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Still using mine 2.5 years later, but at this point it should be $300 tops.
Consider the Ram price increase. On those times, buying the barebone was the most cost effective solution and I have posted plenty of Barebone deals but at this point where the DDR5 price is sky rocketing, 32GB Ram + 1TB option at sub $400 price is not bad either. Check the price of 32GB DDR5 SODIMM Kit price and you'll understand.
Consider the Ram price increase. On those times, buying the barebone was the most cost effective solution and I have posted plenty of Barebone deals but at this point where the DDR5 price is sky rocketing, 32GB Ram + 1TB option at sub $400 price is not bad either. Check the price of 32GB DDR5 SODIMM Kit price and you'll understand.
How would you hookup a desktop graphics card to something like this? I'm on the fence with these mini PCs and being able to connect a desktop GPU would pretty much seal the deal - OK if it's sitting in a box next to it
^^anyone have experience with this type of setup? I know those things exist; zero clue what works well in practice
How would you hookup a desktop graphics card to something like this? I'm on the fence with these mini PCs and being able to connect a desktop GPU would pretty much seal the deal - OK if it's sitting in a box next to it
^^anyone have experience with this type of setup? I know those things exist; zero clue what works well in practice
You can connect a dGPU via USB4 or Thunderbolt 3/4, but OCuLink is probably the best way to do it. When it's an option, it tends to be both cheaper and have better performance. How much better it performs depends on a lot of factors including the game, the visual settings, and resolution. You'd have to look up benchmarks that closely reflect the scenarios you are considering.
If gaming is a major concern, you might want to look into things more to see how much of a performance hit you'd take us going to an eGPU setup. And you might want to see if you'd prefer to target something with more bandwidth or less overhead than USB4
I use a pair of eGPUs connected over OCuLink for my home lab. But my use case is for LLMs (AI) workloads. In those scenarios, the PCIe bandwidth often makes very little difference. Gaming is a very different use case.
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Consider the Ram price increase. On those times, buying the barebone was the most cost effective solution and I have posted plenty of Barebone deals but at this point where the DDR5 price is sky rocketing, 32GB Ram + 1TB option at sub $400 price is not bad either. Check the price of 32GB DDR5 SODIMM Kit price and you'll understand.
+1 to this. 32GB of DDR5 is $150+ in most cases right now. Estimate $50+ for the 1TB NVMe drive and you're looking at this being an ~$180 barebones kit.
The prices are disappointing. I got a barebones GMKtec K2 with a Ryzen 7 7735HS for ~$300 almost 2 years ago. So it feels like a bad deal. But in reality, it looks like the pricing has gone down appropriately aside from the crazy memory prices.
How would you hookup a desktop graphics card to something like this? I'm on the fence with these mini PCs and being able to connect a desktop GPU would pretty much seal the deal - OK if it's sitting in a box next to it
^^anyone have experience with this type of setup? I know those things exist; zero clue what works well in practice
I tried it with USB4 v1 eGPU and it works, but it won't be as fast at Oculink. I have 2 of those, both modified with a newer 3D printed base to accommodate a low profile fan and a pathway to route an oculink cable (had to make internal storage a 2.5-inch sata ssd, and used the m.2 slot for an Oculink adapter). Since it's an add-on oculink (not a native oculink port like some mini-pcs), the bios may lack ReBAR support.
I have this exact machine. I bought it refurb for ~$280 about a year ago. FWIW I've had no issues with it. Still, I would say wait for a better deal than $379 on this or a similar system. Just my 2 cents.
I'm also considering using an external gpu w it over usb4—if anyone has any experience running, say, an rtx 4060 or similar externally on a system like this I'd love to hear how it went.
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^^anyone have experience with this type of setup? I know those things exist; zero clue what works well in practice
^^anyone have experience with this type of setup? I know those things exist; zero clue what works well in practice
If gaming is a major concern, you might want to look into things more to see how much of a performance hit you'd take us going to an eGPU setup. And you might want to see if you'd prefer to target something with more bandwidth or less overhead than USB4
I use a pair of eGPUs connected over OCuLink for my home lab. But my use case is for LLMs (AI) workloads. In those scenarios, the PCIe bandwidth often makes very little difference. Gaming is a very different use case.
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The prices are disappointing. I got a barebones GMKtec K2 with a Ryzen 7 7735HS for ~$300 almost 2 years ago. So it feels like a bad deal. But in reality, it looks like the pricing has gone down appropriately aside from the crazy memory prices.
^^anyone have experience with this type of setup? I know those things exist; zero clue what works well in practice
I'm also considering using an external gpu w it over usb4—if anyone has any experience running, say, an rtx 4060 or similar externally on a system like this I'd love to hear how it went.
Join The Conversation
Share your experience with the Slickdeals community
Share information with the community. Please follow our Community Guidelines and be kind!