
Mini PCs in 2020 - walterbell
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-mini-pcs,review-2760.html
======
lilactown
I’ve recently purchased a MacBook Air to replace my Pro as my day-to-day
laptop while coding on the couch, and been thinking of getting a Mac mini to
handle the times when I want the extra power: for playing games like WoW or
doing mobile development. Android Studio brought my 2013 Air to its knees
previously.

Has anyone done this and been satisfied / dissatisfied? The Mac mini just
seems so economical both in terms of size and dollars. I guess the only thing
I would maybe want to shell out for is an eGPU, but I’m not even sure that’s
necessary for my usage.

~~~
zerkten
Many people will point out that the equivalent NUC or SFF PC will be less
expensive. If you feel like you need macOS and have a monitor already, then
there aren't a whole lot of options than the Mac mini. Hackintoshes are too
much work in my experience.

If you can live with Windows or Linux, then you can get a whole lot more bang
for your buck. I got my first NUC this year for family and it's totally plug
and play. There are gaming NUCs which are beefier than the ones I had heard
about. Bigger form factor machines have the typical PC building experience,
but even these seem easier to put together.

The Windows Remote Desktop app for macOS is a really good experience compared
to old versions, so you can easily move from where the PC is setup to your
couch for many apps. I'm enjoying where VS Code is going with remote dev too,
but I don't think it'll help you much if your focus is primarily on mobile.

I have no experience with eGPUs, but it feels like something you can add
later.

~~~
lilactown
If I was more of a hacker, I would spend time to get a Linux system just to my
liking. I find myself chained to the Apple ecosystem mainly because it’s what
I use day-in-day-out across all my other devices (esp. for work) and I just
have no desire to experiment. It’s just enough *NIX and just enough polish to
keep me happy.

------
4cao
Might be worthwhile to look beyond just the big brands. I have an obscure
Chinese Mini PC, which is about the size of a NUC (15 × 15 × 6 cm) but comes
with a much more powerful i7-8850H CPU, and, since it has two M.2 connectors,
I can use both an external GPU and an NVMe SSD for storage. The case is made
of high-quality aluminum alloy and looks better than any of the products
pictured in the article. Needless to say, I'm very satisified with it. Only
had to patch the BIOS to make all the advanced settings show in the menu but
as a bonus it came with the ME already disabled (manufacturing mode).

~~~
jeffbee
The CPU in a NUC10i7FNH is more powerful than the one you mentioned, and it
has m.2 and a TB3 port for an eGPU if you want. All the junk in the linked
article is 2 years old; I'm pretty sure it's a repost.

~~~
4cao
The NUC you mention was just released, and I've had my mini PC for a while
already. The i7-10710U CPU inside the NUC is officially 2 generations ahead,
so it wouldn't be surprising if it were more powerful. Not really sure what
you're trying to prove here.

However, is it really more powerful? I don't think so. The i7-10710U is a 25W
TDP U part, whereas i7-8850H is a 45W TDP CPU used in workstations like the
ThinkPad P52 or some gaming laptops. Benchmark results show the i7-8850H is
significantly faster (speed rank #120 vs #226) [1].

And, most importantly, the NUC you mentioned still only has a single M.2 port.
Why would I want a TB3 port when eGPU performance is better over NVMe? Only
this wouldn't be possible with the NUC.

Anyway, I'm not telling anybody to buy what I bought, just that there are more
options to be considered. I think we agree about this part.

1\. [https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-
Core-i7-8850H-vs...](https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-
Core-i7-8850H-vs-Intel-Core-i7-10710U/m485626vsm900004)

~~~
jeffbee
The reason I mention it is because running a foot-long ribbon cable out of a
case vent from an nvme port to an egpu is ridiculous and sure to offend every
amateur radio station in your city.

------
mynegation
I live in a downtown condo. After I got fed up with 4-bay Synology - noise and
proprietary everything, I copied all the data to a single 4TB WD passport and
bought a fanless mini-itx on AliExpress and installed Ubuntu on it and few
services, mainly in docker containers. I understand it is a shoddy setup so
all important data has reserve copies and offsite backups but in terms of form
factor - that was the right decision for me.

~~~
neodymiumphish
If you're comfortable with Docker but want a great modular experience, I
highly suggest UnRAID (unraid.net).

