lowcostminipcs.com
I would like to add power usage, noise levels, PCIe slots but that data is hard to find.
Please let me know if you have any feedback / suggestions.
Thanks!
Also, AMD is crushing this market - but AMD is pretty under-represented here. There are also some great N-series Intel machines that are highly popular and you can get on AliExpress [2]. Or even more US focused brands under this umbrella like Protecli [3]
[0] https://www.bee-link.com/ [1] https://www.minisforum.com/ [2] https://www.servethehome.com/fanless-intel-n200-firewall-and... [3] https://protectli.com/
I did a thorough audit for bloat- spam- & mal-ware due to their reputation, and it came up much cleaner IMO than my HP.
Given that they compete in price with Raspberry pi with far more capability, everyone should have one.
But, yes - smart to just max these systems out right away. Most easily support 64GB which is more than enough for almost all use cases. I'm hoping that AMD continues to develop for optimizing local model usage. Currently that's the only area that Apple's Unified architecture really shines over these. If I could run reasonably sized models on these that would open a number of additional use cases.
Brands in the far east are quite different and less important than in western markets; to me it seems there are say 5 manufacturers that build OEM products that 30 will relabel with their brand and put into their box, then give to 1000 sellers, each one running like 30 shops on Aliexpress, Ebay and Amazon. Numbers are totally made up of course, the point is that the name isn't that important over there as the very same product can be (and often is) rebranded in many different ways.
Waiting to RMA now, but I've seen a lot of similar "weird BIOS bugs" after searching for help on my issue.
A lot of people buying mini pcs would rather go with AMD but are stuck with Intel due to the need for Quick Sync in order to transcode Plex.
This is the first I've heard of Quick Sync (and admittedly I could always be clueless, I'm surprised to only encounter it now).
Truly fantastic machines.
They make no attempt to explain the difference between the various model names, leaving to you go through them one by one until you figure things out. It's so bad.
An old PC draws easily 5-10 times more energy.
Depending on your location, the yearly cost of running a Pi is around ~10$. The big machine then 50-100$. So energy wise, a small power efficient machine might be more expensive but the running cost could be lower.
This is really small fry compared to other HVAC efficiency concerns, and definitely not an issue outside of summertime temps in most locales.
My Threadripper on the other hand - I had to move that into the crawlspace as it was: a) loud as hell, and b) basically a space heater that also does useful compute. 160w idle, ~280w full tilt - that thing is very noticable.
Just as a reference point, straight up "electric heat" is basically 250 watts A Foot.
It makes a big difference in the summer, but I miss it during the winter.
BTW, I'm using a M.2 2280 drive, even though the hat is designed for shorter drives. (I just tied mine down.) I installed it over the CPU fan and it works great.
I have a full on Dell Optiplex 3070 (i5-9500, 1x16GB memory, 512GB NVMe) running windows 10 that idles at 8W.
I have a lenovo m92p tiny (i5-3570s, released 2012) that idles at 6W.
It has an i5-6500, 32 GB RAM, 2 SATA SSDs and a 4-port i350 NIC (all ports up). Idle means OpnSense and HomeAssistant running inside KVM on top of whatever kernel version was current in Arch at the time, but with no traffic.
Does the raspberry pi draw 1-3W only? It should be noted that old pcs like these can be had extremely cheap, so the difference in price should take this into account. Moreover, if you need extensions of any kind (NICs, drives), getting them running at all on a PI is somewhat more involved than on a standard PC.
In either case, USFF is an order of magnitude less energy than desktop so it's still a win most of the time.
What do you mean by this?
> In either case, USFF is an order of magnitude less energy than desktop so it's still a win most of the time.
Doesn't it depend on the actual CPU used? I have an HP Elitedesk Mini (which is basically a small laptop without a screen — the equivalent of the ThinkCentres mentioned in this thread) and the CPU is an i5-8500 IIRC. I don't think this particular configuration would draw much less power than a "regular" desktop / SFF, aside maybe from the RAM (it uses SO-DIMM). I've never bothered to measure its idle power draw, and don't have any comparable "full desktop" to compare.
I don't know if HP or Lenovo have models with laptop-class CPUs in this form factor, but I image that would be an actual improvement on the power draw. I did see however Chinese brands on Amazon sell models with those kinds of CPUs.
You're correct that some of these machines have desktop CPUs, what I discovered was they also have different classes of desktop CPUs.
