Geekbuying.com[geekbuying.com] has GMK M2 Mini PC 11th Generation Intel Core i7-11390H, 16GB DDR4 1TB SSD on sale for $339 - $40 w/ coupon code NNN0718DS = $299. Shipping is free.
I've been considering mini pc's for nas' too. Here's what I've found:
- Most anything above a celeron processor is overkill for just a NAS.
- You'll have to add DAS (direct attached storage) to this if you want several platter drives
- The Intel N95 or N100 cpus are less expensive and can run JUST a NAS just fine.
- if you want emulation or graphics prowess you'll want AMD, preferably a version with the AVX512 instruction set that can handle up to PS3 emulation pretty well. Intel used to have AVX512 in their 11th Gen (alderlake) chips but removed the functionality.
- If you want plex transcoding of 4k streams, the Intel N100 can handle 2-3 4k transcoded streams because it has quicksync instructions that no AMD chip has. Even a J4125 chip can probably handle a couple of streams. Plex also only supports Intel hardware transcoding, and while modern Ryzen apus are strong enough, they're not officially supported, so it's hit or miss if Plex will actually use the horsepower they have for transcoding.
- Intel added Quicksync on 6th gen Intel chips, but imperfectly. The best quicksync chips are 8th gen and later, and like I said, the n100 is a beast for transcoding for how low power it is.
- I watched a video of an 11th Gen i3 that had avx512 enabled and it handled ps3 emulation pretty damn well without breaking a sweat, so future generations should be pretty damn great.
- AV1 decoding is a new function of what is likely the next big codec, and it's only available on the newest amd and intel chips, but don't currently remember which ones
**EDIT** Adding more info:
You probably can't have the overhead of running Windows as well. Having to burn in subtitles is apparently a herculean task, even for top of the line processors.
Here is what I read about the J4125, which is older than the N100:
AMR5's 5800U is faster with a passmark of 18,691 compared to the GMK's 11390H passmark of 10,485. The 5800U also runs cooler with a 15 watt rating compared to the 11390H at 35 watts. AMR5 has two NVME slots, GMK has one. AMR5 has 1 gigabit ethernet and GMK has 2.5 gigabit ethernet. The AMR5 won't ship until 07/25 or later due to a manufacturing defect they're having to fix, while the GMK also ships slowly.
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Check if the NIC chipset is on ESX compatibility list. Usually Intel NIC is fine, others are often problematic and won't detect when installing ESXi. You could try virtual box or proxmox, or Nutanix CE as hypervisors, they may be less picky, bit ESXi is still the standard.
I;m an older person looking for a PC for browsing and shopping with occasionally printing of documents and letters . If printing of a letter most printers require installing software for the printer with a CD. Is this or would this be possible in any way with a PC such as the one in this post ? Thanks in advance.
I;m an older person looking for a PC for browsing and shopping with occasionally printing of documents and letters . If printing of a letter most printers require installing software for the printer with a CD. Is this or would this be possible in any way with a PC such as the one in this post ? Thanks in advance.
Most printer software is available online. Just Google the name of your printer plus the term "installation software" and you should be able to download and install the software from the official manufacturer website.
Thus no need for CDs. If you really want to use a CD/DVD drive for some reason you probably can get some sort of external CD/DVD drive connected via USB on this mini device.
If you search N5105 or N95 mini pc on Amazon, they should show up. Sometimes, they have clip coupon that lower those machine to $110 to $120. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=n95+mini+pc
I;m an older person looking for a PC for browsing and shopping with occasionally printing of documents and letters . If printing of a letter most printers require installing software for the printer with a CD. Is this or would this be possible in any way with a PC such as the one in this post ? Thanks in advance.
Most PC accessories no longer require CDs, as all of their drivers (software) is available online. Macs (Apple) do not require drivers at all. You would do just fine with this PC. If you absolutely needed a CD Drive, external USB drives can be bought for under $30.
Depends what you want to do...
Potential issues: core count, nic compatibility, nvme compatibility, passthrough of igpu to windows vm may crash it with some regularity.
That being said, I put together a (rather hacky) 8th Gen i5 mini pc build for running my esxi setup for minimal space / power consumption with acceptable headroom.... https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/...00_g4_mini
These things are capable if you set proper expectations.
Partially true, but depends on your application/use case.
