Mini PCs on a budget, how I caught the bug!

[Pob255]

old/damaged laptop + basic wood working skills + monitor = all-in-one pc
can even make a mini pc depends on the motherboard pcb

what you need is a laptop that's basically functional, it needs to turn on and work when plugged in, don't care about battery, keyboard, trackpad, screen or caseing
now depends on the internal board but most or only about 33% of the laptop size, and that's pretty much all you want.
Often ports are on sub-boards connected via ribbon cable so they can be repositioned and layed to bring down the foot print.
now build a box to put it in.
connect monitor via hdmi/vga, keyboard and mouse via usb, and power via the charger
1mini pc, might be longer but should be flatter.
need more usb? build in a usb hub
build it onto the back on a monitor, all-in-one pc

[Rob_B]

I did that a few years back to make a kitchen PC, my woodworking skills leave a lot do be desired though!

[Rob_B]

I *may* have just took a punt on another tiny Dell with a 7th gen i3, fingers crossed it works OK :/
I'll compare the games on the old HD4400 vs the HD630 but I'm hoping for a decent jump in performance.

[OwP]

I *may* have just took a punt on another tiny Dell with a 7th gen i3, fingers crossed it works OK :/
I'll compare the games on the old HD4400 vs the HD630 but I'm hoping for a decent jump in performance.

We have the Dell mini PCs at work, have to say they have been brilliant, better than the Lenovos we had before. Same goes for the laptops and all in ones.

I currently have a mini PC wired up to a ELO touchscreen monitor, works really well. The touchscreen was £30 on ebay, seems to be a lot of them around at the moment.

Hadn't realised they also did AMD
Dell AMD Quad Core 1.5GHz, 4GB RAM, SSD, Windows 10 Pro Silent Fanless Mini PC £65 on ebay.

Just did a bit of research and the Dells can have issues with HD replacement, some if not all have "unusual" connectors.

[DanceswithUnix]

Hadn't realised they also did AMD
Dell AMD Quad Core 1.5GHz, 4GB RAM, SSD, Windows 10 Pro Silent Fanless Mini PC £65 on ebay.

Very cute. Not sure I would want to use Jaguar cores for everyday tasks, but damned tempting for those times when a Raspberry Pi hasn't quite got enough grunt.

[Rob_B]

Aah a Wyse box, yeah I can't imagine that'll run amazingly but it fits the size/budget contraints!

[Pob255]

My experience with mini pc's tend to be what's inside is more important than brand.
And many of the very high end units have thermal issues, I did some testing on one of the mini pc's from lenovo 2 years ago (maybe 3) it had a i7 t series (I think it was a 8th gen) and a Quadro gpu, it was being sold as a work station but really wasn't up to it, the big issue was the cpu and gpu shared a heat sink, a pair of heat pipes with the cpu and gpu at each end and a fin stack & fan in the middle, the moment you tried to do any serious load on it it would start thermal throttling.
I remember reading up on it at the time and the i5 model using intergrated graphics was fine and didn't throttle

Then a couple of months later I had a job at a uni installing the i5 version in a new building, 300 odd of them.
Lenovo did a really nice vesa bracket, so it was set up with dual monitor arms and the pc is actually in between one monitor and arm, made a very clean setup.

[Rob_B]

So I got my new toy today, fresh install of Win10 and its up and running.

It's a Dell 3050micro running an i3 7100T with 4GB DDR4 and a bog standard HDD (with an obscene uptime) Same size as the 3020m (almost identical in fact)

I definitely need to add in another 4GB or preferably 8GB stick but I only have DDR3L in my other machines. Also in dire need of an SSD of some sort. I'll be posting in the classifieds in a minute!

Bit of a bargain this one, bit scuffed up and 1 dodgy USB port but as my mum and Pob said, it's what's inside that counts...

[beebub]

I have an old Revo box that I'm considering running as an emulator box for the living room. It should be more than enough for that! Cheap fun gaming! None of this spending 2 months rent on just a graphics card. I applaud you for your efforts.

[Rob_B]

So now I'm running the 3050m with 12GB and an SSD which is a more pleasant experience

- FPS in HL2 is crazy high which really surprised me even though it's old (1080p, high settings, 100+ sometimes)
- Crysis Warzone hits 30fps @ 1366*768 medium settings.

I'm currently downloading a few more games to test, Metro/Alien,FC2 and couple of MoHs however Origin won't let me download Battlefield 3 for some reason :/