The Mini PC You SHOULD Be Looking At

[@josiahhums]

Fun Fact: These are the Mini PCs that Chick-fil-A uses for their in-store POS Servers. They're getting upgraded right now so there might be a lot flowing into the market soon.

[@HardwareHaven]

Oh awesome! Also I still chuckle every time I see POS haha I’m a child

[@weatheronthe8s895]

The Food Lion I work at still also uses very similar systems (some HP, some Lenovo) for their office PCs. I'm not sure when they intend to upgrade, but I imagine it will be before Windows 10 goes out of support if Microsoft doesn't extend support.

[@BastetFurry]

@@HardwareHaven well, Chick-fil-A are LGBTQA hating PoS, so yeah... 😊

[@marcogenovesi8570]

These always come in waves so when this wave is done, the next wave of decommissioned businness mini PCs will come

[@nuclearbomb9483]

@@BastetFurry They may be horrible people but the chicken is good tho

[@senspartech3533]

As someone who uses MicroPCs *extensively* in a variety of projects, I use MiniPCs almost as much for general use. They are absolutely fantastic for low power consumption daily drivers, nodes, etc. Due to their widespread use in enterprise applications, they are frequently offloaded for great prices. In thinking about it just now, I cant even remember the last time I did something like use one of my rPis in a similar application. Ive long recommended MiniPCs to anyone who has mentioned to me that they are looking at getting an rPi as a "cheap computer."

[@TerraMagnus]

A single one of those 1L PC’s could run a whole homelab for many of us.

[@KameraShy]

Like me. HA on Proxmox. Home automation server only. NAS on separate machines including rack servers due to my massive data hoarding.

[@HardwareHaven]

So true lol

[@thedev2496]

Definitely ! Mine is running on an HP EliteBook 8570p... I don't need it but recently I be fancying another server to host all of my spare hdd and ssd lying around.

[@Mecrom]

not this one specifically, with 4 skylake threads, but the newer Ryzen ones with 6/12 or even 8/16 have very impressive performance!

[@natk5569]

I've been using full size 800 g3 elite desks for my lab. Not as small but pretty cheap and lots of expandability

[@kraio-sfu]

It’s worth noting that any of these mini PCs with vPro on the CPU badge can be remotely managed and monitored, allowing you to remotely turn it on and off among other things. Just make sure the MEBx hotkey is enabled in the BIOS (this is what it is called in my unit), and press Ctrl+P while it is booting to enter the Intel AMT configurator.

[@mjfvasmer]

I think, Xeon didn't work not because of TDP limitation, but because of compatibility. Since Skylake generation, Intel started to restrict the use of server CPUs on home chipsets

[@CFWhitman]

Yes, which stinks. The only consolation is that there are newer CPUs that are much less limited than these old i5s, including Ryzens.

[@purnomoabdillah3852]

in some gigabyte mobo, bios mod can solve this.. but i m not sure with prebuilt pc...

[@BastetFurry]

Maybe the age old solution of covering up some pads can help here?

[@RoastBeefSandwich]

The newer generation of Lenovo Tiny can accommodate Xeons I believe as they've moved to a mostly mesh chassis for much better airflow.

[@digason]

The units with a 35W CPU use a different motherboard. Since the model in the video has a 6500T, TDP limitation could be a factor.

[@scottgardener]

I have two of these. When I realized I had a desktop in my home office out of habit but only used it for web browsing and light tasks like word processing and occasional video conferencing, I pulled out the bulky tower in favor of a low profile mini box. We have a second one upstairs available for use as a media server, for playing archived video and audio files as well as streaming off of web services that don't have traditional smart TV apps.

[@AuftragschilIer]

you should write a book about it

[@TamalPlays]

@@AuftragschilIer lmao

[@nathanbarker7686]

I did exactly this as I wasn't prepared to pay pi scalpers almost double for a model 4. I ended up getting a Dell Optiplex 3046 with a 6th gen I5, 16Gb RAM and a half decent ssd for about £80. Does a great job and runs everything I've thrown at it so far.

[@Drak976]

Yes I being a poor person in the know find programs for cheap pcs and laptops. I guess over time maybe a r pi is going to pay for itself in power consumption but the dream of a $30 board costing what was it at the big squeeze $200+? You can get entire computers and laptops for less.

[@tonyhawk123]

I've been looking at second hand Dell Optiplex too. Long term thoughts? This review of the Lenovo has thrown a spanner in the works - looks more powerful for graphics. One of the uses is retro gaming so i'm wondering where the cut off for (say) PS2 is. I read that the Iris integrated graphics is much better than the other Intel graphics but I havent found any micro PCs making use of that.

[@nathanbarker7686]

@tonyhawk123 Hey, I used the Dell to complete the entire metal gear solid games on ps2 and ps3 with no problem and a little tweaking with the emulator settings. I also ran N64 goldeneye which is notorious for not playing ball on various PCs regardless of spec. I even use this to run designspark CAD software which is resource hungry. For what you pay it's well worth it. I like lenovo and have used it in a corporate setting many times but I personally prefer Dell. Hope this helps :)

[@tonyhawk123]

@@nathanbarker7686 ps3 emulation? I'm new to this but wouldn't have expected that! I thought it would be a struggle to do ps2 let alone ps3! Is this using Intel UHD 630 graphics?

