Do These CHEAP PCs Live Up To The Hype?

[@alexander0the0gray]

When I started IT in 2010s thin clients were DA BOMB for business clients. But ever since the Intel NUC came out, we all jumped ship because the cost didn’t outweigh the benefits anymore.

[@rmcdudmk212]

I don't blame them the NUC are great machines. I was looking into thin clients as a way to do some old school win 98 to Xp era LAN gaming. Never pulled the trigger on it thou.

[@igorschmidlapp6987]

Back in the '90s, diskless HP clients and NCD X-Terminal displays were the thing, sharing computing servers down in the data center. Management decided to put disks and O/S on the HP clients, and replacing the X-Terminals with HP-UX desktops, which caused us admins no end of trouble on the helpline when users would keep cycling the power on them when they had a problem like they used to, crashing quite a few of the disks, and corrupting O/S's. "I'm having trouble. I already cycled the power, and it still doesn't work...". The "re-training" to NOT power-cycle was a chore. Yep, I'm old...

[@kbhasi]

I have an old Intel NUC 5 with Celeron that I use as a thin client of sorts with Remmina on a minimal Debian GNOME setup, so I can agree, though to be fair, I already had it from a previous project that I decommissioned some years prior.

[@schubajo]

Yeah. The company I worked for had these connecting into a Citrix XenApp server. Not much reason to anymore since fully capable USFF PCs are very cheap.

[@Not31337]

We used to buy thin clients, then when we could get HP EliteDesk DMs for cheaper we switched to those. More power for less money? Sure, why not? We still use them for Citrix and they're faster. Win all around.

[@rainerwahnsinn3265]

I'm running a 3040 as a dedicated proxmox backup server (PBS). Backing up a 170GB LXC takes about 1h30 min (full backup). Validating that backup does take about 1h5 min. Installing PBS is not easy (PBS doesn't allow install to flash by default) but absolutely worth it. Small, quiet, draws next to no power and looks good.

[@metalwolf112002]

I have been working on a "baby's first hypervisor" project for a friend. Initial version i installed proxmox completely on a usb WD passport hard drive and it seemed to work reliably. Currently, i reinstalled proxmox on a 128gb sandisk ultra fit and deleted the thin storage and expanded the other storage volume to fill the entire drive. I am including a 512gb Samsung USB SSD for VM storage. The idea being if it is completely solid state storage there is much less chance of damage since the friend lives across the country. I have been considering using the WD drive to install PBS on but havent gotten around to it.

[@KibaTheBarbarian]

These computers are quite thin should you install mint on them then they'll be thin mints

[@wuzado]

Quick note about the Minecraft server you tried on 5060 - most Minecraft servers are heavily single-threaded due to the original Minecraft server design. Customizing your settings and Java flags could help a bit, but they definitely benefit from very fast cores and fast and large memory (avoiding garbage collection pauses).

[@oinkerbob2]

That would explain why the i5-2500k in my former gaming PC turned home server doesn't fall over itself while it's running Minecraft over my local network and doing things with Plex.

[@nanianmichaels]

The 3040s are a nice option to use as an Octoprint server, too. In some printers, you can even slot it below the print bed, making it so that you don't need to increase the printer footprint at all. As for me, I've been running a 5060 competitor (aka an HP t630) as a test homelab server: it's the one I first deploy stuff to, to check things out, before moving them to the main server.

[@octothorpian_nightmare]

True that, one of mine is running a Klipper/Mainsail install, and another of the 16GB ones for Home Assistant. HASS is OK on it but nothing to write about.

[@macphile]

I picked up a couple of 5060s from my local IT recycling shop for next to nothing last year. One has been running CasaOS on Debian with pi-hole (now adguard) non-stop, and the other is running a long-term time-lapse capture of my new work building. As long as you don't ask them to do too much, they're amazing little machines!

[@marcimon1642]

I'm using Wyse 7020 as my home server for "stuff". It has some lovely features: 1. It's cooled passively, no fans at all, and this was important for me. 2. Performance-wise it's decent, I got 946 and 3779 evts/s in sysbench for 1 and 4 threaded loads, respectively. 3. I was able to find this dreaded SATA power cable, so I have a 1TB 2.5" HDD connected to it - using it as a crude NAS and a media server. 4. It uses x86 architecture, which, contrary to Pi, allows for some hardware (e.g. printers, scanners) to work easily. My Brother printer just plain refused to work on Pi, but I'm having no issues whatsoever on Wyse. 5. It was dirt cheap - overall I paid around 60 USD for Wyse+SATA cable+power brick+HDD. It's an awesome machine for my particular needs.

[@jburnash]

This was really interesting - I especially liked that you compared it to the Raspberrry Pi 5 for contrast! I really like these small form factor PCs, and I've focused on the 6th Gen and higher Intel CPU's because from that generation onward they seem to have more power and less power draw. Keep up the good content, and props for the quality of your whole sound/lighting/editing - you make a quality video!

[@AkosLukacs42]

Had to check, but it was even a pi 4! So a pi 5 or other alternatives would perform even better. The problem with those is usually the lack of decent IO...

[@jburnash]

@@AkosLukacs42 thanks - my bad - I have Pi 5 on the brain apparently!

[@therandomdot2563]

Late to the party, but one reason these thin clients are so "popular" in the US is due to financial industry using them for a lot of things after regulations passed from the housing crash. There were issues with folks keeping financial files on laptops, local pc's, etc. So, gov't told financial companies (at least loan services) all financial info had to be stored on secure servers, and employees had to thin-client into the systems. This had these little things flying off shelves for businesses like crazy. And, since it was so cheap to upgrade them, they'd chuck them out on a bit faster depreciation life cycle than, say, a normal work pc or laptop.

