Uh… It’s my server.
Should you bother with... mini PCs?
Submitted 1 day ago by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to technology@beehaw.org
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/should-you-bother-with-mini-pcs
Comments
ryan213@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
klangcola@reddthat.com 1 day ago
PSA about mini PCs: They might not come with adequate cooling for RAM, leading to potential data corruption.
(I’m in the middle of troubleshooting/fixing overheating RAM causing memory errors, will post on /c/selfhosted when I have more conclusions).
TLDR: Bought 3 Minisforum HM90 mini PCs (for Proxmox), equipped them with 64gb (2x32gb) RAM, with a different brand RAM in each PC. All 3 give sporadic errors in Memtest86. The RAM overheats due to the 2 SSDs mounted in the lid blocking natural airflow. With the lid off, or an extra fan installed, there are no errors. The errors were very sporadic: 1 PC gave errors after 1-2 passes, then almost 24hours. Second PC gave errors after more than 24 hours and some cases more than 48 hours between errors. The last PC gave hundreds of errors on the first pas. To be fair, memtest is a synthetic test and the RAM is unlikely to see 100% utilisation in real life, on the other hand the two adjacent SATA SSDs and the NVMe SSD are completely idle during memtest, and will generate extra heat during production use.
DdCno1@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Take this seriously, people. I’ve been there and it caused tons of issues on an older server of mine. That’s why I was very adamant about my current system having built-in error correction for its RAM.
DrFuggles@feddit.org 1 day ago
Had an NVME fritz out on me on a passively cooled NUC because of thermals, I suspect. That sucked.
cygnus@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Same. It seems weird not to mention that in the article, since it`s a very popular use case for them.
DdCno1@beehaw.org 15 hours ago
Like others have said, RPS is a gaming site, not a general purpose tech site, so it makes sense that they limit the scope of the article.
stephen01king@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Mine as well.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Works great as a NAS controller, multimedia server and basic web server. Also works as an emulation server for older systems. Not so good for gaming, but there’s a LOT of computing that isn’t current gen game, audio or video editing, which are the three areas where most minipc rigs will fail.
Just make sure it gets enough cooling - run a temp monitor.
chahk@beehaw.org 23 hours ago
Some of those things make killer HTPCs for the living room. Or Plex/Emby/Jellyfin servers.
Not every computer needs to handle AAA games at 240 fps.
hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org 17 hours ago
Gotta make sure the fan is quiet enough for it though.
ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 21 hours ago
You’re absolutely right!
At no point did I consider it being a entertainment system.
I think this is a great party idea.
Icarus@beehaw.org 1 day ago
I have an i7 NUC that I use as my jellyfin server cause it has hardware transcoding. It absolutely rips and takes up less electricity at full bore than my gaming desktop at idle. I agree that there’s a place for mini computers, but it’s probably not serious gaming.
DdCno1@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Not to one-up you, but I’m doing the same with an Odroid H4+ board (no case yet, although I’ll probably 3D-print one), which has the exact same transcoding feature as part of its Core i3-N305. It can handle multiple 4K HDR streams just fine (at least in theory - I’m only serving three users at once at most and none of them are using 4K HDR) - all while being passively cooled and using about three smartphones worth of power. Note that I had to use a dummy HDMI plug in order to get the hardware decoder to kick in, since I am using this as a headless server.
I paid €240 for it new, which is a steal (although you have to get SODIMM DDR5 memory for it, which isn’t that cheap). On the official website, it’s available for $139, but that’s without shipping and import duties from South Korea.
Granted, apart from the transcoding feature, general-purpose performance is not even close to your i7, but I’m using less than half as much power for the same job. If you have an i7-1260P, you’re about 70% ahead in synthetic benchmark, but my little i3 is still an 8-core CPU that has about 25% more CPU processing power than an old i7-4790k that I was using on my main PC (including for gaming) until last year. Since I am limited by my storage array going through a single SATA cable anyway, that’s fine by me, especially since this thing replaced a significantly less performant Intel Atom-based mini PC I was previously using for the same purpose. My priorities were having multiple SATA ports, being low cost, efficient, quiet and small - and in that order.
People have also used the same board as a normal PC and reasonably capable low-end gaming/emulation machine, by the way. You can get a case that looks like a Nintendo GameCube straight from the manufacturer. Here’s an overview video that includes it being used for this purpose.
Icarus@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Very nice! I don’t find this a one up but I love the ingenuity. I managed to salvage this NUC from work because we shut down a zoom room from a agency we acquired at work and then disposed all the unneeded /uniform hardware. Before that point, I was looking at doing something quite similar to you.
I also had to use get an hdmi dummy plug. That was an annoying stumbling block. Just, why??
DrFuggles@feddit.org 1 day ago
I’m really interested in this! How do you passively cool something like that? It’s to get quite under load, no?
lemmyng@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I bought one and put Bazzite on it. It’s now my kids’ gaming console. Integrated GPUs are perfectly cromulent for most casual games.
ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 21 hours ago
I never heard of bazzite before! Thank you for the recommendation!
djsaskdja@reddthat.com 22 hours ago
Haven’t seen anyone mention the biggest deal breaker with these for me. The thermal and dust management is truly awful. They tend to overheat and collect dust super easily. You’re lucky if you get 4 years out of these things before they burn themselves out. And guess what? Barely repairable to boot.
DdCno1@beehaw.org 15 hours ago
They are essentially like gaming laptops in this regard.
thejml@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Wow, this goes against Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, but absolutely.
I’ve got a small stack of 1L PCs running a ProxMox and Kubernetes cluster and it’s been perfect. Highly recommend. I’ll probably get one for my wife’s desk when she sets it up as it’ll do everything she needs and more, and it’s tiny and you can get em cheap lightly used.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 day ago
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines
It’s more like a myth than a real thing. Or rather, a pattern that is false so often that you can’t use it to guess if it’s true.
Tower@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Any tips on finding cheap used ones, other than scrounging eBay and the like?
CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee 18 hours ago
Find a brother in law that works in IT. I changed his brakes and he gave me three Optiplex micros that were e-wasted from his work.
thejml@lemm.ee 1 day ago
eBay, Amazon, sometimes you can snag deals when they release newer versions, they actually had a few on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
Tbh, I got mine in a pack of 4 on eBay (I only needed 3), cleaned them out a bit, bumped the RAM and put new disks in them and they’ve been solid.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I use a pretty basic one (with an N100 microprocessor and no dedicated graphics) as a TV box + home server combo and its excellent for that.
It’s totally unsuitable for gaming.
Mind you, there are configurations with dedicated graphics but they’re about 4x the price of the one I got (which cost me about €120)
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
An 11th Gen Nuc runs my main server, a 13th gen runs my backup system