[@Zerbey]

Needed a cheap PC for my living room to do streaming and some game emulation, ended up with a free OptiPlex 790. Upgraded the i5 to an i7-3770 for about $20 and then added a cheap GPU for about $50 and it's a legitimately great system that will actually play some modern games.

[@Laphoot]

Bought both m910q and 800 g3 last week for ~$60 each with 7500T & 8GB. Added crucial p3 500GB for $10(after coupon) from microcenter and have very fast WFH PCs. FYI with Wifi cards. Cards like Intel 9560ngw or ax201ngw are CNVI/CRF and only works with 8th gen or higher cpu/dedicated motherboards. You will want to get cards like 9260ngw or ax210ngw.

[@appl3zpiefatalities]

This is the computer i use as my proxmox server. I have quite a lot of services running on docker. around 15+- LXC containers and 1 VM. 0 issues so far with it. Why i love it is because its so tiny, u can buy 2 more and have a cluster. I kinda paid a bit more than 50$ tho :P (250 euros) All in all i would recommend it

[@l.a.2646]

The reason I use an RPi 4 is for portability my portable ham radio outfit, my son got me a mini PC that runs on 12 volts, but its kinda rough to run from battery ( voltage drop ) but im really interested with using one of these little rigs for my home radio station, desk space is a premium for me. Thanks for the good info! Keep up the research!

[@ColinUniverse]

I actually just ordered a Dell Optiplex 7040 Micro with an i5-6600T (same form factor as the guy in your video) for $89 last week! I also got 32 GB DDR4 2400 MHz for only $36. Going to be using it as a power efficient home server to run my Minecraft server and other things. Oh yeah, and great video by the way! :)

[@HardwareHaven]

NICE! And thanks!

[@KameraShy]

Probably like elsewhere, for most general applications, sufficient RAM is a key factor.

[@ManelRodero]

I am looking for 16GB DDR4-2400 for my 7050 with an i5-7500T. Where do you find them at a good price?

[@therealb888]

Woah where did you get that RAM? Only $36? Is it 16GB x 2 or 32GB x1?

[@goodfractalspoker7179]

@@ManelRoderoOfferUp and for that less than $100 I got a 7060 with i7 8700t for $140

[@TribbleBot]

A couple of months ago I spent a bit more for a refurbished one to replace the Pi 400 my wife had been using for a couple of years. It worked out so well I decided to step up to the next largest size (the 800 G3 SFF) for a dedicated Plex server. After installing Ubuntu, dropping in our existing 8 TB media drive, and copying over our existing Plex configuration, it was up and running easy peasy lemon squeezy.

[@KameraShy]

I have been using these mini PC's (Lenovo) for a number of years now and they work great. One is in daily driver mode at one location and performs perfectly for things like video watching. Easy to work on. I recently picked up a batch for about $50 each including power supplies. One thing to watch out for is whether the hd caddy is included. Those can be a pain to source independently. It varies.

[@HardwareHaven]

That’s what double sided tape is for 😋

[@zeruty]

An m.2 screw is cheaper than an hdd caddy

[@BastetFurry]

Nothing an evening in FreeCAD and some hours on the Ender can't solve. 😁

[@psylentut]

A company I worked for had a couple of dozen of these delivered right before covid hit. They became suddenly "useless" as all staff were very quickly issues laptops. A couple of years later, they were still sitting in storage, unused. Our IT guy gave me a couple of them and they're brilliant. I've got one set up in as HTPC in the living room. It's decent enough to play older games, and stuff that's not too demanding like Dead Cells. It streams from my gaming tower via Parsec flawlessly.

[@nikobellic570]

That's ideal. Cheap, tiny, energy efficient, silent and compatible with most software.

[@mikkun_]

Can we get them for free? 😅 haha

[@psylentut]

@@mikkun_ haha, my manager let me take a few home, but I no longer work there :D

[@mikkun_]

@@psylentut HAHA no worries! Thanks man!

[@YO-BIZZY]

nice goldmine!

[@kalark]

I picked up one of these elitedesk mini g4 mini earlier this year for around 140 and that one included a ryzen 2400g. It's been a fantastic mini pc!

[@fgregerfeaxcwfeffece]

Okay, that's good to know. As those have a lot more GPU power!

[@heyjustj]

I used to buy Pi’s for so many projects back when they were always $35. Now I feel like they don’t make much sense anymore when I cam buy these older mini PCs for less than a raspberry pi with all the accessories needed to get it up an running. Unless I need something that very specifically requires a Pi, I’m going with a mini pc every time.

[@GrzegorzCichocki1173]

I had hp 800 Mini G3 with the same processor for almost 10 months. It worked great with YunoHost as a server. Nextcloud, home assistant and other apps worked very nicely

[@UserWhoExists]

I recently upgraded from my trusty PI 4 to an Optiplex 7040, upped the RAM and installed 1TB 2.5" HDD, works absolutely like a charm. Great thing is BIOS has auto power on AC, which means PC will start again in case of power failure.

[@victor2410]

I was really tempted to get one of these 1L PCs but settled on the optiplex 7060 sff with i7 8700. Having the extra pcie slots, M.2 and easy installation of 2 sata ssds made it perfect for my proxmox install. Currently running a vm for docker containers, a pihole lxc, plex lxc, and a home assistant vm. Still pretty small and quiet for me since I have it in the basement.

