The price seems pretty good. I don’t really know much about mini PCs. Do you think there is a better alternative?

Update: ok, not price efficient. Noted 👍

  • @just_another_person
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    820 days ago

    I’m not saying idle power is unimportant. I’m saying the M-Class chips can’t ever go idle with a minimal set of features NOT being engaged, because they’re going to be more engaged in general vs other chips that can run truly headless. macOS doesn’t allow for that.

    • @[email protected]
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      620 days ago

      Yup. My old 1st gen Ryzen desktop system isn’t particularly power efficient, but it idles <50W (I think closer to 25W, but I haven’t measured for a while). And that’s a desktop class chip from 7 years ago with two HDDs and a discrete GPU and PCIe wifi card, so it’s not winning any awards for efficiency. Even at that, it’s barely a blip on my power bill.

      An AMD or Intel laptop-class chip should be able to get to 10W or so idle, and not spike too much with basic tasks. And those can be had for $200-300, less if you’re okay with older chips. Run Linux headless and it’ll likely stay below 15W at the wall most of the time.

      • @just_another_person
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        420 days ago

        Pretty much exact. Lots of reviews to back that up without me spouting about it.