[@g3-is-me]

I'm using 3 5060s for a proxmox cluster. Two with 16GB of ram and one with 8GB. They're working great. I even have ceph running well. It's a great environment to test out ideas before committing them to my larger cluster and works for my more modest home needs. I'm slowly adding tasks to it and I've not had any issues. I used USB for system boot and a sata ssd to host ceph for all the vms. The cost of three systems upgraded to meet my needs was under $200. I also have 2 7010s and they are working great as low load web servers in another location. They're okay and meet my needs. I also had plenty of old ram to stuff into them. They're not as good a value as the 5060s but they meet my needs and have been running non-stop without issue for roughly 9 months. These have been more reliable than my raspis. They reboot cleanly every time, even the remote the boxes. All of my raspis have hung at reboot at one time or another and every so often I've had one freeze.

[@ThePupil]

Good to hear the 5060 can use 16gb ram without problems. what brands are you using, don't know if the 5060 is RAM brand fussy.

[@g3-is-me]

@@ThePupil # dmidecode 3.4 Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs. SMBIOS 2.7 present. Handle 0x0016, DMI type 16, 23 bytes Physical Memory Array Location: System Board Or Motherboard Use: System Memory Error Correction Type: None Maximum Capacity: 32 GB Error Information Handle: Not Provided Number Of Devices: 2 Handle 0x0017, DMI type 17, 34 bytes Memory Device Array Handle: 0x0016 Error Information Handle: Not Provided Total Width: 64 bits Data Width: 64 bits Size: 8 GB Form Factor: SODIMM Set: 1 Locator: DIMM 0 Bank Locator: CHANNEL A Type: DDR3 Type Detail: Synchronous Speed: 1600 MT/s Manufacturer: Not Specified Serial Number: 00000000 Asset Tag: 0918 Part Number: Rank: Unknown Configured Memory Speed: 1600 MT/s Handle 0x0019, DMI type 17, 34 bytes Memory Device Array Handle: 0x0016 Error Information Handle: Not Provided Total Width: 64 bits Data Width: 64 bits Size: 8 GB Form Factor: SODIMM Set: 2 Locator: DIMM 1 Bank Locator: CHANNEL A Type: DDR3 Type Detail: Synchronous Speed: 1600 MT/s Manufacturer: Not Specified Serial Number: 00000000 Asset Tag: 0918 Part Number: Rank: Unknown Configured Memory Speed: 1600 MT/s I don't recall the brand. Just found something on amazon and it was zero issue.

[@g3-is-me]

@@ThePupil A believe it was A-Tech brand.

[@jackconway4097]

I purchased one of those Dell Wyse systems off of Amazon. I was overjoyed with what I received. In the box was the Wyse system, a throwaway mouse, and a BEAUTIFUL OLD STYLE MECHANICAL KEYBOARD 🎉🎉🎉 I never powered up the Wyse system but that keyboard has been my daily driver for many months.

[@sycoclownx]

So if you want to get a much better system, the Wyse 5070 runs a J4105 or J5005 with 8 GB RAM. There is a slot for a m2 sata drive and power draw is pretty low on them. They also tend to cost the same as the 5060 you were showcasing.

[@perryholman5302]

Agreed, the RAM is DDR4 and can go at least to 16GB. I got 3 for a great price on eBay, and set up a small, power efficient proxmox cluster for kubernetes. Great video as always!

[@HardwareHaven]

I’ll have to check them out

[@DallanLoomis]

@@HardwareHaven also if you get the 5070 extended, it has a pcie 2.0 x 8 slot+riser, working on getting those setup as my HA cluster

[@googanhiem]

Yep, if you get the 5070 extended version, it’s got a pci card slot and is still tiny and low powered. I added more m.2 and now it’s a flash nas with vm’s.

[@hmsq82]

@@perryholman5302 I got 3 of them running proxmox, it has 32GB RAM , looking at my wattage meter it runs at 5w even with some HA and a few other docker images.

[@darkpalidin]

The company I work for has a couple of clients that use these. It's crazy that for the price of a new thin client, you can get a (fairly) cheap laptop that can do so much more and is so much easier to troubleshoot. I loath having to fix any thin-client problems because they are so uncooperative. Even the management software is just terrible and unhelpful. I ousted them from our internal use over the course of a few years and no one regrets moving to docked laptops from them, even with the higher cost.

[@y00t00b3r]

refurbished laptops are my favorite option. Cheap, well known quantity, built in keyboard and monitor... why would I want to futz with anything else? Sure, something rack mounted might be cooler, or a tiny mini PC stashed out of the way could be really great. I can just SSH into it when I need to, right? But there's that 1 in 20 situation where you just need to be directly on the console. And, no, I don't want to scrounge around for a keyboard, and balance a flat screen on whatever weird place I need to put it... Just give me a pile of cheap laptops, and be done with it. (but make sure they are business grade lease returns and they have ethernet ports, lol)

[@tsukisplayroom6996]

I had 2 3040 both with diet pi x86_64 ufei installed running pihole and unbound and they do make for a great high availability alternative during the rpi shortage a few years ago.

[@EVR1AL]

you can run dietpi pihole and unbound and home assistant on pi 1 or pi zero no problem. pi4 is only good for samba and docker

[@ltpinecone]

I recently got the 5060. It's awesome for low power homelab stuff like a website, nginx proxy manager, docker containers, etc. I barely use 2% of the CPU while running all 8 of my docker containers. The RAM and storage were upgradeable, so I added a 500GB SSD inside, and my OS of choice is ubuntu server.

