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 👍

  • tahoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    2 年前

    What’s great about Mac minis is that they’re extremely power efficient since they’re ARM machines, so if you live somewhere like in Europe where power is expensive, it can save you a lot of money. They’re usually completely silent too.

    Depending on their needs, I’d suggest OP to get a used M1 Mac mini, they’re great value for money.

    • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      2 年前

      You may want to check your specs again. The Ryzen APUs are very power efficient and run the same stretch as M3 (reported): 15W-45W

      Though the more realistic at the wall measurements of the 2023 Mac Minis pretty much seem to have it pegged at a solid 15W-25W min under normal service workloads. The reported “idle” measurements of the M* chips being at 6W are literally just saying “if it has power”, and unrealistic considering you can’t even run them without a the GPU being engaged somewhat without a fully headless software configuration.

    • babybus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      2 年前

      What’s great about Mac minis is that they’re extremely power efficient since they’re ARM machines, so if you live somewhere like in Europe where power is expensive, it can save you a lot of money.

      I want to see numbers. How much is “a lot of money”?

      • tahoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        2 年前

        I’m no lab scientist but when I switched from a hackintosh to an M1 Mac mini a few years ago, my total electricity consumption went down by around 15-20%. This can mean a lot on the long run if you’re tight on budget.

      • stuner@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        2 年前

        I don’t have a Mac Mini, but for always-on systems, the idle power consumption can become quite significant.

        • Gaming PCs can consume up to 100W (876 kWh / year).
        • My AMD B650 NAS consumes about 17W in idle (150 kWh / year).
        • A NUC / Mac Mini can idle as low as 5W (44 kWh / year).

        If you pay 0.30$/kWh, running your old 100W gaming PC all the time would cost you 263$ per year. My NAS is 45$ per year…

        It also depends on what you need/want from the machine. The Mac Mini doesn’t have any HDDs and can’t run a regular Linux distro, for example.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          2 年前

          Would the Mac Mini actually idle at that wattage if it’s open for connections? I doubt it, it’s probably more like 10W, which is generally the range for those smaller AMD MiniPCs or NUCs.

          If it’s 10W, that’s a $20 savings from your NAS w/ a desktop CPU (and probably a discrete GPU, unless it’s running an APU). I can get 4% easily on savings, so I’d only need a $500 savings vs the Mac Mini to recoup that difference every year ($500 * 4% = $20). So if you already have an old PC, use that instead of buying a Mac Mini, and you also won’t have to fight macOS to do what you want.

          • stuner@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            2 年前

            I do think it can achieve that while waiting for network packets (see e.g. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested).

            But in terms of money savings it would rarely make sense, as you need to make it back during the time you run the system. If we assume 6 years lifetime then it would only make sense to pay $120 more. But yes, I’d also go for a system that runs regular Linux :)

      • suction@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 年前

        Cheap in Germany for example nowadays is 0,20 EUR / KWh + 15 EUR / month base fee. Most people have more expensive contracts though, 0,30 EUR / KWh and more