The m920q/m920s appear to have differnet power usages an possibly different cpus, or at least they're configured different.
If I compare the two:
- m920q (USFF) can go as high as 135w: https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCe...
- m920s SFF can go as high as 260w: https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCe...
Additionally, if you look up the Gen 6/7/8 power usage for the cpu itself, you can see the idle and total is different as well.
The trick is Lenovo is far from the best priced USFF in this category for the same thing.
When I bought Lenovo, I wanted to try out Proxmox, had no interest in fighting with installation or drivers, an just picked something that had flawless installation... that has since improved with other manufacturers.
The tool from OP here is really cool - I'd probably add some from the spreadsheet I had built out but I haven't had to buy many more of these once I figured it out. Load them up with ram, a few ssds, a UPS and they're pretty solid.
Dell Wyse 5070 with Pentium Silver J5005 ~ 5W
Fujitsu Futro S940 with J5005 as well ~ 7W
Dell Optiplex 3080 Micro with i5-10500t ~ 12W with two SSD's
In comparison, my Ryzen 7 server build consumes about 22W idle (before I added GPU), has 4x SSD and 4x RAM sticks. I like raspberry pi, but for most purposes an used mini-pc is a better choice.
Obviously, Raspberry Pis, SFF boxes, workstations and rack mounted servers all occupy different niches (with some overlap). Anyone confidently stating that one could fully replace anther with no context of the workloads is wrong.
Speaking of my projects - the RPi is perfectly capable of working as a web crawler (at a page rate that may surprise you) as well as a media download client & transcoder (again, simultaneously transcoding a number of streams that may surprise you).
My homelab includes 1L PCs and 1 U rackmounts (actual servers) - I appreciate what each brings to the table.
The reason I prefer mini-pc's over pi is the x86 architecture and possibility to add more RAM. For maximum flexibility, I mostly run my self-hosted services inside virtual machines that I manage with Proxmox, and pi isn't ideal for that. Admittedly I found even the mini-pc's too limited due to lack of space/pcie slots for a GPU, and ended up with a custom desktop build. That allows me to experiment with stuff like self-hosted AI, and game remotely. Support for ECC RAM and more SSD's was a big plus too.
So, indeed it all depends on what and how much you want to do with the machines.
It could probably run a single-task relatively well, like PiHole or something, but otherwise it's in a completely different performance category. Like an order of magnitude.
So 6W idle for J5005 would put it on the same level of efficiency.
I recently (8 months ago) replaced my 10 year-old laptop. The only reason I retired it was because the display was starting to go.
So I bought a second-hand workstation-class laptop with 6 beefy CPU cores and kinda wish I hadn't. Overall I want to like it but the battery life is abysmal, it makes a lot of heat even when fairly idle, and is a bit heavy due to the large heatsink inside. (And that's without a dedicated GPU.)
If I had to do it over again, I would trade it for one with a weaker but more power-efficient CPU.
In the US electric power might be cheaper. And if it's running only part of the time, you should adjust the calculation.
My desktop/server runs 24/7, so I prefer having a CPU with 65W TDP over one that is 125W TDP. That might run up to 120 Euro per year difference for me (if it would be running at 100% CPU).
I ended up going with a HP EliteDesk 800 G5 Mini I5-9500T (35W) off of Ebay for $100 and it does the stuff I need it to do just fine. According to my current monthly power usage graph, it's averaged 7W which accounts for $0.61 of this month's power bill.
When I did this I was surprised by how much - or how little - it cost to run various devices. It's quite addictive.
It's not always accurate because a lower-power machine doing the same task will often need to work at its full power more often, so the savings may be less. For example, a Raspberry Pi 5 may often be more power effecient than a Pi 4, despite drawing more power at full capacity on paper, because it spends less time at full capacity than the Pi 4 does.
On the other hand, when I upgraded my work PC I found it used less power but I also had to run my office heater more often in winter, as the new PC wasn't as efficient at heating the space.
Just from tweaking my laptop, I’ve noticed that when it is really idle (or I’ve intentionally put it in a low frequency mode), the big power drains are the wireless interfaces (don’t forget bluetooth) and the screen (OLED helps as long as the screen is mostly black). Gotta tweak the whole thing.
So, it goes quite quickly. Savings of 20 watt save you $ 52 a year.
