Small energy efficient mini PC advice

ryu · 30 Aug 2023 at 20:51

Have you seen the Zimaboard? x86, under 10 watts

ZimaBoard - World's First Hackable Single Board Server

ZimaBoard is world's first hackable single board server. It is a hybird of micro server and SBC (single board computer). It's designed for building a low cost NAS, media server, and software router as your home automation and entertainment center.

www.zimaboard.com

mi9tchy · 2 Sep 2023 at 14:38

I was looking at the Intel N100 mini pc's to replace a lenovo 7th gen Intel im using as an unraid server, want one with a couple of nvme slots though.

Pickers · 2 Sep 2023 at 15:36

I've also been looking at a gmktec nucbox g2 -
It's n100, 12gb ddr5 ram (soldered), and currently on offer with 1tb M2 drive for about £50 less than the beelink AND has import tax sorted. Beelink gets you same CPU, DDR4 SODIMM 16gb and 500gb storage.

BUT gmktec is realtek chipset apparently so esxi not supported (but there may be work around).

I really don't know now.!!!

mi9tchy · 3 Sep 2023 at 17:54

Pickers said:
I've also been looking at a gmktec nucbox g2 -
It's n100, 12gb ddr5 ram (soldered), and currently on offer with 1tb M2 drive for about £50 less than the beelink AND has import tax sorted. Beelink gets you same CPU, DDR4 SODIMM 16gb and 500gb storage.

BUT gmktec is realtek chipset apparently so esxi not supported (but there may be work around).

I really don't know now.!!!

the other ones have intel v226 or v225's which are 2.5Gbit NICs but apparently have issues too

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

LostCorpse · 3 Sep 2023 at 23:27

Pickers said:
I've also been looking at a gmktec nucbox g2 -
It's n100, 12gb ddr5 ram (soldered), and currently on offer with 1tb M2 drive for about £50 less than the beelink AND has import tax sorted. Beelink gets you same CPU, DDR4 SODIMM 16gb and 500gb storage.

BUT gmktec is realtek chipset apparently so esxi not supported (but there may be work around).

I really don't know now.!!!

do you have to use esxi? there are other options.
theres also the Mini's -UM690/UM590/UM560XT lowest being £220 (no ram or harddisk)

mi9tchy · 4 Sep 2023 at 21:46

Emo_hug said:
do you have to use esxi? there are other options.
theres also the Mini's -UM690/UM590/UM560XT lowest being £220 (no ram or harddisk)

these look to be pretty high power consumption compared to the intel

Pickers · 5 Sep 2023 at 06:42

mi9tchy said:
the other ones have intel v226 or v225's which are 2.5Gbit NICs but apparently have issues too

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

Perhaps the issues are less of a worry than simply not usable... I'll admit I am new to home servers but reviews suggest these two units are good and not extortionately priced... But if one will be severely limited for the use case (gmktec) then I guess it's best to pay a little.more.for the beelink..

All moot now because a massive bill has just blown everything out the window!

eggbert · 9 Sep 2023 at 11:21

I quite like the look of this https://www.zimaboard.com/blade/

was considering a zima board but this one seems to drop to one LAN port and gain user upgradeable ram.

alexakasloth · 9 Sep 2023 at 11:45

Perhaps one of the SBC's that have a rockhip 3588/s, they appear to have good performance and have M.2 and 2.5GBit ethernet, Rock 5 B or Orange Pi 5 for example. The later is available for around £75 for the 8gb model.

fish · 9 Sep 2023 at 17:01

Just a quick chip in on this. As I have mentioned in a different thread you can pick up a clone of the beelink with an n95 for 125 inc on elsewhere and one with the n100 for a little more. The main difference being the n100 systems seem to come with 16gb ram and 500gb hdd rather than 8 256. Search for trigkey. I have been running one as a Plex server for around 5 months ish now as the power usage is 6-15 w it’s a no brained I think for a home server solution

LostCorpse · 10 Sep 2023 at 13:28

mi9tchy said:
these look to be pretty high power consumption compared to the intel

around 80w max and some were between 8-10w idle. is whats been reported by a few people.

Pickers · 10 Sep 2023 at 17:41

fish said:
Just a quick chip in on this. As I have mentioned in a different thread you can pick up a clone of the beelink with an n95 for 125 inc on elsewhere and one with the n100 for a little more. The main difference being the n100 systems seem to come with 16gb ram and 500gb hdd rather than 8 256. Search for trigkey. I have been running one as a Plex server for around 5 months ish now as the power usage is 6-15 w it’s a no brained I think for a home server solution

Only thing I can see with trigkey is that it seems to be realtek chipset again - so an issue for VMware ??

fish · 10 Sep 2023 at 22:18

darn, it does have intel wifi if that helps?

Armageus · 10 Sep 2023 at 22:37

Pickers said:
BUT gmktec is realtek chipset apparently so esxi not supported (but there may be work around).

So use something else: proxmox, xcp-ng or even Hyper-v standalone are all mature options

Cyber-Mav · 27 Sep 2023 at 08:18

Those thin clients work well for some jobs too like the dell wyse 5010 etc. Usually under 10w on low loads and probably idle at around 5w.

Can be had real cheapo too even for brand new ones

Pickers · 4 Oct 2023 at 22:16

So I got a beelink eq12 which is just an awesome little beast!!

Running hyper-V with a VM for Home assistant and another for pihole.

Coping a dream. Great purchase.

I'm now wondering if I get another VM set up for a VPN server, which at the moment is managed by my router.

Rroff · 16 Nov 2023 at 14:46

Some decent deals on 16GB RAM mini PCs at the moment, not sure what will be available Black Friday but I can't see some of these deals being beaten, but might be better deals on other stuff.

jennidc · 22 Nov 2023 at 11:16

ETA Prime (youtube) had a video a few months back about the mini n200 system which is due out soon -they are 3.7ghz quad (n100 is 3.2ghz I think).

Cyber-Mav · 27 Nov 2023 at 09:32

jennidc said:
ETA Prime (youtube) had a video a few months back about the mini n200 system which is due out soon -they are 3.7ghz quad (n100 is 3.2ghz I think).

that using gracemont cores?

meandu229 · 27 Nov 2023 at 09:44

I managed to get a dell 9020m with i5-4590T 8GB ram (advertised as 4gb but was 8gb in) 500gb hdd (which replaced by an ssd) from ebay for £28 delivered. Got it running opnsense now I think its around 15-30 watts.
Seller I used has raised price to £40 but im sure there are others around.

Small energy efficient mini PC advice

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