re: Recommend a good budget NUC/Mini PC

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I think you have picked me out a winner, bobby.

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Lenovo, Dell, and HP all have very nice SFF machines that should fit your bill. I have several in my office. You can often buy them off-lease with an SSD and w10 pro for around $200 from Amazon with a 4-series Intel cpu.
The key is to search the 4-digit cpu code + letter "T" (their low-power and often fanless or otherwise near-silent machines). Doing this will let you see between the manufacturers and get the insides that you want fairly reliably.

The sort/filter on Amazon is so-so, so I usually search and dig through a few pages of results to find the right one. For office settings, I think most of what I have are 4570t machines, a mix of HP and Lenovo. Make sure to check your peripheral/display ports (as some are HDMI, some DP, some with/without vga). It can be a little difficult to see on the Amazon product descriptions, so you may have to go and look up the specs from the manufacturer.

I've only bought these about 6m ago, but I would recommend the process and find where price meets what you want. for my use, the authentic professional version of Windows alone (on a more-than-passable office machine) just about makes the purchase worth it. Given your search into Atoms and Celerons, I would think that a 4xxxT processor should do almost anything you'd need it to, though I've admittedly never attempted to test the graphics out if you are looking for.


But if you want to bump up to a $300 machine, this one should do nice (elitedesk, 240gb SSD, w10p, 8gb RAM)

But having bought some of these off-lease/refurb units, I don't think I'll ever go away from them anytime soon.


ETA: I don't watch eBay at all for these, but the prices on Amazon are basically stagnant- I've never seen a deal like your $99 machine above. $200-250 is going to get you a 4-series i5. $300 is around where the 6500t machines start.
The i7 machines are all north of $400, and I don't see the 6700t much, usually the 4770t (rarely 4790t)
The above all assume SSD included. Typically 8-16gb RAM.

Just won an elitedesk 800 g2 i5 6500 for 130.

im going to use this to run my process automation software im planning to use.

I have my big machine running plex as i have like 30 people on it and it transcodes a good bit. No matter how hard i try to get people to upp their bandwidth via settings, it still calles to transcode down to some extent.

But i do plan to move that machine to more of a server environment. I was going to start a tread on this but ill ask you before i do that.

As of now i just have my main machine running Win10. I would like to install proxmox so i can set up virtual environments. Is there a way to basically copy my windows instance and install it to a VM without loosing a step? Im basically wanting to have my big machine run VMs for plex, my surveillance system, and the home automation software. I will probably move the hardware to a server rack was well.

and bear in mind i dont know much about all this. i just learn from reading and youtube videos.

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As of now i just have my main machine running Win10. I would like to install proxmox so i can set up virtual environments. Is there a way to basically copy my windows instance and install it to a VM without loosing a step? Im basically wanting to have my big machine run VMs for plex, my surveillance system, and the home automation software. I will probably move the hardware to a server rack was well.

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Where there's a will, there's a way, but it would likely go poorly

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I will probably move the hardware to a server rack was well

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I have to move away from my rack setup, sadly. Wife says it's too loud and ugly in the second bedroom even though it's barely louder then fans in the room. I spent a lot of time and money on that setup

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nice

Little 4c/4t that you can load up with 32gb of ram. Great little in-home plex machine

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well what sucks is that the seller canceled the sale, quoting "out of stock" bullshite i dont think he wanted to sell it for that cheap.

Anyway the good part is i just won a HP Elitedeck 800 G3 i5-6500. for 40 more bucks.

Great little machine

there is a bunch on ebay for that price.