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Low Cost Mini PCs

xhrpost
21 replies
5h22m

I've been loving the recent attention to mini PCs here. I've had hobby projects put off for a while as I tried to find the best R-Pi clone, only to buy one and struggle just to get it to boot. Then I pick up a used mini PC on ebay for like $42 shipped, power cord and everything and even a 500gb SSD. Now I have a server running at home and am actually working on projects again, oddly for probably less than what a Pi clone costs after you buy enough accessories to use it.

roflmaostc
17 replies
4h8m

difference might be that a Raspberry Pi consumes < 10W.

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.

weweweoo
4 replies
2h9m

Here's examples of idle power consumption of second hand mini-pc's i've tested, running Ubuntu, measured from the wall:

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.

sangnoir
3 replies
1h58m

The RPi Zero 2 W consumes ~ 0.6W when idling, and costs $15 new, or in the $25-30 range with a case and USB power adapter.

paulmd
0 replies
11m

Pi 4 is the smallest thing that would be remotely comparable to even a 14nm-era atom NUC in terms of usability as a fileserver etc

antisthenes
0 replies
12m

The RPi zero 2 is nowhere near powerful enough to be used for multiple purposes as any of the above 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.

42lux
0 replies
1h45m

Talking about building a server with a Zero 2 W is a bit of a stretch. I have some running as airplay and Spotify connect clients + some environmental sensors but much more would be pushing it...

throwaway984393
2 replies
4h0m

Not only excess power draw, but excess heat, which then needs more power for the AC to cool the home

switchbak
0 replies
2h9m

I have a little Intel i5 behind me all year long, and I don't notice any effect on the temperature of this (small) room. 12 watts is not a lot of heat to be dumping.

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.

declan_roberts
0 replies
1h38m

This is exactly why I upgrade my old 2012 server. I was able to cut the power usage (and heat generation) by over 90%.

It makes a big difference in the summer, but I miss it during the winter.

vladvasiliu
1 replies
2h27m

As others have said, this needs to be qualified. My HP Elitedesk 800 G2 SFF qualifies as "old" I think, yet it draws 14-15W at idle, measured at the outlet.

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.

j45
0 replies
1h35m

I have owned gen 5/6/7/7 devices, Gen 8 delivers the idle power much more honestly and it can be measured quite easily.

In either case, USFF is an order of magnitude less energy than desktop so it's still a win most of the time.

cdaringe
1 replies
3h46m

Agreed. Related, disappointingly, the new pi5s don’t have much in the way of running in a lower power state. I gather it’s mainly the cpu, but my new pi5 runs hot doing a whole lot of nothing. Cooling solution is pretty much required. I am very content with perf, but it actually brings too much juice to the table for the tiny apps im running. Sure, another soc would be a better fit power wise, but the ecosystem keeps me locked in!

dkasper
0 replies
3h33m

I agree, might buy another pi 4 for my next project. The new chips are interesting though.

xhrpost
0 replies
3h32m

It's a fair point but as others have noted, these mini PCs can be very power efficient. I still need to hook up a meter to mine to see what the wattage is but I'm sure it's far below a typical desktop PC.

vel0city
0 replies
3h21m

My mini PC I use as a router with an N3710 CPU uses like 5W idle with a SATA SSD. It's a 6W TDP. Running full tilt is like 10W.

notpublic
0 replies
2h0m

Have a used HP Prodesk 600 G3 with 16GB RAM running idle around ~12W. Bought it last year and its been running solid so far.

auspiv
0 replies
3h36m

mini PCs are < 10W also.

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.

SparkyMcUnicorn
0 replies
3h41m

As noted in my other comment, my SFF computers with i7 CPUs idle around 12W. Roughly $20/year with my usage in a home server setup.

fud101
2 replies
3h21m

I've switched to a minipc as my main computer. I'll never go back. Went from a 16 core monster to whatever 4 cores this thing has and it's just as nice.

fossdd
1 replies
3h16m

I wonder why you switched and not use your 16-core PC? did it somehow broke or do you just like the benefits of a minipc?

bityard
0 replies
2h55m

Not who you are replying to, but likely: 1) heat 2) fan noise 3) power consumption.

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.

kyriakos
19 replies
6h14m

This is fantastic. Can you add a filter for location US/Europe/Asia?

mjcurl
13 replies
6h7m

Yes, should be easy. Would it work if it used the region's ebay marketplace to get results? The following could be added:

  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)

prmoustache
5 replies
5h56m

ideally you would add regional popular second hand websites too.

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.

transpute
4 replies
5h47m

What are some alternative EU sites?

prmoustache
1 replies
4h53m

leboncoin.fr in France, subito.it I believe in Italy, in Spain Wallapop.es although wallapop also exist in some of those euro countries, anibis.ch in Switzerland, I am not sure about the rest and I guess they don't have a public api so you would probably have to rely on web scrapping.

aarroyoc
0 replies
1h44m

+1 for Wallapop in Spain. There's also MilAnuncios, but Wallapop is what people say when they say they want to sell second-hand stuff

kyriakos
0 replies
5h11m

I don't think there's an EU-wide site for used items unfortunately. Each country has a couple of local sites.

