{"id":2182,"date":"2023-01-05T18:08:49","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T23:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/mcq1press\/?p=2182"},"modified":"2025-01-12T16:47:28","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T16:47:28","slug":"mini-pcs-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/blog\/?p=2182","title":{"rendered":"Mini PCs Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s been not quite two years since I bought a mini PC to play with<\/a>. That one continues to work just fine as an internal server on my home network. Unfortunately, it’s starting to feel a bit slow running Ubuntu, and since I continue to be fascinated by the ultra small PC form factor, I figured it was time to look at maybe getting an upgrade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of manufacturers of these devices now, and they can vary in price from less than $200 to devices like the Minisforum Neptune HX90G<\/a> a power tool with discrete graphics, 32Gig of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, for >1000 $US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much fun as that would be, I ended up with something a bit more reasonable. The ludicrously named “KAMRUI Mini PC with Windows 11 Pro, Intel Celeron N5105(up to 2.9GHz) Mini Desktop Computers, 8GB RAM\/256GB M.2 SSD Micro Computer Support 4K UHD, 2.4G\/5.0G Wi-Fi, LAN for Business Home Education<\/a>“. If nothing else, that gets the point across. Here’s a product shot:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The thing that appealed to me about this one is that it’s basically the same price as the previous one I bought, with more RAM, a bigger SSD, and a significantly faster processor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After several days of playing with it, I can honestly say I’m totally happy with how it performs. Originally I had a bit of trouble with the somewhat dubious Windows 11 version it came with, but since I already knew I was going to run linux on it, this wasn’t a big deal. If you decide to get one, and intend to run Win11, watch out for the Windows Update cycle. YMMV, but in my case it hung badly enough that I couldn’t even reset the PC. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, running linux it’s great. I don’t have benchmarks, but it’s very significantly faster than the old one, even to the point that I can do some low spec Steam gaming on it. Woo hoo!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been not quite two years since I bought a mini PC to play with. That one continues to work just fine as an internal server on my home network. Unfortunately, it’s starting to feel a bit slow running Ubuntu, and since I continue to be fascinated by the ultra small PC form factor, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2182"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2838,"href":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182\/revisions\/2838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikew.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}