I bought this tiny workstation — and it’s almost the perfect mini PC

[admin]

I picked up a renewed Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny to replace the mini PC powering my digital dashboard. It’s a lot more powerful but there were some quirks I wasn’t expecting.

I bought this tiny workstation — and it’s almost the perfect mini PC : Read more

 

[Moose and Squirrel]

I'd bet power supply on the old machine. Most cheapo mini pcs have a cheapo one and you're lucky to get 2 years out of a cheap wallwart. I've also had brand new setups actually require more power on a burst than the power supply could legitimately supply, leading to poor performance or reboots. Usually a $15 compatible unit brings them back to life.

The other problem the latest rage of using old systems like this is the power demand. I'd bet that people in Europe right now aren't looking to resurrect an old system that uses 5x the power of a new one.

 

[MangoCat]

I have had a series of i5 Intel NUCs over the past 10+ years, each a great PC when new, each eventually packing dust into the cooling fan until it dies, usually about 4 years later.

Trying a N5105 fanless Celeron now, more powerful than a Raspberry Pi and still fanless. So far so good in simple applications like you are showing, not super snappy like the i5, but silent and better still: no moving parts.

 

[Dan15]

$170 for a small i5-6500T system isn't really that good of a deal. You can usually find better deals on eBay compared to Amazon, as a lot of the ex-office PCs end up there, particularly at the end of the year when companies have to use all their remaining IT budget.

For the same price, you can often find 8th or 9th gen systems on eBay. I recently bought a HP ProDesk 600 G5 SFF with an i5-9500, 8GB RAM and a 256GB NVMe SSD for $199 from eBay. When I was looking, I saw some systems with i5-8400 processors for around the $170 price point.

 

[USAFRet]

$170 for a small i5-6500T system isn't really that good of a deal. You can usually find better deals on eBay compared to Amazon, as a lot of the ex-office PCs end up there, particularly at the end of the year when companies have to use all their remaining IT budget.

For the same price, you can often find 8th or 9th gen systems on eBay. I recently bought a HP ProDesk 600 G5 SFF with an i5-9500, 8GB RAM and a 256GB NVMe SSD for $199 from eBay. When I was looking, I saw some systems with i5-8400 processors for around the $170 price point.

Key factor - Used vs New.

Saving $30 for a performance difference that a LOT of users would not notice does not make up for the other issues with a used system.

 

[Dan15]

does not make up for the other issues with a used system.

Used business-grade systems are different to used consumer-grade systems though. Business systems are designed to last - some businesses use them in production for a very long time, and if a particular brand fails early, the businesses will switch to a different brand.

 

[USAFRet]

Used business-grade systems are different to used consumer-grade systems though. Business systems are designed to last - some businesses use them in production for a very long time, and if a particular brand fails early, the businesses will switch to a different brand.

Agreed.
I've bought ex-corporate items, many times. Printers, systems, etc, etc.

But there is still a lot of potential oddities with a used system that a lot of people would not want to deal with.
No warranty, possible OS license issues, unfamiliarity with buying a PC on fleabay, etc, etc.

If the difference were $400 vs $200, that is one thing.
But $200 vs $170...not so much.


And for the difference between i5-6500T and i5-9500 ?
I could swap those interchangeably for my spouses system, and she'd never notice.

Bottom line - Both pathways have their pluses and minuses.

 

[Dan15]

And for the difference between i5-6500T and i5-9500 ?
I could swap those interchangeably for my spouses system, and she'd never notice.

It depends on what your spouse does with the system. If they just use a web browser, then sure, they probably won't notice. If they do anything that consumes a noticeable amount of CPU, the i5-9500 has a CPU Mark that's over double the i5-6500T: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/3444vs2627/Intel-i5-9500-vs-Intel-i5-6500T. Even if you compare the low-power i5-9500T to the i5-6500T (which might be a more fair comparison since they're both 35W TDP CPUs), the CPU mark is still ~73% higher: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/2627vs3454/Intel-i5-6500T-vs-Intel-i5-9500T. The newer systems are far more efficient and you get a noticeable increase in CPU power for the same wattage.

Bottom line - Both pathways have their pluses and minuses.

Which pathways? My post is only comparing the second-hand ThinkCentre SFF/mini PC (which is an ex-office PC) in the original post to other second-hand ex-office PCs available on eBay. I'm just saying that for the same price, your money goes a further on eBay vs Amazon Renewed.

 

[USAFRet]

And that what a lot of people do, very basic stuff.