[@WeightlessBallast]

After the first few seconds I paused the video to say that the point of R Pi is not being a desktop/laptop replacer, it's aimed for interfacing to electronics via its GPIO bus. At least that is all I care about in it. Plus its networking capabilities.

[@PrymalInstynct]

I have been running a 5 node k8s cluster on the Elitedesk 800 g3. I installed a 256gb nvme and 128gb SSD in each and use the SSD as a boot drive and the nvme with rook/ceph for distributed storage. It has been an awesome experience.

[@warbirdnut9269]

+1 for using rook/ceph.

[@copper4eva]

What networking did you do for this ceph cluster? People say to get good performance out of ceph, you really gotta be looking at like at least 10gbit networking. And since you’re running on nvme, you definitely want some fast networking for ceph. I’m just curious. Would love to build a ceph cluster from thin clients, but am worried about networking being a bottleneck.

[@PrymalInstynct]

@@copper4eva I am just using 1gbe nics through unifi switches and routers. IMHO bottlenecks in a home lab are kind of irrelevant because the typical workloads we run are not so CPU, Memory, or IO intensive you will notice a performance impact due to a bottleneck. I use NVMEs because the HP 800's I use only have 2 storage interfaces. 1 SATA and 1 NVME. It made more sense to use the NVME for the ceph cluster over the SATA SSD because of random R/W performance.

[@copper4eva]

@@PrymalInstynct Should have also asked, are you using erasure coding with ceph? Or you just running replication?

[@PrymalInstynct]

@@copper4eva just replication

[@jasonviande5053]

They do rock. I have a bunch if them and I mostly just mess about. Couple things to keep in mind are that in some of the generations there are 35W variants and this might not be reflected in the sale (35W are in the SKU if you know the serial, 65W says nothing). Also, under most circumstances you should be able to use a dual drive (NVMe and SATA) configuration.

[@awebuser5914]

65W versions have a vented top-case an an extra tiny fan above the SATA drive. The case is the dead give-away...

[@phucnguyen0110]

These tiny PCs are quickly getting more popular, I love it!

[@jackedup447]

I don't because I need to buy one before they get expensive.

[@phucnguyen0110]

@@jackedup447 I am sure you can get one quickly

[@fafiteee]

​@@jackedup447i wouldn't worry about that tbh. most of these come from offices that are upgrading their computers, and those offices aren't gonna stop using computers so the supply should still be there even after a few years.

[@justsomeguy5103]

@@fafiteee There is an increasing move towards laptops though. Until the mid 10s, schools and universities used to have computer labs full of these behind every other door. Today, students are expected to bring a laptop. Meanwhile, offices are moving away from 1 person = 1 desk in favour of work from home schemes and clean desk policies.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@jackedup447 They won't, there is a very large supply of them and they come in waves as offices decommission their fleets.

[@LooxJJ]

We build corporate network (physical cabling as well as IT Architecture) for our clients in the Southern Cali to Texas area. G3 and Lenovo mini PC are what we use as server / network monitoring station for all our clients. And yes, we used to use TeamViewer but now we use both RDS and Chrome Remote Access.

[@Trains-With-Shane]

Recently I have become a big fan of the ultra small formfactor office PC's for use as Proxmox servers, etc. Especially now that they're getting to the point where loading them with 64gb ram is not a big deal, or expensive.

[@pavelperina7629]

People are mentioning proxmox quite a lot. Does it have any advantage or different use case than running podman/docker containers for nextcloud, git, nginx, databases and so on? I have just one minipc for everything. Actually two, Zimaboard which does not have any use.

[@Trains-With-Shane]

@@pavelperina7629 Proxmox, being a hypervisor, let me spin up VM's and LCX containers. And in these VM's and containers I can run docker to be able to run Nextcloud, git, etc. Which, of course, you could run on a host OS like just Windows, Linux, etc. installed directly on the mini PC. But I like using Proxmox VM's because it allows me to not only rapidly spin up new systems for testing and labs but easily be able to manage backups of my "production" services by just using Proxmox to schedule the backup or snapshot of the VM or container. Of coutse Proxmox does require a little overhead as far as hard drive space, RAM, etc. but it's fairly minimal.

[@ernestgalvan9037]

…’64gb RAM is not expensive’ ..since most everything I do runs fine with 4-8gb, I just happily and even less expensively cram 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD into these machines, and never look back 🤓

[@Trains-With-Shane]

@@ernestgalvan9037 That's awesome. 32gb just isn't enough anymore for the amount of lab work and testing that I do. The setups and scenarios have become more.. complex, lol. Especially with people wanting to roll stuff like ZFS via stuff like TrueNAS rather than traditional hardware RAID.

[@fuarkstyle]

@@Trains-With-Shane do you work with media encoding/processing or just enjoy it as a home multimedia AIO?

[@TheBassistPhilosoper]

The HP elite 800 g3 (and newer) are one of my absolute favorite 1L PCs to work with in my homelab. Great to see others picking up on this fantastic little box!

[@KaidenBird]

My dad uses one of those as his daily drivers! It was actually an upgrade compared to his old computer, which was almost as old as me!

