Top 5 Tiny PCs: We Test Them from Smallest to Most Powerful!
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- čas přidán 20. 01. 2024
- Dave reviews five different Mini PCs, including the ZimaBoard, the Pantera Pico PC, the Xulu XR1, the Herk Orion, and the Acemagic Tank. For information on my book on Asperger's and ASD, check out amzn.to/48GNzjT
ZimaBoard:
shop.zimaboard.com/
Pico PC:
picopc.net/
Xulu XR1:
xulu.store/
Herk Orion:
igg.me/at/HerkOrion
Tank:
www.acemagic.com/collections/...
Video Credit: Some gameplay footage from ETA PRIME; check out his channel for excellent mini PC reviews here: / @etaprime - Věda a technologie
Thanks for featuring the Herk Orion in your review! Hope the Orion performs well for you over time!
It's not for sale yet, though, is it? Have you set a consumer price?
unless you can make an AMD 8700G variant, this 7940HS mini PC is AMAZING!!! When and where can anyone buy this?
It sounds like a good design.
When and where will it be possible to buy it and what will it cost?
It will go live on Feb 1st. Price will range from $300-600 depending on CPU and memory config. Landing page in Dave's description.@@walterpleyer261
Launches Feb 1st. Price ranges from $300-600usd depending on CPU/ memory config. Landing page is in Dave's video description.
Excellent reviews Dave, thank you for covering a range of needs and providing a detailed analysis and summary of each unit’s strengths.
Nice! I'm an IT consultant, and in the last year, I've been reselling a lot of mini PCs, mostly Beelink. I've found that Beelink hits the sweet spot of price, performance, consistency and reliability, but I don't have a lot of clients who do any serious gaming. (Most serious gamers put in the research time to build their own PCs, although every so often, a newbie or wannabe gamer will contact me for guidance, since there's a lot of "alphabet soup" that gets bandied about on gaming forums.) Beelink is the captive brand of AZW Shenzen, which makes a lot of these mini PCs and white-labels them for other mini PC vendors, possibly one or two that you featured here. From what I can tell, Beelink is never the standout in terms of performance, low price or smallest form factor, which probably explains why I haven't had any issues with reliability; they apparently just don't push the envelope, so to speak. Still, it's all about suitability to task. I resell mini PCs for general purpose home and business computing. I wouldn't recommend one for high-availability applications, heavy I/O or gaming.
I like how the Xulu looks exactly like a 90s alarm clock.
I have no need, but i love seeing what mini computers can pack!
Very interesting comparison! I'm inclined toward the Xulu. The Tank certainly can pile on the memory - do you might say it's "Tanks for the memorys"...so to speak. I really appreciate seeing useful videos like this!!
Glad you are digging the Xulu XR1! Cheers!
Get a better CPU than the Xulu you find at 10$ difference .
@@blender_wikiwdym?
Oh goodie, I’m looking for a new mini-pc.
Love your table, I used to have flywheel/crankshaft/wheel hub to mount a rim too with glass
I love them, one is always on, and holds the crucial backup and home web server and services. Has no and needs no desktop.
Big thank you for this review! (The only detail missing are the prices that would make this video for me 100% complete. When clicking on the links provided I am able to find them.)
A very helpful video. Informative and thorough reviews of products I really hadn’t considered looking into before. Now I see how these devices could be very useful. Thanks, Dave!
And this is why we need the competition. When AMD was not able to compete with Intel in the CPU space (in large part thanks to Intel's unfair business practices), Intel stagnated so much, that we can see it up to this day.
It was much worse before Ryzen came out, with ~5% performance increase, and no core count increase, per generation of consumer-grade i5/i7.
I love your channel Dave. And this episode was right up my street as I have used small Intel NUC's for years while living in a camper and now on a boat. I would love to hear overall current draw for mini PC's, as mine run from 12 volt batteries. But thanks for a great review, I think I may be in the market for a Herk. :)
The best review of these critters I've read to date. I am the owner of two Picos with extra storage memory. Pico works well but only for the basics. I was an early purchaser and they shipped without Windows at the time. Thanks for the professional review. Subscribed.
Great video Dave!!
I like your channel. You're thorough in researching and presenting information to us.
Oh man that revodrive brought back so many memories. Thank you for that.
Thanks for the reviews.
