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 👍

  • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
    142·
    11 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·
        11 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·
          11 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.