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 👍

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    26 days ago

    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.

    • stuner@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      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 :)