[@Zerbey]

Oh they're a great choice for retirees, pair them with a larger monitor and they can watch movies or do basic web browsing or even play games if they're into that. Much better than being hunched over a laptop.

[@tsisson]

We've been running these HP minis as our standard office PC at the medical college where I work for about 3 years. I was a little suspicious when we changed from full towers to these tiny PCs but they have been great. And they free up a lot of desk or floor space compared to a SFF or full tower.

[@monkeing]

I just bought something just like this pc for around $60. I’m happy to see that this is a good mini pc for and home lab activities. (HP ProDesk 600 G3 Mini i5-7600T w/ Charger, 128GB SSD, 8GB DDR4 RAM, Win 10 Pro)

[@HardwareHaven]

Nice deal! The 7th gen has better transcoding as well if that’s something you’re interested in.

[@ColinUniverse]

Damn, $60 is a steal!

[@utgotye1]

We have thousands of these where I work ranging from G1 to G9, mostly in this form factor. Very good product overall.

[@ShawnMcNaughton]

You monster! I've been looking at building a K8s testbed with these for the last week or so, and was finally closing in on the price sweet spot, and now they're going to go up again! :D But seriously, these are great. I have one dedicated to Home Assistant, and it's excellent. 6th gen Intel is the oldest I would go - any older and the power/efficiency isn't there, especially with spectre/meltdown mitigations - as well as NVMe support. You can also look at thin clients, like the HP T640 (with a Ryzen Embedded R1505G) and Dell Wyze 5070 (Pentium J5005/J4105, limited to 8GB RAM). Furthermore, don't sleep on the SFF machines - they aren't quites as compact as the Mini/1L PCs, but some have standard internal power supplies, better cooling/performance and can take a low profile graphics card and full-size RAM. Either way, these can have a surprising amount of 'oomph' for small, used, low-power hardware.

[@HardwareHaven]

If you look in the background you can actually see a pro desk SFF lol

[@sergeantseven4240]

Just looking on ebay right now, none of the ones under $100 have a CPU, SSD, or RAM or a power adapter. All the ones that have enough to boot up are closer to $200-$300.

[@dozog]

The result of some bigger and many smaller KZbin channels saying people should switch from RPI's These things suddenly became more popular when RPI's were over $150 if you were lucky enough to find one at all.

[@jeremywj]

It really just depends on what you are using your computer/server for. The RPI4 is a pretty powerful little guy that can handle most home server needs. The benefit things like the RPI4 have over a minipc is power consumption. A RPI4 might cost you a few dollars a year to run. A minipc is probably going to cost you at least a few dollars a month. Also, I might be lucky here but I've never had a RPI die on me. They are extremely reliable, especially if you invest in a solid microsd or flash drive.

[@plica06]

I've had 3x Pi 4s die on me. Two came back to life three years later. Not holding my breath that their re-awakening will be long lived.

[@Drak976]

My pi 0 before they become impossible to find for less then quadruple their supposed price always made a whining sound in the audio. It's literally on the ground now like the garbage it is. I used to want to replace it with a 0 2 whatever. I'm glad they were also impossible to buy while other better companies and newer components drove prices down for more bang for your buck. Or do you actually carry it around in your pocket to show off to women? Bro I got 64 gb in my pants.

[@linux42069]

Mini PCs are fine, but SOC boards usually have specific benefits like exposed GPIO that aren't available on mini PCs. Although it's cool that they CAN push a desktop, that's really not their purpose. They are really better for embedded purposes

[@tirsojrp]

Worth mentioning: vPro minipc's can be managed with Intel AMT and the M2 A&E port can be converted to a M2 M and hold another NVMe SSD.

[@Issa_eth]

Which one would you recommend?

[@tirsojrp]

​@@Issa_ethany HP 800 mini G3 or better, vPro depends on your needs. Newer pcs have more features and modular upgrades.

[@juggernautz]

Bought a HP ProDesk 400 G4 SFF Intel Core i3-6100 @ 3.70GHz 4GB ram 2x 500Gb HDD with Dvd, similar platform but needs more ram but it has no OS so having a dvd drive makes it easy to upload Ubuntu. Once you get past the MS craze or dependancy you quickly realize OS choice really does matter! Great review!!

[@kevinhu196]

While Skylake CPU does not have hardware 10bit HEVC, with my testing it is still sufficient for jellyfin 4K 10-bit HDR transcoding. You just have to use the CPU for decoding, and QSV can be utilized for tone mapping and encoding the 8 bit stream (in software transcoding, the CPU has to do all the dec and enc work and tone map doesn't work). I tested my i5 6500, it transcode a 4K 10 bit HDR 50 Mbps file to a 1080p 8 bit HEVC and the speed is around 30-40 fps. The i5 6500T shown in the video is less powerful so I'm not sure how that handles transcode. I sold the 6500 and opted for a Coffee Lake QTJ2 with UHD 630, much better experience. Why is this relevant? In my area Vancouver BC, PC, PC parts and especially mini PC with 7th+ Intel are being scalped on local marketplace while 6th gen are priced reasonably. Not sure its because Netflix 4K support? or Win 11? that caused price disparity. And ebay is no good due to high shipping cost to Canada. If people are on a budget, Skylake is an interesting option. Anyway I look forward to your jellyfin machine video!

