Suggesting for Low power Mini PC

[chrischambers]

I’ve posted a few times about my ongoing issue running Unraid inside a VM on Proxmox. After some trial and error, I’ve decided it would be simpler to move Unraid to its own dedicated server. My plan is to then purchase a low-power mini PC, install my Proxmox SSD into it, and mount shares from Unraid back into Proxmox.


For the mini PC, I’d like at least 8 physical CPU cores and 32 GB of RAM, both to match my current Unraid resources and to leave some room for growth.


I’m aiming for something around the £300 mark, which feels about right when you factor in the cost of a new motherboard, RAM, etc.—and it should save me some headaches compared to rebuilding from parts. Ideally, I’d just install my Proxmox SSD, power it on, and be good to go.


Here are a few options I’ve found on Amazon UK:

• DreamQuest Mini PC Windows 11 Pro Intel N95 (32 GB + 1 TB Pro)
• BOSGAME P4 Plus Mini PC Ryzen 7 5825U
• BOSGAME E2 Mini PC Ryzen 5 3550H
• BOSGAME P4 Mini Gaming PC [Dual LAN], AMD Ryzen 7 5700U

If anyone has experience with these brands (or similar alternatives) in a Proxmox setup, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

 

[pringlestuffs]

I would opt for a barebones/used "big name" mini PC such as the HP Elitedesk 805 G8 Desktop Mini, mainly because parts and support are easier to get, and they are mass produced by the hundreds of thousands, and frequently better validated with better support concerning issues like BIOS updates, than the Chinese brands.

I'm not sure how customized a Proxmox install is to the hardware it runs on, you may well run into problems trying to drop an installed SSD into entirely different hardware.

 

[AndyInNYC]

I’m running a Beelink SER5 with a 5800H - 8 cores/16 threads and 64GB of crucial (32x2).

Proxmox installs and seemingly runs perfectly; the machine is on a UPS and hasn’t crashed at any time.

Purchased mine pre tariff and it was in your range then. DDR4 prices have tripled since the first quarter of this year (not necessarily driven by tariffs) so YMMV.


Andrew

 

[wattcheck_lab]

Late to this, but the "low power" half of the ask never got answered with actual numbers, and that is exactly where 8-core AMD mini PCs trip people up, so here are measured idle figures for the boxes in play.
Idle on these tracks the AMD generation, not the core count, and it swings about 5x:
Beelink SER5 Pro (Ryzen 7 5800H, 8C/16T): ~5.3-8.2 W idle, takes 64 GB DDR4. Andrew's pick is genuinely one of the lowest-idle 8-core boxes going, so it is a good steer for your priority.
Aoostar R7 (Ryzen 7 5700U, 8C): ~7.3 W idle, but 32 GB max.
Minisforum UM690 (Ryzen 9 6900HX, 8C): ~8-10 W idle, 64 GB.
Beelink SER8 (Ryzen 7 8845HS, 8C): ~7-10 W idle (package 3.5-4.7 W) if you want a newer chip.
The catch: newer is not lower here. A SER6 Pro (7735HS) measures 20-35 W idle and a UM790 Pro (7940HS) 25-45 W, so reaching for the latest Zen4 HS chip can triple your standby draw versus the 5800H. On an always-on box at UK rates (~£2-2.50 per watt per year) that gap is most of your running cost.
On the EliteDesk 805 G8 idea, nothing wrong with a validated big-name box, just note the AMD Pro mini line tends to ship Realtek 1GbE NICs (the 705 G4 and Lenovo M75q both do), which are fine under Proxmox/Debian but not under ESXi if that ever matters. I do not have a clean measured idle number for the 805 G8 specifically, so I will not invent one.
On dropping your existing Proxmox SSD straight into new hardware: it usually boots since it is just Debian, but two things bite. The NIC comes up under a different name on the new board, so vmbr0 loses its uplink until you fix /etc/network/interfaces. And you are on Legacy BIOS now, so a UEFI-only box means repairing the bootloader. Doable, just not always plug-and-play, so pringlestuffs' caution is fair.
One extra if you ever want iGPU passthrough for transcoding: the Ryzen APUs (680M/780M) hit the AMD reset bug where the GPU only resets once per host power-on. The older 5800H Vega is less affected than the 680M. Ignore this if passthrough is not in the plan.
Full disclosure, I built a small free thing for exactly this decision because I got tired of re-deriving measured idle / NIC chipset / passthrough notes per box from scattered reviews: https://idlewatt.vercel.app (every figure cited to a wall-meter source, data is CC-BY at https://github.com/SolvoHQ/homelab-mini-pc-dataset). Corrections welcome if your SER5 idles differently from what is listed.