August 2021: which models of TinyMiniMicro should I be looking out for deals?

[Gio]

I am looking to complement my homelab with one or two TinyMiniMicro devices. Although the articles in STH are detailed some of them may be a year or two old, my question is - for August 2021 which models are the most recommended for a TinyMiniMicro setup?

The lenovo P330 with its extra PCI-e slot is intriguing and would be ideal if my TinyMiniMicro was able to support a PCIe plus a max of 64gb of memory for growth.

What models should I be keeping an eye out for that are reasonably priced? The P330 Tiny is expensive at $600 at the moment.

 

[WANg]

Depends on your needs. if you are not planning to run ESXi7 natively, look for an HP t740 thin client - like a P330 but AMD Ryzen based (specifically the embedded version of the Ryzen 5 2600H) - also 64GB max RAM ceiling, dual M2 storage slots, TPM chip built-in, and a single PCIe slot that can accommodate for a single width, half height, half length card. On a good day they are available for around 280-350 USD used. The only downside is that the embedded NIC is Realtek based so no ESXi 7 support.

 

[Gio]

Thanks! going to keep an eye out for these.

My plan was to run Proxmox and see about using a cluster.

 

[WANg]

Thanks! going to keep an eye out for these.

My plan was to run Proxmox and see about using a cluster.

You might want to check out my writeup on using it with Proxmox/ESXi 6, then - particularly on getting SR-IOV working with it.