I was reading another post and there was mention of a mini pc. This is something I’ve thought about before but still unsure of my limitations such as software or adding things like midi via usb or firewire. I see in amazon you can get them with windows installed because I was wondering how I can install software that I want. I will be reading of course but any insights on these by people who own them or know about them would be great.
This one is a good price it seems but I’ve only started looking.
I bought this one a year ago and has been ROCK SOLID!..i got it as a major upgrade from my tower desktop,the ease of placing it behind my monitor and outta the way and the future proofing in softwar,hardware upgradability.it was a NO BRAINER of a purchase for my needs… just an FYI…you will NOT have a CD/DVD drive with these mini pc’s so keep that in mind.
I also purchased the Beelink SER5 5560U about one month ago, to replace an 8 year old desktop.
Love how small and quiet it is. Comes with Windows 11 Pro.
This will be our day to day pc, (no gaming) and Plex Media Server.
Because of the low power consumption, I plan to leave it on all the time.
(Apparently chips ending in “U” are low power, those ending in “H” are high power.)
I also like that Beelink uses branded components. This unit has a Kingston SSD, and Crucial DDR memory.
You can upgrade easily by removing 4 screws.
What do you mean by limitations? These are pc’s, period, limited only by whatever active ports/outputs they may or may not have and whatever OS is installed. I have two: one very low power unit I use as a smarthome controller and another that is my wife’s primary pc. Both are fantastic, and my wife’s is functionally equivalent to my business Lenovo X1 (sans installed screen & keyboard, thunderbolt, etc.)
This is the unit I bought and set up for my wife: Amazon.com . She loves it! It is blazing fast, consumes little power, and is a breeze to set up. You just can’t beat a unit like this for under $300 ($289 right now after coupon), assuming you have the peripherals you need on hand (monitor, keyboard, etc.).
This is exactly the type of information I need. I have many wireless keyboards/mice etc and of course a monitor for it. I am wondering about audio as now I use a professional audio card and asio drivers. I will lose that for sure but have a mixer that will use usb as well as Midi. The drivers such as Asio4all just don’t have low latency. If it will let me at least play games, I will sort something out for my DAW. I do have another old pc. The one you linked to is $369 CDN.
If you want to use a Mini PC for Kodi, you can save a few bucks and buy one of the units that doesn’t come with an OS and install LibreELEC on it. The N100 processor seems to work well for an entertainment center. Install an SSD drive in it and download movies from your Kodi add-ons.
I got a Beelink EQ12 Mini PC that has 16G memory and a 500Gb SSD drive for around $150.
Thank you. I actually have not used kodi for years even though I started with XMBC way more than a decade ago on my pc. I found it took up so much space and when you added in the builds, there was not a lot of room left for anything else. If that massive memory hog has changed, I would consider looking at it again but honestly, with light weight apps like Stremio and Filmplus etc, I see little need for it. I actually have a dedicated laptop that I spoke about a few months ago running a free media server https://serviio.org/ that will stream to any DLNA device / TV including xplore that also supports it. I believe VLC also does. The mini would be used for the internet and hopefully running some games as my old Nvidea card can’t anymore.
Is GMKTec a reputable, trustworthy brand of mini pc? What are your thoughts towards mini pcs running as media servers? Do they overheat? Not made for the constant running?
Whoops…forgot the 2nd part to your question about media server. Waaaaaaay overkill. Yes it will work fine but way over powered to serve media. Look for an N100 or N200 that are much cheaper and will do the same thing and remember ddr5 blows away ddr4 so 16 gb ddr5 will be great and still not needed but very powerful. N100 boxes run on 6 watts of power which is also good for an always on device. or even a n300. good deal here
The Celeron processor always scares me off, but I guess a media PC is a little different. I don’t plan to transcode 4k, at least that isn’t my plan. The N200 is powerful enough to create and run the Plex Media Server?
Yes. I run my casaos, docker, emby, stremio, channelsDVR, xteve and a few other docker apps on a n97 server which is far less than the n200 and it handles all that with ease. I have 32gb ram and it just never needs it. This screen shot is while watching stremio…note the cpu and ram usage.
I’ve been using a Mac Mini since the first generation. Switched to it from a big Windows Tower. Runs every thing I throw at it. I know it’s not a Windows box. It is small. Though it be small it is mighty.
Am going to set it up as my main media server now and that will be its only function. I have a 3.5" server HDD (14TB) that I am going to put in a USB dock with fan (Dock)and attach that to this mini pc. Also, going to take advantage of the power savings, and using Wake on LAN, etc, that my old PC doesnt support. Excited to start setting it up this weekend and see how it does. Thanks for the help…I will report back.