Just became a subscriber. In my mis-spent youth of building junk with PC6 chips ahead of their time with built in PCI Bus which was the bomb, i love watching the wired world of somebody else in flux with Biggot codes coming out of their shell.
Thanks for being here and being you.
Lizard squad
Love that Ace Tank but even if it were within my budget (it's not even close) it's been sold out with the configuration tested here since early December. Thanks 4 the showcase sir!
neat stuff, I was in the market to build another tiny pc for on-site CAD work, but I might go with one of these. Had no idea they existed.
I can vouch for the BeLink SER6 Pro, with a Ryzen 7 7735 and 680m iGPU for about 500 bucks. I think that Ryzen 9 is a bit overkill personally.
14:54 "An impressive achievement, given the size". I hear that all the time from my girlfriend.
So nice to see the variety of x86_64 mini -to-micro PCs. ARM is fun, but not appropriate for as many situations as x86_64 is.
Please keep us posted about what else you find like this.
Hi Dave! Off topic but I'm very glad i found your "Secrets of the Autistic Millionaire" book. Its been a wild 2 years but with the support of friends and family, we are 99% sure i've been undiagnosed autistic my whole life. This year i'm gonna try to get an autism evaluation with a written report.
Your book and hindsight has helped me so much to understanding my brain ❤🙏
The meltdowns, emotional post processing, mindblindess, depression, anxiety, Attention focus problems, obsessive thoughts all hits home for me. And having the knowledge to look back in the past to gain Wisdom has helped me immensely in gaining the inner peace I lacked.
Two other books has also been helping me understand my flavor of autism if you want something to read:
"Chaos" by James Gleick
"Deep Survival: Who lives, who dies, and why" by Laurence Gonzales
Thank you Dave. Life for me has gotten better once I learned more about my Autism and how to manage it!
Out of genuine curiosity, why? I've been variously labeled off and on and never found even the tiniest of use or advantage with any of that stuff. I never thought I was particularly similar to others but beyond that hasn't more than made me sporadically curious. By labeled here I don't mean by run of the mill normies but psychologists etc, but I never really cared much about their largely unqualified opinions either.
Dave, I really enjoy your channel and all of the things you cover. I've only started getting into tech these last few years and what I've already found from your channel and topics has been invaluable already! I'm a musician who's attempting his hand at home recording and better understanding of the utilities within this realm. I took a chance at purchasing an Acemagic/AcePC/AceMagician mini PC, namely the Wizbox G, although I had my sights initially on the Tank you reviewed here. The purchase fell through and I was somehow deemed "high risk" from their support team regarding the purchase and I'm still unclear as to the "why" or "how" of it all, and then after all was said and done, I started seeing unsavory reviews among Reddit and other forums regarding malicious malware pre-installation, to which the company itself, or rather, one of the branches of the company I named above, made an apology/disclaimer about it. I say all that to say this... I'm curious about your take on any of this, if you have any, and was wondering if perhaps you'd consider a segment on the stipulations in buying PCs, mini or otherwise, and what to lookout for as a first-time buyer. The market is flooded with so many options, and as a noob, I definitely try my best to do my research beforehand, but the irony is that I didn't start seeing the negativity until AFTER my purchase was made, and ultimately it has pushed me into the process of attempting to possibly just build my own PC. Thanks, and keep up the good work!
Thank you for another great video
The new AR glasses make Display Port interesting because they can be used as displays for tiny PCs. Make a whole fairly powerful system that you can fit in your pockets.
I'm frankly impressed that Dave has a working example of an OCZ flash PCIe card, complete with Sandforce controllers. A lot of those died not long after they were made.
Yeah... "working"... that's the ticket!
Heh, I have two of them, not in use now because 128Gb taking up a slot isn't an attractive proposition anymore, but mine did work when put away. I have a Hyper M.2 now instead.
Great video Dave, I learned a lot. Thank You
I’d like to point out that the Xulu XR1 is an Indiegogo project. That means there is some risk that the project could fall through. I decided the risk looks minimal and pledged for the Max32 version in November 2023. Xulu has been pretty forthright in their communication and the project seems on track, but is a bit behind schedule due to some board redesigns. To Xulu’s credit, they did offer to make their supply of prototypes available to pledgers who did not want to wait. Dave’s review of what must be one of the prototypes is encouraging, and I’m looking forward to receiving the finished product.