The similar CPU Mark performance is comparing multithreading - note the newer i3 has double the core count of the older i7 but still only pulls even.
This is because even with less cores, the 11th gen i7 has significantly higher single-thread performance (2976 vs 2289). Emulators in particular benefit from single thread performance - not to mention the disabled AVX512 extension in the 13th gen series further gimping emulator performance in supported scenarios.
The i7 also has significantly better iGPU. 96 vs 32 EU and 1.69 TFLOPS vs .74.
Is this desktop a good investment for a home computer that we can all use for just email, some social media and homework ( word, excel, ect?)
No. Not because it's a bad PC, but because you'll be buying it from the literal thieves. This company is the worst to advertise on SD and I wish I'd listened to similar warnings from the people who were burned in the same way as I was. I've never hated another merchant so much in my entire life.
No. Not because it's a bad PC, but because you'll be buying it from the literal thieves. This company is the worst to advertise on SD and I wish I'd listened to similar warnings from the people who were burned in the same way as I was. I've never hated another merchant so much in my entire life.
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- Most anything above a celeron processor is overkill for just a NAS.
- You'll have to add DAS (direct attached storage) to this if you want several platter drives
- The Intel N95 or N100 cpus are less expensive and can run JUST a NAS just fine.
- if you want emulation or graphics prowess you'll want AMD, preferably a version with the AVX512 instruction set that can handle up to PS3 emulation pretty well. Intel used to have AVX512 in their 11th Gen (alderlake) chips but removed the functionality.
- If you want plex transcoding of 4k streams, the Intel N100 can handle 2-3 4k transcoded streams because it has quicksync instructions that no AMD chip has. Even a J4125 chip can probably handle a couple of streams. Plex also only supports Intel hardware transcoding, and while modern Ryzen apus are strong enough, they're not officially supported, so it's hit or miss if Plex will actually use the horsepower they have for transcoding.
- Intel added Quicksync on 6th gen Intel chips, but imperfectly. The best quicksync chips are 8th gen and later, and like I said, the n100 is a beast for transcoding for how low power it is.
- I watched a video of an 11th Gen i3 that had avx512 enabled and it handled ps3 emulation pretty damn well without breaking a sweat, so future generations should be pretty damn great.
- AV1 decoding is a new function of what is likely the next big codec, and it's only available on the newest amd and intel chips, but don't currently remember which ones
**EDIT** Adding more info:
You probably can't have the overhead of running Windows as well. Having to burn in subtitles is apparently a herculean task, even for top of the line processors.
Here is what I read about the J4125, which is older than the N100:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/com...&context=
N100 info:
Link 1
https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/..._plex_and/
Link 2
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/com...anscoding/
Link 3 (one of the comments mentions 10x 1080p transcodes going at once on an older N5105)
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/com...?context=
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It has 2 HDMI ports so yes.
Check if the NIC chipset is on ESX compatibility list. Usually Intel NIC is fine, others are often problematic and won't detect when installing ESXi. You could try virtual box or proxmox, or Nutanix CE as hypervisors, they may be less picky, bit ESXi is still the standard.
https://slickdeals.net/forums/showpost.php?p=
But for $110 to $130 you can get N95 or N5105 with 12GB, 512GB for great web browsing, basic PC
But for $110 to $130 you can get N95 or N5105 with 12GB, 512GB for great web browsing, basic PC
Most printer software is available online. Just Google the name of your printer plus the term "installation software" and you should be able to download and install the software from the official manufacturer website.
Thus no need for CDs. If you really want to use a CD/DVD drive for some reason you probably can get some sort of external CD/DVD drive connected via USB on this mini device.
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https://www.amazon.com/s?k=n95+mini+pc
Depends what you want to do...
Potential issues: core count, nic compatibility, nvme compatibility, passthrough of igpu to windows vm may crash it with some regularity.
That being said, I put together a (rather hacky) 8th Gen i5 mini pc build for running my esxi setup for minimal space / power consumption with acceptable headroom.... https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/...00_g4_mini
These things are capable if you set proper expectations.
The similar CPU Mark performance is comparing multithreading - note the newer i3 has double the core count of the older i7 but still only pulls even.
This is because even with less cores, the 11th gen i7 has significantly higher single-thread performance (2976 vs 2289). Emulators in particular benefit from single thread performance - not to mention the disabled AVX512 extension in the 13th gen series further gimping emulator performance in supported scenarios.
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