Mini PC vs SFF PC: Which is BEST For Your Homelab?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ม.ค. 2024
- Comparing the HP MINI PC with the Small Form Factor version to help you pick between them for your next home server.
The Prodesk 400 G3 Mini is a 1L PC with an Intel i3-7100T processor. It's compact and power efficient, as well as affordable. The Elitedesk 800 G3 SFF has an Intel i5-6500 and 8 gigabytes of DDR4 memory. The larger SFF system is a full sized computer with some useful features, but is it a better choice than the Mini?
There's a lot of things to consider, from processor TDP to storage and expandability, so we're comparing the two.
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Great video,
I have 3 computers from this generation, and if you are looking to get one of these, be aware:
Prodesk 400,600: same form factor, 400 doesn't have m2 nvme slot 600 does, 400 has only two sata connectors, one is usually connected to DVD, other is for Hdd/ssd. Both only have 2 RAM slots. They use the same PSU. PCIeX16 slot is next to the PSU as mentioned in the video, LIMITED to 35W. Prodesk 400 supports m2 nvme disks in bios and can be used via pcie expansion card. Both 400 and 600 do not support RAID directly from BIOS.
Elitedesk 800: Max Memory 64GB, at least 3 Sata Connectors(some come with four, if shipped with DVD from factory) . Supports RAID 1(mirror), configured from BIOS. Comes with integrated m2 nvme slot, and more nvme's can be added with pcie expansion cards. Supports Hardware RAID expansion cards with battery backed up buffer and RAID 0,1,5,6,10,50,60 configuratios.
PCIe x16 slot with room to spare, although 35W specified, it runs 75w GPU's with ease.
My kids have two 400's with GT1030 and PSU gets really hot with those card. Pcie nvme card installed next to it, gets really hot also.
All three are incredibly power efficient, meaning You can run it on UPS longer. Being business products, all three are designed with airflow from front to back, no vents on the sides, meaning you can stack many of them one on top another and just ran them that way.
Didn't have the chance to try the mini.
For homelab 800sff is the way to go. For gaming 800 in a tower configuration, has more power in pcie slots, and room for full height GPUs.
I love the detail that you go in to, the thoroughness of the material.
Crazy timing! I just bought one of each of these. One is my Proxmox server, the other is running TrueNAS with two 4TB hard drives. So far they've been pretty solid and didn't cost much.
Happily using the G4 Elite Desk 800. $150. Added 32GB ram, 2x12tb drives 2x2tb nvme, and 10Gbe. Nice chassis to work with. Just needed right angle sata connectors.
Nice! I probably should've mentioned the right angled sata connectors in the video.
I've been using the same Small Form Factor (SFF) EliteDesk non-stop for two years with Proxmox. It's modern enough to be energy-efficient and reasonably priced, making it a great choice for continuous usage. Coming from someone who abandoned old dell xeon server 😉
Thank you so much, you helped me make a call on what I should use for my needs. Much appreciated.
Great video, I love how through your materials are! As a fan I have one request: please add more tables and visualisations, especially when you go through differences between systems. I believe it would bring more work, but also it would make the material easier to follow. This channel has a lot of potential to become one of the biggest in its area. Whatever you do please keep up digging into the specs and fetures as much as you do now!
Recently I bought the bigger Elitedesk with the i7-8700 (6c/12t). Plan to use it with proxmox for jellyfin, home assistant, frigate (with coral TPU), pfsense/opnsense, wireguard, pihole and bittorrent at the same time. Can't wait to get it running!
Glad you liked it! I absolutely agree with you about including things like comparison tables, that would probably be a great way to visualise the differences.
Hi, i also bought it last week, the thing is that i was not able to install two 3,5 HDD on the bays, the connectors for the cables are facing so there is no way to connect it. I had to leave one of them over the other. Are you trying to do something like this?
@@nicolasortuzar7457, I have a separate NAS, so have no plans to add HDDs to the Elitedesk. Is using angled connectors and/or a 3D printed bracket an option for you?
@@fpspiter would need to see if i can find a sata power adapter to split on two angled connectors, thanks for the advice
Thanks for the clear info. Very helpful
Great and informative video! As an ex-product specialist for HP I really appreciate the way you present the information regarding the generations and form factors. Keep up the good work!
Just what I was searching for posted at the same time. Thank you for this video, your explanations are very clear and interesting :) As mentioned in another comment, I would add some text to your videos in order to catch key elements. Keep it up 💪
M.2 SATA is obsolete imho since NVME costs roughly the same. A shame there are no cheap high capacity SSDs.
