The Mini PC You SHOULD Be Looking At

The first 1,000 people to use the link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/hardwarehaven07235
HUGE thanks to ‪@JeffGeerling‬ for kicking a computer so I didn't have to. Go show some support! redshirtjeff.com/
SSD I Used (Affiliate Link):
► amzn.to/3pTXiC5
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Music (in order):
"Hardware Haven Theme" -Me ( • Hardware Haven Theme M... )
"If You Want To" - Me
"Town Groove" - Me
"CRENSHAW VIBES" - GARRISON ( / garrison-brown )
"VULF JAMS" - GARRISON
"The Butterfly Nose" - GARRISON
"Voodoo Groovez" - GARRISON
"Sunshower" - LATASHÁ( / best-music-pro.. )
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Gear I Use: (affiliate links)
Recording Gear
► Camera - LUMIX G7 amzn.to/3LmfGdk
► SD Cards - SanDisk Extreme PRO amzn.to/3BPXrd1
► Capture Card - EVGA XR1 amzn.to/3Bn8qt7
► Studio Lights amzn.to/3BnYrUd
► Microphone - Shure SM7b amzn.to/3BP0TEB
► Interface - Presonus Quantum amzn.to/3QVeX3T
► Teleprompter amzn.to/3BxcN50
Servers and Networking
► My Remote Editing PC - amzn.to/3J1hN5g
► DriveStor 4 NAS - amzn.to/40R5LDz
► 2.5 GbE Switch - amzn.to/43unwub
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Timestamps:
0:00 I love pis and desktops, but...
0:40 stay curious using skillshare
1:46 Why this video
2:32 This PC
3:06 Specs
5:14 Cleanup
6:39 Windows and Benchmarks
7:40 Power Consumption
8:05 Game streaming and PS2 emulation
8:36 Using this as a server
11:00 eBay Deals

[@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

[@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.

[@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."

[@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

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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!

[@utgotye1]

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

[@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

[@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

[@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.

[@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?

[@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. 😁

[@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...

[@scottluther2091]

They also make 90w power supplies that will work on these!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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!

[@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!

[@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.

[@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!

[@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

[@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

[@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.

[@Genetixxxxxxxxx]

Love this new discovery of your channel. Thank you for the 1 month skillshare and your channel is now I. My top 20 and I have a feeling I’m going to consume every video on your channel. Can’t wait to dive in. 💜

[@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!

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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?

[@bxperts]

Oh man, you have covered a lot ad answered the questions that we have to search for hours and hours to figure it out. Definitely a worth watching for someone interested in building home lab, low watt server, cluster, nas etc.

[@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.

[@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!

[@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.

[@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!

[@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.

[@joshhardin666]

Storage wise, I think the best that you could do would be to replace the 2.5g network adapter with the 10g adapter that i think they make - and if they don't, you could boot off of a sata ssd and convert the m.2 into a 10g nic and then I would use network storage from an external NAS solution elsewhere on your network. I think these types of systems would make EXCELLENT proxmox or kubernettes cluster compute nodes, but storage-wise, I think it's best to just give it a high speed low latency network connection to external pooled storage. - if you don't care too much about performance, and you have like 10+ port 10g switch, you could theoretically use something like ceph to to pooled storage. i'd boot from sata storage, put large fast storage in the m.2 slot, but ceph should really have a dedicated 10g interface AND at least 7-10 nodes to be performant as storage, but that would make a pretty performant scale-out all-flash NAS if you wanted to do that... would be a fun (if kind of expensive for a homelab) experiment. My current project (waiting on shipments) is 5 optiplex 5060's with i7-8700's with 512gb ssd's that i'm upgrading to 64gb of ram and adding dual 10g (intel x540-t2) network adapters and 2tb m.2 ssd's and bought a 24 port 10g base-t managed switch to in order to do a hyperconverged proxmox cluster on. ceph gets it's own interface, management (and corosync) gets it's own (1g) interface, and applications get their own interface. I'm going to use an unmanaged switch for the management interface (plugged into a managed switch to tag all traffic from that switch into it's own management vlan), ceph gets it's own vlan, and applications get 2 vlans (separating homeprod vlan from homelab vm as this cluster will serve both purposes). it's going to be slow to set up, but it's just about the best train set I can think of :D

[@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

[@rawa9891]

Great idea! 😊 I found three of those HP units on Amazon for $90.00 a piece, which was perfect for a Proxmox Cluster. Pihole is running as a container in High Availability "HA" and doing great! Thanks for the tip, and keep up the good work 👏.