[@JavaCaliente]

Protip for gum removal. Use a hot air to take off stickers/labels, it's way faster than scraping and if you find the sweet temperature it leaves less residue.

[@mattsanchez4893]

Great video, especially liked the cleaning montage video. Love this form factor, I picked up an almost new used mac mini M2 on ebay for $350, best desktop computer I've owned by a mile, it takes up almost no space, makes no noise, and puts out little to no heat and it can stream 4k video.

[@chmedlychmedenstein916]

Wait, for $350?? That's way too low!

[@Goonit83]

Great video man. Received a dell 7070 mini just recently loaded it with 64gb and it’s perfect for the next 10 years for my hosting requirements sits nicely next to my ancient hp micro server. Life is good.

[@JarredSutherland]

I think in most cases of someone considering an RPi it's for specific reasons. I use micro PCs when the use case allows it, but even on those the power draw is much higher than a Pi or other similarly spec'd SBC. Pi's are also now more "readily" available in stock (the 8GB pi 4 was in stock for most of the day at Adafruit on Friday). Good video though either way.

[@Resanctify]

A non server chip mini pc will have either low power chips or T variants of powerful chips, which dont use a ton of power. I run a gaming laptop off of a battery and it's non T but mobile chip and and gpu draw between 60-100W. Imagine something not designed for gaming. T variant hybrid Chip, low power RAM, no discrete gpu, no 1440p 160hz screen attached. Face it, Pis are fo suckas.

[@TheAnthonyBrandi]

I run a pi off a solar panel and a small lipo battery for my wireless cam ndvr. Power draw is sooooo low.

[@maximilianstallinger735]

​@@ResanctifyWas recently in the need for a 24/7 running pc for some scripts. Did the calculation and the Pi was costing only a fraction of the power-costs, compared to a HP mini-pc I had laying around. Like 1/5 to 1/7 of it. So RPis are great in this regard

[@Resanctify]

@@maximilianstallinger735 My post errored out before it completed. Plainly, your mini pc is around skylake, and regardless of exactly which gen it was using, most older mini pcs went for workstation specs. I'd recommend one with a Hybrid(newer) P or U variant processor(Down to 15W base) low speed/power ddr4/5 ram, which blasts the pi ram out of the water. Then instead of 6-7x the power draw it'll be much closer, and then we could actually have more developers for low power x86, and we could all stop buying these single use silicons. When costs aren't even low for what they're giving you, might as well get a device that can do most stuff, with a little modularity.

[@StephenHoldaway]

Yeah there's a balance, but if you don't need GPIO/SPI/I2C, the higher power consumption of a 1L PC brings with it more processing power, expandable RAM, faster and far more reliable storage, more IO and a very sturdy case

[@swordedsniper]

Got one of these and they are absolutely fantastic. Relatively cheap and easy to upgrade to make a very powerful and quiet home server.

[@FowlerAskew]

Looking in the "for parts" section is a good strategy. At least for electronic test equipment, tons of people sell working things "for parts" because they either didn't test it or can't validate calibration, both of which I've had good luck taking chances on. With how reliable PC hardware tends to be, I suspect that there are decent deals to be had for hardware that people just didn't want to bother testing

[@ILoveTinfoilHats]

Ya and the other half have been half salvaged by the seller and they go "I dunno why it don't work" like this didn't just rip out the chipset

[@egbront1506]

"Not tested" is also a euphemism for "tested and broken beyond repair". It's a gamble you can lose as well as win.

[@athomegrampy709]

I have a pair of these running ESXi in my home lab. I have a 1TB SSD, i7 processor and 32GB's of ram in each, and they have been rock solid.

[@CFWhitman]

We currently have a bunch of HP 600 G2 mini PCs that are being written off at work. They are pretty similar overall. With the G2s, however, you have to be even more careful of the SATA ribbon cable for the 2.5 inch bay.

[@itsjoshwood]

I accidentally ripped the cable out for the 2.5” drive in my G2. Still annoys me that I couldn’t fix it.

[@CFWhitman]

@@itsjoshwood I found a replacement cable on the Internet and successfully fixed one of these. That was a few years ago, so it's possible the part is harder to get now.

[@itsjoshwood]

@@CFWhitman if I remember correctly, it wasn’t the cable that broke but rather the connector that attaches to the motherboard. I’ll take a look to see what I can find about replacement parts. At the time I couldn’t find much information.

[@CFWhitman]

@@itsjoshwood The one I had to replace looked OK still, but didn't work. Replacing the cable (with the drive end attached) fixed it. If you can see the connector on the motherboard is broken, it might not be worth fixing.

[@factotumindustries]

Biggest problems with SFF / USFF PC's vs RPis are the massive power bricks and no GPIO. So they really lend themselves to projects where space isn't at a major premium and you don't need to do sensor / interfacing...

[@geekytechycool]

Very cool! Thanks for talking about the flooded used market 🙂 So many good options to help reduce ewaste and give older machines a new purpose

[@Dutch3DMaster]

If I have seen anything so far it is that some companies are not hesitant of giving bigger resellers a big bunch of the exact same machines. Bulk selling of second hand stuff tends to work very well, and I like that companies are not uncomfortable with the idea of actively promoting recycling. Yes, not all of them still do it to the extent I would like, but it's still a massive improvement. We have a chain of second hand stores in The Netherlands that are now also increasingly buying lots of used equipment, it's pretty cool.