I agree. It's like there was a time warp for consumer grade SSD's (2.5") I hate they named NVMe's SSD's also, I love the speeeed though.
Just found your channel. Excellent content - Another sub for you sir!
Excellent and very informative video. Right to the point with no nonsense. I've learned a lot from this. One thing that I experienced with the differences between the HP EliteDesk series and the newer HP Prodesk Series was power. I have an HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF 4th Gen Intel system that I still use as my "daily driver" PC to this very day. With the upgrades that I added to this system it out-performed a 7th Gen ProDesk 800 G4 Mini Tower case by quite a wide margin. What I discovered was that the ProDesk was grossly under-powered and based on a "green" power consumption initiative that literally ham strung all its internal components and wasn't very suitable for anything more than a mainframe slave system. An 8th Gen EliteDesk 800 G4 mini tower system that I just purchased a few weeks ago I discovered is a much more capable and versatile system that I have seen from the "business class" of PC's from the prebuilt lineup so far. It's still a completely proprietary system but the OEM specs and upgrade path isn't completely horrible (and it has WIFI and an NVMe slot) I haven't had much experience with the "mini" form factor but I might have to look into them in the future! Thanks for all the great information!
Good info, thank you!
I have an 800 G4 SFF, 600 G3 SFF and 400 G2 mini, excellent desktops.
i was going to say this video got me to sub, but im already subbed 😁
Thanks for your insight on this! Great video, I learned some new stuff today
excellent video. thanks. I am running a few of both devices in clusters. The mini PCs might look advantageous as cluster node if space is an issue but as failover I would say the SFFs are much more relevant. That is because the single biggest failure point are harddisks and not processors, mainboards or memory. So to get true availability or data safety you will need to use SFFs and pack in up to 3x3.5’’ HDs or even better up to 7x SSDs. This way the SFFs become really valuable for the low costs. The MiniPCs on the other hand are best for media streaming and Nextcloud where the NVMI or even the very very cheap 32GB M.2 SATA makes a huge difference in processing. Often Nextcloud does not need raw CPU power but fast r/w database access and it therefore benefits from the fast read writes on the m.2 lanes.
I fitted Intel Xeon CPU E3-1265L v3 @ 2.50GHz × 4 to my Lenovo M93 Tiny ThinkCentre they run well did come with i3 4130T 2.9GHz CPU.
Hi, I found at the same price an elitedesk 705 g5 sff with ryzen 5 pro 3400g, and a prodesk 800 g3 sff with i5 7500.
For home use and something a bit more pushed which one do you recommend to buy?
I’m personally using a Dell 4th gen sff with a 10 gig sfp and 4 x 1gig network card for my router
Hey. What is the idle power comparison between the two?
Can you provide the link for the 10gb adapter card for the small micro form factor model
Im running the g3 800 mini as proxmox server. I hooked a m2 - 6 sata adaptor, to add a total of 6 2tb hdd, proxmox runs on the sata port with ssd and i uphraged the ram to 32gb.
nice! how do you power the hdds? do you keep the case open?
@@KinoapparaTom 12v 10a laptop type PSU with a 5v stepdown to get all needed voltages.
3d printed HDD rack and yes it stays open, I'm working on cpu cooling upgrade because cpu it's running avg 70 Celsius.
@@werox709 great! he he adventurous ;-) btw 70C is fine for a cpu, unless you have spare time and got a cheap noctua cooler to swap it ;-)
Wow, that is information dense 👍. I just purchased 3 x EliteDesk 800 g3 SFF for a homelab promox cluster. What 10GbE cards are recommended here?
I can’t currently recommend any 10Gbe cards because I don’t own any myself, sorry. Hope those systems are doing well for you though.
There aren't many 10GbE NICs that are pciex4, most are x8 with pcie2.0 for single and pcie3.0x8 for dual port cards. And most of the older chipsets run pretty hot.
I use single port Mellanox ConnectX-3s in my EliteDesk 800s (G6 LFF Tower). They're pciex4 and use only a couple watts. Well, they're SFP+, but they're also only 30-50 bucks so the additional cost for a transceiver or two is easier to stomach.
power consumption?
Mini: 8-12 watts at idle, approximately 40-45 watts at 100% load
SFF: 15-20 watts at idle, approximately 70-80 watts at 100% load
It does depend on which processor is installed, as well as memory, PCIe cards and storage.
@@serverscience do you think the power consumption of an optiplex micro/sff are about the same as the one you stated?