Hello @wtmayhew ! Thanks for backing us! Yes, we put the SSD on the bottom of the IO board for easier access. We also addressed some issues that some of the reviewer units had. The PCB developers are testing our latest batch of ten boards and we'll post a full update once we get the boards in our possession. We'll be delivering a more optimized and easier-to-maintain Xulu XR1. Thanks again for your patience and support!
@@XuluPCnoticed how responsive you guys are and will definitely have to try one :)
@@XuluPC Thanks for the reply. Your team has a great Indiegogo project in the XR1 and the communication about the project status has been first class. It will be worth the wait to receive an even better product.
@@googlehomemini2059 Cheers! Thanks for your support :)
I'm reminded of the Xi3 Piston many years ago which had a tiny size (and it also had a lot of I/O for its size) but was very underwhelming for its claims as a "Steam Machine" box.... but finally tech has caught up and we and new we can truly enjoy some AAA games with some of these tiny PCs.
thanks for this video , i never heard of any of these mini pcs
@DavesGarage I'll take one haha
I have a 7940HS based system that I use as my "daily driver". I'm impressed by just how well it performs in 1080p gaming.
I wonder is it really better than the 7735? Doubt many games need the extra CPU power, which on a miniPC with a wattage limit, is needed for GPU work. My BeLink SER6 Pro plays 1080p 60 for almost all the latest AAA titles at only 45 watts.
Thanks again Dave. Love your vid's
Dave it would be cool if you looked at the conga-HPC/cRLS. It has a lga 1700 socket and can support up to a 14900 in a tiny package. Im sure it could be the highest power density NUC around if someone designed a carrier board to have just a pcie x8 slot and essentials like usb and m.2
These are some cool brands I had never heard of before. Any chance of doing a similar video on passively cooled (mini) pc's? I'm considering getting one with desktop capabilities, but it's a whole new world of brands that I'm not familiar/comfortable with (and also quite pricy for the compute you get).
Love all your content, but more stuff covering things like this will hopefully net you more of the views and subscribers that you deserve. Thank you :)
Legend! THank you sir... I'm playing with a M5Core 2 using the Remote+ to trigger some fun effects.
Haha not as good as these. But very cool!
I love these. keep a lookout for the ryzen 8000g igpu that is due to come out this year. that chip would be perfect for these mini pc's.
My work setup is main workstation plus a slave PC, both connected to my Dell widescreen curved monitor (screen split 70/30) with single keyb/mouse seamlessly moving between the two PC's desktops. The slave is Beelink micro PC, but I'm not tempted to upgrade it to the Xulu or the Tank.
I just went and thermal epoxied a low profile cpu cooler on top of my little micro pc and that fixed my fan whine issues.
The headers for them tend to be 5 volts, so plan accordingly for your fan.
Good review. I put a Beelink SER5 with the same Ryzen 7 5800H at my vacation house as the main "general purpose" PC, though I do have a work laptop for electronics CAD. I've had a few problems recently with unexpected shutdowns at high performance, but I have to rule out my "just grabbed a spare" UPS before I can really blame the PC. Like the Xulu, this has a Type-C port but only one, and it can't be powered from it, but it does support PD powering of peripherals, though I can't imagine it goes all that high in power.
awesome review ❤
This was an excellent review. Not too fast, plenty of detail, and the detail was written! And I say that as an old geek.
I'm looking for an everyday PC replacement. The Herk Orion looks like it fits the bill. I'd like 96gb, 2x1tb Raid1, lots of file manipulation, low-end gaming but 8k streaming, 10gbe to my Synology 1522NAS, three monitors: 2x 4k desktop and 8k large flat-screen 16' away. I understand USB a-b-c but I do not understand this Thunderbolt? I do have a nice 8 port gbe with 2x 10gbe manged switch and plenty of Cat7. You blew my mind with a thunderbolt external 10gbe - how does that work and will it give me the speed/bandwidth I expect? Point me in the right direction?
I would go for a Xulu if it goes out of the Indiegogo phase and it becomes a production model. I don't need it to game on so it doesn't need the power. I have used a small form factor Dell Optiplex, and the space savings on a desk is appreciated. Having a clock and temps on the front face would be a nice touch.
thanks dave nice overview.... though missing the most important metric for comparison of cost (manufactuers recommended price)
You mentioned the Cinebench R23 score for the Pico, then skipped it for the others. Feel free to list those scores as a reply or in the description. Thanks for the video!
