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Comment by NelsonMinar | Hacker News Reader

I've been really impressed with the N100 Mini-PCs. I have a couple running Proxmox and then a few different VMs and containers to do light server stuff. For $180 the Beelink gives you 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD, plenty of video output. Just a fantastic performer.

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Given the "good enough" performance and low power credentials I am really surprised that N100 based laptop is not commonplace. Make a 1440p QHD laptop with 32GB RAM it will be selling like hot cakes. The advertised max RAM is 16GB RAM but some say it can takes more up to 64GB.

> it will be selling like hot cakes

I strongly doubt that. Otherwise premium (by Apple standards at least) or midrange specs laptop but with a slow CPU wouldn't be that popular.

It makes sense in a very cheap (< $300) device but add 32 GB of RAM, a decent screen and chassis and it would be competing with significantly more expensive laptops with a proper CPUs. Seems like an extremely niche product.

Personally if they are selling around USD500 - USD600 I will be buying in a heartbeat and I think most people will be buying as well especially in developing countries.

The typical specs of the price range mentioned above are FHD and 8GB RAM, both features are a few times worst laptop compared to QHD dislay and 32GB RAM.

> Personally if they are selling around USD500 - USD600 > well especially in developing countries.

Why? They can already buy a Lenovo/HP/etc. laptop for <500$, FHD and 16 GB RAM (and most in that price range seem to have upgradeable storage/memory).

I'm not sure the $50-100 or so saved on the CPU would be enough to significantly improve build quality or a much better screen.

The N100 just just doesen't seem to have that many advantages over something like:

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_processor_n1...

Yes, you get to save 5-15W or so, but you get a much slower chip with a way worse GPU. Still seems very niche.

We tried that dance with the netbooks of yore, and people rapidly found that their "good enough" performance was not, in fact, good enough for a lot of interactive use, particularly given that you can't burst power forever on laptop batteries.

I'd love to see a rehash of that idea with the performance actually being "good enough", but I think that's probably why vendors have been burned and don't want to explore that form factor space again soon.

I’ve got likely the exact same box as you, and I’ve done the same thing. Mine runs proxmox with a variety of services.

Additionally I managed to get gpu passthrough working with the integrated graphics. My box is physically located below a TV- so I’ve got one VM running Bazzite for gaming, outputting over the HDMI. It’s perfect for streaming games from my gaming pc to the couch. Bluetooth and USB is also passed through to the VM without issue for controllers.

Slightly OT but Proxmox is something else I see is suddenly everywhere - is it only for a container-based homelab setup, or do people also run a full desktop distro like Debian or Fedora as one of the VMs? Since GPU passthrough is supported, seems like a nice neat way to have your cake and eat it too. In which case I might splurge on an N305 with a bit more RAM and migrate Plex and other containers (currently on an always-on M1 which is supposed to be my workstation), plus the Tailscale exit node (currently on an RPi4) to the same machine the kid uses as his DE.

This may help, and you may be surprised at how well an N100 can run Plex. https://www.doscher.com/gpu-passthrough-for-intel/

It's not a container-only distro, that's secondary, it's more like VMware Esxi, does VMs, too, but with extra bits (like ceph). It's good stuff, try it.

Yep. Been running it for a few years, am very happy with it - https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/12/17/2000

I've rebuilt my PC for Proxmox. 7950X3D, X670E, 96G, 18TBx4.

I run TrueNAS with my storage. Give a GPU to a main system (Bazzite/Fedora/NixOS). Distro hopping is one VM away.

I don't run Windows guests.

Nice machine, was looking at something similar but never pulled the trigger because of (possible) long boot times. Any problems with that?

The only long boot times I have is for memory training and that happens once when you change it on any am5.

Always look at what people say about a motherboards IOMMU groups.

On mine I can pcie passthrough 4 of the 8 SATA ports for TrueNAS

Do you happen to have wall power consumption readings at idle for your Mini-PCs?

Not the OP, but my ASRock N100DC-ITX idles at around 9W at the wall.

I have an Asus PN42 with 512 GB SSD and 32 GB of memory idling at around 7 W (default Debian install, without monitor connected).

My BOSGAME B100 is 7W idle, 19W with peak synthetic load. That includes a 3W external spinning drive.

You asked about mini-PCs, which I don't have, however just for comparison I can say I have ODROID-XU4 + cubietruck here running and only drawing about 2W total between both of them.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend those (especially the cubietruck) these days, but there are lots of Single Board Computers (SBC) out there besides RPi.[0]

[0] https://www.armbian.com/download/

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