[@AnthonySleck]

@HardwareHaven Let me start with, that was a great video. I myself use the Dell Wyse 5070. I have been able to score them pretty cheap at about $25/ unit. Even with the Intel Celeron J4105 running at 1.5 GHz, they still seem to do an awesome job running Ubuntu Server. I have one just running Klipper for my 3D printers. Yes it may be overkill, but when RPi's went scare during the pandemic, I resorted to these things.

[@DigitalJedi]

I wish Dell would bring back the 3040 form factor with Alder Lake-N chips. Imagine a modernized version that could be powered over USB-C, boot from a Gen3 x2 drive, and use an N100 CPU. That would be an awesome little form factor.

[@jadenerickson3397]

That would be pretty sweet.

[@System0Error0Message]

the N100 intel atom based CPU is slower than some ARM CPUs while costing more. I compared getting one of the best intel atoms on a SBC vs an intel laptop mobile CPU on a desktop board (cheap chinese options) and ended up with the mobile CPU as its very power efficient and is well suited for proxmox, and has instruction sets the intel atom doesnt. As for arm some faster ones come with a generic NPU, equivalent to vnni on intel, which the intel atoms do not have as they only do image inference via the gausian instructions. Cost wise the intel atom was the same as the laptop cpu, and i had a 1U chassis sitting around. Sure the SBC would've been more compact, but i would'nt have been able to do as much as i am now by choosing it. You can thin clients with proper full core laptop CPUs than going the atom route. Im surprised many people dont know this and want the very slow intel atoms not knowing how slow they actually are. I can still feel the slowness of a fast intel atom running proxmox even for something like a dedicated php VM.

[@Maciek888]

​​@@System0Error0MessageN100 is based on Gracemont which are used in 12-13-(14)gen Core CPUs as Efficiency cores and are actually quite fast, often on par with 6-9gen with greater power efficiency, also fewer limitations than previous "Atoms". With modern GPU these are perfect for HTPC (AV1!), game streaming, also network appliances like NGFW and many other use cases. CPUs don't need to be super fast to be great products.

[@marcwesterink7742]

Interesting video. Although I am using thin clients from HP, the approach may be similar with these devices. No intention to start a vendor discussion here who makes better hardware, not relevant. I am currently using an HP T520 (with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage) running Debian 12 server and a few lightweight Docker containers like Pi-Hole, Home Assistant, Netbootxyz and NUT UPSD. My UPS and Smart Meter (DSMR 5 device) are directly connected to it over USB. I am planning to host a small Samba and Corosync container to facilitate a two-node Proxmox cluster as well. In my scenario, this machine is more or less idling and does what it needs to do. I consider these devices good candidates for leightweight containers. You may consider building a Kubernetes cluster with a bunch of these.... However, replacing these with cheap 1L PC's may be a viable choice once you'd run some heavier stuff. Hope this helps!

[@chumbawumba1959]

Prolly older than you, Wyse started back in the 1980's as third-party VT1xx terminal devices in the era of VAX computer systems. At one time, they were considered best of breed of that era for those products. Sadly, as the world of terminals morphed into PC software terminal emulators and eventually just faded out, Wyze moved to thin-client devices (the Citrix-era) and eventually Dell acquired them and the brand. Quite a hoot to see them mentioned here :)

[@Jah_Rastafari_ORIG]

About the 3040; I was using one for a headless (eventually) ROIP Allstar radioless node machine and it works beautifully bolted under a table. Also, when I was buying mine I noticed there's 2 different power supply versions for those; one is 5V and the other is (I forget which) 12v or 19V, so pay attention so you avoid crispiness...

[@spillsndebris]

I've built Batocera gaming machines with those 5060s. Worked great for low end 8 and 16 bit games.

[@TheVirusWar]

Im a MES specialist for a huge company with many factories all over the globe, and we use these wyse clients in a production environment, running all sorts of stations and machines. They are great for such infrastructure, respond fast, their setup is amazing, and for what they're made, its a blast to use them. One precaution, you need a good foundation for those, servers to support it all and a great network situation if you have a lot of them. Also, I suggest tinkering with the other OS distros for it, and its corresponding management suite, because dell is... well, sometimes pain in the ass to work with, both their products and the company.

[@kierank01]

I am running home assistant on a 3040 The OS is plain debian installed on a USB SSD, HA is in docker I have the internal flash set as a swap, but it is never really touched Works quite well

[@XiaOmegaX]

The J4105 based wyse are nice, and still somewhat cheap. I put a SATA ssd in mine and just made it my frontline lowspec server for basic containers.

[@SecretWolfie]

Fun fact: McDonald's in the UK use Dell Wyse systems to connect to the store VDI desktops. A new location I started at, utilises the Wyse 3040s. Granted they still use Windows Server 2016, but hey, I found it pretty neat to see these Wyse systems in active use.

[@ps5hasnogames55]

furry

[@SecretWolfie]

@@ps5hasnogames55 Yes, and I'm proud.

[@danielhandika8767]

Sucks on working on them because sometimes they're mounted up above near cooking stations, making the internals oily

[@Smittron]

I'm using a 3040 to run pi hole on Debian 11. I tried this during the RPI shortage and it's been solid. The storage limitation is a bigger issue than the CPU and RAM for small Linux projects.

[@MrBuggitt]

Another weird use for these are if you require x86. I setup a print server on one of these when I discovered the drivers for my old laser printer are only compiled for x86 and closed source so I couldn't use a raspi.