Back almost a year ago, I ordered one of the Minisforum Ryzen 8 core critters with win 11 installed, a 1 TB SSD (and room for a second SSD of course)... Identical specs to your Ryzen unit. Seems like same level of performance, given fast ram and SSD in the box. My early adopter price was $695, and after they started shipping in volume, that price went up a fair bit.. Perhaps another hundred. Since then, the expected new chips from AMD, and competition have lowered that price down to about $650, which is an outstanding tiny box for video editing and the like. (A USB4 connection to luns on m NAs is the next item to work out...) So far, the box has been superbly reliable... and incredibly zippy.
I can't help but to think you missed out by not adding one of Minisforum's EM series into the mix. I have the EM680 but the EM780 looks to blow that out of the water, especially as far as graphics are concerned. Those are about the same size as the Pico, 80x80x40mm vs the Pico's 67x67x53mm. The EM780 is still same "Pico" size but almost identical specs as the much larger Orion (minus 2.5Gbe as there is no physical LAN port). Insanely impressive, IMO.
Overall, great video...as ALWAYS! 🙂
I'm impressed with my EM680. I rarely use a PC anymore but I needed something since I gave my full size setup to my son to game with. This little thing has plenty of power for my use case and I'm loving the minimalism on my desk
Love these small computers, i use an older nuc as my homelab vm server.
Would love to see the prime sieve as a table stakes benchmark!
Looks like a great domain controller for my lab!
This is great. One essential bit of info missing: prices! Or price indications at least.
He did give links to every unit in the text. At least one isn't currently available for sale, so no price.
AW!!!! It's so cute!!! :)
"The Tank" is about the size of my full desktop hardware, Mini-ITX machine; 3600XT @ 4.6GHz, 32GB DDR4-3800 low-CAS RAM, RTX2070 Super OC-Edition (Factory +30%) etc.
My favorite of all these is prolly "The Hurc" would make a nice NAS or guest PC.
Very interesting review.
Another great video 😊
Nice video. I would like one like this focused on inexpensive development machines. I'm watching this on a Zimaboard 832, but it chokes on some apps...
Not for gaming but I've been using those small SBC systems for my home lab for quite a few years now. An Epyc or Xeon system would be nice to run my VMs, but a 13th gen Core i7-1360 with 96Gb RAM packs a lot more punch than its size would make you think. All while being incredibly silent and using less than 30W, and cost less than many used eBay servers - both upfront and long term (cooling and energy costs).
I came to the realisation a few weeks ago, that most of my infrastructure is now running on mini PCs, on shelves in my rack. My latest acquisition is a generic N100 box, which has taken over light VM hosting duties.
While there is lots of choice for mini PCs (NUC size), I miss the basic PC Engines ALIX/APU2 boards I used in the past. Clearly, a different audience given they have no video hardware at all, but they were capable, inexpensive and reliable. I'm not convinced a generic mini PC with active cooling from China is going to last as long.
I remember the original Tiny pc's - in the mid/ late 90's! It was a brand name in the UK, and worldwide maybe. Big bulky crt monitors, eeh them were the days!
Looked at a message by you on my phone I am confused, as it is not on here ?
Definitely love this ish, i got a nice 11320h but this little n100 that can play decent games, emulate wii games and run a good enough cinebench score its pretty darn cool, 3.6ghz boost for this little thing and after repasting it runs at a steady 64 c top while running cinebench as well so it seems ok.
I kinda like the range that BeeLink offers. a nice one is a Beelink Mini PC called the Mini S with Intel 11th Gen 4-Cores N5095. coupon and all for just under 130 USD. great for fun little projects to experiment with. van do Virtualisation, has full bios, comes with Windows and can handle Ubuntu very well too.
I have a Mini S. It is great!
I work in the entertainment industry as an audio visual system designer and in the last couple of years I've switched completely from rack mounted PC's to 2 small redundant small form factor computers like these. Cheaper, lighter and absolutely get the job done for chores like monitoring and controlling equipment over IP.