JoachimSchipper
0 replies
4h33m

marktplaats.nl is the big "eBay-like" for the Netherlands.

kyriakos
0 replies
6h2m

Yeah that works too :)

inhumantsar
0 replies
5h56m

region can help but Item Location is the important one

exacube
0 replies
6h3m

yes that'd be great!

and if the price could somehow include the shipping rate to the country, that'd be awesome

beeboobaa3
0 replies
5h22m

ebay isn't widely used in the EU. Sure the sites exist, but they're just filled with ads, not by listings put up by consumers.

You'd need to support national alternatives, like marktplaats for NL

RobotToaster
0 replies
3h35m

Would be great to have a GB/UK version.

JohnHammersley
0 replies
2h22m

As others have said, a filter on item location would be ideal, but the region might also work. Specifically UK/GB for my use case :)

Thanks for putting the site together!

Daneel_
0 replies
3h32m

Yes please, this would be very helpful (I’m in Australia).

rkachowski
2 replies
6h7m

seconded, i've been looking for exactly this kind of machine in EU and this would be ideal.

mjcurl
1 replies
6h5m

which eBay marketplace do you use?

gerardpg
0 replies
5h40m

Spain.

prmoustache
0 replies
5h58m

I seconds that, without filters it is worthy of ending up on r/usdefaultism

nolok
0 replies
3h44m

Another approach for this if you're in europe (I do not know the market elsewhere) are the quality refurbished resellers (they buy bulk from companies upgrading, refurbish, sell with warranty).

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.

outime
18 replies
5h57m

This is neat, although I have a word of caution (even if it might be a bit obvious): it's possible to find good deals, but you should be aware of power usage. There are modern mini PCs, such as those with Intel N100 processors, that are very cheap and consume very few watts while being useful for many purposes. I personally bought a brand-new CHUWI LarkBox X, and it's been great. It cost around 100 EUR on a deal. If however power usage isn't an issue for you and you don't care about other misc stuff (noise levels etc) then you can disregard this.

bizzleDawg
9 replies
5h46m

Does anyone have any useful rules-of-thumb or heuristics for balancing this trade off of upfront cost v.s. power cost? e.g. how much does an N100 cost to run for a year v.s. say a i5-2400s (the CPU for the first row on the linked site)?

mjcurl
4 replies
5h33m

I tried to find this out myself. All I could find easily was the TDP of different processors. But I'm not sure if it's a good measure of how much power it will use.

tfryman
0 replies
4h58m

I went down this rabbit hole earlier this year. Best I came up with was to calculate the TDP at max for the whole year. Full TDP is unrealistic, but it gets us a worst-case "max running cost" . Energy for me is roughly $0.12/kWh, so the yearly max running cost for a 35W TDP is $36.79, 65W is $68.33, and the 95W would be $99.86.

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.

teamonkey
0 replies
4h22m

The only real way of knowing is to measure it. If you already have a system in place an energy monitoring smart plug can help you calculate the current running costs and help estimate the savings of using a lower-power machine.

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.

bizzleDawg
0 replies
5h11m

Yeah, exactly! I suppose that it's workload dependent to a great extent

bee_rider
0 replies
3h28m

No, sadly the TDP tells us every little about the idle power cost, which might be where you spend most of your time depending on the workload.

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.

mpol
1 replies
5h34m

I used to calculate costs of lightbulbs: 1 Watt running the whole year, at 0,28 eurocent/kWh costs 1 Euro per year. Until someone corrected me and it turned out that every 1 Watt 24/7 will be 2 Euro per year.

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).

gizmo
0 replies
5h19m

Real world energy use is nothing like what you see on spec sheets. And not just because manufacturers differ in how they compute TPD. And TPD is also not a good indicator for energy use at (near) idle. With underclocking/volting in the BIOS you can get a beefier CPU to outperform smaller CPUs per watt. Because CPUs get really inefficient as they use more power undervolted or capped high TPD chips might be much more power efficient in the real world than their low TPD counterparts.

kstenerud
0 replies
4h38m

My NUC13 with i3 has a nominal 15w TDP, but while idling on a KDE desktop with a browser open to reuters (1 tab) it hovers around 3 - 4w (5% CPU usage). If there's REALLY nothing going on (no desktop even) it's 1.0 - 1.3w (1% CPU usage).

Edit: I should note that there's no fan drawing power because I put it in an Akasa passively cooled case.

boredpudding
0 replies
5h15m

If a Kwh of power costs $ 0,30, then 1 watt = $ 2,63 a year. (0.001 kwh * 24 hours * 365 days * $ 0,30).

So, it goes quite quickly. Savings of 20 watt save you $ 52 a year.

DCKing
1 replies
4h14m

I wouldn't automatically prefer any random N100 mini PC over a nice second hand enterprise mini PC.

