Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
PC build challenge
I am looking at getting a non gaming pc. The pc will only need to be able to connect to the internet wirelessly. I was thinking about just getting a laptop and using it.
So here is the challenge. Get the least expensive box that can be used to access the internet that is not a complete piece of junk. I would like to get ~5 years out of it. This is why I am looking at building one.
prefer a smaller form factor but size is not real important.
prefer a smaller form factor but size is not real important.
Any advice would be appreciated.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
--John Ruskin
--John Ruskin
Comments
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
--John Ruskin
https://www.newegg.com/intel-boxnuc7cjyh1/p/N82E16856102203
https://www.newegg.com/crucial-8gb-260-pin-ddr4-so-dimm/p/0RM-0006-00C63
https://www.newegg.com/silicon-power-ace-a55-256gb/p/N82E16820301380
That's about $230 for a dual core CPU that launched in 2017, 8 GB of memory, and a 256 GB SSD. It's also very low end, and powered by a laptop-like power brick. It doesn't support WiFi out of the box, but you can add a USB WiFi adapter for about $10.
You should be warned that the CPU and GPU are decidedly low end. The CPU has two Goldmont Plus Atom cores with max turbo of 2.7 GHz and the GPU has a mere 96 shaders, as compared to 768 in the current best available integrated GPUs, excluding game consoles. It should work for web browsing, though.
You could also go fully prebuilt and get something like this, which is a little cheaper, but also significantly slower:
https://www.newegg.com/p/2SW-003F-00005
If you don't already have peripherals, then you might just want to get a laptop, as peripherals will add quite a bit to the price tag.
https://www.newegg.com/ecs-z-plus-liva/p/2SW-0021-00014
That has WiFi built in, and could take the same memory that I linked earlier. It needs a different SSD form factor, though:
https://www.newegg.com/vaseky-256gb-ngff-m-2-2242-ssd/p/0D9-00HY-00050
That does add about $40 to the price tag, but it's quite a bit faster than what I linked above. A lot depends on what your idea of "junk" is.
You can also get much faster versions of that sort of small form factor stuff, but they also cost quite a bit more.
--John Ruskin
Just make sure it has an HDMI, usb's and Bluetooth is pretty standard these days
edit: It wont be very long and all connections will be wireless, except that power will take a little bit longer but not too long.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
--John Ruskin
Gets on the internet. Not complete junk. Can run Windows if you wanted to. Hard to find a smaller form factor. Accepts touchscreens, keyboards, mice, and up to two 4K HDMI external monitors if you want. You would have to add a WiFi module for wireless internet, but that's about $10 extra.
So, adding in a WiFi USB adapter, your at about $50 all in, maybe $75 if you want a cool plastic case or something.
https://www.amazon.ca/Quieter2Q-Portable-Dual-Band-Bluetooth-Expendable/dp/B08ZXS11KW/ref=sr_1_48?crid=NUOKSEB1KBSW&keywords=mini+computer&qid=1641946947&sprefix=mini+computer%2Caps%2C136&sr=8-48
--John Ruskin
If you want significantly more reliable then you'd need to start adding stuff like UPS to ensure power supply, RAID and backups for data protection, and connect the device to both landline and 4G networks so that it can switch when one of them goes down.
Having far fewer chips around means a lot fewer things that can go wrong. Having lower power consumption makes it much easier to handle power delivery and much easier to avoid overheating. Very low price tags also give you the option to buy reliability by having backups: if one dies, then plug in the next and you're ready to go with no need to wait on shipping.
Would I get a Raspberry Pi myself? Not if you're planning on running Windows. But don't confuse it with an effort at offering high performance cheaply by cutting corners on build quality. The low price tag is possible because it cuts performance and features.
It's a substantially similar story for the NUCs that I linked above. If you want a desktop for light duty use and a 15 W SoC offers enough performance for your needs, then you might as well go the ultra small form factor approach. Rather than spending $40 on a case and $60 on a power supply and $80 on a motherboard, you effectively get all three packaged together for $50 or some such.
And again, that's done by cutting performance and features, not build quality. A 4" x 4" bare bones motherboard is cheaper to build than a 9" x 9" Micro ATX one that needs to offer a bunch of PCI Express slots and SATA ports and so forth. A 5" x 5" x 2" case is cheaper to build at a given level of build quality than a Micro ATX tower. A 65 W laptop-like power brick with only a +19 V output is cheaper to build than a 400 W desktop ATX power supply.
If you think I picked the wrong memory or SSD, then swap them out for whatever you want. It won't make that much of a difference to the price tag, anyway. The SoC with the CPU and integrated GPU is the same chip as Intel has sold in a zillion laptops and desktops, and clocked lower to save power than some of the laptops and nearly all of the desktops. Clocking it lower makes it more reliable, not less.
If the 15 W SoC doesn't offer enough performance for your needs, then going with something bigger makes more sense. But that's a judgment call on your part, not a problem of reliability.
Looks decent, also consider you can chop off a good 100$ off that by just using w10 without activating it.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.