[@guesswho2778]

im working at an ewaste/refurbishing place and ive seen plenty of these kinds of things laying around as we cant do anything with them, i might see if i can take a few home with me and mess around with them. ive already snagged a 24 port gigabit network switch from them, so i could probably set up a cluster of them doing something.

[@christopherjonesramos3655]

These devices meant to be a Linux server, I think. A cheaper alternative to a raspberry pi.

[@scrungyy2166]

hey man great video i'm glad to see my suggestion was good enough, keep up the good work!!

[@tiredestaj]

a few months back I was weighing up between a Pi4/5 or an x86 based machine for a local development server. I ended up choosing the 5060 after reading up abt it. Partly for the ease with x86. I upgraded it to 16gb ram and added a 250gb 860 EVO (de-shelled, it fits almost perfectly with some electrical tape). It's only really running docker and a samba share but it's been behaving very well and fits perfectly into the awkward little nook in my desk with my network switch. In hindsight, I could've gotten better performance for the price, especially looking at the pi4 benchmark, but I have two Pi3Bs for arm dev and it was so little hassle to set up, get working and I know it's running fine.

[@DavidBozinov]

I actually really like my Dell Wyse 3040's somehow I pull off getting the 16 GB EMMC models and one with Wi-Fi all the same price as the 8 GB models. I love that the 12 volt models are super easy to use with 3d printers especially when there was a huge absence of raspberry pi's. The BIOS allows for Auto on with power which is awesome for blackouts. You can even get them so much cheaper if you get the BIOS locked versions because you can just do a key command on the motherboard with one of the buttons and reset the bios. If the store does not enough USB booting is totally possible. Dell Wyse 3040 #1 - Home Assistant OS - So little power used and it just Auto reboots it's perfect. Dell Wyse 3040 #2 - Klipper OS for modified Ender 3 - I actually like it so much I'll probably use another one for my voron 2.4 that I'm building Dell Wyse 3040 #3 - Semi-cold storage NAS - just use for a general backup for random stuff not on my main NAS All three of them use so much less power than my old parts unraid server lol AMD FX-8350 24GB Ram & GTX1080. - I'll never show anybody a picture of this it too jank until I have some spare cash for a new case. And crazy enough my favorite of everything has to be a 2011 Mac Mini I got for a stupid good deal on eBay. Popped in some DDR3 modules I had laying around so it has 16 gigs of RAM and got a $6 Sata cable so now I have an SSD inside and a HDD. Uses very little power it's all in one and just works, mostly (2011's have Intel 3000 driver or bios issues that make it challenging to run Windows) Would recommend 2012 and Up models. All in all the little Dell Wyse 3040s are definitely not perfect but they have gigabit Ethernet on them and can do 4K out at 30 HZ across two monitors and has a USB 3.0 port and it's honestly not bad if you're just running light stuff. Plus I really like them more than the mini PCs I bought on Amazon years ago just because it's nicer to reuse old Hardware that's already in the world than create new stuff for no reason. Especially if your services are mostly static and not sustaining any continuous heavy loads or high peaks. All of our power here is hydroelectric so I'd rather use old/used Hardware and keep it going as long as possible. Great video as always!

[@ry4nwo0t]

We use these in our call centre, I like them because they're so easy to use and are low powered. Literally plug them in out the box and they're good to go using DHCP options to send the config for thinOS. They log into a connection broker that hand them off to session host servers. Smooth operation and users can log on from any thin client terminal to get to their profile. Performance isn't an issue as the servers do all the work - even KZbin runs smoothly on them.

[@magcs6233]

You should really look into repurposing old Chromebooks, Right now i'm typing on an old HP Chromebook 11 G5ee on Debian 12 and they're cool little netbooks when repurposed. One could always run them headless for light server needs too.

[@copper4eva]

Apalrd's adventures is a great channel. Love his videos. He's apparently working on some kind of ceph build for homelab use. Curious to see how that goes.

[@rmcdudmk212]

I was recently looking at these Wyse systems. The ones that caught my eye ware the ones built into a monitor. I saw a couple of them when visiting a hospital. Might be cool for some older LAN games.

[@lucasrem]

VESA mount they use, u can do Arcade system that way too, any old CPU can do that, not needing GPU acceleration.

[@whitebeartigtig]

I was looking at these, but ended up just spending a little extra to get a couple HP 400 G3 Minis with i3 7100ts. They don't draw too much power and perform very well. I'd even be happy using one of them as my daily driver machine, it'd work fine as long as I'm not playing any games.

[@markc871]

I set up a 5070 as a media downloader/DLNA server (Universal Media Server)/Streaming media player running Win11 (debloated) with logitech k400 keyboard for my brother in law. Runs great. After that I had my entire family wanting the same setup. I've done about 8 now, people love them. Great for travel too, I have one that I take away on work trips with me.

[@akr4s1a]

I noticed you used Minecraft servers sometimes in your videos, you could do a standardized test for them If you either load into the same seed each time or use the same world each time with redstone machines or farms going and then either use Fabric and Carpet to do a tick warp or wait until 1.20.3 to be released where tick sprint will become a command you can see how fast the server can theoretically run the game.

