I bought a Mac Mini as my main computer back in 2012. It's tiny, inaudible, fairly powerful (quad-core Ivy Bridge that can sustain 3.1GHz), uses only 15W when idle, and runs OS X. Haven't looked back.Milos wrote:I thought every one has some desktop laying around, or would be upgrading an existing desktop machine.TomKerrigan wrote:I suppose it costs less if you already own a bunch of components.
Here's the breakdown on the computer I bought:
- $150 for the CPUs from eBay, includes shipping
- $399 for a Dell T5610, includes motherboard, coolers, 32GB RAM, power supply, case, DVD-RW drive, and low-end Nvidia Quadro
- ~$65 for a cheap SSD, USB wifi adapter, and DisplayPort cable from Amazon
Total cost ended up at $615 including shipping, etc. with no reused components.
If I were to buy the same thing now, it would end up being significantly more expensive, considering the cheapest Dell T5610 on eBay is $750...
Big advantage is really that modern air coolers (and I am not talking Noctua's that cost 70-80$ a piece) but basic CoolMaster 212EVOs are more than adequate for cooling down non-OC Xeons and are even on full load almost inaudible. Plus you buy modern mainboard, so you get all the nice features, can plug in any GPU, have best PCIe performance, have bunch of USB3.0, most modern BIOS, organize your RAID as you wish, it is extremely power-efficient (much better than old server-box MBs), Xeons at idle are 20W each, MB is additional 30W and GPU is 20W (and I can even work without GPU, in case I really don't need it). Plus it works perfect on Win7/10 and you don't need server OS.
When I bought the Mac Mini, I happily dumped all my computer junk in some boxes and took it to the local computer recycling place. All the old cases, power supplies with outdated connectors, CPU fans for sockets that nobody uses anymore, 3.5" hard drives, graphics cards that were current when people still played Quake 3 Arena, etc. It was probably 150 lbs of stuff in total and I was extremely happy to be rid of it all.
The Dell I bought is a great computer and it was released in late 2013, so it's current as of ~3 years ago, which really doesn't seem like that long ago. It has dual PCIe 3.0 x16 slots = can handle dual graphics cards no problem, 825W 80 PLUS gold power supply, only uses 70W idle, has a bunch of USB 3.0 ports, and is fairly quiet.
I use my Mac Mini to ssh and sftp into it. Sometimes I wish I could get OS X running on it and use it as my main computer, but then I remember how much I hate being able to hear my computer and it'd be a waste of electricity too.