Considering getting one for both aesthetic and saving money. Gonna get one where I can upgrade the RAM to 128 gigs and the ROM to at least 8 TB SSD.
Any pros, cons, suggestions, etc?
What miniPC had a good GPU?
https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/branded-systems/nuc-&-mini-pc/100923-rnuc12snki72va1
They do exist, but for the price you could build a hell of a desktop or just buy a sweet gaming laptop.
but for the price
that’s always the problem, isn’t it. If someone is that tight for space, mount their desktop under their desk. I built a custom shelf stand so it is not sitting on the ground, but it is still under my desk.
They usually have pretty limited video chipsets unless you spend pretty big on one.
Gonna get one with supports 128 gigs of ram max
Doesnt mean anything if the gpu chip sucks.
Any ones with great GPU chips + 128 gig ram support?
What do you need 128 gig ram for?
3d models, 4k ones that is
“4k models” does not make sense. 4k is a measure of 2d, height and width. But even assuming you are going to be dealing with some heavy models, I still doubt that you need 128 gb ram.
I honestly thought this was a bit. Unless you’re building a server for a data mining lab or something like that, you’ll hardly need 128 GB of RAM, and you’ll probably forget about what is in 7 out of 8 of your TBs unless you’re storing a lot of raw video footage. That looks like a waste of money.
If you want to play games, a good mid-range GPU plus 16 GB of RAM tops is all you’re going to need. Anything more than that gets into the realm of “ultra graphics” which is too subjective for me to give any useful advice.
P.S.: unless you’re already hitting it close to your max memory usage, more memory usually does basically nothing to improve speed. It might even have slower data fetch rates than a smaller board due to sheer size and bus complexity.
I game on a NUC. If you’re getting the computer strictly for gaming, I really don’t recommend it. Something with a full pci slot and room for a modern sized graphics card would be better. I have a nvme to pci adapter, and I use the much maligned 6500XT from it. Nvme is only 4 pci lanes, which is all the 6500XT will use. It’s fine for 1080p gaming on medium settings, and nothing more. If you also have a small, low res screen and you’re content with that, I guess go for it. But if you want to play modern games in a way that looks even remotely good, just get a small desktop.
RAM to 128 gigs
You really don’t need that much RAM for gaming. 32G is fine, 64G is overkill, 128G is wasting money.
I regularly compile chromium on a ramdisk, using a solid 32 threads, on 128GB and that’s about the only legitimate use case that I can think of.
ROM to at least 8 TB SSD.
ROM means Read Only Memory. You don’t want that in a computer that you intend to store things in.
Honestly though, you don’t need more than ~2-4TB of solid stare storage in a PC at this point; it’s trivial to add an additional NVMe or replaced the existing one - save yourself some cash in the short term; flash prices are coming down every day; by the time you hit capacity it’ll be far cheaper to buy more storage.
I find it funny how everyone swears by SSDs these days, you’d think HDDs were a barbarian’s tool and not worth the time it takes to order them.
I get that prices are mostly the same now between HDDs and SSDs for some storage levels but I have an SSD for Windows, an SSD for those large AAA games that benefit from it, and then everything else is on HDDs that have been going on almost 10 years, and they’re still going great. Once you’re looking at >2TB storage (maybe even 4TB now) HDDs are cheaper and still great. The only problem really is running out of SATA ports and places to attach them in your case lol
Yeah you really want a decent sized SSD for OS and loading games, but beyond that it’s worth it to get some larger storage options in HDDs.
You can go even further and get refurbished enterprise HDDs for nothing and they will still last years. These things are built to last 2 decades at least and they will be used for 2 or 3 then refurb and sold for 1/3 the price. I’m about to set up a raid5 server with 4x4tbs and they cost be slightly less than $40 a piece. At that price I could get an entire second set as backups and still pay less than a set of 4 new ones. lol.
Go for SFF with desktop components. Mini PCs usually have laptop/mobile components, aren’t particularly upgradeable, and have limited performance.
Any SFF cases, motherboards, etc that support water cooling?
Basically all do, just depends on how much radiator area you want. I wouldn’t call water cooling entirely practical though, especially in SFF builds.
Looking for at most can fit 2. I’m going for a cube-ish mini-ATX case
more ram doesn’t make your PC faster, i don’t really see a case where you would need that much and you know what they say about unused ram.
look up mini atx cases first, don’t get a prebuilt it will never save you money.
Found this. Quite good imo
Next step is to choose a mini atx motherboard that meets your needs.
I’ll be honest, I don’t even do mid towers, so I can’t really offer anything for minis. It’s full of go home for me. Mid towers don’t have the width to fit the best CPU air coolers and I’m too cheap for liquid. I also like to have room to work in there. Just easier all around to deal with unless you are really cramped for space and or planning on moving the PC frequently. Minis really boggle my mind. Everything so cramped in there. Makes me uncomfortable. Like computer claustrophobia. lol. Idk how the cooling is for them but I feel like water cooling would be almost a necessity and that’s going to eat cash. If budget is not a limiting factor I guess that’s not an problem though.
No offence intended OP but it sounds like you’re bench building some über gaming rig without any real fundamental grasp of what you need and why.
A “mini” pc is a type of PC about the size of a hamburger box, but you’re talking about mini atx and wanting to watercool. You’re talking about upgrading the ram and nvme to the current high end of whereconsumer grade is currently but dont really understand how graphics and graphics cards work. You want to go to a smaller pc to save money but it works absolutely opposite to that.
As long as you get an external graphics card, it sounds like a pretty solid setup. Just make sure your cpu cooling system can fit
Gonna go SFF
