My current setup consists of a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4gb RAM and a 1tb external SSD. I’m thinking of getting a used mini PC for around 100€ to replace that tho because it would give me a lot more power and especially RAM (I currently need to use an 8gb swap file). My plan so far is to get a used mini PC that’s quiet, has a built-in SSD and at least 8gb of RAM (16 would be better). Because of the built-in SSD, I could also sell the external SSD and buy an 8-12tb HDD instead.
Does anyone have recommendations for what mini PC to get or things that I should look out for?
Edit: Thanks for all the help! I decided on the Firebat T8 Pro Plus with 16gb RAM and 512gb internal storage because that really seems to be perfect for my use case.
If I were you, I would look at the chinese offerings on aliexpress. If you carefully read the spec sheets, you can find excellent price/performance
Just looked around and there are mini PCs for around 130€ with Intel N100 CPUs, which have a 6W TDP, AV1 decoding and they beat an i5 6500T (that one’s in a 130€ Dell Optiplex I found on ebay) in single core and gets close enough in multicore. Is there some kind of catch I’m not seeing with that CPU? Because it looks perfect for my use case.
Can’t quite speak for the n100 but I got a n305 one of these “China PCs” it’s passively cooled (which was important since it’s running in my bedroom) and seems to have amazing performance for what I need (I put jellyfin on there). I’m quite happy after futzing around with ARM SBCs and external drives this just works so well.