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Topic: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why? (Read 2672 times) previous topic - next topic
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if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

 a new mac mini 8gb 256gb model (i have my sources)

a ryzen 7 5750h model with 8 gb ram and 256gb storage made by beelink

geekcom mini it8 with 16gb ram and 512gb storage with an i5 8259u

or just save you money and be happy with your pentium j4200 machine because though it's old it does its job 16gb ram 119gb ssd and 30 gb emmc





Cat Herders of Linux

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #1 –
That depends, what are you trying do with a mini pc? Have a desktop like experience that is semi-portable and/or doesn't take up a bunch of space? Do you want to run a home server? Do you just want a machine you can use to testbed various software?

You can't really expect much of an answer without some clarification.

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #2 –
Well i was hoping some people would personalize it to whatever they would find most appealing.

what would i do with a home server?  what is the advantage of a home server?

testing software, building packages.  and a desktop experience that isn't power hungry.

Honestly, if i had my old tandy 1000 with cga graphics and its 8088 processor and a copy of word perfect that would take care of a bunch of my needs if i could transfer my writing from that to my tablet wirelessly to post online.  I don't much care for these little tablets for trying to work on.  Much prefer typing on my tv screen.  tablets are cool for some things like facebook and email and the attraction for me is the low power useage.

the roku is pretty good for some things but i prefer youtube on the pc so i can block the ads. 

a used chromebox upgraded and hacked to install linux on would suit me most days probably. 

BAH!  now i'm talking myself out of them all!

before deleting my amazon account, i was in the top 1000 of reviewers and some people had offered to pay me to review their products.  i declined.  can't be objective if i'm being paid.
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #3 –
There are some quite cheap i5 's like 6/7/8 series which would outperform the Pentium (which isn't difficult as it's an eco cpu, even some 1st gen i7's out benchmark that) and you could probably get one for more like $100 - $200. The i5's aren't so sought after as i7's but for performance a good i7 is better of course, especially for multi threaded builds. Don't know about the power usage concerns, but you could spend the change on a solar panel?  8)

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: cat herders of linux – on

what would i do with a home server?  what is the advantage of a home server?

There's lots of things you can do with a home server, you can use it a cloud storage solution that you completely control (instead of having to rely on Google, etc).

You can make it a home media solution, so you store all your movies, tv shows and music on it and stream them over your local network to any other device in your house.

If you require compiling programs or doing machine learning you can have it set up as a machine that can run those jobs remotely for you so your main computer isn't useless in the meantime.

Or really any combination of the above.

Quote from: cat herders of linux – on
testing software, building packages.  and a desktop experience that isn't power hungry.

Depending on what packages you're building, $500 might be a bit of an ask (unless budget is flexible or you find a good second hand deal).

You might be interested in looking at the Intel NUC (and other similar minicomputer designs).

They basically put medium to high end laptop parts in a small little box, that has power delivery, WiFi, ethernet and some USB and Thunderbolt ports on it and the idea is that you can take it around with you and plug it in wherever you happen to be.

The downside over a laptop is that you don't have a screen, keyboard or trackpad (which allows more compute power per $ budget).

Their biggest upside from memory is the VESA compatible mount point on the bottom of the design which means you can (depending on the back of your monitor) put your monitor on a stand and then use it's arm mount to mount the NUC to back of the monitor where it's out of the way.

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #6 –
https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Optiplex-Computer-i7-4770S-Bluetooth/dp/B07SPHR9SW/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3JK2SLC4F4TLA&keywords=core+i7+mini+pc&qid=1649761260&sprefix=core+i7+mini+%2Caps%2C550&sr=8-3

for 260$ it looks like a reasonable offer for a core i7  though it is 4th gen...


then here's a 6th gen setup for 340$

https://www.amazon.com/HP-EliteDesk-Quad-Core-Professional-Bit-Multi-Language-English/dp/B083JL2FXC/ref=sr_1_5?crid=3JK2SLC4F4TLA&keywords=core+i7+mini+pc&qid=1649761260&sprefix=core+i7+mini+%2Caps%2C550&sr=8-5