Edit: I should note that there's no fan drawing power because I put it in an Akasa passively cooled case.
In home server use cases, mini PCs stay idle the vast majority of their runtime. So it's idle power consumption that is the most useful metric to look into. The N100 can have great idle performance in theory, but most data I can find about N100 boxes is them idling in the 12W-15W range. This is something that older enterprise mini desktops have no trouble matching or beating [1]. Especially since roughly the Skylake era (Intel 6th gen), idle power consumption for enterprise PCs has been excellent - but even before then it wasn't bad.
Enterprise vendors like Dell/HP/Lenovo have always optimized for TCO and actually usually use quite high quality power supply circuitry, whereas most N100 mini PCs tend to be built with cheaper components and not as optimized for low power usage for the whole system.
[1]: I recommend reviewing Serve The Home's TinyMiniMicro project, which often finds the smallest enterprise PC form factors to idle at 8 to 13W, even older ones. Newer systems can get below 7W! https://www.servethehome.com/tag/tinyminimicro/
I have a bunch of SFF computers (Dell 7060, HP 600 G4, etc) with i7-8700 or similar CPUs. They all idle around 12 watts.
Most of the mini pcs use the T version of the processors, which are usually 35w TDP.
Power usage will definitely be higher than an N100 (65W TDP vs 6W), but they're a lot more versatile since you're getting more than double the performance, 2-3x the threads, and an iGPU that can do things like transcoding for plex and accelerate ML models for Frigate/Scrypted.
The N100 is definitely powerful enough run a ZFS RAID array. Depending on what all you'd like to run, it might be enough. Check it out with cpubenchmark's compare feature!
I used a Celeron G4900 (also has an iGPU) as a plex server for years, and it's half as powerful as an N100. The celeron is a fairly slow processor, but for plex it was enough since the iGPU did the heavy lifting.
I'd highly recommend joining the serverbuilds dot net discord. They also have a forum with pre-specced NAS build configurations, complete with pricing. People there are very helpful and will give realistic advice.
I think Jellyfin beats Plex on 4k transcoding (tonemapping?) with the iGPU, but fwiw I do not transcode 4k and add subtitles to them just fine. I use an nvidia shield, which direct plays 4k content with the added subtitles. Hearing about transcoding 4k content just to add subtitles is news to me.
The new computer cost me $240 back in late 2022 (with 32GB of RAM and WiFi) so it'll basically pay for itself in electricity savings - and it's 3x faster than what it replaced.
ServeTheHome has some good reviews: https://www.servethehome.com/tag/tinyminimicro/. The tl;dr is just that there's good options from Dell, HP, and Lenovo and the differences are kinda minor, but it's a good source if you care about specific information and teardowns.
It's a great little machine, takes up almost no space, it's almost silent, and it was basically free with the power savings - in fact, once I pass the two year mark, it was cheaper to get the new hardware than to keep running the old.
And you can put Proxmox on it as a hypervisor to run multiple OSs or containers.
Looking at the OP, there's a ton of i5-8500s in the same price range as a new n305 on Amazon (not bargain hunting here, I'm sure you can find either option much cheaper anywhere). Compared to an N305, a i5-8500 has less cores/threads (6), has al least 4x the TPD, and has a significantly worse GPU. And many people want to buy new. But the used i5 is more expandable, and particularly affords more max memory.
There isn't one uncontested "best".
Math: 1,000 watts /65 watts/hour = 15.384 hours per kwh. 365.25 days/year * 24 hours/day = 8766 hours/yr <=(accounting for leap days) 8766 hours/yr / 15.384 hours/kwh = 569.81 kwh/yr 569.81 kwh/yr * $0.12/kwh = $68.377/yr
For quick math where accuracy isn't very important, at $0.12/kwh it will cost you ~$1.05/year per watt (65w = $68.38/yr), so every watt you save per year is a dollar in your pocket.
Of course, there are ways to reduce the energy usage of a system, a computer rarely has to run at 100% 24/7/365 unless it is very underspecced for your use case, even things as simple as enabling C states and not utilizing all of the PC resources available will save you many dollars a year.
I don't know if the ebay API allows you to check for variants to ensure that the price you are listing is the price for the actual variant listed or not?
The price listed on the website under 64gb is for the 8gb variation.
Most of the other 64gb minis I listed that I checked were actually the 64gb version.
