from Hacker News

Ryzen 7 Mini-PC makes a power-efficient VM host

by secure on 7/2/24, 3:29 PM with 12 comments

  • by jauntywundrkind on 7/2/24, 3:55 PM

    Power efficiency & power management really need to be a focus. I have an old Gigabyte GA-AB350-Gaming-3 I got when I eventually upgraded to a Ryzen 1700 (now 5800), and I: a) cannot get this system to idle below 80W after stripping non-essentials, b) suspend or sleep in any way (the system goes down but I literally have to pull the plug, wait, and replug it in to turn back on). I've tried undervolting, spent hours trying to tune power profiles &making sure maximum PCIe aspm link savings are active; the system is just a brute, and unmanageable. It feels so cursed & has been such a leaden disappointment I've tried to carry for so long; it has truly shattered my faith in AMD in general.

    I'd rather not get a G core, but hearing that this system idles at 10W is incredible. That's what my 8600t HP tiny PC's idle at. That would be stellar.

    I'd love to see more reviews and write ups include power consumption, and also ideally suspend capabilities. Ideally wwol would also be verified working.

  • by pseudalopex on 7/5/24, 3:47 PM

  • by inhumantsar on 7/5/24, 3:32 PM

    Seems strange that they compare this to a raspi in the conclusion rather than one of the fully integrated mini PCs with a soldered down laptop CPU, eg from Minisforum.

    Besides, the barebones unit is over €200, the 8700G is €300, and RAM is €150-250, for a total of €650-750. Meanwhile an 8GB Raspi 5 is less than €90 all-in and a 7 node cluster of these would use about as much power in total as the 8700G does on its own.