Like Tree23Likes

Buying a mini PC from banggood

Closed Thread
Page 3 of 4 FirstFirst 1 2 3 4 LastLast
  1. #21

    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Posts
    11,711
    Quote Originally Posted by shri:
    @David4Maths - Reading your post .. and since you brought up the whole penis thing... my TL;DR version of your post is - "My penis is adequate for my needs, it does not need to be as good as yours"... am I right?

    For people like me who really do not give a toss about all the nitpicking?
    reminds of a system of down song about cock measuring and perceived status

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XL-Rr5a-Nk

  2. #22

    Join Date
    Jan 2014
    Posts
    1,274

    thanks.

    i am ok with dual core (or celeron)... again, as long as it can play 1080p videos in H.264 (and probably H.265, WMV and RMVB), I am perfectly fine with it. (My requirement for web browsing is minimalistic.) My primary concern is price. My budget is HK$900 or less. I am willing to consider 2nd hand machine, although I don't know where or how to get a reliable 2nd hand machine. My requirements on hardware are two: (1) mini PC form factor, and (2) fanless.

    should i try carousel? or new Golden? or ebay? dcfever?

    I am thinking of 32 GB eMMC on-board... plus a SATA slot for a 2.5 HDD....(maybe 500 GB or 1 TB)

    As for OS, I have the following requirements:

    (1) it must be able to read/write NTFS drives having files with size exceeding 4GB
    (2) it can play videos files in H.264, H.265, WMV and RMVB..
    (3) it can bittorrent to the SATA attached HDD...

    Last edited by nivek2046; 15-06-2020 at 12:23 PM.

  3. #23

    Join Date
    Aug 2011
    Location
    Hong Kong
    Posts
    677
    Quote Originally Posted by shri:
    @David4Maths - Reading your post .. and since you brought up the whole penis thing... my TL;DR version of your post is - "My penis is adequate for my needs, it does not need to be as good as yours"... am I right?

    For people like me who really do not give a toss about all the nitpicking?
    I did not ( of course ) use the word YOU use. YUCK ! I prefer to be more metaphorical. Maybe should have been classier and used the full version of the name aka Richard. But, we are all friends here right?

    I could have asked him if he wanted a crib board challenge if my centric view was organ based. You know us sailors, we have a unique view of the world and how we feel it should be described. Some people, not of our ilk seem to get really littereal about this stuff, when really it's not.

    Nice outside today --- oops --- Is that a double entendre? No, but really, looking out the window it is a really nice day. Life goes on but some of us are on a different journey old friend.

  4. #24

    Join Date
    Jan 2014
    Posts
    1,274

    i think i found what i want..

    It's ASUS Chromebox 3 mini PC. It's only US$185... plus US$2 shipping (to Hong Kong).

    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32966393971.html

    It can do almost 100% of what I wanted (eg, connecting to a DisplayPort monitor).

    There is one downside. It has a mSATA slot instead of a traditional SATA slot, meaning I can't connect a cheap second hand 2.5 inch SATA drive to it..


  5. #25

    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Posts
    11,884
    Quote Originally Posted by David4Maths:
    Sorry @jgl but your post is twisting my words and look s like a " I know more than you do" or a dick measuring contest.

    I said it will run anything you throw at it now. The fact the some things are laggy does not override the fact that it will run it (codicil - appears so far). Previous versions have failed to run OS types and having some of them I can personally confirm that. Trying to run ported Android on previous RPi can make you want to throw the whole thing on the rubbish tip FYI.

    The 64 bit comment is related exclusively to Windows and I thought ( obviously not for some ) that this was made clear. You cannot take advantage of the extra ram needed to EFFECTIVELY run Win 64 bit because a Win 10 installation eats up most of the 4 gb ram and 32 bit is only capable of reading 4gb I have a Lenovo C440 touch, that runs i3 and 4gb out of the box Over time and as it got older running Win10 32bit, the BSoD was a regular visitor. Now with 8Gb and a 64bit Win 10 it has been much happier not running out of ram as it did on 32bit. When it FINALLY arrives ( Aliexpress takes forever ) i it will get an i5 3330s and that should make it purr like a kitten again.

    Why say all this? Well I do, basically, all the things the poster does. I do not play games, I use low quality web based CAD CAM. Get TV and Movies on it as a replacement for a TV. So I talk from personal experience and neither care how much more you want to project you know in IT or how long your dick is, thank you very much.

    To the poster - there are a million opinions on every subject, but I say from experience doing what you do. Celeron and dual core is there because they cost zero dollars in the market because everyone has moved on. The eMMC makes it look modern but is gagged by everything built around it. The Single Board Computer market is full of better options and these intel celeron boxes are only in the market because lots of people can understand them from their own experience AND they are cheap enough to be a consumable item and not an investment you might make for a more powerful unit. BUT, it is a false economy. REALLY !!!
    Far as I can tell from previous posts, I... do know more than you about consumer IT gear. Sorry.

    You were just being some kind of wannabe tech dick for some reason (and yes, you brought this up). Really not sure why you brought up irrelevant stuff like eMMC on a CPU-crippled system, 32 vs 64 bit OSes, or anything else. The old reason for sticking with 32 bit OSes was for driver compatibility reasons, but that was relevant in the early 2000s. But from a memory perspective, 32 bit OSes don't address 4096KB RAM, in practice they will only address 3.5 to 3.6MB. So if you run a 32 bit OS on 4 gigs of RAM, you're leaving a bit sitting in limbo. On a Windows system running under 8G, you really want to be able to address every scrap of RAM you have physically present.