Some things I don't: - I've had to do some ridiculous things to get them to behave after installing Linux, like tricking the BIOS to deal with UEFI correctly - It's basically impossible to get a better power supply, so you're limited with how much each one can do. Don't expect anything better than a very low-power, low-profile GPU for example. - There's not a ton of room in the case, so if you want PCIe stuff you will need low-profile. You can definitely stuff lots of hard drives in there if you work at it, though.
And, maybe someone has advice for me...!
Strange. I use Dell Optiplex Micros which are pretty much the same. I’ve never had a problem installing any Linux distros or hypervisors (Proxmox and XCP-NG)
Yeah these are the ones I'm buying too. Lot of banks have these for example as an all-in-one docked into a monitor. Sometimes they even have a small amount of Dell warranty left, though I've never ever had a problem with them.
Yes, though technically any add-on warranty coverage or service plans are only available to the registered owner. I bought a couple Dell OptiPlex micros last year that were originally owned by a large organization. They were clearly being resold on eBay by someone who had acquired them in some sort of bulk purchase. Dell has a form you can submit to request that the registration be updated, but it requires you to provide contact information for the original owner. I asked the eBay seller if they for this contact information, but they said they did not. I was able to open a support request with Dell and have their records updated to show me as the owner after showing evidence that I had acquired the machines. This included a photo of them showing their asset tags along with a hand-written note that showed my support case number, as well as a copy of the eBay listings. I believe Dell checked with the original owner (a US federal agency) to verify the machines had been sold.
I would suggest going for a couple of generations newer - the M92p is from an era before UEFI became really stable. For automated testing of my startup's product we have a testlab of tens of older USFF desktops and the M700/M900/M910 machines are some of my favorites. They're also just before the cut-off for Windows 11 support so they're still available dirt cheap.
Two things to watch out for - the M700 lacks a PCI-E M.2 slot - the internal M.2 slot supports only SATA M.2 drives. Second, the front USB ports failing is a really common failure mode.
Those M900s look REALLY nice!
I just upgraded my Mellori-ITX to 64GB RAM and have a 5700G to drop in there. This is possibly the best SFF config you can do in an AM4 socket:
https://github.com/phkahler/mellori_ITX
BTW we need USB ports ON TOP so you can plug stuff in without pushing the PC around the desk. Storage, not permanently attached stuff.
I think ebay technically frowns upon excessive shipping as some sellers use it to get their items higher in certain search results due to a low base price, but ebay doesn't really apply enforcement to their sellers on these soft violations most of the time.
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It seems some of your filters like "storage type" are must include and when unchecking it all the results disappear, while others like "OS" seem like a filter and when unchecking the results increase.
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I'm not seeing many chromeboxes in the results so maybe they are being filtered out?
Chromeboxes don't come up much for the search I'm using. I think I could try a separate search for them.
Regarding shipping, I'm not sure how to include it, since it requires the user's location, which would take this over the API limits. I'm going to add more marketplaces, and maybe product locations. Which country are you shipping to?
Or just get a shipping estimate to the same city as the seller is in.
"You Can Build This Powerful Ultra Low Cost SteamOS 3 Gaming PC For Only $150"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFIgQ9zgXOk
Optiplex 7020 with a tower - not a "Small Form Factor."
"This Super Low Cost PC Runs SteamOS 3 Better Than The Steam Deck!"
Thanks again!
https://www.newegg.com/dell-7020/p/N82E16883165773 - $160
https://www.amazon.com/Power-Express-Video-Cable-Adapter/dp/...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C3QSCLR4?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_... - $101 - this one fit!
But I found more videos I had bookmarked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTAzwKiQ7Ns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLQ8NDbMEUw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97enzfkRg2o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvNS4M3o85o
ALSO, while we're chatting - I picked up this Chromebook:
ASUS Chromebook Plus, CM3401 14" 2-in-1 Laptop with Google AI - AMD Ryzen 3 7320C - 8GB Memory - 128GB SSD - Ponder Blue, Model CM3401FF-R3128BLX.
I got it in "Open Box Good" condition for $199.99.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-chromebook-plus-cm3401-14-...
I kind of love it. Convertible to tablet (keyboard folds under.) Runs Android apps, including Disney+, can download Disney+ shows. HDMI out. I believe the HDMI out works for Disney+ which is a surprise and a treat. Runs Linux. I installed Visual Studio Code, .Net Core, etc. Because it's a "Chromebook Plus," it has an App Shortcut to install the Steam Installer. (!!!) I installed Balatro, and the touchscreen works awesome. I installed both Android Minecraft (works well on the built-in screen but for some reason has frame rate problems on the external display?), and also Minecraft Java through the Linux.