Obviously, you're likely good with your situation, but anyone else looking for
a similar alternative to the proprietary NAS solutions should definitely look
into UnRAID. I've got it hosting a web server with a ton of different services
on a 2700X with 4 6TB and 1 4TB drive. Excellent software and really great
community support.

~~~
mynegation
Thank you for recommendation! I think I looked at Unraid and other options
like FreeNAS and Proxmox etc, but from what I understand - the main value add
of Unraid is presenting multiple HDDs as a single volume and with a single
data drive (1) it does not make much sense (2) I specifically wanted to be
able to stick the drive into another computer, and mount its ext3 file system
and go, that came in handy few times. As for the amount of data - I went full
Marie Kondo on my old datasets and now my backup set is well under 2TB.

------
Faaak
Still no real AMD-based mini-pcs in 2020 (except for the ASRock A300).

I'd love to have a small AMD cluster (k3s, boinc, ...), but there still is
nothing like the NUCs.

~~~
berbec
[https://www.axiomtek.com/Default.aspx?MenuId=Products&Functi...](https://www.axiomtek.com/Default.aspx?MenuId=Products&FunctionId=ProductView&ItemId=25592&C=CAPA13R&upcat=270)

------
ja27
Two that aren't on the list:

It's getting a bit old now and prices crept up but I've been really happy with
my little Gigabyte Brix GB-BLCE-4105. The J4105 Celeron is only 10W TDP but
has 4 cores and a 3020 Passmark. $150 plus 1-2 laptop sticks of DDR4 and a
2.5" or M.2 SSD and it's a lot cheaper than a NUC. Mine runs Plex for the
household but I tried it as a desktop first even with CSGO and it was usable
but a little slow at times. Not for the performance-minded but I think my
total cost was closer to $200 than $250.

I also have the ASRock DeskMini A300 with a AMD Ryzen 3400G and it's hard to
notice that it's a "mini" PC at all from the performance until you try AAA
gaming or push the CPU hard. I got a bundle deal but right now it's I think
$480 without RAM or disk. Not cheap but I think it beats price-comparable
NUCs. I think the same A300 should handle the upcoming new APUs if you wanted
a little more umph. There's also a Noctua cooler that fits this case (even an
all-black version) for very quiet operation.

------
phkahler
My favorite miniPC is the Mellori ITX:
[https://github.com/phkahler/mellori_ITX](https://github.com/phkahler/mellori_ITX)

Yeah, shameless plug for my printable design ;-) Next rev should be smaller.

------
jcastro
I have a Hades Canyon NUC and it's served me well, however I wouldn't get one
today.

Great little box but the price/performance of the hardware in mid 2020 doesn't
make much sense anymore and Intel has discontinued this style of NUC.

~~~
mszcz
What else would you get in that form factor today?

I have one and love it. One thing I wish it had is a more powerful CPU. Aside
from that it's been awesome. It doesn't take up much space, is easy on the
eyes and since I temporarily moved because COVID I just threw it in the
backpack and was ready to go ;)

~~~
walterbell
Lenovo P330 Tiny and HP Z2 Mini have Nvidia GPUs and are small.

------
syntaxing
Anyone have a recommendation for a small desktop that can fit a double slot
GPU (like a 1080/2080)? It doesn't make sense for me to get a eGPU+mini pc
because of cost reasons but there's not many prebuilt mini-ATXs.

~~~
vetinari
The new Intel Ghost Canyon NUCs have PCIe slot and optionally come with 2070
RTX. But they are not cheap either.

------
tyingq
My favorite mini PC is the Lenovo M92P "Tiny". Fairly easy to find a used one
on eBay with 8GB RAM and a small SSD. No fan noise, decent performance, and no
issues for me thus far.

------
yesenadam
My girlfriend converted me to Macs by giving me a Mac mini about 7 years ago.
I love them, and every time I read the complaints on here about Mac keyboards,
screens, mice, batteries etc I like them more. I can't imagine not being able
to instantly replace those when needed, being stuck with annoying faults. I
need a real mouse and keyboard too, and bigger-than-laptop screen.

------
dragontamer
I was expecting to see cabinet-sized minicomputers for some reason.

I think I hear the term "SFF" (small-form-factor) to describe the PCs in this
article. "Mini" is a term I haven't really heard since "Minicomputers" (not to
be confused with today's microcomputers). The DEC-PDP11 was a minicomputer for
example.

------
sxp
If you are willing to go the DYI route and pay extra in money and time,
[https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/) has many
good Small Form Factor PC designs with powerful CPUS & GPUs in a relatively
small case.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
Looks like it's a private/closed subreddit (at least the popup told me so)

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
nope

~~~
BrandoElFollito
Interesting - I tried again and now it works fine. Thanks.

