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
    1213·
    4 days ago

    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
      142·
      4 days ago

      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.

        • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          4 days ago

          I’m not saying idle power is unimportant. I’m saying the M-Class chips can’t ever go idle with a minimal set of features NOT being engaged, because they’re going to be more engaged in general vs other chips that can run truly headless. macOS doesn’t allow for that.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            6·
            3 days ago

            Yup. My old 1st gen Ryzen desktop system isn’t particularly power efficient, but it idles <50W (I think closer to 25W, but I haven’t measured for a while). And that’s a desktop class chip from 7 years ago with two HDDs and a discrete GPU and PCIe wifi card, so it’s not winning any awards for efficiency. Even at that, it’s barely a blip on my power bill.

            An AMD or Intel laptop-class chip should be able to get to 10W or so idle, and not spike too much with basic tasks. And those can be had for $200-300, less if you’re okay with older chips. Run Linux headless and it’ll likely stay below 15W at the wall most of the time.

    • babybus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      34·
      4 days ago

      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”?

      • stuner@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        4 days ago

        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
          31·
          3 days ago

          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·
            3 days ago

            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 :)

      • tahoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        51·
        4 days ago

        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.

      • suction@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        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