    Edit:

    I said it will run anything you throw at it now. The fact the some things are laggy does not override the fact that it will run it (codicil - appears so far). Previous versions have failed to run OS types and having some of them I can personally confirm that. Trying to run ported Android on previous RPi can make you want to throw the whole thing on the rubbish tip FYI.

    You appear to be suggesting that an rPi4 is a suitable bit of hardware for the OP. I point out it's not because I have tried it for the same use case. But you're gonna stick to your guns and say "it will run everything that the OP wants... but it's laggy"? I am not sure how this makes sense... I don't think the OP really needs to state that he doesn't want a laggy system, that's kind of a given.
    Last edited by jgl; 15-06-2020 at 03:13 PM.
    jrkob and emx like this.

  6. #26

    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Posts
    11,884
    Quote Originally Posted by imparanoic:
    for HK$2-3000, micro fanless pc, for web browsering, youtube and kids stuff, what do you recommend? i have a spare 24" 1080p monitor and i might use a vesa deskmount to mount the micro pc to the monitor
    Sorry, I am years out of date on this kind of thing. Years ago I bought some J1900 industrial PC of Aliexpress (main requirement was a quad port Intel NIC) and it's been absolutely rock solid since. Does fine as a desktop and would easily exceed what the OP needs, but I don't use it for that.

    Looks kind of like this (but isn't the same one and I can't remember the original vendor): https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32907761506.html

    Good things about it are no fan (no noise, no need to clean out dust). Downsides: You have to add your own RAM and SSD if you don't want to get whatever random stuff comes from Aliexpress. No free OS (not a problem, just run unactivated Windows), and probably bugger all warranty. Oh, and forget about firmware updates to patch things like Heartbleed.

    But, there'd be a local option if you want to go cheap and secondhand. I recently bought a ThinkCentre M73 Tiny from the secondhand mall over in SSP. The stores there sell corporate cast-offs. Something like 2K for an i5-4570S with 8G RAM and a 240G SSD. It's got a fan, but it's quiet. Downsides: No real warranty, I'm pretty sure the SSD is a fake (it's got a Kingston HyperX sticker on it but benchmarks terribly with 30MBps sustained writes!), it's only got a DisplayPort instead of HDMI. Upsides: It's tiny, you can VESA mount it, it designed for enterprise so you can set wakeup times in BIOS, you can still get firmware updates for it (machine is from 2015, but there are 2020 BIOS versions).

    If you got the latter route, you have to be careful on specs. The mall sells almost identical models but with S and T CPUs. The 4570S has twice as many cores as the 4570T, but they are the same price. It's a bit weird.
    Last edited by jgl; 15-06-2020 at 03:59 PM.
    imparanoic likes this.

  7. #27

    Join Date
    Jan 2014
    Posts
    1,274

    ok, thank you all...

    to be absolutely 100% clear, this is what I want:

    - something cheap like under HK$900 (including shipping).. the cheaper the better
    - CPU/GPU can decode H.264 and H.265 videos at 1080p.. (I do not need 4k)
    - can read/write external USB 3.0 NTFS formatted hard drives with files larger than 4GB..
    - chromebox or windows 10 home
    - can connect to an HDMI monitor
    - can connect to a DisplayPort monitor (whether via a DisplayPort port proper or via USB-C port)
    - 4GB RAM
    - 32 eMMC
    - has a SATA slot so that I can connect a cheap 2.5 inch second-hand traditional mechanical hard drive inside (like HK$80 for 500 GB on carousel)


  8. #28

    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Posts
    11,884

    I looked at sub-1K machines in the past and never found anything that appealed enough, there are usually too many compromises and if you spend a bit more you can easily re-purpose the machine for something else. There is stuff available, but I have no hands-on experience with it.

    You definitely want more than 32GB for a Windows OS though, otherwise you will run into major problems, quite soon. 64 will probably let you scrape by. I have no idea about ChromeOS.

    If I wanted a pure tiny entertainment box in a small form factor, it'd probably be a Minix like someone mrgoodkat already mentioned. But that'd be more than HK900. If you have to stick to the budget, it's some random gear from Aliexpress (note increased shipping times) and you take your chances.


  9. #29

    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Posts
    11,884

    Doh, I missed the followup post. Ignore this.


    Original Post Deleted
    Quite interestingly that's exactly the same specs as what the OP started the thread with.

    Any issues with storage capacity? The one that gets mentioned a lot in ranty online reviews is that the major Windows updates don't have enough spare working space to complete the patching process.
    imparanoic likes this.

  10. #30

    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Posts
    6,452
    Quote Originally Posted by nivek2046:
    ok, thank you all...

    to be absolutely 100% clear, this is what I want:

    - something cheap like under HK$900 (including shipping).. the cheaper the better
    - CPU/GPU can decode H.264 and H.265 videos at 1080p.. (I do not need 4k)
    - can read/write external USB 3.0 NTFS formatted hard drives with files larger than 4GB..
    - chromebox or windows 10 home
    - can connect to an HDMI monitor
    - can connect to a DisplayPort monitor (whether via a DisplayPort port proper or via USB-C port)
    - 4GB RAM
    - 32 eMMC
    - has a SATA slot so that I can connect a cheap 2.5 inch second-hand traditional mechanical hard drive inside (like HK$80 for 500 GB on carousel)
    I think you are asking too much for your budget. Most boxes below $1000 only have 2GB RAM and are Android powered. Just the Windows 10 license probably costs $100. The Minix G41 has 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC, SATA, HDMI and Windows and costs $2100. Minix is pretty middle of the road. An Nvidia Shield Pro costs $2400 and has 3GB RAM, 16GB eMMC, HDMI and SATA.

    The Beelink BT3 Pro costs $1500 but doesn`t have SATA afaik.
    Last edited by mrgoodkat; 15-06-2020 at 04:56 PM.