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/

switchbak
0 replies
2h8m

One can also do things like undervolting to reduce the power draw even more. Modern BIOSs can give a lot of freedom for underclocking/volting, not just pushing things to consume more power.

mkesper
0 replies
5h19m

Reusing these boxes instead of having them thrown away and getting a new one built is better for the environment, though.

mjcurl
0 replies
5h50m

Agreed, an N100 mini PC can be a great deal. They also tend to be smaller. I added a separate Intel filter that includes a lot of N100s. But it might be better to buy those new, not used.

mdasen
0 replies
3h26m

Power consumption is definitely a big deal. I replaced an old PC that I'd been using as an always-on device with a tiny PC (i7-8700T) and it saved a ton of power. Given that power rates in New England are around $0.30/kWh, saving 50 watts means saving $128/year. I went from using around 60 watts to 10 watts at idle (and going from 110 watts under load to 50 watts).

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.

kjs3
0 replies
17m

The N100s are everywhere, but I think the N305 with 8 E-cores is the bomb for a home server at slightly more power consumption.

josefresco
0 replies
5h49m

For those wondering (like me) the normal price for the CHUWI LarkBox X is about $190.

SparkyMcUnicorn
0 replies
4h3m

Power usage on these mini pcs is actually pretty decent.

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.

mydriasis
10 replies
5h34m

For reference, I thought I'd outline the baby PCs I use, since we're chatting about baby PCs. Maybe someone will find this useful. I use thinkcentre M92p SFFs for easy server boxes. Some things I like: - Bountiful - Cheap -- they can be had for under $100 each - Pretty powerful considering what you're paying, too! - Use common desktop parts for the most part - Accepts low-profile PCIe equipment ( network cards for ethernet, wifi; GPUs ) - Repair & replacement parts are CHEAP

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...!

haunter
6 replies
5h26m

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

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)

bitmasher9
3 replies
5h11m

I’ve bought 3 used Dells, mostly Optiplexes, over the decades for dedicated hardware for Linux based projects. They always seem like a good deal, and I surprisingly never have problems with them. These are fleet computers that get gently used during business hours that have IT departments that replace computers on a time schedule. Outside of one HDD that didn’t last a year of heavy file traffic I haven’t had really good luck with these machines.

haunter
2 replies
5h8m

These are fleet computers that get gently used during business hours that have IT departments that replace computers on a time schedule

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.

ilikepi
1 replies
2h10m

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.

haunter
0 replies
1h22m

Thanks that's helpful. I still have two with warranty until January so I might try my luck with Dell

vladvasiliu
0 replies
4h0m

Same experience as you with HP Elitedesks. At work we used to use those for people doing regular office things. I have a few G2s (i5-6500) and they work flawlessly with Linux, including using my own secureboot keys.

mydriasis
0 replies
3h29m

It was so bizarre. I'd get a "No Operating System Found" message, and had to go toy with the UEFI config. Eek!

rjst01
2 replies
4h50m

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

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.

mydriasis
1 replies
3h29m

Ooo that's _gotta_ be what it is. Just the most bizarre UEFI issues. I luckily found an incantation that works in a pretty general way for M92ps, but had I not I'd have some bricks laying around.

Those M900s look REALLY nice!

swills
0 replies
1h21m

I have some M910q that I am very happy with. UEFI is well supported, I was able to upgrade them to 32gb of RAM, i7 7700t and both a 512gb SSD and NVMe for mirrored storage. Highly recommended. Sure, it would be nice to get something newer than 7th gen, but it's still highly capable, small, quiet and fairly low power usage.

gboone
7 replies
6h4m

Would be nice if links opened a new tab. Good job.

mjcurl
6 replies
6h1m

Thanks! I think it's a better practice to not open links in a new tab i.e users should have control over their experience. But it can be subjective.

josefresco
1 replies
5h46m

Think about it this way: Will the user "lose their place" on your page if they click a link and go back? Will the user lose any filtering or search options? If the answer is yes to either, open in a new tab. I personally make this determination all the time, especially on social media after I've scrolled a lot and don't want my "progress" to be lost.

mjcurl
0 replies
5h16m

That makes sense to me, thank you. I have changed links to open in a new tab.

achow
1 replies
5h55m

Opening in a new tab has become some kind of standard UX. Regardless of that, for this kind of site it would be very useful for product spec comparison.

Scoundreller
0 replies
5h50m

I’m a Ctrl-click kinda guy for these scenarios.

samstave
0 replies
5h49m

Always open in new tab. Ill keep track of the 437 I have open in 7 different FF windows, and the couple Edge tabs to hide cookies ThankYouVeryMuch

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)

nfriedly
0 replies
5h9m

I think not forcing links to open in a new tab is the right call.

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.

windexh8er
6 replies
2h55m

This is great! The one thing I'd say is that the market is rife with non-mainstream brands. As an example "Beelink" [0] and "Minisforum" [1] are very commonly referred to and have a lot of great models, but they're not well represented here and often times offer better value depending on what the buyer is looking for. My recommendation would be to expand the vendors into the popular non-mainstream brands. Easy ask, but harder to execute on your side - so I get it.

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/

tonymet
3 replies
1h38m

I took a risk on a Beelink and so far it's been the best piece of hardware I've owned. Affordable, quiet, reliable, excellent performance, versatile for development & light gaming.

