Mini pc - which one?
Discussion
Like these?
https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/desktops-and-all-in-o...
I had an i5 ThinkCentre Tiny. It was very good.
Lenovo and Dell certainly sell them. Probably HP too. Mostly business use, probably loads available second hand...
https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/desktops-and-all-in-o...
I had an i5 ThinkCentre Tiny. It was very good.
Lenovo and Dell certainly sell them. Probably HP too. Mostly business use, probably loads available second hand...
Check out Kingdel. I've bought one recently and it's superb for the price. This one
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01AWB2GWG/ref...
The case is made of metal and is the heatsink, so it's completely silent.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01AWB2GWG/ref...
The case is made of metal and is the heatsink, so it's completely silent.
I bought one of these and it’s been doing the job for watching films etc for the past 3 years just fine. Boots in seconds and totally silent.
https://www.vjmcomputers.co.uk/product/gigabyte-br...
https://www.vjmcomputers.co.uk/product/gigabyte-br...
Resurrecting this thread to as I'm now in the market for a Mini PC, I remain tempted to consider an Apple Mini Mac M1 (M2 late this year?) but ideally I'd like to stick with a PC, I just wondered if anyone had bought something at a similar price point / performance in a PC form?
I found these 'MinisForum' machines that do look capable....any thoughts would be appreciated.
https://store.minisforum.com/products/hx90?variant...
I found these 'MinisForum' machines that do look capable....any thoughts would be appreciated.
https://store.minisforum.com/products/hx90?variant...
mark seeker said:
Resurrecting this thread to as I'm now in the market for a Mini PC, I remain tempted to consider an Apple Mini Mac M1 (M2 late this year?) but ideally I'd like to stick with a PC, I just wondered if anyone had bought something at a similar price point / performance in a PC form?
I found these 'MinisForum' machines that do look capable....any thoughts would be appreciated.
https://store.minisforum.com/products/hx90?variant...
Timely thread as I'm planning to get one myself, but not found one that meets my requirements yet.I found these 'MinisForum' machines that do look capable....any thoughts would be appreciated.
https://store.minisforum.com/products/hx90?variant...
Check out Youtube channel ETA PRIME - he reviews them regularly.
From reading the comments on his videos for a long time now, the general jist of it is that the Chinese brands MinisForum, MeLE, Beelink, Morefine (and a couple of others I forget the name of) are a bit of a mixed bag. Some people have no issues, but plenty have issues and find that support is nonexistent so if something breaks in them, you're on your own.
All of them suffer from cooling issues to some degree. The Chinese ones have comparatively poor cooling so the fan runs like a jet engine at full chat at anything more than medium load and then thermal throttles at 100C. Higher quality Asus PN50 and PN51, Intel NUCs have the same issue with annoyingly loud fans. There is a 'hack' where you can remove the fans on the PN50 and PN51 and put the mini-pc inside a large Akasa Turing A50 case, but while this solves the fan noise issue, the Akasa case is nearly the size of small tower PC so kind of defeats the whole point of having a mini-pc
.German company Cirrus7 do a range of fanless mini-pcs which you can spec however you want, but they are expensive. Basically you're buying a massive block of heatsink and putting some CPU and RAM inside it. Check out their website.
For me, I was wanting to go fanless because active cooled PCs are a pain in the arse to periodically take apart to clean all the crap out of the fans. The fans are typically buried under everything else so you have to remove everything to get to them. However... I watched ETA PRIMEs build of a Ryzen 5600G https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYlZPjxoxHs using an Asrock A300 DeskMini case and he puts the AMD Wraith stealth cooling fan at the top which would be super easy to access to clean. Rather than buy an off-the-shelf ready made PC I'm probably going to buy a bare bones kit and build it massive once I've decided on the spec.
If you've got plenty of cash, he's just done a review of the latest Intel Phantom Canyon NUC box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPlBXSBFttU . £1230 to you sir with 16GB memory and 512GB SSD...
PS. just noticed the model in your minisforum link. The HX90 has a bad rep for liquid metal leakage. Loads of youtube videos about it. Supposed to be fixed now, but reportedly there's lots of old unsold stock sitting about, so it's 50/50 whether you'd end up with a lemon.
