All I see these mini-PCs as, as just personal PCs. The kind you boot up, record things on like private documents, power off and proceed to do other tasks and things on your more expensive machine that can handle the workload. Like they’re meant to be PCs you do not want people discovering or see you using, so to say.
I just have a hard time seeing mini PCs as primary devices for everyday use, especially when their upkeep is poor and temperature management is poorer.
Some of those things make killer HTPCs for the living room. Or Plex/Emby/Jellyfin servers.
Not every computer needs to handle AAA games at 240 fps.
Uh… It’s my server.
PSA about mini PCs: They might not come with adequate cooling for RAM, leading to potential data corruption.
(I’m in the middle of troubleshooting/fixing overheating RAM causing memory errors, will post on /c/selfhosted when I have more conclusions).
TLDR: Bought 3 Minisforum HM90 mini PCs (for Proxmox), equipped them with 64gb (2x32gb) RAM, with a different brand RAM in each PC. All 3 give sporadic errors in Memtest86. The RAM overheats due to the 2 SSDs mounted in the lid blocking natural airflow. With the lid off, or an extra fan installed, there are no errors. The errors were very sporadic: 1 PC gave errors after 1-2 passes, then almost 24hours. Second PC gave errors after more than 24 hours and some cases more than 48 hours between errors. The last PC gave hundreds of errors on the first pas. To be fair, memtest is a synthetic test and the RAM is unlikely to see 100% utilisation in real life, on the other hand the two adjacent SATA SSDs and the NVMe SSD are completely idle during memtest, and will generate extra heat during production use.
Same. It seems weird not to mention that in the article, since it`s a very popular use case for them.
Works great as a NAS controller, multimedia server and basic web server. Also works as an emulation server for older systems. Not so good for gaming, but there’s a LOT of computing that isn’t current gen game, audio or video editing, which are the three areas where most minipc rigs will fail.
Just make sure it gets enough cooling - run a temp monitor.
For context, Rock Paper Shotgun is a gaming site, which is why the reviewer focuses so heavily on game performance on different mini PCs. Unsurprisingly, the answer to the title isn’t an unequivocal “yes”, but some of the little lunch boxes fare quite well despite their limited specs.
A more accurate title would be “Should gamers bother with mini PCs,” but given their audience that would be superfluous 🙂 I think mini PC gaming will continue to be a niche interest, but there are certainly other and probably better uses for the tiny computers.
Over time, as CPUs get better integrated graphics, it might be worth it. Essentially, if you’re fine with playing last-gen games at ok framerates and you don’t need maxed-out graphics, a mini PC is an option. If you want to play recent AAA blockbusters at 100fps, obviously it’s a big no. But the next generation might get you close to those results on current-gen games.
To be fair, I bought a really good mini pc for a home server. The problem is, it was marketed as a gaming pc. But with the on chip Intel HD graphics.
I can understand why this would upset people. For my uses though it was perfect. Sits in the TV cabinet, is quiet yet still quite powerful (intel 12900).
I have an i7 NUC that I use as my jellyfin server cause it has hardware transcoding. It absolutely rips and takes up less electricity at full bore than my gaming desktop at idle. I agree that there’s a place for mini computers, but it’s probably not serious gaming.
Not to one-up you, but I’m doing the same with an Odroid H4+ board (no case yet, although I’ll probably 3D-print one), which has the exact same transcoding feature as part of its Core i3-N305. It can handle multiple 4K HDR streams just fine (at least in theory - I’m only serving three users at once at most and none of them are using 4K HDR) - all while being passively cooled and using about three smartphones worth of power. Note that I had to use a dummy HDMI plug in order to get the hardware decoder to kick in, since I am using this as a headless server.
I paid €240 for it new, which is a steal (although you have to get SODIMM DDR5 memory for it, which isn’t that cheap). On the official website, it’s available for $139, but that’s without shipping and import duties from South Korea.
Granted, apart from the transcoding feature, general-purpose performance is not even close to your i7, but I’m using less than half as much power for the same job. If you have an i7-1260P, you’re about 70% ahead in synthetic benchmark, but my little i3 is still an 8-core CPU that has about 25% more CPU processing power than an old i7-4790k that I was using on my main PC (including for gaming) until last year. Since I am limited by my storage array going through a single SATA cable anyway, that’s fine by me, especially since this thing replaced a significantly less performant Intel Atom-based mini PC I was previously using for the same purpose. My priorities were having multiple SATA ports, being low cost, efficient, quiet and small - and in that order.
People have also used the same board as a normal PC and reasonably capable low-end gaming/emulation machine, by the way. You can get a case that looks like a Nintendo GameCube straight from the manufacturer. Here’s an overview video that includes it being used for this purpose.
Very nice! I don’t find this a one up but I love the ingenuity. I managed to salvage this NUC from work because we shut down a zoom room from a agency we acquired at work and then disposed all the unneeded /nonuniform hardware. Before that point, I was looking at doing something quite similar to you.
I also had to use get an hdmi dummy plug. That was an annoying stumbling block. Just, why??
Apparently, it depends on whether or not a specific BIOS setting is available. I don’t think there was on this board, but I might be wrong, since I already had the plug lying around and immediately used it when QuickSync refused to work. If you haven’t had any experience with this before, it can definitely be annoying though.
I’m really interested in this! How do you passively cool something like that? It’s to get quite under load, no?
There’s just a big ol’ heat sink covering most of the board. Even under sustained 100% CPU load, I’ve never had it getting any hotter than 72° C, which is not even close to the maximum operating temperature of 105°. It’s sitting under a desk in a corner with practically no air flow, almost completely enclosed from all sides.
You might need some limited active cooling if you are using the device for gaming, like a large and slow fan as shown in the video, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you can get away without it.