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.

sam2426679
0 replies
41m

Agreed! Using a beelink as an htpc, and its been phenomenal.

rfoo
0 replies
1h22m

They are simply not competent enough to install spam-ware.

biomcgary
0 replies
23m

The daily driver I am using to write this post is a Beelink with Linux installed. Very happy with it. Switched out the original 128GB SSD with a 1TB SSD. FFMPEG and light gaming run fine. My only minor regret is not starting with more memory, but I could probably switch that if I was motivated enough.

squarefoot
0 replies
35m

The one thing I'd say is that the market is rife with non-mainstream brands.

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.

kjs3
0 replies
12m

I have a Protecli 4-port firewall. It's the second one I've bought for this. It's really been excellent from a cost/performance standpoint.

molticrystal
5 replies
5h50m

It would be awesome if you included shipping in the total price(or at least for certain countries). I know bookfinder does that, as some people add an extra $100 to several hundred dollars to the price which skews the results.

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.

------

I'm not seeing many chromeboxes in the results so maybe they are being filtered out?

mjcurl
2 replies
5h18m

Thank you, I have fixed the "OS" filter to be must include.

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?

throwup238
0 replies
4h20m

Maybe just take an average of shipping costs to a few locations (West coast Us, East coast US, Europe) and filter out anything where the shipping cost is greater than the cost of the product itself.

Or just get a shipping estimate to the same city as the seller is in.

Qerub
0 replies
2m

Adding product location would be great! As a resident of the European Union I'm unlikely to order one of these mini PCs from the USA due to import taxes and additional shipping costs.

chazeon
1 replies
4h14m

I think shipping costs varies wrt where you live.

jacky_tuning
0 replies
4h9m

A $38 lenovo cost me $633.90 with the shipping costs, from US to Switzerland i guess :D

samstave
2 replies
5h54m

That one you got is stunning value!

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.

xhrpost
0 replies
5h16m

Stunning value indeed, they got more RAM than my M3 I use for work. Edit: oh wait there are drop downs to change the specs, subject is max specs but initial price is the min specs. Still good though

lastofthemojito
0 replies
3h5m

It's a shame that people need to use this template to design these sorts of eBay search sites though. Seems like it'd be easy enough for eBay to create a tabular view where one could choose fields applicable to their search - the same table that works for mini PCs could work for smartphones or comic books or collectable coins or whatever.

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.

roshansingh
0 replies
4h7m

The one you got is so cool. Can you leave this running 24x7 and is it noisy?

sulandor
3 replies
5h4m

YES!!!! Usable ebay interface - very nice!

would be great to have a filter for country of origin/shipping

InMice
2 replies
4h49m

Makes you think about how most website are just junky interfaces atop relatively simple tables of data.

sulandor
0 replies
4h7m

"value added and removed here"

mjcurl
0 replies
4h47m

Oh, how I wish I had better access to the eBay data .. currently they limit you to 5k requests per day.

shmoogy
3 replies
6h1m

Being able to filter by CPU (and model i.e. optiplex 3010 or whatever) would be useful here. I'm looking for a sff that has 13th gen intel cpu, supports 64gb ram as an example.

someone13
0 replies
5h7m

It’d also be neat if there was a way to sort by the passmark CPU benchmark score:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/

roger_
0 replies
5h39m

Came to suggest the same thing.

I’d love to be able to filter by CPU and generation.

Maybe using an LLM could help with the parsing?

mjcurl
0 replies
5h58m

Since there's hundreds/thousands of cpus and models, how about a keyword filter field?

jasongill
3 replies
5h59m

Would it be possible to add a column with some kind of CPU score - for those of us who don't keep up on PC CPU advancements, it's hard to tell if an i3 5th gen is faster or slower than an i5 3rd gen

mjcurl
2 replies
5h55m

I did plan this, but upon getting the data, found it too difficult for the initial version. There's no standard for CPU (or most fields actually), so sellers write it in a variety of ways. But it could be done, after I compile a dataset of cpu > benchmarks.

nfriedly
1 replies
5h15m

I like passmark / cpubenchmark.net to get a good ballpark idea of CPU performance, because it covers a wide range of CPUs, and because it has both single-core and multi-core scores.

mjcurl
0 replies
5h2m

I prefer that too. Now to get data for all the listed CPUs!

eterps
3 replies
4h30m

I would love to see something like this but being able to sort on price/performance ratio (f.e. based on a CPU performance index in comparison to the price).

jll29
0 replies
3h14m

...and MIPS/Watt!

calvinmorrison
0 replies
4h19m

seconded. I cant keep up with all the variants on intels naming scheme.

buescher
0 replies
4h12m

What I'd really like to see is the curve! There's usually two "sweet spots", right? The minimum you should spend, and what you should expect at that point, and the point of diminishing returns, and what you should expect there.

transpute
2 replies
6h11m

Useful index!

Suggestions:

  1. encode search filters in URL, for sharing/bookmark
  2. Add "Intel vPro" as a filter.

mjcurl
1 replies
4h58m

Good call, I'll encode the state in the URL.