[@tellyjoossens4186]

I use a Wyse 5070 (J5005 Intel cpu) with Windows 11 (yes it's supported 100% by Microsoft) almost every day as a desktop system. It cost me 80$ on Ebay a while back. Put a bigger capacity ssd in. Easy for day to day tasks like mails, youtube, etc.. I even use it for Photoshop from time to time and it performs really OK since the GPU is 100% hardware supported. No it's not even near as fast as my Workstation with 28 cores and 56 threats etc... but it's small (strapped to my monitor cables lol) and it isn't power hungry (15 Watt's at 100% cpu load) comparing to my workstation using even 200+ Watt's when idle. The Wyse is passively cooled so it's quiet and not much can degrade over time leaving you replacing stuff. You can even use it for some light gaming (yes the GPU is quite brave ). Games I tried like Team Fortress 2, Dave the diver, The Sims 4, etc... they kinda work and in 1080p they run OK-ish. Where these systems shine is the everyday office tasks though. I haven't tried putting other OS's onto it, but I can imagine that some won't work as well since the cpu throtteling is really bad until the point you install the right chipset drivers. In my case the cpu stayed stuck at 1,5 Ghz in the beginning and I really noticed the difference when the drivers were installed so that de cpu speedboost worked. A friend of mine uses the same config as me as a PfSense router. I think there are a lot of options left for using these systems and not letting them become e-waste. In times where everything is getting so pricy a lot of people would be happy using such a economical system.

[@JamesTenniswood]

The dell wyse 5070 are awesome. Just fitted mine with a £15 2.5GbE adaptor

[@stonent]

I bought a 7010 years ago and installed server 2016 on it and 16GB of RAM with Hyper-V and inside Hyper-V I installed a PF sense VM. I then removed TCP/IP from the onboard NIC inside Windows and connected the virtual NIC to the VM which made the "server" almost incapable of being remote exploited as there was no TCP/IP on the NIC, it was only forwarding traffic from the VM. It was a fun little thing to play with.

[@brandieboy]

This is exactly what I needed today. Haven't been going so good the last few weeks. Love the content! Keep it up!

[@dominick253]

Hope it gets better for you. I've been going through a bit of a rough patch myself but this is life I guess.

[@LedoCool1]

With minecraft you could run terrain pre-generation of a large area around spawn and it will cover 80% of your needs. There are plugins for that.

[@PPPH1L1PPP]

Could you please note which exact Sysbench version was used for these comparisons? Afaik the results can vary a lot depending on version. I am comparing this to one of my Lenovo M900 Tiny with a i5-6500T and the numbers just dont make sense at all. Using Sysbench 1.0.20 on Debian Bookworm

[@tommybronze3451]

JUST FYI: if you run those without monitor connected - say a server / proxmox node, the power will go dramatically down ... with exception of 3040, which already runs on electron vapour.

[@njsurf1973]

I use one of these systems to run my 3D printers. The raspberry Pi 4 might have blown it away in benchmarks, but for the same price I could get the RPI for I was able to get upgraded memory and storage. And normally you have to run a separate raspberry for each printer.. I can run four printers on one of these thin clients. And I'm basically just running Linux mint.

[@johnstancliff7328]

I have a WYZE 7010 and had to buy some SATA adapters to be able to upgrade the storage. once that was done and I had 2 512GB chips installed, the system took W10 pro with no problem. these units are mostly used on a corporate network... Mine came with a 16GB flash Module and 4GB memory. I was able to upgrade the system to 8GB of memory and since the unit has a SECOND SATA Channel, I was able to add the D Drive. really Like the little system! and mine was a "Legacy Edition" so it has 2 extra USB channels plus 2 serial ports.

[@Jacksaur_]

I bought my N10D Wyse, admittedly, mostly for the aesthetic. But it's definitely a great little Borg Backup Server for the price! But I'd warn that the tiny flash memory can be an absolute *pain* to work with... I had to fully reinstall Debian three times from my screwups: Maxing out the storage accidentally can leave you unable to reduce it again, and end with a practically broken system. Get a little too eager with apt, and now the entire system is unable to update or properly uninstall things. It's working fine now, with external storage for the backups obviously, but I am getting a little worried watching the flash memory usage creep up with each Debian update still...

[@HardwareHaven]

Haha yeah.. I can see that being an issue

[@VastCNC]

Dang, I wish I was aware of this project, I have a few 5070’s in the standard, and an extended I could have sent your way.

[@soooempty]

i have a Dell Wyse 5010 with 2gb ram + 128gb ssd and it runs batocera quite well. Although the startup splashscreen and some ui elements could be a bit laggy but gameplay wise, all 👍🏻. So retro gaming on these boxes can also be recommend 😁

[@pixel_vengeur391]

I've used these Wyse Thin Clients quite extensively for VDI (specifically, Microsoft RDP) quite extensively over the past year or so, and I can confidently tell you that the little 3040 is by far, the most common Thin Client to simply die. I've replaced and sent back dozens, approaching the 100 mark, of these in barely over a year, with about 130 deployed and active at any given moment. That's one Client, every other working day or so, that dies out of nowhere. I've placed 5070, HP Clients, and even some Intel NUCs and non had that problem. I personally would avoid the 3040 for anything remotely important.

[@stubarnes1965]

I have 3 of the Wyse 5060's, one running OMV as a NAS backup, one running Home Assistant and one as an IP based CCTV display for onvif cameras. Although I could containerize everything onto a single more powerful box, only the HA pc is on permanently so it makes more sense to me to split the jobs between PCs. My current favourites though are the HP Elitedesk series as they are considerably more powerful. Mine have I5 7th gen CPU's at 3.4 GHz. One is a thin client and the other is an All-in-one with full HD screen and both are surprisingly fast as long as you aren't doing anything GPU intensive. Both have M'2 NVME SSD's plus sata connectivity and both were under £70 delivered (Less then $90 currently) So more expensive than the 5060s but vastly more capable.