[@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.

[@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!

[@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.

[@DirtyIssa6230]

Which one would you recommend?

[@tirsojrp]

​@@DirtyIssa6230any HP 800 mini G3 or better, vPro depends on your needs. Newer pcs have more features and modular upgrades.

[@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.

[@CHiCguitar]

We've used these at most of the jobs I've had. They run EMR software well (I've worked with a few different ones), pharmacy software and general work-related stuff. I think they're great!!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@PoeLemic]

Really liked this video. And, I always love your content. I'm always happy to see another HH video in my Recommendations.

[@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

[@smoothbraindetainer]

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.

[@piggyproaxel2]

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

[@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)

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@mikebroom1866]

I manage a bunch of thin clients. Very useful. I used a mini-pcie to rj45 to make pfsense boxes. Worked great.

[@alexwalker2582]

This seems like a great way to do server hosting for older games like Battlefield 1942 and such. I'd thought about doing something like that but I didn't really want to buy some big 'ol server tower, this would be more than doable.

[@NickCombs]

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

[@ColinDavidChen]

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

[@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.

[@DozIT]

I love those PC’s, have purchased 20 or so in the last year. They make for amazing thin clients/lightweight application servers!

[@zxcaaq]

This is 65w the raspberry pi is 5 watts

[@antonyesousa]

27 watts

[@lucioaraujo3070]

wich one? ​@@antonyesousa

[@carloseduardoresende7712]

@@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

[@KeithWeston]

I like - no, live for - cleaning montages!

[@HardwareHaven]

Hahahahaha

[@rgfarm2010]

ROFL

[@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.

[@seismojones]

Those little fellas are awesome. 6 months ago I was actually in the same boat - I had an older pi but wanted to run an app that required a newer generation, which was nowhere to be found for a reasonable price. Found one of these G3 refurbs on Amazon with an i5 @ 3.2ghz, 16GB RAM, 1TB NVMe m.2, wifi and Bluetooth modules, Windows 10 Pro for $200 (it's $25 cheaper now).

[@KameraShy]

There is a product called "Un-du" that is outstanding for removing sticky adhesive labels and such. It is very gentle and evaporates quickly. One of its intended uses is for removing old scotch tape and residue from photographs. I have used it for that many times and it never leaves any marks or effects. It can usually be found at Walmart (crafts section, I think), or ordered online (unless you unfortunately live in California, where you are SOL).

[@nakayoshi93]

I recently set up a mini pc like this to be a home theater pc. I've even got an s-video adapter on the way so I can hook it up to the ol' Trinitron. I didn't bother upgrading the ram, but I might pull some from storage since I have a lot of compatible ram from the era I dont know how I never considered taking the thing out of storage. It works great so far, I just need to get a wireless remote thing

[@eastfrisianguy]

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.

[@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.

[@TheSimon253]

We use the 800 G2 version in the school I'm working at. I love these small machines, although we are going to phase them out for individual PCs instead (replacing chromebooks).

[@Ronin7477]

very popular business model mini PC..... my work place, as well as previous employment, both used these. These are super easy to come by. And I intend to use both the M.2 and SATA.

[@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!!

[@JackStavris]

Right before I left my previous job about a year ago we upgraded our ageing HP EliteOne 800 G1 fleet with about 120 HP EliteDesk 800 G8 mini PCs with i5-11500T processors, and I was really impressed with them, they can have so much power in such a small package, and I really want one for my next home server to replace a micro-ATX desktop PC from 2010 with an i7-870 in it which draws a fair bit of power.