Did not come across a lot of Intel VPros in my searches. What's the use case for them?

transpute
0 replies
48m

Many of the Dell/HP mini PCs with Intel i5 or higher are vPro, because they were used in corporate environments, but it looks like this is rarely part of the eBay item description. Thanks for checking.

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.

pjc50
2 replies
4h54m

Site is currently timing out. If it's actually static, stick it behind free Cloudflare. But still - nice idea, thanks for the Show HN.

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.

mjcurl
1 replies
4h50m

Actually I did stick it behind Cloudflare..not sure why it would time out, since it's just an html page.

pjc50
0 replies
4h7m

Huh, turns out to be a problem at my end, probably due to corporate firewall.

davidjade
2 replies
4h54m

Cool. It would be great to be able to filter Intel vs AMD. Or perhaps even by processor family.

mjcurl
1 replies
4h47m

Sure, how about a keyword filter instead? That way you can filter by whatever instead of big filter lists cluttering the UI.

davidjade
0 replies
4h28m

That would be good. Easy enough to filter Intel vs AMD that way as well as a particular CPU.

amelius
2 replies
5h17m

I would like to add power usage, noise levels, PCIe slots but that data is hard to find.

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.

mjcurl
1 replies
5h14m

Reviews aren't common due to many listings having 1 item in stock.

What would the requirements for your decoding be?

amelius
0 replies
4h30m

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.

agg23
2 replies
4h59m

This is really nice, and I just did this analysis myself.

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).

mjcurl
1 replies
4h55m

eBay uses a 'best match' sort on the results, perhaps that's why it was missed. What did you search for when you found this one?

agg23
0 replies
4h10m

I believe I looked up common machines with good prices, then searched for those individually, which obviously isn't going to work very well for this tool.

yegle
1 replies
3h27m

It would be great if the results can be filtered by the CPU generation. I'm specifically interested in replacing my 8th Gen mini PC and won't want to buy anything older than 8th Gen.

ilikepi
0 replies
2h39m

Seconded. You can do this on eBay by choosing specific CPU models, but it would be really helpful to filter more broadly. "Intel 8th gen" for sure, but it could also be useful to be able to combine that with, say, "Intel -T series" or "Intel i5".

wan888888
1 replies
5h46m

The joy of living in Australia: $38.00 + $710.23 shipping

thelastgallon
1 replies
4h45m

An option to filter by ECC RAM would be super helpful.

mjcurl
0 replies
4h43m

I wanted to add this, but that data is almost never entered by sellers.

styfle
1 replies
1h24m

I haven’t bought a Windows PC in 10 years so I thought it was time to upgrade the old tower I had in the closet.

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.

art-not
0 replies
1h3m

refund/chargeback?

shortformblog
1 replies
2h56m

Given how dominant AMD-based options are from a new machine standpoint (you can get a pretty good 5000-series U-grade processor for less than $250 on Amazon) I’m kind of surprised by the lack of AMD options on the list. This is a useful idea though, but I wonder if the lack of AMD may be hinting at some variable that hasn’t been considered?

supertrope
0 replies
17m

Most used PCs for sale started off as business machines. They usually buy from the big brands that can provide enterprise warranty support and volume discounts. AMD released Ryzen in 2017. Add up the time for AMD to convince Dell/HP/Lenovo to design, qualify, and release an AMD model. Add the time for significant uptake into the market. Finally add three years for the AMD PCs to get retired from office use.

pdimitar
1 replies
4h43m

Instant bookmark, thank you!

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.

mjcurl
0 replies
4h41m

Another person mentioned this, so I will add this as soon as I can.

overcast
1 replies
5h40m

Been using a Beelink SER6 Mini PC, AMD Ryzen 5 6600H, 16GB DDR and 500GB NVME for the last year or so with PopOS as my daily driver and loving it. With a portable monitor makes remote work great for $351 and $100 for the monitor!

InMice
0 replies
4h52m

I have a beelink, have had no problems except the original SSD in mine failed suddenly in <1 year. I'd recommend anyone getting a beelink to swap out their SSD with a crucial, kingston, samsung brand etc before putting the pc to use.

nashashmi
1 replies
5h5m

I have been looking into mini pcs. The niche I want is a USB c powered hand sized pc. I have only found two on Amazon so far, one has a small screen and another close to the size of a small dock. But they are both underpowered with Celeron processors.

I just need something that i can take from one desk to another that carry docking stations.

universa1
0 replies
20m

I wanted to recommend Minisforum, as I have a um560, that is powered through usb-c. But that is not available anymore... So those kind of machines exist...