[@theroboticscodedepot7736]

I'd really like to see you do a cost/performance analysis between some of the new mini PCs and some of the older inexpensive hardware listed on ebay such as a laptop like the HP Elitebook 8470p or one you have worked with before such as the HP ELITEDESK 800 G4 Mini.

[@RobertoCarlos-tn1iq]

"Who cares about the video . . . now do what I want!"

[@RishabhBohra13]

i have wyse 5070 running kodi and some docker container, bought for 50$ after conversion , def bang for bucks, easily plays 4k yt video with around 25% cpu😊

[@chrichtonsworld1]

The main reason the company I work for opted for Thin clients was the fact they would meet our needs and were super cheap. Our purpose was to have trainees log in remotely to our software. Well, let me tell ya. These things are a pain in the...Almost everything is restricted. Even updating the system required a lot of tinkering and patience. I asked the guy in charge why he didnt go for mini pc's. They made more sense to me. But he said that this wasn't in our budget. Now they are in the process of replacing the thin clients with new ones. Again, lesson not learned. But this time they claim that everything is going to be more streamlined and improved. We'll see.

[@gliderspace]

I feel this is one of those things people simply never thought about doing it but it is a great use of them: Why not using it as it was intended? For people working remotely, sometimes it is a great pain in the ass to unplug the work laptop and plugging the personal laptop for personal and work usage if you have a big setup like me, with two monitors, keyboard, mouse, fullHD webcam, usb headset, thumb drives, etc... It would be amazing to have a guide on how to setup your work and personal laptops to serve remote connections to one of the Wyse cheapo thin clients, and how to setup it to access both machines, alternating between them when needed...

[@NigelMelanisticSmith]

My NAS is whirring away right now on a Wyse, absolutely love it. Cheaper and more powerful than a Raspberry Pi, and without ludicrous power draw. My model had a wifi card slot that can be adapted to PCIe or extra SATA aswell.

[@spoenk7448]

I almost pulled the trigger on a 5070 but found a much better deal for an HP Prodesk 400 G3 Mini. I set it up as a Jellyfin server, though I haven't gotten Jellyfin subtitles to work properly so I just use it as a file server for Chromecast running Nova media player. Works great with 4k files. I think it idles at 8W which is fine for me. The total setup was less than a Pi 5 and runs on SSD. Sure it uses more but idle is so low it doesn't really matter that much. I'm not concerned about data loss as there is nothing of value on it and that situation wouldn't necessarily be better on a Pi anyway.

[@abunk8691]

While watching the video I was thinking what kinds of uses I would have for a lower power computer that I could leave powered on with not much issue on the power bill. And so far I've come up with the following: 1. Storage server (not a home NAS or anything but just something simple to make transferring files between devices easier since Warpinator on Windows and Android isn't as good as the Linux version) 2. Spotify connect hub I could leave by the stereo (using raspotify) 3. Print server (no idea if it would work fine on my Epson L220 since there's some functions there that I need the Windows driver to access) 4. Thin Client (so I can access my main pc from a different part of the house when necessary)

[@win7best]

You can get a Fujitsu Futro S520 for 12 euros of ram könig and they can run desktops just fine and even video playback works.

[@shadowen9252]

You should look into the Zimaboard sata power cable. It's got a 4pin power connector very similar to that and splits the 4 pin into 2 standard data power plugs

[@forcequitOS]

This video’s perfectly timed, I picked up an OptiPlex 3000 thin client off Amazon for only $50 last week and after throwing extra RAM and storage at it, it’s capable even as just a small Linux machine and emulation system for the price I paid for it.

[@rickwj324]

I own a bunch of Dell Wyse's and use them mainly with libreelec software and function as KODI boxes. Works great.

[@NeverEnoughRally]

I'm using a 5060 as a Pfsense router running on a trunk line to a unifi switch with my wan being a vlan on a port on my switch. I've been running that for almost a year now, it's really awesome. I designed a 3d model ssd mount and found a super short SATA extension cable so you can mount a 2.5" SSD inside. I even went to the level of designing a fan mount, even though it's probably completely pointless. Considering I paid $40 for 2 of them, I always have a back up.

[@jevgenijobzigailov2376]

I'm using Dell Wyse 3290 (n03d) with Celeron N2807 CPU since 2019 for hosting small personal database I want to be accessible 24x7 under Centos 7. Initially it had 16GB mini mSata SSD and 4GB of RAM, but recently I bought Chinese 256GB drive and swapped RAM module to 8GB. Now it serves as home SMB share and torrents / yt-dlp downloader, too. Performance wise it is slow (like Pentium 4 3GHz), but draws only 3-4 watts idling or 6W under load. Recently I've tested 8th gen Intel NUC (i3-8109u) and was impressed with its performance (plays 4k60 video easily), relative silence (fan at idle is almost inaudible) and low power draw (sometimes it fell to 6w under Windows 11). NUCs are popular, spare fans or even fanless cases are available, so I consider buying NUC as my next home server and bedroom HTPC in one package.

[@justomorales7892]

In your next video, I would really like to see how they perform when connecting to an AWS WorkSpaces. Years back, I looked for a desktop in a cloud solution because I wanted to connect to a desktop from anywhere. I tried to use my work computer, iPad, home computer, or an actual WYSE workstation. After searching for workstations in the cloud, I found AWS WorkSpaces. It worked great! Have you ever seen Windows 10 on an iPad? It wasn't running locally, but seeing a full Windows 10 desktop on an iPad is something else. But back to AWS WorkSpace, it is awesome to have all my files, desktop, and apps available anywhere. I even tried using a very old WYSE terminal (before Dell bought them), and it could connect and use it as a desktop. However, it worked with reduced graphics and a few performance issues. Yet, I could still do office work on it. Can you sign up for an AWS account, activate an Amazon WorkSpace desktop, and connect each WYSE terminal to see if there are any performance issues between them? I would like to see such a comparison of the hardware being used for what it was intended to. I settled with using a Vevo Stick to run the AWS Desktop software, but that seemed like it needed to be more powerful. Maybe you can also try setting up the software (clients.amazonworkspaces.com/) on a Raspberry Pi to do a full comparison of performance. Thanks for the video, and I hope you are able to do such a comparison!

