My current setup consists of a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4gb RAM and a 1tb external SSD. I’m thinking of getting a used mini PC for around 100€ to replace that tho because it would give me a lot more power and especially RAM (I currently need to use an 8gb swap file). My plan so far is to get a used mini PC that’s quiet, has a built-in SSD and at least 8gb of RAM (16 would be better). Because of the built-in SSD, I could also sell the external SSD and buy an 8-12tb HDD instead.
Does anyone have recommendations for what mini PC to get or things that I should look out for?
Edit: Thanks for all the help! I decided on the Firebat T8 Pro Plus with 16gb RAM and 512gb internal storage because that really seems to be perfect for my use case.
i dont think alot of ppl need a super small comp. it comes with disadvantages. harder or more limited upgrades.
I’d say the opposite - most people work fine on what’s available in minis/tiny today (which is surprisingly a lot).
It’s us power users/gamers that need more. Even then, some minis have impressive specs.
As for upgrading, well, it’s not like you can swap in the next gen of cpu - memory and storage are pretty much all you can upgrade even in a full desktop. Even video is limited to the generation of the motherboard.
thats kinda true. (even excluding gemini lynx user like myself) comps and phones have reached overkill for most users. therefore sff is totally fine for most users.
truth is… only reason i dont have a bigger pc is that i want flexibility to move apt if my landlord raises rent. thats literally the only reason.
otherwise i would have dual socket, 8 sticks memory, full sized gpu, etc.
i dont mind not having all that. although, it could be used for something… currently it would be used for nothing.
I’ve been building monster machines since… Well, a long time ago - back when cases were one color, and black wasn’t an option yet.
We all dreamt of big towers, numerous hard drives, multiple fans, so we could play whatever game we wanted.
I’m blown away at what we can do today within the volume of a box of tissues, or less, and at a price that is frankly, cheap.
If I were you, I would look at the chinese offerings on aliexpress. If you carefully read the spec sheets, you can find excellent price/performance
When looking at these it seems I can only find models with “EU plugs” even though I am shipping to a US address, all the items with “US plugs” are greyed out. I assume the only difference is the wall socket, right? Are the sockets on the power supplies universal?
Generally… Power supplies these days are auto-switching capable (so they can use 120v or 220v).
BUT…I don’t know specifically if these units do so (so it’s a very good question).
I would guess that since they’re capable of 220v (which is EU), they’re more likely to be auto switching than something specifically marketed for 110v (US).
I haven’t seen a manually switched 110v/220v power supply in years - they’ve all been auto switching.
But I wouldn’t assume either - I could totally see manufacturers in China making 220v-only units without auto-switching, to save a few pennies.
Just looked around and there are mini PCs for around 130€ with Intel N100 CPUs, which have a 6W TDP, AV1 decoding and they beat an i5 6500T (that one’s in a 130€ Dell Optiplex I found on ebay) in single core and gets close enough in multicore. Is there some kind of catch I’m not seeing with that CPU? Because it looks perfect for my use case.
One catch is that you have to assume it’s gonna be sending data to China or at least have a hidden backdoor, possibly both. That may not matter depending on what they are doing.
Can’t quite speak for the n100 but I got a n305 one of these “China PCs” it’s passively cooled (which was important since it’s running in my bedroom) and seems to have amazing performance for what I need (I put jellyfin on there). I’m quite happy after futzing around with ARM SBCs and external drives this just works so well.
The N100 has a reputation for decent performance and good power efficiency at a cheap price. It’s a basic quad core CPU with only efficiency cores (no performance cores) and no hyperthreading, but it comes with modern codec capabilities. It will certainly give you more power than a Raspberry Pi for everyday tasks, but don’t expect to do anything too demanding with it. If your needs are basic an N100 mini PC seems like a good option.
Go used on eBay. Also I wouldn’t recommend replacing a SSD with a HDD as hard drives tend to be much bigger. Many devices will have a m.2 slot and a small bay for a hard drive.
If you want more storage, get some sort of NAS or a external drive. You aren’t going to be able to sell used storage anyway.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| PCIe | Peripheral Component Interconnect Express |
| SBC | Single-Board Computer |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.
[Thread #554 for this sub, first seen 28th Feb 2024, 17:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
With that budget I find it hard to imagine you could beat the Raspberry Pi, but please post what you do find!
Actually, I found the Firebat T8 Pro Plus, which has an Intel N100, 16gb LPDDR5 RAM and a 512gb M.2 SSD. It’s more than 5 times faster than the Pi, has AV1 decoding and a power draw of 27W (not TDP, this number is from independent tests). It goes for 146€ on Aliexpress. It’s a little more than 100€ but for what I’m getting here, I think it’s worth it.
It’s a little more than 100€
It’s half as much again! If your budget is that flexible you really should have mentioned it in the original post so that people could give you a wider range of options.
Translate it up by a couple of orders of magnitude and you get “I want to buy a car, I have €10,000 to spend” … “I found one for €15,000, it’s a little bit more but …”