[@itskyb]

I bought two used EliteDesk 800 G4 minis a few years ago with the i5-8500T cpu (35 watt). I put ESXi on both of them. One runs a domain controller and my NextCloud server and the other is for a test lab. I leave the first one running all the time since the power draw is so low compared to my other "big" servers which only run when I am working. I put 40GB RAM on both as well as an m.2 drive and a 2.5" sata drive. They have been working flawlessly since I have purchased them.

[@jaymacaulay81]

I grabbed one of these of Amazon, for retro game emulation. Im very happy with it.

[@WillWillWill]

Love these! The only issue is managing the bulky power adapters if you run more than a few

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@from6454]

Great information. More please!

[@hfuy8005]

I watched this video on one of these machines which I bought when electricity became expensive. In the UK they sometimes turn up in Computer Exchange, a used equipment retailer, though the thought that one is assisting in the fencing of boosted gear is ever present. I estimate it's paid for itself by now and it's perfectly adequate for most stuff; I fire up the big rig when I want to cut video or play games. Obviously, it's a bit anaemic in the GPU department, but it can just about run something like Genshin Impact.

[@dairedarcy1130]

Literally just rebuilt one of these for my nephew. He was delighted

[@mikehensley78]

i have been using a tiny PC similar to that one for a NAS for the past couple years. 8 GB RAM and a 4TB Drive. I run transmission-daemon and mini-dlna on it. It downloads videos then broadcasts to my LAN as long as you have VLC installed you can watch. I love it! mine are lenovo m-73. i found a few of them at yard sales for cheap a while ago.

[@mikehensley78]

I would LOVE to have one of these HPs to setup as a new NAS though.

[@thomaskish8392]

Last year I purchased a mini-Lenovo to make it a media pc for streaming (MLB-TV) on my large screen TV. I installed Linux Fedora. Works like a charm. Its nice because its actually smaller than the Xfinity cable box. Its much better than constantly connecting your laptop to the TV for streaming.

[@blocksrey]

Dude you're awesome, I hear the inspiration from Slum Village in that second song of yours

[@justinlangiewicz975]

I have a Lenovo model running off a 12-120 inverter in my trunk. Use it to run android auto up to a USB touch screen in replacement of the radio. These little things are great and I can stream no man's sky anywhere I want now.

[@rickybobbyracing9106]

I do really like small SBC's, but you're video really is a great option. Example, I have old hardware I cobbled together running klipper for my 3d printer. Nothing about klipper that needs to be on an arm chip. Works fine on x86.

[@msg1956]

Excellent video..! Thank you..!

[@markg6860]

I have one of these HP mini pcs. It's great ... it drives my big screen TV and also acts as a "laptop", when traveling.

[@worMatty2]

Thanks, very informative.

[@ravensnflies8167]

the knowledge i never knew i was missing. thank you. i guess i watched enough of ltt and jays vids that yt let me see this finally:}

[@mike0rr]

This is a great video. I had an AI project a year or two ago that Pi 4 wasn't strong enough for, and at 200$ a pop (at the time). So I bought one of these mini PCs. Just had to learn about serial communication to an Arduino but what project doesn't involve some learning? (They all should). So much power and for the time, at a cheaper cost. Didn't know you could get a Coral add on for them, even better!

[@caldodge]

Thanks for alerting us to this. I got a unit with 8G of RAM and power adapter for $70 plus tax! In my case, I have plenty of spare SSDs, and I'll be using it as a MythTV Front End system.

[@drew42228]

This is great. Never thought of this, just looked at Android boxes. Thanks

[@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...

[@_lslvr]

For a couple of years, my main driver was a salvaged laptop my dad got from the trash. The screen was broken, so I took it off, also removed the battery, sticked it under my desktop, connected it to a monitor and it was ready to go.

[@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.