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 👍
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You can get a Ryzen mini PC for less than $200. Depends on what is worth to you in cost.
If you’re hosting plex or jellyfin I’d recommend an old Intel processor with quicksync. I paid like 200 for my pc on ebay gutted it and put it in a bigger case for more hard drives. Runs 4k videos like a champ with no GPU installed.
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.
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 $200-300, less if you’re okay with older chips. Run Linux headless and it’ll likely stay below 15W at the wall most of the time.
Pretty much exact. Lots of reviews to back that up without me spouting about it.
I don’t have one (and I don’t want one), but Anandtech measured the M1 version at 4.2W in idle. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested I think you can also get that from other Mini PCs (e.g. NUCs).
Cool, so the version from many years ago related to OP’s question…how?
It’s an Apple Silicon Mac Mini. Do you have a particular reason to think the new one is less efficient?
What’s great about Mac minis is that they’re extremely power efficient since they’re ARM machines, so if you live somewhere like in Europe where power is expensive, it can save you a lot of money.
I want to see numbers. How much is “a lot of money”?
I don’t have a Mac Mini, but for always-on systems, the idle power consumption can become quite significant.
- Gaming PCs can consume up to 100W (876 kWh / year).
- My AMD B650 NAS consumes about 17W in idle (150 kWh / year).
- A NUC / Mac Mini can idle as low as 5W (44 kWh / year).
If you pay 0.30$/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.
Would the Mac Mini actually idle at that wattage if it’s open for connections? I doubt it, it’s probably more like 10W, which is generally the range for those smaller AMD MiniPCs or NUCs.
If it’s 10W, that’s a $20 savings from your NAS w/ a desktop CPU (and probably a discrete GPU, unless it’s running an APU). I can get 4% easily on savings, so I’d only need a $500 savings vs the Mac Mini to recoup that difference every year ($500 * 4% = $20). So if you already have an old PC, use that instead of buying a Mac Mini, and you also won’t have to fight macOS to do what you want.
I do think it can achieve that while waiting for network packets (see e.g. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested).
But in terms of money savings it would rarely make sense, as you need to make it back during the time you run the system. If we assume 6 years lifetime then it would only make sense to pay $120 more. But yes, I’d also go for a system that runs regular Linux :)
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.
Cheap in Germany for example nowadays is 0,20 EUR / KWh + 15 EUR / month base fee. Most people have more expensive contracts though, 0,30 EUR / KWh and more
Fellow EU here. Those prices are crazy. My peak price is 0.18, while the valley is 0.08.
where is that in the EU…South-East parts?
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.
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
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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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
Most answers here are missing the benefits of a home Mac running 24/7 if you’re already part of the Apple ecosystem. For example, you can have it sync all your iCloud data (documents, photos, iTunes content) and back them up locally, then elsewhere outside of Apple’s ecosystem. You can also have it act as a local CDN for OS updates, whereby it will cache OS downloads locally so any subsequent updates will be super quick.
On the downside, I found native Docker on macOS kinda sucked, and just installed Ubuntu on my 2012 Mac Mini (now running Proxmox for funsies), but I have an old iMac to do the caching. You could probably virtualize and get both benefits, and I am considering moving to a new M4 mini for the power savings and sheer speed. That M4 Pro chip has absolutely incredible Geekbench numbers while sipping power.
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.
i have one running debian as a secondary backup to run just smart home stuff and pi-hole. you can set it up to start back up after power failure. was like $50 used. there’s basically no point in it being a mac rather than an old lenovo machine, but it sure is cute looking.
spoiler
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It doesn’t matter… You will have to use virtual box or docker
I will. I was asking from CPU power and price perspective though.
Sorry I’m not familiar with Mac specs
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.
At the ends of the day, it’s about what you’re comfortable working on. My daily driver is a MacBook Pro. I have a BeeLink S12 Pro that runs most of my self hosted stuff, and a Synology that runs a couple things. I also have an HP Z440 as a test bed box (powered off unless I’m working on something). I’m comfortable working with Linux and power draw was important for me in setting up my always-on server (my power bill is already high).
The only minor concern I would have with a mini is you’re limiting your support base. This isn’t to say there’s no support, there’s just less. Most self hosted are using something like a unraid, a beelink, or an old micro Dell/HP/Lenovo. Because of that, there’s a ton of stuff out there about getting various services running on these setups. The M-based mini environment is going to be a little more unique.
