BARE BONES DESKTOPS MOD
BARE BONES DESKTOPS PC

At peak can go to 150W, which would be similar to a modern CPU but has only 1/10 of its processing power.

BARE BONES DESKTOPS PC

My (very) old desktop PC draws about 70W idle.

The idle power consumption is usually what makes the biggest difference in power efficiency when you have something running 24/7, unless it's constantly under heavy load. So even if it draws twice the power under heavy load, it does it only for a third of the time, so in reality it's actually more power efficient than the NUC when under heavy load. So, for the same task the desktop will take a third of the time to complete it. In the CPU benchmarks I ran, that desktop CPU was about 3x faster than my NUC. My NUC (i5-8259U) can go over 60W if I push the CPU to 100%. That's just temporary so not a big problem. The more processing capacity a CPU has the more power it will draw. It's not going to be 5-10W like my NUC, but 20W not that bad.Ī bit over 100W if the CPU is pushed to 100%. I need to do more research but I think it's possible to get a similar one that consumes under 20W idle. Idle it consumes about 25W from the wall. I'm not very happy with this NUC and I want to replace it, but mini-pc prices now are so high (and I also no longer need my PC to be small and easily transportable) that I'm considering going for a desktop mATX or m-ITX build.Ī company for which I do some work recently acquired a new desktop PC, mATX sized motherboard and i5-11400 CPU for about 400€ (including RAM and disk). A few months later, the same model was selling for nearly 300 €. I bought a NUC (8th gen i5-8259U) barebone (ram/disk not included) nearly two years ago for just a bit over 200 € on Amazon (new unit, not refurbished). But it seems that mini-pc prices have skyrocketed in the last couple of years. The 5500U laptop you are looking at might suit your needs and that is plenty fine. If you look at some Ryzen 5300U laptops and some Intel 8th gen laptops and are confused why they are the same cost then you are seeing laptops have their expensive products too. The worst are the refurbished laptops that do not say they are refurbished. Some 5500U laptops are also made super cheap intended to be unrepairable and to breakdown quickly. * Cheap LCD screens, keyboards, batteries, speakers in general are not really expensive. * produced in smaller quantity than the laptop you are looking at * made to be more compact with higher quality components than the laptop you are looking at * out of production in place of next gen.

It is major reason why itx motherboards are often more expensive than ATX motherboards and a sporty coup is more expensive than your average suv even though they have the same engine. ResourcesĪs counter intuitive as it is to think about: smaller but the same functionality is more expensive.

BARE BONES DESKTOPS MOD

If you are uncertain, contact the mod team. Sharing mITX boards may be OK in some cases if they are particularly interesting for some reason. Please refrain from posting complete mITX builds here, they have a dedicated subreddit ( r/sffpc). Keep it in mind a small form factor PC isn't considered a mini PC. Typically they should also be able to directly drive a display, but headless devices may still be relevant as servers, controllers, etc. Note that we don't have a strict definition of 'mini PC', but a good rule of thumb is something that: A subreddit for everything related to PC-on-a-stick devices and other small single-board computers (e.g.

Bare bones desktops