Would benefit from one or two small pictures. I guess MiniPC means like a Mac Mini or an Intel NUC?
> You can expect average power draws of 20-50W in usage and 6-12W in idle.
> Put that in perspective with high-end machines with hardware concerned with performance and not power draw, that can easily idle at 100W.
Have you measured that? I think my full ATX desktop only idles around 30 watts. (With a bunch of apps running ofc) I took out the GPU to reach that, something was wrong with the power saving, feels like bad drivers.
That said... I'm not totally disagreeing. I have a mini PC running a couple web and P2P services. I'm trying to unburden my ATX so it can shut down at night to save power and do maintenance. And having more computers would shift me away from my "kitten" habits, so I'd abstract over hardware better.
A beelink mini pc will draw about 5w when idle (measured with a watt meter the pc was plugged into). It’s smaller than a NUC (I think!) - it’s slightly bigger than a raspberry pi with a case. Not exactly this model but it cost about us $150.
Intel no longer makes NUCs. Asus bought the rights. But there are lots of other form factors. Search for n100 or n150 minipc and brands like topton and cwwk. More router like than the classic nuc.
> You can expect average power draws of 20-50W in usage and 6-12W in idle.
> Put that in perspective with high-end machines with hardware concerned with performance and not power draw, that can easily idle at 100W.
Have you measured that? I think my full ATX desktop only idles around 30 watts. (With a bunch of apps running ofc) I took out the GPU to reach that, something was wrong with the power saving, feels like bad drivers.
That said... I'm not totally disagreeing. I have a mini PC running a couple web and P2P services. I'm trying to unburden my ATX so it can shut down at night to save power and do maintenance. And having more computers would shift me away from my "kitten" habits, so I'd abstract over hardware better.