Cat Herders of Linux

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #7 –
You should be able to find something similar for less on eBay but you may have to rummage about or wait for a good deal to come up. Amazon is mainly aimed at larger professional sellers, so it's like getting a used motor from a dealer vs privately. But if something is described as working on eBay then you can always return it if it isn't, for example. Read carefully to ensure all the expected bits are there, some are sold without hard drives and so on, mostly it works out cheaper to get one that's complete. The newer generation ones have better / more modern graphics.
(I can build a kernel - with modprobed  - in about half an hour on my 1st gen i7 with 8 threads so that's acceptable for me, and usually I build smaller things anyway. Some fast modern CPU's can do that in a minute or two though.)

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #8 –
do you use tmpfs and build it in ram?
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #9 –
No, just writing to an SSD with fairly regular spec rather than a gaming one. It was quite an improvement over my older C2D, more than I'd expected from the CPU benchmarks. I don't build things that size frequently but it's handy to be able to if required, and I can set it going then do something else for a bit until the drive light stops flickering.  :D

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Krellnus – on
There's lots of things you can do with a home server, you can use it a cloud storage solution that you completely control (instead of having to rely on Google, etc).

You can make it a home media solution, so you store all your movies, tv shows and music on it and stream them over your local network to any other device in your house.

If you require compiling programs or doing machine learning you can have it set up as a machine that can run those jobs remotely for you so your main computer isn't useless in the meantime.

Or really any combination of the above.

Depending on what packages you're building, $500 might be a bit of an ask (unless budget is flexible or you find a good second hand deal).

You might be interested in looking at the Intel NUC (and other similar minicomputer designs).

They basically put medium to high end laptop parts in a small little box, that has power delivery, WiFi, ethernet and some USB and Thunderbolt ports on it and the idea is that you can take it around with you and plug it in wherever you happen to be.

The downside over a laptop is that you don't have a screen, keyboard or trackpad (which allows more compute power per $ budget).

Their biggest upside from memory is the VESA compatible mount point on the bottom of the design which means you can (depending on the back of your monitor) put your monitor on a stand and then use it's arm mount to mount the NUC to back of the monitor where it's out of the way.




TY for the thoughtful reply.  i don't actually have a collection of anything other than cats.  i could def put cat pictures on the server for sure.

machine learning?  what's this skynet conspiracy you are throwing at me now?
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #11 –
Quote from: ####### – on
You should be able to find something similar for less on eBay but you may have to rummage about or wait for a good deal to come up. Amazon is mainly aimed at larger professional sellers, so it's like getting a used motor from a dealer vs privately. But if something is described as working on eBay then you can always return it if it isn't, for example. Read carefully to ensure all the expected bits are there, some are sold without hard drives and so on, mostly it works out cheaper to get one that's complete. The newer generation ones have better / more modern graphics.
(I can build a kernel - with modprobed  - in about half an hour on my 1st gen i7 with 8 threads so that's acceptable for me, and usually I build smaller things anyway. Some fast modern CPU's can do that in a minute or two though.)


i will def look on ebay.

i may decide to forgo this.  the last time i had some money to spend i thought i would upgrade my machine i borked the cpu trying to removing it and trashed what for me was a pricey cpu and i spent a lot of money on nothing.

My landlord wont improve my apartment while i'm in it unless its very broken and unsable and sometimes not even then so i may spend it on the kitchen.  it's a trash pit really.

will meditate more on what to do after i peruse ebay for options on i7 builds

ty
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #12 –
Oi!  A contender!

Its a discount program for people qualify for verious reasons that must certify.
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: if you had 500$ to spend on a mini pc which would you buy and why?

Reply #14 –
I cant discern for certainty if tnis machine will take 4x8gb or 4 x4gb ddr3 1600.  This isnt the full tower but its just as tall but half as wide.  I would like to install 4x8gb so i can buikd packages in tmpfs in ram.

Someone knows.  Web search is inconclusive.  Clearly the chip can run 32 gb butthe sffs seem to have only 2 memory slots.

I think now its tne usff with 16 g  max
Cat Herders of Linux