Haven't tried too many other Steam games yet. I tried to install Path of Exile, but it seems to completely not work.
For $199.99, the thing's a beast.
The Chromebook situation's a bit different over here though - I don't think the market is anywhere near as big as it is over the the States, as I think your educational set up encouraged them a lot, whereas they haven't here.. I think?
Still, plenty of cheap laptops to be had otherwise (I know I'm never going to bother buying a new one again - Second Hand Thinkpads FTW!)
I'm doing a dual-boot into a 128 GB Steam Deck image I found with... many... retro games on it. The website looked like hot garbage and I had to make an account to have access to download... but... very well made image.
EBAY_AT - Austria (ebay.at)
EBAY_AU - Australia (ebay.com.au)
EBAY_BE - Belgium (ebay.com.be)
EBAY_CA - Canada (ebay.ca)
EBAY_CH - Switzerland (ebay.ch)
EBAY_DE - Germany (ebay.de)
EBAY_ES - Spain (ebay.es)
EBAY_FR - France (ebay.fr)
EBAY_GB - Great Britain (ebay.co.uk)
EBAY_HK - Hong Kong (ebay.com.hk)
EBAY_IE - Ireland (ebay.ie)
EBAY_IT - Italy (ebay.it)
EBAY_NL - Netherlands (ebay.nl)
EBAY_PL - Poland (ebay.pl)
EBAY_SG - Singapore (ebay.sg)and if the price could somehow include the shipping rate to the country, that'd be awesome
I don't know about the USA but in most europe countries ebay is less and less the default place to look for second hand items.
You'd need to support national alternatives, like marktplaats for NL
Thanks for putting the site together!
Eg in France https://www.afbshop.fr/PC-Bureau or https://www.tradediscount.com/ordinateur-bureau/unite-centra...
Price might be a bit higher, but eg right now for sub 200 you can get a mini pc with ryzen 2400G and 16GB of RAM, with warranty. That's a great proxmox machine for jellyfin & co.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/315406551868 https://www.ebay.com/itm/386903851995
I one I ended up getting: https://www.ebay.com/itm/296370169192?var=594356150752
This site is fantastic.
Also - look at CyberPunk 2077 Crawler
https://github.com/itsOwen/CyberScraper-2077
By another HNer.
This site is great!.
Would be cool to use it as a template for any other category of "thing" -- if you could share it.
I suspect that doing so wouldn't be great for eBay's business though - the table is sortable, but eBay wants to sell promoted listings that are at the top of pages. And less dense search result views with big photos probably entice people to buy "shiny" things rather than specs.
(it was priced for a more basic spec than in the title. If you played with the configuration the spec in the title came to $219.99. You can make your own determination whether that was as good value)
My personal one has 12GB of RAM (4+8) and two SSDs (there is a spare slot for a half size M.2. inside). You can abuse the hell out of them and they take it.
[1] https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=Dell%20Lati...
One other thing I'd be interested in: not just mini PCs but used office workstations. I realized that many offices were selling old workstations that were often just a few years old with things like dual Xeon chips and 64GB of RAM or more with support for a few hundred GB for only a few hundred $. Things like 2ish generation old HP Z400/Z600/Z800 series. They make for great home lab virtualization machines and can often support 2+ GPUs and a boatload of additional peripherals. I'd love to see something like this that lets you find those as well
I stumbled across Mini PCs and was surprised at how cheap they were so I brought one.
Turns out they were lying about the clock speed, citing 3.4Ghz when it was actually 1.7GHz.
I contacted their support to say the description was wrong but they said it was right. Don’t buy from KAMRUI.
I ended picking up a 5 year old Dell Optiplex SFF on eBay for $75. I added a few sticks of RAM and a new SSD, installed Ubuntu server, and it’s been great. Super fun and easy to pop open and work on.
I sort of want to start grabbing these for anyone I know who needs a basic computer.
Cost me $100 'used' (open box), SSD, decent RAM and even a copy of Windows I didn't need. Install *nix, run it headless, good to go.
You can go cheaper but at a certain point who cares if it's $80 for an unknown brand or $100 for Lenovo, etc.
