Looking for a Mini PC

[DukeComposed]

Further to that, I've seen many a wholesaler try to sell off refurbished NUC's, which leads me to question their build quality.

Intel recently announced they were stopping or selling off their NUC product line, so you may get a cheap model as retailers try to clear out the last units of a discontinued series. I still have a NUC that I'm using as a daily driver. It looks like it's about 9 years old and it has no real problems other than that it periodically shuts off or power cycles randomly a few times a year. This may be an Intel thing. It may be a Windows thing. I suspect that investigating the problem will be more trouble than it's worth and potentially more destructive to the equipment, too.

To its credit, the NUC line spawned a number of copycat systems. System76 has the Meerkat, and their big thing is that their hardware runs Linux natively. Shuttle makes a fanless "Express" unit that I use to adequately play music and videos on a television at 720p, but I wouldn't recommend it for gaming or compiling kernels.

[mw1649]

www.zotac.com

[MadMax]

I'm not the biggest fan of Mini PCs. They usually use laptop hardware, get hot and have very limited IO due to the space contraints. So I'd rather recommend to build a custom system in the small ITX form factor. It's a little bigger, but you get a lot more bang for the buck. You have to be comfortable building in a small case, though, and know your way around hardware well to pick out parts in the right size.

[skallal]

Recently read where Asus is taking over from Intel...

That would be a good result.

Chris
[/quote]

https://beebom.com/asus-nuc-extreme-dis ... continues/

[davidy]

I have a couple minisforum minis and they are excellent. All their new models support dual pci-e gen4 nvme's and ddr5. They have a barebones (add OS, mem, & nvme's) for $560 that runs the amd ryzen9 7940hs which is an 8c/16t laptop processor with a 4Ghz base clock up to 5.2Ghz if pushed. Since it's a minipc it doesn't even need to use the wifi or bt it has onboard. It supports raid 0 & 1 and if you put a simple filter on the vents it is almost zero maintenance. I use electrostatic filters you can get at homedepot or the like. I took the snapshot iso from my intel laptop and installed it to my amd HM90 and it works perfect after tweaking it to the device specific specs. I payed like 450 for my hm90 and about 3 something for my um350. My um350 boots/reboots win10 in literally 10s flat to a working desktop.
store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-um790-pro
They have EU online outlets as well.
Building your own with a miniitx board and a small case would be lots of fun but I rather like opening the box, adding drives and memory, plugging it in, installing an os and simply booting. Saves lots of time and headache and you don't worry about compatibility issues.

[linexer2016]

I'm not the biggest fan of Mini PCs. They usually use laptop hardware, get hot and have very limited IO due to the space contraints. So I'd rather recommend to build a custom system in the small ITX form factor. It's a little bigger, but you get a lot more bang for the buck. You have to be comfortable building in a small case, though, and know your way around hardware well to pick out parts in the right size.

As I suggested in my earlier post to this thread, I have to agree now with Max, heat is always going to be an issue with small form factor units IF you are doing more than simple browsing and etc. Throw in CPU intensive tasks like video editing (which the OP may not have need of) or other such tasks, then issues probably will arise. Whether those issues are something that cause more than momentary slow downs or whether they ultimately lead to hardware failure I suppose is anyone's guess. Max has cited limited IO and indeed that surely can be an issue. Simplest things as patching your 5.1 sound system to the mini pc can cause problems.

[Geek3579]

I have used BEELINK products for a few years now, usually the more cheaper units for simple tasks, but OK for simple video editing.

They are still going strong. But I recommend that you find one where there is space in the drive for a second SSD, at least for storage space, or a clean install of MX-Linux. I am not a fan of dual booting.

[davidy]

I bought a schitts audio device and returned it as my minipc would not recognize it. My audioengine one works fine however and is actually better anyway cause it has controls on it the schitts one doesn't. Glad it didn't work in the end. But yeah the peripherals may be an issue for sure, not just your wireless stuff. Less is more in my playbook.