[@aathehuman]

4:36 you don’t need to take out the entire 2.5” drive enclosure, there’s a metal plate in the middle of it with two screws on the sides: unscrew then and take out the plate, you can access the m.2 and wifi card ports from here.

[@RobertPendell]

Not one of these but a SFF (probably closer to the 1 liter that you have in this video) a friend acquired for free is currently running as a proxmox backup server. Doesn't have much for storage itself but I did mount my network drive on it and the system happily uses that as a data target for incoming backup tasks.

[@schillaci5590]

Lenovo TinyPC user here. Almost zero noise and zero overheating. Mine has been running Win10 and 2 VMs (Home Assistant and OpenVPN Server) whilst sitting inside a cupboard that reaches 35 degrees with no air. No crashes in almost 1 year.

[@christian_oz]

Definitely worth checking them out, but different to a Raspberry market. Starting with power consumption, they are miles apart. specially if you want to leave it on all the time.

[@eastfrisian_88]

I had the HP 800 G5 with i7 processor and 16 GB RAM as a work device in the office (supervisor/quality analyst) with three monitors and about 10 very large programs running constantly and I was always impressed by this small box. My boss had a much higher-end Sony notebook and the little HP was far superior. When my father (70 years old) needs a new PC, he gets a refurbished HP 800 from me. That is completely sufficient for him.

[@B1NARYP0Ny]

I read the thumbnail as “forget piss” and now I can’t unsee it

[@HardwareHaven]

I’d say it did it’s job then lol

[@TalmidAndy]

Fine for basic windows/Linux applications but does not have the IO capabilities, voltage/current requirements, nor size of the SBCs.

[@jabonorte]

Good video, thanks! I've just ordered a new mini PC, and it's interesting to see a similarly powered old box being set up. In the UK it's not as easy to get this type of SFF so it's actually not much more expensive to get an N100 mini from a Chinese manufacturer like Morefine, Beelink and Chuwi

[@bruceleeharrison9284]

I've been doing this for years. These thin clients cost barely more than SBCs and outperform them in almost every area.

[@zinc_trioxide]

Yeah, pi is too expensive, was looking for orange pi instead but i found second hand wyse 5070 4x celeron J4105 8gb ram and 120gb ssd with the same price, so i get that instead it only spend 5w with 8 docker instances on it

[@bikerdude1569]

I've had one of these running as my router with OPNSense for a couple of months and never had an issue. Now I've upgraded to a small form factor just so I can add a 10gbe NIC, better cooling and a more efficient PSU.

[@patrickambrosso]

Have two HP G3 800 MINIs. Fantastic, silent and low powered machines. Yes, they are refurbished! Edit: 4:35 - You can flip levered latch on top of the 2.5mm drive enclosure, then unscrew 2 screws to get access to the M.2, Wifi adapter slots. Agreed it is not tool-less,, but it is much better fiddling with the SATA ribbon cables.

[@craigb2343]

Bought one of those for emulation and it works amazingly well. Also great for traveling as you can just connect it to a TV.

[@piggyproalice2]

I’m tired and I thought the thumbnail said “forget piss” 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

[@kmi187]

5:30 : If you need to remove stickers fast and without risking extra scratches. Get a bottle of akasa TIM cleaner. Few drops on a sticker rub it in a bit with your finger, let it sit a bit. The TIM cleaner contains a bit of petrol (we used to use zippo lighter fuel for this), it will go through the paper and dissolve the glue given a minute or two. Just let it sit do something else real quick and then just peel em off like nothing, no marks. Usually one to two drops per label does the trick. Can also be used if you collect vinyl records, best way to get stickers off and not damage the cover.

[@affsteak3530]

I've had a lot of luck removing stickers with plain isopropyl alcohol. They also dissolve pen ink.

[@Cassandra_Johnson]

Still waiting for a mini-pc to have decent gpio, i2c etc available for developers. You would think SOMEONE would have at least created a pcie board for PCs by now!

[@linux_gamer]

Use a microcontroller

[@davelmx]

There is a bracket available from HP that allows you to mount an HP mini and it's power module on the back of a monitor. If you use wireless network adapter and wireless mouse/keyboard then have only two cords to deal with, the two power cords. If you want to move the unit to an alternate location you unplug the power cords move the the unit plug the power cords back in and power up.

[@silkyzielke]

i read the thumbnail as "forget piss"

[@phiksit]

Before buying a used one it's a good idea to ask the seller if the Absolute Persistence Module has be activated or not. HP makes a nice workstation stand to mount it and a monitor to, which is what I did... brand new stand in box for $25 and $50 for the pc itself. I love the setup as a laptop replacement. Just need a new compact keyboard now and some small speakers which should tuck nice under / in back of the stand.

[@NickCombs]

On second thought, don't forget pis(s)

[@luisor5121]

PCI/USB module in AliExpress Solution

[@Mobin92]

FYI: The fan control in that specific HP mini PC is kinda annoyingly loud, because it never turns the fan off. There is also absolutely no way to control it, not even in the BIOS. However you can just get rid of the fan if you use it as a low-power home server. The passive cooling keeps it at 40°C on idle, and if it really needs to compute anything intensive it thermal throttles automatically at 80°C.