Good vid, but I think you should have included the prices of each as well, as I'm sure they differ there a lot as well
I wish those hdmi stick pcs had caught on more. I would totally want one but the most powerful one I could find had a celeron from 2019
You are certainly a hero of mine, my childhood to today I'm 35 my computers and cd cases have been filled with wonderful Microsoft things, Doom and Monster Truck Madness. But I am deeply in love with my Pi 5, have been for months, and I would not replace it with a single one of these contraptions. it's...... my single board precious..... my precious Dave . It's also twice as efficient with it's power as these multi board mammoths. Not like the single credit card size of a Pi, a 5w generally browsing , vscode, processing, spotify, and CZcams shenanigans, and if your in an emergency and on a solar panel , i get 4 days of computing instead of just two, two weeks instead of one week, if no sun and it's all i have but 4watts , i could probably do it for month with no sun . I
That Zimaboard looks mighty tempting for a mini homelab server. Especially at those price points.
2-3W idle, 7W at load. But as soon as you want some CPU power, it's not present (I have version with 2GB RAM and two cores) and it's not upgradable. I soon replaced it by refurbished USFF PC with i5-6500t for pretty much the same price, upgraded it with NVMe SSD and more memory (which is overkill, 8GB was enough), it consumes 6-8W idle, 40W under load, but it gets stuff done like 5 times faster. So it depends. Zimaboard struggles with transfering large files via SFTP, generating thumbnails for image gallery and with 2GB RAM it can barely run browser with 5 tabs on openbox+tint2+xrdp, KDE is not even worth trying.
But if you want something like Raspberry, hopefully more reliable that can use SSD drive and 2xGbit ethernet, do some tasks such as datalogging, running few static webpages and docker/podman containers, then it's fine.
Prices would be nice.
very nice, not just small PCs But quality Small PCs
No prices? I couldn't also find the price of Herk Orion on their site.
We'll be launching on Feb 1st. Please subscribe on the pre-launch page for launch notification. Thanks!
@@herk_orion I am not interested. My 5 years old i3 PC is good enough still. I am just sick of sites that show fancy pictures, flashy animations, and mind-boggling specs, but neglect to put that one piece of information most people look for first. Subscribe for spam emails only because I want to know the prices? What else do you hide from us?
@@nowymail Prices will range from around $300 to $600 depending CPU and memory configurations. Thanks!
That _Tank_ seems awesome, but I am very satisfied with my _Mac mini._ While Apple could make them significantly smaller since they are mostly empty space nowadays, keeping the form factor consistent is good too. They should add USB-C power to it, though. That would make it perfect.
Dave you should consider making lectures on computer sciences from basic to advance on youtube like a text book that can be used as a reference. These days text/reference books on this subject are becoming quite expensive and many students just get left our due to non access to quality books. Good youtube videos on their subjects act as a reference to them to sharpen their own skills in programming.
I was looking for small package, Orion fit the bill. I already got the Pico one, love the little one and show it off to my friends and laugh.
What color Orion did you get? The orange/red looks cool in photos, but I have the light blue...
@@DavesGarage I will get the Orion soon , Pico one, I got blue.. Dark blue.
I wouldn't use a Zima or a pico as a general purpose desktop. And for a small server I wouldn't use a Zima either. The tank, I'd rather just go to a full desktop at that point,.
I dunno why he compared them to Raspberry Pi; no GPIO and twice the price
I'm curious to see what will come out in the ARM mini PC market starting with Qualcomms X-Elite this year and furthermore the ARM exclusivity deal ending with Microsoft.
Keeping the OS on them seems a bit risky from these random manufacturers. Although you literally helped make windows so what do I know. I’d be curious what you check on and how to keep safe when testing these, I assume on a separate VLAN but what else. Also ARM or RISC 5 can go way smaller.
I've been running Intel NUC-6 and NUC-7 boxes for quite a few years
Nice vid3o but unfortunately you didn't test any N100 for comparison, and you didn't run any specific benchmarks for video encoding decoding.
That Zima would make an awesome firewall running pfSense
I love my little NUC. :-) For £200 from amazon it was a bloody bargain.
Several years ago I used a tiny 12-volt passively cooled "fitPC" physically similar to those in the video ... but much weaker in capabilities .. to monitor lambing in an off-grid barn 10 miles away.