Small form factor, it can tuck in with wherever you store your router, or buy an aftermarket rack kit if you run rackmount network components like I do. OR 3D print one https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4769452
Eg https://www.ebay.com/itm/186591932407 - this is a great project server that can probably run tons of docker containers (depending on what you are doing).
A$115 example, https://www.australiancomputertraders.com.au/hp-elitedesk-80...
Just bought a Dell Optiplex 7060 Micro from this website for <300AUD. I heard they were pretty decent for used PCs. The price difference isn't too far off from the USD equivalent here.
I’d love to be able to filter by CPU and generation.
Maybe using an LLM could help with the parsing?
Suggestions:
1. encode search filters in URL, for sharing/bookmark
2. Add "Intel vPro" as a filter.Did not come across a lot of Intel VPros in my searches. What's the use case for them?
vPro devices support Intel TXT (DRTM) to verify firmware integrity on each boot, based on user/OS policy. TXT can be used with QubesOS ("Anti Evil Maid"), Windows Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) or upcoming Linux Secure Launch in mainline Linux. vPro also supports optional remote KVM/serial management over LAN with Intel AMT, which could be considered a feature or anti-feature, depending on use case.
A lot of these are not what I would call "mini," but I like the idea.
Is it a static list of manufacturers/models? If so, I feel like it would be worth putting that on GitHub so that the community can help maintain it. For example, I know there many fanless PCs on the market but the site is only showing me three and they are all fairly expensive.
Any plans to add websites besides eBay? When I am hunting down a SFF PC for a project, I generally try to at least look over what is on offer from AliExpress, NewEgg (clearance), Dell Refurbished, Lenovo Refurbished, Microcenter, and a variety of websites for second-hand business IT recyclers.
Love this, thank you!
Great site, I'd love if it also took data from EU countries Ebay sites too, as buying from the US from here would inflate costs too much when adding overseas shipping and taxes.
This is particularly useful from an environmental point of view - all these machines can serve a good purpose for decades to come. Mini PCs use less energy, and every used machine re-used means one PC less built, saving minerals and energy.
I recently installed a DELL Micro-PC, which I intended as an X11-Terminal. It turns out that it's also a fine machine for most local work like editing and email (except machine learning and heavy development work), so more beefy machines can stay off.
I tried using such a PC in my living room as a media console. My plan was to use steam's 'Big Picture Mode's along with an Xbox controller to give a console like experience.
Instead of buying console games, I would get access to my extensive steam library. Games not on steam can be manually added to the steam launcher.
In practice, I ran into enough problems to abandon the idea. The controller experience didn't have enough support. A Bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo helped but eventually I just went back to using a Chromecast.
Also, I have bought a lot of mini-pc and those with Intel 6th gen CPU seems to offer the best bang for bucks, at least for my needs. (I don't really need powerful system, since I"m mostly using them for dedicated obs streaming or light video encoding or homeassistant).
So I would just have an "OS Included?" checkbox.
Except for gaming duties, if someone wants a desktop experience, monitor, kb, mouse then mini pcs are awesome.
Maybe you can use an LLM to extract that data from reviews?
Anyway, I'd like to know if I can use the system for a home cinema, so it should be able to decode 4k resolution in real time (and shouldn't be too noisy). It would be nice if there was a checkbox for that usecase.
What would the requirements for your decoding be?
Well, it should just play 4k content from various sources (and so various formats), using Vlc.
> Reviews aren't common due to many listings having 1 item in stock.
I suppose you could use a (Google) search to find reviews elsewhere on the internet, based on the product name. Then feed them to ChatGPT, and ask it to summarize various things and build a JSON structure out of its findings. Maybe ChatGPT can even do the search for you.
Probably because they bought ICL (which IIRC had itself recently bought Nokia's PC business) around the turn of the century.
Thank you everyone for the feedback!
No weird splash screens from windows after updates, 2GB is vast for me when running headless, dotnet apps ported with minimal effort, and the list goes on. Only downside is the USB can only power one external 2.5" hdd, and I didn't want to add a powered usb hub.
It seems like the tool is missing some of the better deals, like Optiplex 3070 with 9th gen i5s for ~$100, entire working system included (this is what I ended up buying).
For example this laptop:
Dell Latitude 7400 Intel i7-1165G7 16GB 256GB NVMe SSD
Is $180 shipped.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266969891671?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid...
