David Heinemeier Hansson

The Minisforum UM870 mini PC, retailing at $343 as a bare-bone unit, offers surprising performance with its 8-core/16-thread AMD 8745H CPU, 48GB RAM, and 1TB storage for under $550. It matches or exceeds larger, more expensive systems in certain tasks, such as running the HEY test suite faster than a 14-core Apple M4 Pro. While it may lack capabilities like 8K video editing that high-end Apple systems offer, it compensates by being able to play modern games at 1080p. The post highlights the impressive efficiency and cost-effectiveness of modern mini PCs, driven by advancements in technology and manufacturing.

Cheap mini PCs have gotten really good

This guy successfully escaped the Apple bubble and realizes that there’s life outside the walled garden. Good for him.

Just a reminder that this likely wouldn’t have been possible without AMD. I remember there was a time when Intel’s Celeron, Atom, and Centrino (the old, doomed ones) were the only things that could be equipped in those mini PCs, and it was a complete failure. Since AMD launched the Zen architecture, we’ve seen a huge improvement in small, energy-efficient, and performant machines. Intel has somehow managed to catch up in some fields (for instance, the ZimaBlade I run as a homelab uses an Intel CPU, and it works well), but we really have AMD to thank every day.

i get a little scared every time this og image pops up in my feed 🙈

mini pcs with linux make an excellent servers