7fqx's avatar
7fqx 7fqx@ditto.pub 3 weeks ago
What do people think of mini PCs? Seem to be quite good deals on them. Brands I have never heard of (Beelink ??) Even the Mac mini m4 looks decent at sale price (I know f all about macs and don't know my way around them, but I'm sure I can learn:)) Was looking at something called a Beelink ser8. I'm so out of my depth on the technicals. I also noticed everything seems to come with some AI chip bullshit nowadays. Is that a thing now??
Beelink | Beelink SER8 AMD Ryzen™ 7 8845HS MINI PC 8C/16T Frequency up to 5.1GHz
 #asknostr

Replies (19)

cbrooklyn's avatar
cbrooklyn 3 weeks ago
I have a beelink I use for a start 9 server. Had no issues
Bill Cypher's avatar
Bill Cypher bill@nostrplebs.com 3 weeks ago
Beelink is king from what I've seen, gmktek seems to be ok too. Other brands are more risky. I've got a ryzen beelink running proxmox with a USB DAS as my home server. Pretty happy with it. My biggest warning would be many have random limits on what can and can't be upgraded. Just check before buying if you plan to upgrade. An example is n150s are limited to 16gb of RAM.
The Beave's avatar
The Beave TheBeave@GitCitadel.com 3 weeks ago
Buy a 1L form-factor tiny PC from lenovo, HP, or dell. You get better driver support and if you are savvy, you can buy used and get rally good hardware for less or comparable prices. The driver support is the most important thing and I prefer lenovo since they have very excellent Linux compatible drivers, which some of the minipcs have trouble with. If you want to run containers and VMs, you'll want a "real" processor with virtualization baked in from the start.
running bitcoin's avatar
running bitcoin 3 weeks ago
I have a couple HP pro desk micro w 16gb ram and they are great. I got them off Amazon for pretty cheap
node's avatar
node node@nostr.land 3 weeks ago
I use mine as a start9 server. I upgraded the ssd. Next server I need will be a beelink 1000%
Ancap Revolt's avatar
Ancap Revolt AncapRevolt@primal.net 3 weeks ago
Mac minis are great deals but I recommend using Linux. I believe Linux will stick long term. It depends what you want to do. A mini PC won’t be good if you want to game or host local AI. The new Steam Machine will be good for gaming, but it’s a step short of a full pc. You could probably put a different Linux distro on it though. You want to ditch windows. Just buy a gaming laptop and put Linux on it
Ryan's avatar
Ryan ryan@nostr.land 3 weeks ago
My tv PC is pretty much my main PC these days fwiw. I have a slightly older one, ser5 with 32gb RAM. It's fine for anything on desktop, and light Steam gaming and emulation up to the Xbox/PS2/Wii generation. I'm assuming a newer one would be better 👍
1 replies ↓
↑