------
bjoli
At work we have a HP prodesk with a monitor mount, which is extremely neat.
They are specced about the same as the Lenovo tiny computers (which I used to
replace 3 raspberry pis), but are mostly aimed at companies.

The monitor mount is really neat. The computer is ok-ish reachable, but stays
very much out of your way.

------
wicket
Maybe next time they could include mini laptops such as those from GPD, One
Netbook, Chuwi and Topjoy.

------
galfarragem
Is it reasonable to use a Raspberry Pi 4 as main desktop in 2020?

~~~
geerlingguy
I know a few kids who have a Pi as their only computer; they can do most
things they need to do, and it comes with Minecraft. They quickly outgrow it
if they end up needing to do more work on the computer or media work, but the
Pi 4 is not a slouch.

------
sbacic
I think a much better alternative to this is a SFF-PC. The smallest comes in
at about 4.7 liters and includes a discrete GPU and ITX PSU.

~~~
jeffbee
Most discrete GPUs and all ITX PSUs have fans. Lack of fans is one of the nice
features of these minis.

------
BoumTAC
is there amd NUC alternative with comparable performance to an i3/i5 ? Can't
find anything

~~~
walterbell
This is larger than a NUC, but also cheaper and potentially more powerful:

[https://www.newegg.com/asrock-
deskmini-a300w/p/N82E168561580...](https://www.newegg.com/asrock-
deskmini-a300w/p/N82E16856158064)

These two are NUC-sized:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23288281](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23288281)

------
comboy
I've been very happy with dell optiplex micro series which are not listed
here.

------
ai_ja_nai
Isn't this a bit of a technology without a spot?

Day to day activities can be proficiently carried out through laptops, while
heavy crunching and 24/7 operations must be carried out through heavily cooled
rigs.

So, what's the place for a fanless, low powered mini pc?

~~~
danieldk
_So, what 's the place for a fanless, low powered mini pc?_

I use an Intel NUC with Linux (NUC8i5BEH) for daily work on Linux. Reasons I
like it:

\- Nearly all-Intel hardware, so very good Linux support.

\- Easier to upgrade (3.5" SATA, M.2 NVMe, RAM) than many laptops. (Of course,
there are laptops that are also easily upgradeable.)

\- Since the firmware is also Intel, probably gets firmware updates for longer
than many mainboards.

\- Affordable. IIRC it was somewhere between 300-400 Euro a year ago, but same
CPU/GPU as the 2000 Euro MacBook Pro 13" 2018 (which still makes it faster
than the current crop of 8th generation MacBook Pro 13" 2020).

\- Not very noisy under load. Probably noisy for a NUC, but definitely very
quiet compared to the Dell workstation I had before.

Downsides:

\- No space for another GPU. Though, it has TB3, so an eGPU would be an
option.

\- Not as extensible as a tower.

\---

 _Day to day activities can be proficiently carried out through laptops_

For me there is no laptop outside a MacBook (or possibly Windows, but I have
never really used Windows). I use a laptop when I am on the go (work,
conferences). I do not want to fiddle with drivers, bad battery life, bad
noise reduction, xrandr, or whatever when I am on the go. It just has to work.

However, powerful MacBooks are quite expensive and I do not want to carry
around a 2500 Euro machine on a trip.

So, I am doing my daily work on a MacBook Air and on the Intel NUC (plus
remote work GPU servers).

~~~
jeffbee
Great Linux support but surprisingly for an all-Intel rig I can't get Windows
to install on a NUC8i5. It just whines that it can't find a mass storage
driver.

~~~
wswope
Were you creating a USB Windows install drive from Linux?

~~~
jeffbee
macOS. Is there a trick? Stackoverflow "answers" on this topic center around
moving the boot medium from one USB port to another at just the right moment.

