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Comment by rwyinuse | Hacker News Reader

For a bit more money, Optiplex Micro / Lenovo Tiny / HP Mini series with at least 8th gen i5 are a good option too. Can be found from Ebay for about 70 - 120 USD, much more powerful than Wyse 5070 while still quite power efficient (about 10W idle, as opposed to 5W of Wyse). Usually they come with one NVME, one SATA 2.5" slot, some premium models even with PCIE.

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All good options, just noting that based on some searches I made they all seem to lack serial ports compared to the Wyse if that is something you care about (I personally do). There could be variants out there though with serial ports and if would be happy to hear about them and even more happy if there are fanless variants/alternatives for those of us with very limited space at home and a need to avoid noise.

I don't know about fanless, especially with an i5 as opposed to n-something.

But not all those minis are the same. G4 (intel 8th gen) and G5 (intel 9th gen) HPs are horrendous. The fan makes an extremely aggravating noise, and I haven't found a way to fix it. Bonus points for both the fan and heatsink having custom mounts, so even if you wanted to have an ugly but quiet machine by slapping a standard cooler, you couldn't.

G6 versions (intel 10th gen) seem to have fixed this, and they're mostly inaudible on a desk, unless you're compiling something for half an hour.

My Lenovo m910q Tiny has serial ports. Two of them in fact. Cost me $50 on eBay.

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