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Looking for a power sipping PC similar to Mac mini's max power (122W)


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Looking for a power sipping PC similar to Mac mini's max power (122W)
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2021-09-20, 09:58

I'm looking to consolidate some machines in my house to reduce power consumption. A mini will allow me to retire a 650W Hackintosh as well as an OLD Dell that is likely just 350W. Of course those are peak consumption but the mini is 122W max. Given these normally sit idle now it would still be a savings.

I was looking at getting a mini but now I'm thinking a PC will be just fine. Currently of the VMs running my home I only have 4 that are macOS (of some flavor) that NEED to be on a Apple hardware (without a hack). So 15 VMs (as of right now) are running either Windows or Linux in various flavors. So really, I need a power sipping PC that is modern (Intel 11th gen CPU) and able to have 64GB or more RAM. RAM is always the limiting factor for VMs.

Any ideas on good options for a small PC that can run ESXi? For now we should just start with power sipping modern PCs and I can vet out ESXi requirements. It needs to have a 10Gb NIC or at least a slot to upgrade though.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
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Bryson
Rocket Surgeon
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: The Canadark
 
2021-09-20, 10:13

Intel NUC 11 with a Thunderbolt Ethernet adaptor?

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...fications.html

Not cheap, though.
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chucker
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: near Bremen, Germany
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2021-09-20, 11:19

That's a 28W CPU.

I'm a bit surprised a 65W config (Beast Canyon) is even pricier.
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2021-09-20, 12:21

Man, these prices put me back at the mini's price after getting 10Gb NIC and 2TB of storage. I have to admit, I though it would actually cost less.

I don't want the mini with the CPU being so outdated. I want the modern CPU with power sipping.

Why is it I always come up with the hard corner cases during my daily life.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
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PB PM
Sneaky Punk
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Vancouver, BC
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2021-09-20, 14:14

These Mini PCs have always been higher in price than you would think. Other than the barebones NUCs with Pentium class ultra low power chips.
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2021-09-21, 07:33

Given I need to run VMs and some with really processing needs I should get a decent CPU. I don't NEED a Xeon, but if there was a mobile version I'd be all over it.

Actually, I've been thinking about what I could move to a Raspberry Pi or two instead of a VM. I do have some restrictions though. HomeBridge being one of them. My mom lives on my property so I'm her geek and run a HomeBridge instance for her and one for my home and family. Rather than fight a dual instance configuration I have a VM for her and one for me.

Things like my Nginx reverse proxy could easily run on the rPi though.

Hmmm... what about something like building a Mini ITX based system? I need to figure out how low power of a CPU I can get into those.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
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PB PM
Sneaky Punk
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Vancouver, BC
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2021-09-21, 07:44

Unless you get something that’s a little toothless building a Mini-ITX system isn’t cheap either, small cases and PSUs are typically more expensive than full size PSUs, and you pay full ATX case prices, but you can find combo kits with case and PSU. Sometimes the PSU is doggy. InWin seems to have the best case/PSU kits. I was going to build one with a AMD 2200G APU, before the pandemic sent prices sky high.

If you want super low power the Pentium J series isn’t bad, I think they are 15W, more powerful than a PIE, not sure how much, and they tend to be integrated, so you just a RAM and a drive. Supposedly they can run Windows, if needed. Not sure I’d want a VM. You likely want at least an i5 for that, I would think.
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2021-09-21, 08:02

Yeah, really I want i5 or i7 for the hypervisor.

Maybe I need to look at Docker finally. 10 of my 13 VMs are Linux based and generally purpose built VMs. Some I can't change, like the ANMC server. Others though, should be able to work with instance based configurations.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
  quote
PB PM
Sneaky Punk
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Vancouver, BC
Send a message via Skype™ to PB PM 
2021-09-21, 09:10

Hypervisor, is that the new name for virtualization enhancement? Or are you thinking of hyperthreading? I haven’t looked too closely at the 11th gen stuff. 12 gen is going to launch in a month or so, and it looks like a big leap, not sure if that is desktop or mobile.
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2021-09-21, 09:25

I'm using "hypervisor" as a term for the hardware and software but really it is the software that runs the baseline OS that enables the VMs to interact with the hardware.
Quote:
Originally Posted by VMware
A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor or VMM, is software that creates and runs virtual machines (VMs). A hypervisor allows one host computer to support multiple guest VMs by virtually sharing its resources, such as memory and processing.


I'm back to where I was at the beginning. There really isn't what I want out there and not good way to make it work. I read an article that talked about shredding a laptop and using that as the guts for what I'm looking for, but then there are interface issues.

I'm really amazed at what the mini is when I'm trying to find something that is like it but not Apple made/designed.

Maybe I look at the rPi again. The high end is like $100 (not counting storage) and only a max of 15W based on the power supply. While these won't run the Windows or macOS VMs they could run the linux ones. This model of Pi also has a PoE HAT set of pins so I could run it from my PoE switch rather than a separate brick.

Really, I could likely go with the cheaper 4GB model too given the linux processes I run and typically low RAM consumption AND it wouldn't be a hypervisor where I need the RAM to share with multiple systems.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
  quote
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