Cast of characters: 12-volt car battery, webcam, USB-controlled relay to activate large 12-volt LED lamps for a few seconds at a time, USB 3G modem, cut-down industrial Windows, headless mode, remote desktop to view the webcam and a DIY app using Powerbasic and UDP to control the lamp relay.
Every 2 hours I would use my bedside laptop to connect to the barn PC, remote activate the lamps for a few seconds and then view the sheep in their pen.
Key takeaways for such a usage:
* Use an SSD drive not a so-called low power hard drive
* Setup a fixed IP address for your home Internet service
* Use Linux not Windows if possible ... it can power-down when idle, thus saving battery.
* Consider gluing on an extra heat-sink to the PC case.
badass
If I were doing that now I'd be tempted to use Home Assistant with the Frigate plugin for cameras.
Zimaboard is very expensive for the performance you get, when compared to a mini PC. I have a Beelink EQ12, which has 2x Intel 225 2.5gb NICs and uses an Intel N100 cpu. I run pfsense - I wanted a router where I had more power and control, even with pfblocker no slowdown, and low CPU usage. Next to add Suricata for IPS. I've got a number of others, Asus and Beelink, running HyperV and Proxmox, and a Minisforum for my new desktop. Another two are a Topton and similar, 5095 and 6005 CPUs, with 4x 2.5gb NICs which are spare for testing. I was going to install VMware 8 on one but VMware is heading down the toilet so I'm not sure about wasting any time on it, and I have used VMware 7 in an enterprise environment with 1500 VMs before we moved it all to Azure. Much better to try out Nutanix, or get familiar with KVM, Zen, etc. one thing I have decided is I won't buy passively-cooled kit, these small PCs generate heat and need airflow, IMO, and I won't go super-small as they need room inside for the air to circulate. I have been using WD Green NVMEs as those appear to give off less heat. You will only be glancing at the temperature display frequently if you have concerns. Luckily I've built most of this up over the last 18 months and memory and NVMEs have been relatively cheap, although prices are going up now.
Like the video but still don't get the use case for this form factor? Have an old mini PC from Lenovo (used office) for linux stuff and a steamdeck for gaming.
Would be useful to have an approx cost comparision of the 5 units
I wish you talked about pricing. And showed the Pico's projector
These small form PC are getting better. I have wondered for some years why the laptop internal offerings have not been more widely used by SFF builders in China, they seem to have restricted themselves to a small market with Celron and other low power offerings and almost useless graphics. Not everyone wants games, I have no interest there. However I do need some reasonable graphics power as I use Ai photo editing software that is make a coffee time on the CPU but don't stand up time on the GPU. These units are getting to where I want to be, but I still want to be able to poke my fingers in and change things, so a desktop will be on my desk for sometime yet, even if it is a space I could use for other things like model making. I don't like PCs on the floor, I cant get at them.
Nice technical comparison. Cost of each unit would be appreciated.
My favorite pcs in the small form factor are the n100 and n305 based pcs... cheap and pretty fast
N100 is 4 cores of Alder Lake E-Cores.
an interesting overview of small-form factor PCs. Do any of these small boxes include their PSUs? It's one "trick" used to make them "smaller" :)
No, they all use external power bricks. Only Apple seems to have sorted that out...
@@DavesGarage Apple always devotes time to PSUs :)
I wish you include the performance per watt metric.
Those PCs are actually normal size, Dave is just secretly a giant.
New Strix Halo APU’s will be wonderful for this
Next time please add the volume of the mini PC in liters! That will clearly show the tradeoff. Thanks!
Only two of these can actually be bought... and the tank is actually more expensive than ITX build that will have replaceable/upgradable parts... i mean its interesting, but i think if you need that kind of power you wont mind a 7-10L itx case... to me the most interesting here is the Zimba board... if you need x86 i guess, Pi4 is still half the price tho...
You can always run doom
Slightly random question, but if anyone would know, it would be Dave. When installing a driver on every version of windows and you choose to select the driver, it always goes the the "A:" drive!? Why? who still uses floppy disks. Just default to C: or C: user downloads. It just seems so legacy that has slipped through every crack in 20+ years
I want one of these as my streaming pc. I think that would be smart.
Hi, it would have been nice to know their power consumption as some of them could be useful in embedded applications (the smaller ones).
Raspberry 5 or Rockchip based boards like Radxa Rock 5B or Orange Pi 5 are great.