[@hereis_Tiff]

I've heard similar stories regarding Elitedesks heating up a lot, it's suspected to be because of the use of copper heatsinks. The heatsinks on the Prodesk line aren't the same, and from my experience they don't heat up that much & the fan isn't obnoxiously loud

[@zxcaaq]

This is 65w the raspberry pi is 5 watts

[@antonyesousa]

27 watts

[@lucioaraujo3070]

wich one? ​@@antonyesousa

[@cadoo-nsfw]

@@lucioaraujo3070most micro form factors are around ~35W TDP

[@Connorplayer123]

It’s not like we can’t pay for power, So?

[@antonyesousa]

@@lucioaraujo3070the rpi5 is actually 27 w and the elitedesk is 35

[@MarkoVukovic0]

I love my Elitedesk G3. Using it as my media PC hooked up to my TV, running Windows 11. I've found myself installing VSCode and doing some work on it from my couch when I don't feel like sitting at my desk.

[@ColinDavidChen]

"How to Play Solitaire: A clear Step-by-Step Guide" kzbin.info/www/bejne/mJmZZ4WirreEnK8

[@mem1428]

we toss these around at work all the time, you don't need to remove the old hdd tray, just the 2 screws holding the access plate within it, then it gives you access to the sockets hidden under

[@TheGrizz485]

the UM790 pro will probably give you 400% CPU/igpu performance of the 715. i think its 0.75L.

[@HardwareHaven]

But a lot more expensive to be fair haha

[@BenDunlop]

I have loaded up on these, knowing the price is going to go up. No plan to sell/flip, I just want to have them for projects in advance

[@rvlyssup]

I got into 1L PCs about 3 years ago when I watched Serve at Home's videos on the subject. I've recently just started to sell off / donate my arsenal of TinyMiniMicros. Will be keeping a couple for modularity purposes. I got into SFF builds but got bored real quick. I'm back to full-size gaming desktops again. These tiny PCs are bulletproof and pretty capable for their size.

[@trs-80fanclub12]

My proxmox system has been up for almost 8 months using this machine ( i3-7100T). It hosts all our local servers including 5m, old wow, and red dead. We also use it as non critical NAS. Its my goto for virtual lab machines, retro VM's and just pure reliability. It sits inside our alarm panel box, is always there, and comes in handy re-installing steam library files. With the initial investment in 16GB ram, a very fast Nvme , and wake on lan, its been very good for us.

[@danielberglv259]

A 1L server with a connected DAS supporting JBOD works perfect for a ZFS NAS setup. I have been running mine with a Lenovo 6500T mini PC in a RAID-Z for 3 years without any issues. For even further space saver you can get a 2.5 inch DAS and run that with ZFS mirror on two SSD's with a NUC. Have a friend that has been running this setup for the past year. You just need to make sure that most of the common codecs are supported on the GPU if you want to stream.

[@peterbaker6038]

Actually on the HP EliteDesk 800 G3 you don’t need to remove the entire caddy to get to the NVMe. There are two screws you can remove to lift the floor plate of the caddy which give you access below it. I have purchase several of these HP mini’s; they are such a great space saver. There are two versions of the HP EliteDesk 800 G3; 35W & 65W. The 65W have ventilation holes on the top of the desktop. For personal use I’ll put in a 1TB NVMe drive & a 1 or 2TB 2.5” SSD. These are great little every day desktops.

[@Real_Tim_S]

Rebuttle to "Can't use it as a NAS" - I have 3x of Lenovo's M910q 1-liter with 6x WD Elements USB 3.0 12TB drives in a ZFS RAIDZ2 array and GlusterFS on each... don't need a USB port for keyboard/mouse if you bluetooth it for setup and then go VNC/RDP for the rest of it's life. It works fine if you design your storage for what it is. Standing vertical, all the drives and machines fit in a 4U rack shelf.

[@dylanh3766]

I don't know if this applies to the HP and Lenovo Mini PCs, but Dell Optiplex mini pcs lock their clock speed at 800mhz if you have a "non-OEM" power adapter. I put "non-OEM" in quotes because I've dealt with quite of few Opitplexes at work and this happens even with OEM adapters. I've compared the working power adapters with the non-working ones and they are IDENTICAL. So even if you source one from Dell it might still lock your clock speed. Just something to be aware of and research if you're going the mini PC route

[@wertherland]

What you are showing is exactly the process (minus the bios unlocking) that I went through to install my Plex server at home. Got one of those on eBay for cheap. Upgraded the HD and bam! always on. Left the Raspberry Pi alone to run headless a Pi-hole. Great video!

[@rkeantube]

got a HP EliteDesk 705 G4, upgraded to 32gb of ram, and added a hdmi port for about 200 total. much less heat generated, my AC does not need to kick on as much. I only use my full desktop when i need more compute power, got a KVM switch for going between the two.

[@NevermindXY]

The raspberry pi (8GB with periphals ~120 EUR) will pay for itself after just 1 to 2 years of continuous running just from the savings on the energy bill. Here in Austria it's actually less than 1 year.