You could get a frame.work laptop in an external case, slightly larger than hand-sized, though.

mdrzn
1 replies
6h7m

Add a location filter otherwise it's completely useless from outside USA. I clicked on a $30 Ebay link and the shipping price is US $542.06 UPS Worldwide Saver

mjcurl
0 replies
6h4m

True, thought of this as a test run. Other locations should be added soon.

martin_a
1 replies
3h13m

Are those boxes powerful enough and a sensible solution to get a little NAS up and running?

bityard
0 replies
3h6m

Depends on what "a little NAS" means to you, and what interfaces you need. But in general, most any PC made in the last 20 years would work for as simple and small storage server.

indigodaddy
1 replies
5h14m

The eBay sellers who do the customization/price thing makes some of your price results misleading/unreliable as the price will be more on those than the base you have listed.

mjcurl
0 replies
5h12m

I found that to happen sometimes, so I marked customizable listings. But I think I was able to parse most of them to show the specs for the selected variation, not the parent or the title.

iforgotpassword
1 replies
5h47m

Maybe consider adding Fujitsu as a manufacturer. At least here in Europe they're fairly common in business environments so get tossed on ebay quite frequently. I've had very good experience with their stuff over the past decade.

weweweoo
0 replies
2h5m

Definitely do that. Old Fujitsu thin clients make awesome DIY routers.

heraldgeezer
1 replies
4h54m

I love it. But its been a bit of a "secret" that office PCs that are 3 years old are still very very good. I hope tech bros dont ruin this. Also lol at power consumption voes.

tracker1
0 replies
2h52m

There are some refurbers that will take office PCs and put a modern-ish GPU, upgrade the PSU etc. That said, Mini PCs don't offer PCIe expansion most of the time, so a GPU upgrade isn't an option. Less appealing compared to new options.

gizmo
1 replies
5h28m

That's very cool. I ultimately concluded that those mystery brand Chinese fanless mini pcs from Amazon (essentially laptop hardware in a tiny enclosure) offer a better deal. Minimal power usage, fast networking, real USB-C, and NVMe drive support. Old hardware is bulky, makes noise, and outputs too much heat. Even the truly tiny mini pcs -- the kind that fit in your back pocket -- are fast enough for a NAS or TV media player.

kyriakos
0 replies
5h10m

They are usually a lot more expensive because they come with newer CPUs.

eternauta3k
1 replies
4h53m

Are you the same guy from https://diskprices.com ? Awesome tools! Would be nice to have ebay.de as well.

mjcurl
0 replies
4h49m

No, just was inspired by diskprices, thought it's great UX. I will be adding more marketplaces, .de included.

ensignavenger
1 replies
2h32m

This is great, but the prices aren't accurate for the products listed. As an example, I filtered by the cheapest 64GB model, clicked on the link, and found that to actually get the 64GB it was multiple times the cost listed on the site. This was because if ebay's "variant" option, which is often misused by vendors.

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?

inversetelecine
0 replies
1h13m

Also in my quick glance, it didn't account for shipping costs either.

drcongo
1 replies
6h14m

A CPU arch filter would be useful (I've been on the lookout for an ARM based one), as would the ability to choose a different eBay region (I'm in the UK). Nice work though!

darkstar_16
1 replies
4h56m

the data needs a bit of a cleanup. I see N100 showing up with "Intel 100", Intel Alder Lake N100" and just "3.4 GHz" in various places.

mjcurl
0 replies
4h53m

Is this for the CPU column? That's actually one I spent the least time on, since there was so much variation with how sellers entered processors. I'll take a look at it, thanks.

amelius
1 replies
5h21m

Is it possible to run Linux on all of them (so remove existing Windows)?

If not, maybe add a checkbox for it.

bityard
0 replies
2h37m

Linux will run on basically any x86 box.

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.

detritus
0 replies
2h4m

Thanks for this! I've been meaning to get back into games but only keep a laptop at home and I had no idea that I could make a machine that could capably serve my needs for <£300 (32Gb Win10 i7 6700 with 256gb SSD (!), OK 2nd hand GPU) I spent my younger years always having The Best Machine I CoUlD afFord, but fifteen years later I just want something 'good enough' and it's nice to know I needn't spend over a grand to do so.

Thanks again!

SoftTalker
1 replies
3h40m

A bit meta but nice job on the site design. Dense but very readable, filter controls are clear and with a minimum of unnecessary decoration. I wish more people still designed websites like this. Reminds me a bit of McMaster-Carr.

jd3
0 replies
18m

Had the same initial thought; the site design is simple and straightforward, but info dense and easy to navigate, similar to craigslist.

wscott
0 replies
4h19m

On the website itself, "OS" "Included" and "Not Included" is strange. I don't see that I need "Not Included", unchecking "Included" should show you everything but instead it shows you nothing. I don't see the value of "no os included" verses a copy of Windows that I will overwrite.

So I would just have an "OS Included?" checkbox.

winrid
0 replies
2h24m

I've always wanted to do something like this but for laptops too, and allow sorting by passmark score to find the best values.

whywhywhywhy
0 replies
4h20m

You should have a filter for processor, feel the difference between ones like N100 and usual low end Intel processors is huge. Might be cool to list them with benchmarks too for people who don’t want to do research.

whiterock
0 replies
5h36m

Could you add Geekbench scores? I‘d love that :)

whall6
0 replies
1h31m

+ $45 shipping :/

voidUpdate
0 replies
6h0m

oooo, this is useful! It's a pain trying to search for these kinds of things manually, and it would be nice to get a whole stack of the kind of lenovo I have haha. Just need the UK region support :P

tracker1
0 replies
3h9m

A lot of these things are pretty great for general use, home server, game emulation and htpc duties. From the N100 at the relatively inexpensive, to the Ryzen 8000 series at the mid-range with top tier cpu capabilities and decent igpu to the relatively high end monsters.