Edited by r3g on Sunday 8th May 05:25
r3g said:
Timely thread as I'm planning to get one myself, but not found one that meets my requirements yet.
Check out Youtube channel ETA PRIME - he reviews them regularly.
From reading the comments on his videos for a long time now, the general jist of it is that the Chinese brands MinisForum, MeLE, Beelink, Morefine (and a couple of others I forget the name of) are a bit of a mixed bag. Some people have no issues, but plenty have issues and find that support is nonexistent so if something breaks in them, you're on your own.
All of them suffer from cooling issues to some degree. The Chinese ones have comparatively poor cooling so the fan runs like a jet engine at full chat at anything more than medium load and then thermal throttles at 100C. Higher quality Asus PN50 and PN51, Intel NUCs have the same issue with annoyingly loud fans. There is a 'hack' where you can remove the fans on the PN50 and PN51 and put the mini-pc inside a large Akasa Turing A50 case, but while this solves the fan noise issue, the Akasa case is nearly the size of small tower PC so kind of defeats the whole point of having a mini-pc .
German company Cirrus7 do a range of fanless mini-pcs which you can spec however you want, but they are expensive. Basically you're buying a massive block of heatsink and putting some CPU and RAM inside it. Check out their website.
For me, I was wanting to go fanless because active cooled PCs are a pain in the arse to periodically take apart to clean all the crap out of the fans. The fans are typically buried under everything else so you have to remove everything to get to them. However... I watched ETA PRIMEs build of a Ryzen 5600G https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYlZPjxoxHs using an Asrock A300 DeskMini case and he puts the AMD Wraith stealth cooling fan at the top which would be super easy to access to clean. Rather than buy an off-the-shelf ready made PC I'm probably going to buy a bare bones kit and build it massive once I've decided on the spec.
If you've got plenty of cash, he's just done a review of the latest Intel Phantom Canyon NUC box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPlBXSBFttU . £1230 to you sir with 16GB memory and 512GB SSD...
PS. just noticed the model in your minisforum link. The HX90 has a bad rep for liquid metal leakage. Loads of youtube videos about it. Supposed to be fixed now, but reportedly there's lots of old unsold stock sitting about, so it's 50/50 whether you'd end up with a lemon.
Appreciate the info, i'll definitely avoid the HX90 then! I keep finding myself leaning more towards Apple's Mini Mac (16gb/ 500GB SSD), maybe i'll just see if I can wait until the M2 arrives later this year (hopefully). I'm just not convinced I want to extend my life into the Apple Ecosystem yet... The Cirrus 7 looks like a serious piece of kit! Check out Youtube channel ETA PRIME - he reviews them regularly.
From reading the comments on his videos for a long time now, the general jist of it is that the Chinese brands MinisForum, MeLE, Beelink, Morefine (and a couple of others I forget the name of) are a bit of a mixed bag. Some people have no issues, but plenty have issues and find that support is nonexistent so if something breaks in them, you're on your own.
All of them suffer from cooling issues to some degree. The Chinese ones have comparatively poor cooling so the fan runs like a jet engine at full chat at anything more than medium load and then thermal throttles at 100C. Higher quality Asus PN50 and PN51, Intel NUCs have the same issue with annoyingly loud fans. There is a 'hack' where you can remove the fans on the PN50 and PN51 and put the mini-pc inside a large Akasa Turing A50 case, but while this solves the fan noise issue, the Akasa case is nearly the size of small tower PC so kind of defeats the whole point of having a mini-pc
.German company Cirrus7 do a range of fanless mini-pcs which you can spec however you want, but they are expensive. Basically you're buying a massive block of heatsink and putting some CPU and RAM inside it. Check out their website.
For me, I was wanting to go fanless because active cooled PCs are a pain in the arse to periodically take apart to clean all the crap out of the fans. The fans are typically buried under everything else so you have to remove everything to get to them. However... I watched ETA PRIMEs build of a Ryzen 5600G https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYlZPjxoxHs using an Asrock A300 DeskMini case and he puts the AMD Wraith stealth cooling fan at the top which would be super easy to access to clean. Rather than buy an off-the-shelf ready made PC I'm probably going to buy a bare bones kit and build it massive once I've decided on the spec.