[@Big_Coil]

I worked with some refurbished ones of these G3, but the 600 series. You don't have to remove the whole hard drive tray thing to access the M.2, there are two small screws on the metal plate where the dark grey pad is. Just unscrew these and you can access the M.2 . Easy thing 😉 (Oh and to boot from 2.5" drive, don't forget to enable legacy support in the UEFI)

[@BobHenderson-dr2wy]

These older mini pc's are so good compared to the pi or the SBC's out there, but my problem is I want to make a NAS, and they all have no NAS ports. I suppose you could sacrifice the wifi m2 slot and put a sata controller in there but I wonder if it would get full bandwidth, not to mention needing to buy another case just to slot the drives.

[@Acc0919mc]

Starting with the G6 elitedesk you can even get a dedicated gpu (like a 3050) which is awesome. Hopefully they will come down in price eventually. The new dell optiplex 7010s come with 180w instead of 90w power adapters as a recent change also. I work with all of these machines daily at work

[@TiaKatt]

Elitedesk 800g3 mini are the computers we use at work. For security purposes, no Wifi enabled on ours. They're plenty strong for our work software and internet needs. Not something I'd want to use at home for gaming, but I certainly could see it fitting some folks' needs just fine!

[@gfdchugh]

its wierd cuz i use it for gaming and for my work 😅

[@zero604]

4:35 you don't need to remove the whole caddy to get access to the M.2 slots, you just remove the middle plate (2 small screws).

[@TazzSmk]

HP 800 G1 SFF with i7-4770 and 32GB ram is perhaps best cheapest choice even nowadays

[@ubernerrd]

There were a bunch of these systems at SGDQ running various video games. They're perfect for emulating old consoles such as the NES and SNES.

[@LeeMyers-Jr]

For a DIY NAS I purchased a refurbished Dell server with 2 xenons, 192 GB RAM, and 12 Drive bays for around $550. PS - it included 8 3 TB SAS drives.

[@SyphistPrime]

I got an 8th gen Intel one running my Jellyfin server. I wanted that newer iGPU for encode/decode support so that's why I went 8th gen. The thing works like a charm.

[@CamiloSperberg]

One compatibility note: I have this exact same mini pc and despite what you mention in the video, a coral accelerator will NOT work in the small m.2 slot: the motherboard will provide power to it, but it will only accept network devices. I believe this might be a BIOS limitation. Updating to the latest BIOS will not fix it. Buying an adapter and sticking it to the larger slot works, but only 1 of the 2 coral accelerators are recognized

[@HardwareHaven]

Strange. I got it working somehow.. at least it was recognized and frigate was working

[@HardwareHaven]

I used the single tpu accelerator not the dual

[@CamiloSperberg]

@@HardwareHaven oh could that be it then? I have a double TPU... Mm would want to try a single then!

[@DeadHawk23]

My friend has a mini pc that he 3D printed drive bays to the sides of that holds 4 of this 2TB hard drives. He said before that he used double sided velcro wrapped around the whole thing to hold them.

[@evilspoon6833]

these small machines, are very solid, and useful for a ton of applications, personally i recommend running something like alpine linux, as docker host, and just dockerrize all the services you need, most of the services that is useful can usually be fetched from the docker site, and easily modified with little effort. dns blocker, samba, hostapd are very easy to setup, just to name a few.

[@yiffytimes]

They actually use these at the Veteran's hospital where I volunteer. If you do get one also install and run Malwarebytes these PCs are sensitive to Malware and Tracking cookies and will slow down remarkably fast. How fast? Try as little as 6 days is enough to cut performance by at least 50%

[@jesseanderson4807]

I'm a little late on this, but I just went through this evolution. After reading that a Pi 3b 'can' be used for home assistant, I decided to dip my toes in the water. It can't. As soon as I have more that a couple of integrations installed it would freeze the moment to tried to load a new page in the interface. I started poking around and found the Dell Wyze thin clients. Ironically in this vintage they're all about the same price whether you get the pentium gold models or the i5 models. Thinking that a couple of bucks of electricity was worth never having to worry about running out of compute again, I hit the buy button on the Wyze 7040. It was a great decision. This thing is near silent and it's rock solid. Sure it's not as small as the pi, and it's probably massively overkill to run a basic smart home. But I couldn't justify the price of a new Pi5 when these things have so much more compute for a lower cost.

[@josephmolion4345]

I've got two of these machines I use at work, traded in a more powerful PC at each of my sites for one each of these, primarily because of the 3 built in display port adapters. Most workstations out there come standard with just two, or perhaps two and an HDMI. Was nice to have straight DP to DP on 3 monitors, with a tiny form factor to stash the box. Much neater presentation IMO.

[@Hikikomorisama]

I work for a IT group for hospitals and medical buildings and in the past year i must have touched over 1,000 of these devices (gen2,3 and 4). We replaced them with the lenovo m75q gen 2. We then send them to get recycled. Not sure where or what exactly happens to them but im pretty sure they are just annihilated lol.

[@AverageMichaelJordans]

Yeah. Half-broken laptops, intel mac minis, 1L PCs, and other PC types to the tune of that are the better choice, unless you're specifically gonna use the tinker board functionality of these tinker boards (jeff geerling has some good examples of that) The explosion of rPi usage as home servers and other "general computer" usage situations is kinda recent, and is probably why rPi's are so expensive. If we get more people to buy mini-PCs, we can probably curb the demand of rPi's and increase availability.