Looking for a latest-gen Tiny/Mini/Micro Proxmox host. Any differences between Lenovo/HP/Dell or go with DeskMini??

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lmm7425

New Member
Jan 15, 2021
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As the title says, I'm looking for a new Proxmox host that is Tiny/Mini/Micro. I currently have a NUC7i3BNH that is 2c/4t with 32GB RAM. I run 10+ VMs and 25+ containers and now need something with more cores, more RAM, and better cooling.


Requirements:
  • Very small form-factor (will be in living room entertainment center, so needs to be small, low-power, and quiet)
  • Wife and I use Plex/Jellyfin daily, so I need something with hardware transcoding (prefer Intel CPU for this)
  • Would prefer latest-gen mid-level processor (10th Gen Core i5 or 4000 Series Ryzen 5)

Current options. Can anyone recommend anything specific? My current top-contender is the DeskMini H470.

BrandCPUProductNIC
Dell Optiplex MicroIntel-onlyLinkRealtek?
HP EliteDesk 800 G6 MiniIntelLinkUknown
HP EliteDesk 805 G6 MiniAMDLinkUknown
Lenovo ThinkCentre TinyIntel or AMDLinkDepends on specific model
ASRock DeskMini H470IntelLinkIntel
ASRock DeskMini X300AMDLinkRealtek
 

BlueFox

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Oct 26, 2015
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If you like the size of the NUC, could just stick with that. 10th gen i5 ones are quad core with about 2.5x the performance of your current one. i7 version is 6-core and even faster. Either will accommodate 64GB of RAM. 11th gen should be available any day now too.
 

lmm7425

New Member
Jan 15, 2021
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If you like the size of the NUC, could just stick with that. 10th gen i5 ones are quad core with about 2.5x the performance of your current one. i7 version is 6-core and even faster. Either will accommodate 64GB of RAM. 11th gen should be available any day now too.
Ya I saw the new 11th Gen NUC and was tempted. I really like the one I have now, but the fan is so loud since it's so small. I'm leaning away from them hoping that the Tiny/Mini/Micro nodes or DeskMini have larger (and quieter) fans, but if nothing else works out, I'll go with the new NUC.
 

zer0sum

Well-Known Member
Mar 8, 2013
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If you went with a Lenovo M920q you could always run a single slot Nvidia card like the cheap and cheerful P400 and do hardware transcoding on the GPU.

It's only 6 cores / 6 threads, but it does support 64gb ram and NVME drives :)
 
Last edited:

lmm7425

New Member
Jan 15, 2021
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If you went with a Lenovo M920q you could always run a single slot Nvidia card like the cheap and cheerful P400 and do hardware transcoding on the GPU.

It's only 6 cores / 6 threads, but it does support 64gb ram and NVME drives :)
Oh I didn't know that was a thing, I'll look into that, thanks!
 

Parallax

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Nov 8, 2020
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London, UK
Oh I didn't know that was a thing, I'll look into that, thanks!
You can put faster CPUs in the M720q/M920q setup, the highest end one is the i9-9900T which is 8C/16T in the same 35W TDP envelope. If you put a larger power supply on, the 135W for example, then you will get better performance through a higher TDP and thus more heat, which may not be the best idea given the existing heat from the P400.
 

newabc

Active Member
Jan 20, 2019
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Dell Optiplex 7080 micro has a half-height pcie x8 slot and 10gen i5 T series cpu. But I haven't found the information of whether its own NIC is an Intel or not.
 

BlueFox

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Oct 26, 2015
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Dell Optiplex 7080 micro has a half-height pcie x8 slot and 10gen i5 T series cpu. But I haven't found the information of whether its own NIC is an Intel or not.
It supports vPro, for which you need an Intel NIC. Most likely it has an I219-LM.
 
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