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0 points7speter2y ago0 comments

People looking for a n100 are usually deliberately looking for something in the 100 dollar range max if it performs much better than a raspberry pi. These people arent interested in a 250 dollar board and dont need so many cores. These make great little transcoding machines or routers and you dont need much more power than what these processors can provide.

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dgl2y ago· 2 in thread

If you’re wanting to save money though something with say an Intel i5-6500T (6th Generation Core) the ‘T’ meaning it’s a low power (throttled) part is worth considering. They are surprisingly close in performance to an N100: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_processor_n1... (although how much to trust those benchmarks I don’t know — it would be good to see benchmarks where all bug mitigations are definitely applied to the older CPU, edit: except neither are hyperthreaded so maybe spectre isn’t such an issue)…

Something like a HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Mini, can be had on eBay for around $80-100 (USD), with probably 8GB RAM and an SSD. So even less than a new thing with an N100 (although in some cases it’s close!)

It uses DDR4 (one of the first generations that did, so means if you want you can go up to 2x32GB SODIMMs). There’s a whole series of these things, servethehome has a “project tiny mini micro” covering many of them.

7speterOP2y ago

I really don't understand this seeming irrational aversion to the N100. The N100 uses significantly less power than 6500t, and the N100 Atom/Gracemont(iirc)Alderlake little cores have performance onpar with Skylake (8th gen) cores) and fit in much smaller form factors as a result.

dgl2y ago

The big one with the N100 is it either comes from random sellers on AliExpress, or you get something like the ASRock ITX motherboard with one on. Those motherboards alone cost the same price as an eBay system with an 6500t.

If the goal is to go with something familiar, which is why this thread was even considering the N100, then going with a system from a known supplier might be even better.

The power might not be such an issue -- while the 6500t is a 35w part, it idles quite low, it would really depend on the system it is in; I wonder how different the power draw at idle would be.

_huayra_2y ago

True, I didn't mean to suggest that the n100 is a bad machine. I'm actually considering getting this one for running opnsense directly (instead of as a pass-through NIC-enabled VM on proxmox)! I was just pointing out that AMD does have machines in this "mini ITX teensy tiny cheap aliexpress special" form factor.

Bottom line is that the n100 is a way better choice than pretty much any overpriced and under-supported ARM SBC these days.

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