optiplex 3080 Micro with i5-10500t ~ 12W with two SSD's

In comparison, my Ryzen 7 server build consumes about 22W idle (before I added GPU), has 4x SSD and 4x RAM sticks. I like raspberry pi, but for most purposes an used mini-pc is a better choice.

vladvasiliu · a year ago

As others have said, this needs to be qualified. My HP Elitedesk 800 G2 SFF qualifies as "old" I think, yet it draws 14-15W at idle, measured at the outlet.

It has an i5-6500, 32 GB RAM, 2 SATA SSDs and a 4-port i350 NIC (all ports up). Idle means OpnSense and HomeAssistant running inside KVM on top of whatever kernel version was current in Arch at the time, but with no traffic.

Does the raspberry pi draw 1-3W only? It should be noted that old pcs like these can be had extremely cheap, so the difference in price should take this into account. Moreover, if you need extensions of any kind (NICs, drives), getting them running at all on a PI is somewhat more involved than on a standard PC.

auspiv · a year ago

mini PCs are < 10W also.

I have a full on Dell Optiplex 3070 (i5-9500, 1x16GB memory, 512GB NVMe) running windows 10 that idles at 8W.

I have a lenovo m92p tiny (i5-3570s, released 2012) that idles at 6W.

vel0city · a year ago

My mini PC I use as a router with an N3710 CPU uses like 5W idle with a SATA SSD. It's a 6W TDP. Running full tilt is like 10W.

It's a fair point but as others have noted, these mini PCs can be very power efficient. I still need to hook up a meter to mine to see what the wattage is but I'm sure it's far below a typical desktop PC.

notpublic · a year ago

Have a used HP Prodesk 600 G3 with 16GB RAM running idle around ~12W. Bought it last year and its been running solid so far.

As noted in my other comment, my SFF computers with i7 CPUs idle around 12W. Roughly $20/year with my usage in a home server setup.

cdaringe · a year ago

Agreed. Related, disappointingly, the new pi5s don’t have much in the way of running in a lower power state. I gather it’s mainly the cpu, but my new pi5 runs hot doing a whole lot of nothing. Cooling solution is pretty much required. I am very content with perf, but it actually brings too much juice to the table for the tiny apps im running. Sure, another soc would be a better fit power wise, but the ecosystem keeps me locked in!

throwaway984393 · a year ago

Not only excess power draw, but excess heat, which then needs more power for the AC to cool the home

fud101 · a year ago

I've switched to a minipc as my main computer. I'll never go back. Went from a 16 core monster to whatever 4 cores this thing has and it's just as nice.

fossdd · a year ago

I wonder why you switched and not use your 16-core PC? did it somehow broke or do you just like the benefits of a minipc?

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outime · a year ago

ensignavenger · a year ago

This is great, but the prices aren't accurate for the products listed. As an example, I filtered by the cheapest 64GB model, clicked on the link, and found that to actually get the 64GB it was multiple times the cost listed on the site. This was because if ebay's "variant" option, which is often misused by vendors.

I don't know if the ebay API allows you to check for variants to ensure that the price you are listing is the price for the actual variant listed or not?

The eBay api doesn't tell you which fields are variable, so you have to do that yourself. Do you still have the link?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/145913221554?var=444968896814&amdat...

The price listed on the website under 64gb is for the 8gb variation.

Most of the other 64gb minis I listed that I checked were actually the 64gb version.

inversetelecine · a year ago

Also in my quick glance, it didn't account for shipping costs either.

mydriasis · a year ago

For reference, I thought I'd outline the baby PCs I use, since we're chatting about baby PCs. Maybe someone will find this useful. I use thinkcentre M92p SFFs for easy server boxes. Some things I like: - Bountiful - Cheap -- they can be had for under $100 each - Pretty powerful considering what you're paying, too! - Use common desktop parts for the most part - Accepts low-profile PCIe equipment ( network cards for ethernet, wifi; GPUs ) - Repair & replacement parts are CHEAP

Some things I don't: - I've had to do some ridiculous things to get them to behave after installing Linux, like tricking the BIOS to deal with UEFI correctly - It's basically impossible to get a better power supply, so you're limited with how much each one can do. Don't expect anything better than a very low-power, low-profile GPU for example. - There's not a ton of room in the case, so if you want PCIe stuff you will need low-profile. You can definitely stuff lots of hard drives in there if you work at it, though.

And, maybe someone has advice for me...!

rjst01 · a year ago

> I've had to do some ridiculous things to get them to behave after installing Linux, like tricking the BIOS to deal with UEFI correctly

I would suggest going for a couple of generations newer - the M92p is from an era before UEFI became really stable. For automated testing of my startup's product we have a testlab of tens of older USFF desktops and the M700/M900/M910 machines are some of my favorites. They're also just before the cut-off for Windows 11 support so they're still available dirt cheap.

Two things to watch out for - the M700 lacks a PCI-E M.2 slot - the internal M.2 slot supports only SATA M.2 drives. Second, the front USB ports failing is a really common failure mode.

Ooo that's _gotta_ be what it is. Just the most bizarre UEFI issues. I luckily found an incantation that works in a pretty general way for M92ps, but had I not I'd have some bricks laying around.