Except for gaming duties, if someone wants a desktop experience, monitor, kb, mouse then mini pcs are awesome.

throwaway4220
0 replies
1h22m

I’m fascinated that a static site generator makes this! Is this a new concept?

steeleyespan
0 replies
5h1m

Would have loved to see this site a few months back. I ended up buying Dell optiplex refurbs thinking they were minis, but they were big lol.

Edit: Nevermind - mine are the same size as many of the listings here with DVD drives. I was thinking of micros.

squarefoot
0 replies
44m

I still didn't move my main PC to a mini one because it's not that old and I don't feel like relegating it under a table, but migrating everything else to mini PCs (music, servers, firewalls, media players, ...) was the best choice ever; even the FreeBSD based NAS runs wonderfully on one of these small boxes. Unless one needs specific interfacing capabilities (GPIOs for instance) or serious performance which would need optimized airflow that only a bigger case could allow, the Mini PC form factor wins almost everywhere.

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.

smashah
0 replies
5h48m

Amazing! A few more filters (e.g location) and this would be an amazing tool for buying locally. bookmarked!

skadamat
0 replies
4h42m

I love how simple this site is. It's fast, no navigation, etc. Kudos!

simplecto
0 replies
5h0m

Websites like this talk to my heart. Strong early 2000s vibes of nerds just putting it out there.

Love this, thank you!

rmac
0 replies
1h43m

can we get a highcostminipcs plz

riledhel
0 replies
5h14m

I've recently bought this Intel N100 mini pc https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005006727722225.html and it's amazing. It even came with win11 preinstalled, an unexpected surprise for me. 16G RAM and 512G SSD for 100 euros, great deal.

renewiltord
0 replies
3h56m

This is cool. I frequently have a need for this. I also would love if there were a site for low power PCs.

preciz
0 replies
5h17m

Probably GMKtec is cheaper and better. I own one. https://www.gmktec.com

phkahler
0 replies
5h16m

I really want a new motherboard form factor that gets rid of the graphics card slot and assumes integrated graphics. It should also aim to reduce the height of the back panel a little bit. Maybe allow 4 DIMM slots (ECC preferred).

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.

otterpro
0 replies
1h53m

I'm waiting for next year, when the prices for old (intel 6th gen and below) mini-pc are expected to plummet, due to Windows 10 becoming obsolete. It would be sad to see them becoming e-waste, but hopefully some of us will grab them as they make great linux-based home servers.

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).

ornornor
0 replies
2h48m

Pretty neat! Any plans to make it work for people not living in the US too?

mikeocool
0 replies
1h13m

This is great —- my world has mostly been Mac laptops and cloud servers for the last 15 years, and recently decided I wanted a physical server in my office to use as a dev box.

I ended picking up an 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.

mech422
0 replies
5h13m

Gotta throw in a mention of my fav: Odroid H2/3/4(1) $125ish for an SBC with Intel N/J series CPU, DDR4/DDR5, up to 32G RAM, SATA, Dual Ethernet etc. I have the old H2+ series and LOVE them :-)

1: https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h4/

layer8
0 replies
4h16m

This is only of limited usefulness if you want to buy a new mini PC (rather than specifically a used unit from eBay). For example, many current fanless models are not listed. Just searching for “fanless mini pc” on Amazon.com gives many more (and some cheaper) results.

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.

kylecazar
0 replies
5h48m

I had largely written off eBay some years ago after some bad experiences -- but this tool just showed me some pretty insane deals on custom PC builds over there.. Neat.

jll29
0 replies
3h10m

I like your prototype, and people are already giving fantastic hints to make this even better; information about the geographic location of the offer would be my priority (EU).

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.

j45
0 replies
1h36m

This is a great idea. I ahve a similar set of searches on eBay for when I was buying these things.

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.

j0d1
0 replies
5h47m

This is really neat! I would love to see something similar for laptops. I bought a used Lenovo T80s (8th generation i5 CPU / 8GB of RAM / 256GB SSD) for 150$cad on eBay to work on my product (web app) and it is working flawlessly with Debian.

htk
0 replies
3h2m

I had a laptop running Windows for 12 years as my home server, hidden in a closet. It ran a couple of c# apps as a service and was an ftp server as well. Last month I decided to buy a raspberry pi (4B 2GB) to scratch multiple itches (arm processor, linux, low power consumption) and it replaced the server without a hitch, and better than I thought!