[@Raletia]

I'm using one of the 7010 like models with a PCIe slot; with a multiport network card to run Pfsense for my router. Been working great. Didn't do anything but slot in a network card and install Pfsense, no other upgrades.

[@aritryamlbbytlorddarkstar6362]

Can I somehow install Linux on it like puppy linux or bodhi linux on a dell wyse thin client and use them as a standalone cpu or pc?? Can you perform this experiment for me , please add a 32 gb sd card if there is a sd card slot and boot from it??? Just like raspberry pi?? ooof I am very confused 😢

[@langhistruk]

I've got a dell fx170 thin client (single core) with debian running OpenVPN and pihole and after years it is still working great with 0 maintenance!

[@-morrow]

you can also power 19V barrel jacks with a USB-C PD trigger board

[@jaspercas]

I'm using a dell wyze n03d for home assistant bought it for around 25$ and it has a celeron, 4gb ram and 32gb ssd, works well with HA and just uses around 10W of power

[@ajpenninga]

The Wyse 5070 blows all of these out of the water, with a J5005, DDR4, m.2 SATA, in less than 20w full tilt. The 3040 makes a great pi-hole machine.

[@jacobfelton]

Exactly, I was about to post the same. Stick a low profile 4 port NIC in there and you've got a great, low power virtual router box.

[@gtasomogyi]

Watching from a Fujitsu Futro S920 (AMD GX-415GA version). :) Great content, was nice and interesting to watch! I am here from the competition, and I'd recommend to check it out! My reasons for this tiny machine: wanted something cheap, small, and silent for my tv, as a media player. Ended up choosing a thin client, and this Futro S920, to be specific. Has an AMD 4-core, 1.5GHz, no moving parts, 40W psu, 2 SO-DIMM slots, 1 sata, 1 mSATA, 1 miniPCI-E, 2 USB3.0 on the front, 4 2.0 on the back, AAAND a PCI-E x4! What made me eventually buy one, and tune up over time, with a 64gb mSATA SSD (instead of the 4gb), and 2x4GB 1600MHz DDR3 (instead the 1x2gb), got a 90 degree PCI-E adapter, than first a GT710 2gb DDR3, and lately a GT1030 ddr4, for the extra low power consumption. :D And a 128gb usb 3.0 in the front as external storage. Conclusion: no, it is not the cheapest idea, BUT I do not regret, since I use it on a daily basis, good fast for avarage tasks, does some older gaming too, AND practically dead silent and max 40W power usage, on a 1080p big screen TV, and can use my beloved Win 7 HomePremium. I even consider to eventually get a GX-424CC version as a final update, to satisfy my tinker side.

[@StrapMerf]

I've run a 5060 as a desktop/ lightweight gaming(read OLD games).. it was running under Lubuntu. it now lives as a CUPS server and probably a NAS in the future....

[@cheesefries7436]

I use a 16gb 3040 for piHole, and a 5070 with Ubuntu desktop for Steam in-home game streaming from my main desktop. Both have been working great! Just make sure you get the right version of each. I love these things!

[@NinjaSynFrey]

I have one of those Dell Wyse 5060 and I mainly use it as a SMB file and printer server. Currently have Windows 11 on it despite not meeting the requirements. Though it's still running smoothly for almost a year now since i got it.

[@nathanhamman418]

The 3040 uses SDIO for the wifi card, it is not pcie or usb. There is an adapter on PCBway that adapts it to a micro sd card if you need more storage.

[@toxiccan175]

If you run PaperMC, an optimized Minecraft vanilla server, and generate chunks in advance via commands, it actually makes a very respectable little Minecraft server.

[@Maciek888]

5070 with four Tremont cores (2017) is much more powerful and actually pretty usable as a lightweight desktop - 4K60 HEVC videos, game stream or remote session (no HDR) are perfectly smooth. It even supports Windows 11 officially (but you need a separate license). Uses DDR4 SO-DIMM and has M.2 for SSD + WiFi card.

[@Space_Reptile]

the 3040 is under 40$, and it runs off 5v, you can easely get a barreljack to USB cable that fits that thing ideal for a Pihole setup that runs of the routers USB port power (its how i have my Pihole setup)

[@EmanueleSantoro]

You might want to try and use them with a proper remote desktop software, like xrdp (on the server) and any decent rdp client on the wyse thin client. Stuff like spice (afaik) is not really meant for low-latency. I get an usable remote dekstop with xrdp, and it also supports both playing the audio (originating on the remote desktop) on the local client as well as microphone forwarding and niceties like clipboard sharing.

[@RandomGreymane]

I highly suggest the HP T5740 thin clients for lightweight servers. Older but inexpensive, fairly power light, and easy as a PC to load with most OS. I replace the SSDs in them though as the oem ones are cheaply made and small capacity. Also you can find a std pci expansion for them. One of them is running my firewall as we speak with a PCI network card.

[@RandomGreymane]

Also these are good for running SIMH and emulating ancient hardware.