If you've got plenty of cash, he's just done a review of the latest Intel Phantom Canyon NUC box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPlBXSBFttU . £1230 to you sir with 16GB memory and 512GB SSD...
PS. just noticed the model in your minisforum link. The HX90 has a bad rep for liquid metal leakage. Loads of youtube videos about it. Supposed to be fixed now, but reportedly there's lots of old unsold stock sitting about, so it's 50/50 whether you'd end up with a lemon.
Edited by r3g on Sunday 8th May 05:25
Have you considered plugging your phone into a screen, keyboard and mouse?
For basic use Android has a lot going for it, all the apps, simple device control and a top-end phone is really quite powerful. The main drawback may be heat during extended use.
But it'll only cost the price of a cable, maybe a USB hub.
If you have a Samsung, their DEX software is great, a really good balance between Windows and Android and the DEX dock with cooling and USB hub helps too.
I can't think of anything you can do with that setup other than the sort of specialist software that if you were planning to use you wouldn't be asking about mini PCs. Perhaps more limited for running always-on stuff like torrents or server type things too.
It's also a good way to recycle (or pick up dirt cheap) phones with smashed screens, so long as you can still unlock.
For basic use Android has a lot going for it, all the apps, simple device control and a top-end phone is really quite powerful. The main drawback may be heat during extended use.
But it'll only cost the price of a cable, maybe a USB hub.
If you have a Samsung, their DEX software is great, a really good balance between Windows and Android and the DEX dock with cooling and USB hub helps too.
I can't think of anything you can do with that setup other than the sort of specialist software that if you were planning to use you wouldn't be asking about mini PCs. Perhaps more limited for running always-on stuff like torrents or server type things too.
It's also a good way to recycle (or pick up dirt cheap) phones with smashed screens, so long as you can still unlock.
I have an Intel NUC i5, 10th gen (had for a couple of years) and it runs a variety of services for me on Linux. I did have it run my desktop for a while and I never really noticed the fan at all, and was running virtual machines etc on it. Currently it runs Debian Stable, hosting docker containers and again, no fan noise.
Captain_Morgan said:
Isn’t the default for a pc equivalent to a Mac mini a intel nuc?
Also hp, lenovo & dell all offer 1ltr small form factor pc’s
I have a nuc, under the TV for movie watching. It's been faultless so far.Also hp, lenovo & dell all offer 1ltr small form factor pc’s
Just added an nvidia shield Pro though so it might get used less, we will see..
Captain_Morgan said:
Isn’t the default for a pc equivalent to a Mac mini a intel nuc?
Also hp, lenovo & dell all offer 1ltr small form factor pc’s
I have an Intel NUC Core i9 extreme as a development box, running Linux (Dual boot for Yocto / Ubuntu). It is owned by one of my clients and used for embedded Linux development. As a PC it is a fantastic machine and my son is very jealous as I am sure it would make a great gaming PC, but it is not particularly small (about half the size of a mini-ATX tower) and not cheap (cost was about £1500 with no GPU).Also hp, lenovo & dell all offer 1ltr small form factor pc’s
Depending on what you need a small PC for for a Mac Mini may be a much cheaper option, especially as MacOS comes with a lot of productivity software built in (Pages, Numbers, Keynote etc.)
Edited by jesusbuiltmycar on Sunday 8th May 14:11
Depending on budget etc, take a look at the mini Streacom cases, or HDPlex cases.
You can get a nice looking and very high performance silent system built to your exact needs.
With the new AMD APUs arriving and the smaller HDPlex cases with lots of heat sinking you could be able to get a silent semi decent perf with graphics tasks like gaming.
You can get a nice looking and very high performance silent system built to your exact needs.
With the new AMD APUs arriving and the smaller HDPlex cases with lots of heat sinking you could be able to get a silent semi decent perf with graphics tasks like gaming.
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