Hi everyone,
I have a couple of PCs which are switched on 24 hours a day which is costing me a bit in terms of electricity bills.
I use one of these as a download box, and the other as crypto-currency wallet machine. I would also like to have another machine as a "sacrificial machine" on which I could install software I don't completely trust. I know I could use a VM for these, but then I'm still paying higher electricity bills for the VM machine. These need to be Windows-based as I use ReplayAV to record some radio programs on the download machine, and the crypto wallets are Windows based (ideally Windows 10 64 Bit). I usually use Remote Desktop to connect to these and they are not connected to any monitor.
I don't really need this to be particularly mobile (i.e. small form factor to carry around). I don't have a need to connect these to a monitor (i.e. HDMI port), and I plan to just use Remote Desktop to administer them.
I want to replace these with low power consumption devices and was about to buy some Intel Compute Sticks. Shopping Express has been promoting these quite heavily, but I decided to do a bit of research first.
They sell the:
* Atom Z3735 version for $119
* Core M5 version for $740
* Atom Z8300 version for $189
Reading some of the reviews online, it seems that the Z8300 version is much preferred over the Z3735 version (not least because of the 2 USB ports). I have a feeling that the M5 version would consume a lot more power and $740 seems like overkill for what I had in mind.
Doing a bit more research, I came across this video review of the Kangaroo Pro, which sold me on the idea of having a built-in Ethernet port instead of using Wifi (especially considering that one of these will be my downloads box). I know you can get an Ethernet to USB adapter, but the Kangaroo Pro port really appeals to me.
I also got sold on the idea of having 4GB of RAM instead of 2GB by this review. This favourable review also reinforced my desire for a Kangaroo PC.
A few more reviews later and I was getting confused on whether I should get a Compute Stick, a Kangaroo PC or a NUC. I'm pretty sure a NUC would cost quite a bit more though, and probably consume more power (in my searches, I could only find Celeron, or i3/i5/i7 based NUCs and not Atom based ones). I like the idea of a NUC in terms of sitting solidly where I place it (compared to the light-weight Compute Stick, which could get pushed around by the cables connected to it, like a small-form USB hub) and having proper Ethernet (and other) ports.
I only wanted to spend up to about $300 per Mini PC (including CPU, RAM, Storage), preferably around $200 or less. For the download box, I thought of getting a $90 200GB Micro SD Card for storage for the download box. I believe a Micro SD card for storage would use a lot less power than the spinning metal disks I currently use.
Some alternative solutions would be to use the download function some routers or NAS boxes have, but as mentioned above I have some Windows client apps I want to use.
From a power consumption point of view:
* The compute stick uses 2.45W in idle mode and 8.82W under load stats
* While a Broadwell NUC uses 6.85W in idle mode and 33.09W under load stats
Based on this, the Compute Stick (and probably the Kangaroo PC) will use a lot less power than the NUC.
Looking around, I can't seem to find any company that would ship the Kangaroo PC to Australia. Does anyone know where to get one? I also can't seem to be able to find the 4GB version anywhere. NewEgg doesn't return any results for "Kangaroo PC" either.
This post from 2015 mentions some alternative options from Tronsmart, PiPO and Rikomagic which can be bought from Gearbest and the like. I'm normally a bit reluctant with the cheap Chinese options (including the long wait on shipping). A recent pleasant experience with the Xiaomi Note 2 has made me more adventurous though (after changing the OS to CyanogenMod).
Are there any other options I haven't thought about?
Hystou is a Chinese off-brand that makes NUC-like computers. They can range from fairly cheap (under $170 USD -$224 AUD) to pretty pricey (300 USD)
According to this comment they are well made.
Since they are similar to NUCs hardware-wise, they also feature SATA and onboard GB ethernet.
You can also consider this Intel ComputeStick knock-off which has more RAM — packing 4GB of RAM at a lower price of US $95 (roughly $126 AUD)
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2016-Meegopad-T07-MINI-PC-Off…
While a compute stick uses much less power, you do sacrifice a lot of convenient features like Gigabit LAN, less USB ports, no SATA ports etc.
Some notes about using SD as a long-term storage solution… SD cards have limited write endurance, so I don't recommend using it as a download destination for large files or for FTA video recording. With a large enough SD card you can sort of prolong it's lifespan, but it's hard to say how long exactly an SD card can last with frequent writing and over-writing.