Datapoints like this really make me reconsider my daily driver. I should be running one of those $300 mini PCs at <20W. With ~flat CPU performance gains, would be fine for the next 10 years. Just remote into my beefy workstation when I actually need to do real work. Browsing the web, watching videos, even playing some games is easily within their wheelhouse.

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themafia 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I should be running one of those $300 mini PCs at <20W.

Yes. They're basically laptop chips at this point. The thermals are worse but the chips are perfectly modern and can handle reasonably large workloads. I've got an 8 core Ryzen 7 with Radeon 780 Graphics and 96GB of DDR5. Outside of AAA gaming this thing is absolutely fine.

The power draw is a huge win for me. It's like 6W at idle. I live remotely so grid power is somewhat unreliable and saving watts when using solar batteries extends their lifetime massively. I'm thrilled with them.

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samuelknight a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Switching from my 8-core ryzen minipc to an 8-core ryzen desktop makes my unit tests run way faster. TDP limits can tip you off to very different performance envelopes in otherwise similar spec CPUs.

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adrian_b a day ago | parent | next [-]

A full-size desktop computer will always be much faster for any workload that fully utilizes the CPU.

However, a full-size desktop computer seldom makes sense as a personal computer, i.e. as the computer that interfaces to a human via display, keyboard and graphic pointer.

For most of the activities done directly by a human, i.e. reading & editing documents, browsing Internet, watching movies and so on, a mini-PC is powerful enough. The only exception is playing games designed for big GPUs, but there are many computer users who are not gamers.

In most cases the optimal setup is to use a mini-PC as your personal computer and a full-size desktop as a server on which you can launch any time-consuming tasks, e.g. compilation of big software projects, EDA/CAD simulations, testing suites etc.

The desktop used as server can use Wake-on-LAN to stay powered off when not needed and wake up whenever it must run some task remotely.

	▲	whatevaa 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not everything supports remoting well. For example, many IDE's. Unless you run RDP, with whole graphical session on remote. Also, having to buy two computers also costs money. It makes sense to use 1 for both use cases if you have to buy the desktop anyway.

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loeg a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Even if you could cool the full TDP in a micro PC, in a full size desktop you might be able to use a massive AIO radiator with fans running at very slow, very quiet speeds instead of jet turbine howl in the micro case. The quiet and ease of working in a bigger space are mostly a good tradeoff for a slightly larger form factor under a desk.

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ekropotin a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As experiment, I decided to try using proxmox VM with eGPU and usb bus bypassed to it, as my main PC for browsing and working on hobby projects.

It’s just 1 vCPU with 4 Gb ram, and you know what? It’s more than enough for these needs. I think hardware manufactures falsely convinced us that every professional needs beefy laptop to be productive.

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ivanjermakov 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Another benefit is low noise. Many consider fan noise under load to be the most important property of a workstation.

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nottorp 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's why I use a M2 (not even pro) Mac Mini as a terminal and remote into other boxes when needed.

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jasonwatkinspdx a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For just basic windows desktop stuff, a $200 NUC has been good enough for like 15 years now.

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PunchyHamster 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Slapping $300 worth of solar panels on your roof/balcony will probably get you ahead on power usage

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reactordev a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I went with a beelink for this purpose. Works great.

Keeps the desk nice and tidy while “the beasts” roar in a soundproofed closet.