This might be a task for an LLM-supported scraper looking at a number of online marketplaces, retailers, and manufacturer sites. Then, conversely, you could link to matching eBay listings. It would also need a mechanism for users to submit spec corrections.
https://sudos.wordpress.com/2022/05/27/dell-kace-m300-or-fan...
You should consider putting some affiliate links in so this continues to exist and grow.
You are helping people save money, which doesn't cost them anything, and if anything makes ebay make less.
I have a ton of ideas for htis that I use to narrow it down even more - starting with the CPU can be a good place. Generation, wattage, etc.
It reminds me of when I got my own web "server"; I purchased it (for ~50€) after reading this post[0] back in 2017. The optiplex fx160 is still running to this day.
[0] http://thesizzlewo.webflow.io/blog/get-a-dell-optiplex-fx160...
For example passmark scores or power usage for an identified CPU.
I see there is very little standard format in the listings, so might need some logic to extract/guess at CPU versions etc.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=ryzen+mini+pc&_sop=12
Yet the website here seems to only show less than 100. I’m saying its method of organizing the data is not accounting for the fact that there are thousands of AMD mini PCs for sale on eBay.
Does anyone know what the right searchplace is for media storage PCs? I'm considering getting something in this area that's a bit more sophisticated than a NAS but not a huge project to maintain.
I just need something that i can take from one desk to another that carry docking stations.
You could get a frame.work laptop in an external case, slightly larger than hand-sized, though.
Ideas are circulating in my head for a custom solution.
Fantastic gathering of used PC's, but buyer beware, there are a lot of options that are worth studying before purchasing.
would be great to have a filter for country of origin/shipping
If not, maybe add a checkbox for it.
The question of "how well?" is mostly down to the fact that some GPUs and wifi chips have substandard support due to their manufacturers' refusal to document their driver interfaces.
Edit: Nevermind - mine are the same size as many of the listings here with DVD drives. I was thinking of micros.
Wishlist: please allow filtering by Intel / AMD CPUs and Intel / NVIDIA / AMD GPUs. It's IMO important to know how many open drivers can the buyer use on Linux / BSD.
EDIT: Yes ctrl-click is too much effort. Middle-click even.
(Many forget a middle click on a mouse-wheel is also a ctrl-click/new-tab button, and the thumb button MOUSE4 is back)
However, the point about losing one's place is a valid one, and I agree with the other commenter that said it would be good to encode the state in the URL to solve that.
A decade ago they would only last a decade which would make some of these boxes near EOL
I wish there was a similar site for Xeon-processor based systems.
Beyond this stuff, I always found the UX of IaaS like AWS/GCP/etc. to be a nightmare, particularly the IAM experience. Not just navigating their awful dashboard pages, but learning their brand-specific jargon, managing service accounts, staying up-to-date on latest marketing and service breakdowns for every little thing - it quickly takes over your attention (and budget). Not to mention, using IaaS feels like devolving from a modern developer to an early 00s IT specialist. AWS feels less like "infrastructure" and more like a modern take on cPanel but with far less visibility/control over the server.
I digress... in 2021 I copy/pasted my "mono-server" setup from Heroku over to the Pi 4 with vanilla Raspbian and it's been running 24/7/365 ever since. It powers 15+ APIs/backends including a booking engine for a local business in SF, some real-time socket servers for games, and there's both a SQL (postgres) and NoSQL (mongo) server running too. I attached a touch screen that shows the console output in fullscreen, and I velcro it to my wall. It looks like a smartphone charging on my wall or a smart thermostat or something, but it's nice to be able to walk up and see how things are doing. Feels better than checking any dashboard.
I've had to restart it only twice over the years. A couple times it just stopped responding to requests, though didn't appear to be frozen. I could stop it and npm start again but nothing. When this happens, have to fully restart and run IPTABLES stuff again to put it back online. However - that's mere minutes spent each year rather than spending significant time every single day in an IaaS or PaaS.
Thanks for sharing this awesome list, I'm due for an upgrade pretty soon and I am so glad to see so many low cost options. My hope is that more developers get into these mini PCs around the world, and I imagine a future where the Big Cloud providers play a much smaller more specific role (government data, public domain computing) rather than being the de facto platform for hobby/startup projects. Even things like regional deployments and distributed/"serverless" computing can be accomplished with networks and proxying without giving it all away to a major cloud provider.