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.

haunter
0 replies
5h11m

You can probably find better deals from PC shops selling refurbuished enterprise PCs (Lenovo, Dell, HP)

guelermus
0 replies
3h50m

Nice. Could you please add also the postal costs to the sort? My very first trial showed me a 38$ PC with 500$ postal cost. I'm located in Europe, but still ???

gkfasdfasdf
0 replies
3h12m

Very nice! Would be nice to filter by NVMe as well. Also, one of the listings didn't come with a power adapter which was some custom lenovo thing. Finally, you totally should include your affiliate link.

ethanpil
0 replies
3h48m

This is wonderful i'll be using this a lot. Would be great to see a filter for Tiny vs Mini as well as CPU. AMD/Intel and i3 i7 i9, etc, maybe even generation, etc

eskibars
0 replies
5h35m

This is awesome. I used to build a lot of stuff with various single-board computers (Raspberry Pis, etc) but realized I could get way more performance and expandability with these mini PCs if the form factor didn't require it.

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

distant_travelr
0 replies
4h8m

Dude, why are the filters not url encoded??? This makes sharing a specific config to my mates so annoying

dbs
0 replies
2h3m

Neat. Can you add a filter for international buyers? Non-us

ck2
0 replies
3h28m

Are old capacitors still a problem on modern PC motherboards?

A decade ago they would only last a decade which would make some of these boxes near EOL

chazeon
0 replies
4h19m

Core count is something I would add to the table. These mini PC are good for hobbyists, they are cheaper, stable, faster and easier to maintain than Arm SBCs I have get four of them since pandemic. I can’t wait to see what happen when hyperscaler retire their A100s/H100s.

catchmeifyoucan
0 replies
2h3m

This looks great! I love the Cragislist like UI for this!

butz
0 replies
23m

It would be very helpful to know which PCs support power over USB-C and video, e.g. I can connect it to display with single cable.

bschmidt1
0 replies
3h14m

I've been using a $35 rpi4 for years, it's been a significantly better experience and cost ($0 after initial purchase) than any abstracted PaaS/IaaS I ever tried, and performance is significantly better than the free or hobby tiers. With no need for regional deploys or to have devs contributing from all over, there's not a huge need for cloud. Also kinda nice knowing all my customer data and other PI is at my house instead of at Google's or Amazon's house. Remember when Twitter and GitHub were storing passwords in plain text for years? So yeah... the peace of mind of knowing a 22 y/o at their first job is not making security decisions with my data and infra! Let alone the fact these companies sell your data including your IP - you agree to it in their terms.

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.

breakds
0 replies
5h10m

I am currently using a Beelink SER8, a very decent powerful mini PC for its price. It is also the most quiet mini PC I have used.

botro
0 replies
4h14m

I have found that laptops with cracked or scrached screens offer a much better value in terms of newer hardware. The battery acts as a built in UPS.

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...

bluepuma77
0 replies
3h53m

It would be great if it would support other eBay sites than just .com, not everyone is in the US :)

blueferret
0 replies
2h47m

What a great idea! I love checking DiskPrices; the structure does lend well to mini-PCs (another interest of mine). Bookmarking this for my next shouldn't-grab-this-but-price-is-too-good impulse buy.

bloqs
0 replies
4h40m

Cant recommend anything based on intel N100 enough. Power draw is about 13w but absolutely excellent performance. Bought several "Firebat" ones from AliExpress

bloomingeek
0 replies
1h29m

I wonder if this is kind of a semi-panic selling because of Windows 10 supposedly going away next October 2025? (Except MS holding us hostage for a yearly fee!)

Fantastic gathering of used PC's, but buyer beware, there are a lot of options that are worth studying before purchasing.

bityard
0 replies
2h44m

I'm guessing this was inspired by https://labgopher.com?

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.

bflesch
0 replies
3h47m

now do the same for europe with € prices...

baggachipz
0 replies
4h24m

Very cool. It would be helpful to allow search on processor architecture and power draw as well.

bArray
0 replies
5h23m

For UK shoppers looking for a cheap laptop, the Dell Latitude E7240 is a solid machine [1]. For about £50-£60 delivered you can get a 12.5" machine with a ~4th gen i5, 4-8GB of RAM and an SSD. It's great for Teams/Zoom and the keyboard is very nice to type on.

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...

atlgator
0 replies
2h31m

A filter on socket/gen would be useful. Otherwise, it's a great tool! Thanks for sharing.

atentaten
0 replies
3h39m

This is great. I wish there were something similar to find hardware to run AI models locally.

Tepix
0 replies
4h32m

Very cool. Can you add support for eBay Germany (ebay.de)?

RobotToaster
0 replies
3h41m

data on ECC ram support would be helpful, since it's needed for ZFS.

NelsonMinar
0 replies
3h30m

Neat! I'd love a column for external disk I/O type. I've been trying to build a NAS on a new N100 miniPC but am foiled by the fact that the devices all only have USB ports for I/O. And USB is not reliable enough to run ZFS with a heavy load (kernel errors). I'd love to have something with eSATA or some sort of PCI option.

FloatArtifact
0 replies
4h29m

sorting based on the processors, release date, or by performance single slash multi-core would be interesting.

DownrightNifty
0 replies
4h25m

This is super cool! Now if only my ISP would give me a static IP address so I could expose port 51820 on one of these things and life would be perfect.