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 👍
I have an old mac mini that was a server for a good 4-ish years.
The good:
- They are pretty good at sticking in a closet and forgetting about them.
- Specs are always on the decent side and some of the older models are easy to upgrade.
- Power is ok. It sips power
- It can run for years without issues. I still have two mac minis I used for CI/CD jobs, thin clients, etc…
- Its a cheap mac. If you need mac for something, like building custom mac specific applications, then its a decent little machine.
The bad:
- CPU is usually lacking compared to any computer of the same price range.
- MAC OS. Its good at desktop but as a server, it just doesn’t have the same options/ease of use as a good linux box. You can get around that by dual booting, but its just another headache. Docker/VMs are also an option, but the RAM/CPU usage would take a hit.
- The newer the model, the harder it is to upgrade.
I would use it as a specialty server if you have something you do automatically only macs can do. Or as a thin client/vm box.
I used to use it as a CI/CD box before github actions was a thing. If you happen to have one, sure set it up for fun. If you dont and are looking at buying one, I would suggest a cheap dell desktop or (depending on what you want to host) a pi 5 or thin client and throw linux on it.
You can get a Ryzen mini PC for less than $200. Depends on what is worth to you in cost.
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.
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.
I would disagree with idle power not being important for a home server. Most of the time, your system will be doing very little and wait for something to happen. I also don’t think a typical server has a display attached. Wolfang explains this quite well: https://youtu.be/Ppo6C_JhDHM?t=94&si=zyjEKNX8yA51uNSf
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.
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”?
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.
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.
Self hosted server to do what?
Because I have a self hosted server running on a refurb Lenovo mini-pc that I bought for $90 and it does a fine job running the dozen or so docker image of service I need.
But I ain’t gonna run no LLM on that machine, that’s for sure.
If the price is right for you, go for it. You will run containers and or VMs, so doesn’t really matter what your bare metal is.
I would choose something where I can install Linux easily and nice and I am sure at the Mac mini price point you can build yourself an assembled mini-pc with beefer specs, but indeed it’s more work and hassle.
YMMV
Main problem is, ram isn’t upgradable on recent Apple tech, and you’ll need ram for containers, if you’re gonna host it to the CPU limit, if not, then even more so, brand new intel n100 mini pc for 100-150$ is gonna do wonders for you in self hosting field, what I’m saying is, if your MAIN goal is self hosting, then Mac is not optimal, i mean, you can buy Mac mini for your daily tasks and intel n100 mini pc for pocket change you’ll have left after buying Mac, and host your projects on intel one while using Mac yourself
HP/Lenovo/Dell workstation tiny/mini/micro will be cheaper and better supported. Price-wise, I’ve set up 4-5 reasonably powerful t/m/m machines for the cost of my M2 Mac mini.
Which is nice for some of the development work I do, but for a server I personally won’t use anything other than Linux, and I wouldn’t recommend anything else either. Apple adds some funkiness that can be a complete pain (IMO) with some tools, Linux is the only server solution worth using.
So if you want a Mac, go for it, but if you want a server as the most important part, I’d say get an x86 based bit of hardware.
Power should be plenty and efficiency great. The only thing I wouldn‘t like is external HDDs.
It wouldn’t be my first choice, but it’ll probably do the job. Depends on what you want to do with it. There’s fewer people choosing this path, which means that when things go wrong, you’ll have fewer sources of information to help.
Some old Dell office PC with a good amount of RAM and an SSD would be just as well.
I mean, it would work, but you would be better off power-wise, price-wise, and performance-wise, going with a used office PC such as Optiplex.
It is very good but depend on what you want to host.
I have a second hand cheapest M2 with Asahi Linux and some container (like pihole) but not much. I like that it is small, silent and energy efficient (and it can run Xplane12 in 4k !). But I have an homemade NAS so most of the multimedia stuff and containers are on here and not on the MacMini.
The M4 seems incredible, but Asahi Linux only support M1 and 2 at the moment (it might work with M4 tho).
The problem with the mini would be disk space if you are looking for a NAS usage, although I have seen here on lemmy a dude making a Mac Mini NAS (can’t find the post anymore).
But even without Asahi, an M4 with Mac OS, docker and a VM if needed would be plenty of power for price and energy. You can also upgrade to a 10Gbe NIC if your network supports it. Plug it to some screens and you have a workstation + docker server in one place.
DAS enclosures are super easy to set up. Disk won’t be a big issue if you go that route.
I bought a M1 Mac Mini second-hand and it’s great for home server purposes. Like others have said, you’ll be using containers a bunch, so bare metal doesn’t matter quite as much as it used to. They’re power efficient and offer good performance. If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, there’s a bunch of other benefits to having a Mac set up as a server (e.g. content caching for updates/iCloud content).
It’s fine, but not going to be the cheapest.
Cheap to buy: Any old PC desktop, really. Most will run linux and windows fine, depending on what you want. Anywhere from free to £100. If you have an old desktop or laptop already, use that to start with.
Cheap to run: Any mini PC. I run a Lenovo ThinkCentre M53 for low power duties. Cost £40 and runs silently at 10watts, idle. (I have a secondary, much beefier server for other stuff that runs at around 100w which lives in the garage)
But plenty of people do run mac minis as home servers, often on Linux. They’re fine - just do your homework on the CPU ability, how much ram you can add, and whether you’re okay with external disks if you can’t fit enough inside.
If you’re planning on running containers, tbh I would not. The required virtualization layer (due to macOS being BSD-based) is going to make containers WAY less efficient. You’re better off with a system you can easily slap proxmox (or whatever distro floats your boat) on.
If you just want a server with a very small footprint and good specs there are far better options. If you like using macOS and will occaionally use it like a desktop while also having some hosted services running in VM full time. Then yeah the minis are great little systems and fairly indestructable. If i went back to daily driving macOS outside work, i’d just buy a mini. But i’d only pay out for a mini if i’m actually gonna use macOS.
Using the igpu might be problematic for transcoding if you need that. I’d recommend older intel / Asus NUCs if you want a mini PC. 3 year warranty, built for Enterprise, tall version has room for a 7mm tall sata SSD or HDD along with nvme m.2 SSD.
I think if you do Asus 12gen + they have another m.2 slot though it is the smaller one 2242. Doing all this you can upgrade it to 64GB RAM, 8TB m.2 2280, 8TB SATA SSSD, and 1TB M.2 2242. In homelab especially with mini PCs the limit is usually RAM / storage rather than CPU.
I got 4 11th gen with 64 GB RAM each and 32TB of SSD storage. I recommend avoiding QLC SSD as much as possible. Aim for TLC , MLC, or SLC. Higher storage capacity tends to be QLC or TLC, QLC has shortest endurance and slowest speeds.