Those M900s look REALLY nice!

haunter · a year ago

Strange. I use Dell Optiplex Micros which are pretty much the same. I’ve never had a problem installing any Linux distros or hypervisors (Proxmox and XCP-NG)

Same experience as you with HP Elitedesks. At work we used to use those for people doing regular office things. I have a few G2s (i5-6500) and they work flawlessly with Linux, including using my own secureboot keys.

bitmasher9 · a year ago

I’ve bought 3 used Dells, mostly Optiplexes, over the decades for dedicated hardware for Linux based projects. They always seem like a good deal, and I surprisingly never have problems with them. These are fleet computers that get gently used during business hours that have IT departments that replace computers on a time schedule. Outside of one HDD that didn’t last a year of heavy file traffic I haven’t had really good luck with these machines.

It was so bizarre. I'd get a "No Operating System Found" message, and had to go toy with the UEFI config. Eek!

phkahler · a year ago

I really want a new motherboard form factor that gets rid of the graphics card slot and assumes integrated graphics. It should also aim to reduce the height of the back panel a little bit. Maybe allow 4 DIMM slots (ECC preferred).

I just upgraded my Mellori-ITX to 64GB RAM and have a 5700G to drop in there. This is possibly the best SFF config you can do in an AM4 socket:

https://github.com/phkahler/mellori_ITX

BTW we need USB ports ON TOP so you can plug stuff in without pushing the PC around the desk. Storage, not permanently attached stuff.

molticrystal · a year ago

It would be awesome if you included shipping in the total price(or at least for certain countries). I know bookfinder does that, as some people add an extra $100 to several hundred dollars to the price which skews the results.

I think ebay technically frowns upon excessive shipping as some sellers use it to get their items higher in certain search results due to a low base price, but ebay doesn't really apply enforcement to their sellers on these soft violations most of the time.

-----

It seems some of your filters like "storage type" are must include and when unchecking it all the results disappear, while others like "OS" seem like a filter and when unchecking the results increase.

------

I'm not seeing many chromeboxes in the results so maybe they are being filtered out?

Thank you, I have fixed the "OS" filter to be must include.

Chromeboxes don't come up much for the search I'm using. I think I could try a separate search for them.

Regarding shipping, I'm not sure how to include it, since it requires the user's location, which would take this over the API limits. I'm going to add more marketplaces, and maybe product locations. Which country are you shipping to?

throwup238 · a year ago

Maybe just take an average of shipping costs to a few locations (West coast Us, East coast US, Europe) and filter out anything where the shipping cost is greater than the cost of the product itself.

Or just get a shipping estimate to the same city as the seller is in.

Qerub · a year ago

Adding product location would be great! As a resident of the European Union I'm unlikely to order one of these mini PCs from the USA due to import taxes and additional shipping costs.

chazeon · a year ago

I think shipping costs varies wrt where you live.

jacky_tuning · a year ago

A $38 lenovo cost me $633.90 with the shipping costs, from US to Switzerland i guess :D

VikingCoder · a year ago

ETA Prime has some advice on making a gaming machine out of cheap old PCs:

"You Can Build This Powerful Ultra Low Cost SteamOS 3 Gaming PC For Only $150"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFIgQ9zgXOk

Optiplex 7020 with a tower - not a "Small Form Factor."

"This Super Low Cost PC Runs SteamOS 3 Better Than The Steam Deck!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myye5o0y2Jw

detritus · a year ago

Thanks for this! I've been meaning to get back into games but only keep a laptop at home and I had no idea that I could make a machine that could capably serve my needs for <£300 (32Gb Win10 i7 6700 with 256gb SSD (!), OK 2nd hand GPU) I spent my younger years always having The Best Machine I CoUlD afFord, but fifteen years later I just want something 'good enough' and it's nice to know I needn't spend over a grand to do so.

Thanks again!

Yeah, to be honest, I followed one of these build guides, and got a second hand GPU, and it didn't fit in the case. I tried to "make" it fit with some shears. It died. No surprise. So then I bought a new cheap GPU, and the machine seems to work pretty well. My kids play Minecraft and StepMania on it.

https://www.newegg.com/dell-7020/p/N82E16883165773 - $160

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Express-Video-Cable-Adapter/dp/...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C3QSCLR4?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_... - $101 - this one fit!

But I found more videos I had bookmarked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTAzwKiQ7Ns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLQ8NDbMEUw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97enzfkRg2o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvNS4M3o85o

ALSO, while we're chatting - I picked up this Chromebook:

ASUS Chromebook Plus, CM3401 14" 2-in-1 Laptop with Google AI - AMD Ryzen 3 7320C - 8GB Memory - 128GB SSD - Ponder Blue, Model CM3401FF-R3128BLX.

I got it in "Open Box Good" condition for $199.99.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-chromebook-plus-cm3401-14-...

I kind of love it. Convertible to tablet (keyboard folds under.) Runs Android apps, including Disney+, can download Disney+ shows. HDMI out. I believe the HDMI out works for Disney+ which is a surprise and a treat. Runs Linux. I installed Visual Studio Code, .Net Core, etc. Because it's a "Chromebook Plus," it has an App Shortcut to install the Steam Installer. (!!!) I installed Balatro, and the touchscreen works awesome. I installed both Android Minecraft (works well on the built-in screen but for some reason has frame rate problems on the external display?), and also Minecraft Java through the Linux.

Haven't tried too many other Steam games yet. I tried to install Path of Exile, but it seems to completely not work.

For $199.99, the thing's a beast.