[@roopey]

If you looking for insanely fast mini pcs chech out the intel n100 and n305 ones out. The n305 might be bit pricy but gives about 3600 events per second (single thread) and up to 23000 with all 8 cores. Mine is passivly cooled, so performance might not be optimal. Power consumption is terrible though. 10 watts when absolutely nothing is running. 3 VMs and it's at 15 watts. At full load it pulls 35 watts

[@tadeuszmarin5704]

The older models with DVI-I might have a niche as Batocera machines because of their ability to output 15khz. Slap a DVI-I > VGA to SCART (or RGB outside of europe) adapter and enjoy the best analog video signal with virtually 0 input lag in your CRT tv. Considering you can find some thin clients for $10 and smaller CRT sets for a similar amount, it's a bargain. Even older models with VIA cpus make great DOS/Windows 98 machines, as some are old enough to still have drivers for the latter. I recall the via C3 in particular having the ability to play with the multiplier to bring the frequency down to ridiculously low numbers, which is necessary for some DOS games.

[@Zombehmoviez]

I got one of these for free that was still new in box because the business wasn't using it anymore, it's been great as a headless OpenSUSE server until the kernel broke during an update or something and my system started booting into grub. I never learned to fix a system that's in a state like that so now it sits.

[@cheeseisgreat24]

Oddly enough, I use a thin client like this for basically its intended purpose. I have one mounted to the back of an old dell square monitor that’s mounted to the wall in my office and its whole purpose is to be remote access into my various servers located elsewhere around my property.

[@JoseAlba87]

im Happy with my Wyse 5070 J5005, it has the latest iGpu (no Av1) I'm running DietPi os, it has all the driver ready. then its CasaOs. paid $50 and another $45 1tb m.2-ssd, $30 16Gb-2*8 ddr4 = @ $125 runs on Solar Power

[@BronyumHexofloride]

at the moment im using one of those 3040s as a mini TV server using LebreElec and TVHeadend running off a 128GB USB stick, works great to send TV to all of my computers/phones/tablets, my only issue with the 3040 is the PSU cant handle much more than just the computer itself so using a portable HDD for an OS drive is out of the question

[@nfriedly]

I was looking at one of these for a print server where I only had x86 drivers available. But for anything with ARM support, I'd go with a raspberry pi.

[@tenekevi]

The 3040 was a part of my proxmox cluster till recently. Not just as a QDevice but a proper node with 3-4 VMs and 2-3 CTs (Had a SATA SSD for boot+storage). It wasn't a pinnacle of performance but it did the job without any problems. The main problem is the extremely limited connectivity. It has USB3 and an ethernet port, and that's it. The WIFI slot is SDIO. The USB2 are slow. You would always need better storage than the built-in eMMC. That needs the be over USB3. Which leaves nothing for expandability. Can't add a USB NIC, can't ad a PCIE device. No SATA either.

[@DominikZalewski85]

I got dell wyse 5070 super cheap for £30 and with extra NICs it acts as my backup pfsense router. My mate got 3 of them and turned them in proxmox cluster :) Not super powerful but power usage us like 6W for each!

[@HardwareHaven]

Nice!

[@bxl181]

Where did you buy them from at that price? Are the 5070 the 'extended' variant?

[@BPAvt]

I use a 5060 with a 128gb SSD,and an Intel WiFi card. I am running Linux mint xfce and using it as a home theater PC

[@Arek_R.]

I got the smallest 3040 and also bought 128GB eMMC chip from aliexpress for $10 and resoldered it.

[@matthewsturgeon]

I used some upgraded 5070s for routers as you can add a second nic using OEM adapter or aftermaket

[@demitriuspandi9736]

I mean these machines can be quite handy for some case specific purposes, as noted in the comments, as a Casa server, or print server, etc..., but given that older Raspberry Pi devices cost less now but have better performance, honestly, the best use for these thinclients is pretty much what they were made for, as a cheap terminal to connect to another PC. That actually is far more handy than people these days realize though. I mean, for example, if you want a PC to use while in a messy garage or workshop, but don't want to spend a ton on a decent machine that will get wrecked in that environment, (even say, $200 on a mid laptop), then getting one of these & then remoting into another PC or a Server VM is the way to go. That's the best use for ancient PCs in general as well that are too old & low powered for even Linux. For example, I have an old IBM thinkpad X41, (Intel Centrino chipset & 1.5 GB of DDR2 Ram), & an old Toshiba from the P4 days with even lower specs. Even Puppy Linux, Haiku, etc... all struggled on those machines as stand alone machines. & doing things like watching youtube, NOT happening. All I could get them to run decently on was windows XP with some sketchy browsers that were specifically designed for old XP machines. But I like the keyboard & other aspects of the old IBM thinkpad, & I like the giant screen & surprisingly good speakers on the Toshiba, (they really were higher quality back then), so I instead put thin client specific builds of linux on them & use them to remote into a few headless desktops & VMs on my Virtulization server. They work amazing for that.

[@massimo79mmm]

i have some doubts using 3040, when (and not “if”) the emmc will fail, this t.c. will be unusable. i think “real” pc like the usff from dell (i have one, i love it) or nuc would ensure much longer lifespans. if the ssd fails you can replace it

[@lixxus-m]

i have 3040 and ive installed dietpi on a couple, one is my airplay using shairport sync, another is being used as homeassistant

[@agw5425]

As these are a bit on the weak side they can make a usable retro pc, aka a "new" pc with a old os and games on it for a very resonable cost, low enough to have one for each OS you want to run including dos, though dos may be best on older thin clients with limited cpu power.

[@ka24det]

I've got one of them running my Home Assistant and another running Octoprint. Good stuff.