GMKtec Mini PC Intel N150 Windows 11 Pro 12GB DDR5 256GB SSD, Dual LAN, 4K Triple Display, Wi-Fi 6, BT 5.2
Collect the $70 off coupon.
GMKtec Mini PC Windows 11 Pro 12th Gen Intel N97 (up to 3.60GHz) 12GB DDR5 512GB SSD
Collect the $60 off coupon.
CamelCamelCamel.
You're welcome, sometimes it pays to be a night owl.
how does this work? interested in learning more about this. was thinking of doing pi hole but not sure if its the same
Have a look into opnsense and possibly proxmox (a hypervisor you may choose to run opnsense on).
yeah I've got a couple of Intel n100 mini PCs already, but for $149 I couldn't resist the N150 with the dual NICs for opnsense and home assistant under proxmox. The 12GB RAM and 256GB nvme will be more than enough for that purpose.
No, no! Have a look into pfsense and possibly xcp-ng (a hypervisor you may choose to run pfsense on… and xen orchestra built from code).
…
Im probably fighting a lost battle against proxmox… but apparently xcp-ng is (was?) better at windows hosts.
The ha and plugins for xcp-ng is pretty good.
Type 0 hypervisor is where it's at…
@gizmomelb: In all seriousness though, proxmox and opnsense are most likey just as good, xcp-ng is cool because of warm migrations, and the HA stuff, so if you have a couple of machines and a nas, load balancing will be awesome.
Anyone know if these are Realtek or Intel ethernet?
I'd avoid Realtek on anything that'll be running OPNSense or PFsense, things have improved but Realtek drivers are still iffy in BSD, especially if you want to run IDS/IPS…
WOW.Excellent value.Takes a TF card as well.
Which one is better?
Not sure to be honest.
The N97 is a little faster, the N150 has faster Wi-Fi and BT. They use 2242 SSDs which are harder to find and I think both have soldered (not upgradable) ram.
the n150 model has a so-dimm slot, so is upgradable.
Not sure where you saw that. Memory is soldered:
tps://www.gmktec.com/products/intel-12th-twin-lake-n150-mini-pc-nucbox-g2-plus
do you know if theres a breakout board or cable or something i can do so i can put a 2280 ssd into it?
N97 is marginally better for graphics in the reviews I've seen.
N97 is marginally better for performance.
N150 is marginally better for power consumption.
Depending on your budget, i feel like for such a small price difference, i would just get the N97.
This looks really nice. But I don't know much about mini PC's, I hope someone here can help me please, as I'm just wanting a mini PC that can interface with the Yamaha Keyboard and do some basic midi recording and editing etc.
I'm going to attach it to my piano/keyboard stand (will probably just cable tie it to one of the steel beams) and then connect to my Yamaha PSR-EW425 Arranger Keyboard:
https://au.yamaha.com/en/products/musical_instruments/keyboa…
And I'm wondering how it compares to something like this: https://www.untech.com.au/products/lenovo-thinkcentre-m900-t…
Is the Lenovo CPU less or more powerful than the one in this deal? And are there any other key advantages of this deal over the Lenovo?
Thanks👍
These are great for always on applications as they only use a few watts of power and they are tiny and usually quite silent. The 6 gen i7 on the Lenovo would be far quicker in most benchmarks, but pulls ~ 4 times the power.
This is great to know 👍thankyou for your reply
Would one of these work for playing browser movies on a tv i have a Chromecast already but need to use a ad blocker on the browser or the movies are unwatchable.
from my understanding the only downside is streaming services will be low res since they dont have certification, which is why alot of people use the nvidia shield
So do you mean that the Nvidia Shield can actually run an adblocker too?
Why would someone need an adblocker on a Shield? Are there actually people using browsers on a Shield? What on earth for?
@samfisher5986: Smart tube is awesome can log into to your YouTube account also, have YouTube modded on an android pad works flawlessly could easily do the same on a shield.
@AuQld: Personally I dislike 3rd party apps, very easy for them to detect and its against their terms of service. At the very least I would be using a different Google account just in case.
@samfisher5986: I think they're too busy stealing everyone's information to care. Been using them for years.
But the shield and pad have the same home account just for streaming wouldn't trust the hacks on a normal device used for banking etc..
Thanks i will have a look.
What do you mean by browser movies on a TV?
I'm assuming a website you stream pirated content from - on which you need to run an ad-blocker because I assume those sites are littered with ads and non stop pop-ups?
Also assuming you're then running HDMI from your PC/laptop > TV. That sounds like a horrendous way to consume content lol, do better.
Anyway - I certainly wouldn't be relying on the PC's in this listing to provide any sort of reasonable streaming experience on anything remotely high bitrate and/or resolution.
Heaps of people watch content off a TV, I think it’s far superior. What’s not to like
What’s not to like
The interface and UX.
Just use APKs on an Android box if you don't want to setup Plex.
What are you talking about lol? What is "content off a TV" supposed to mean?
Maybe try Kodi, Stremio with Realdebrid instead.
If you're playing browser movies then there are plenty of adblock extensions you can use on the browser. I highly recommend ublock origin.
Yeah that works perfect for my pc but some times i want to watch on my tv and when i do there is no way to block the ads.
I'm more of a downloader so I can watch stuff even without internet connectivity. I share my download folder on my Windows laptop across private network and use vlc app on chromecast to access the folder and play videos. Might be an option to avoid the ads but ofc you need to know what you want to watch to download ahead of time.
Internet download manager is great for it as it automatically detects videos on the page and has an overlay to download video.
if you know what you want to watch and it's on youtube or tubi or iview or similar - you can use YT-DLP to download the content, and then watch it commercial free.
@wonderboy4: I've only ever encountered one online streaming platform which yt-dlp couldn't rip video from (some you of course need to be logged into a legit account, but it's nice to have the option to download and watch offline when you have no internet connection).
@gizmomelb: Excellent, sounds really solid (gotta love apps that just work!) and definitely something that will really come in handy for me, and viewing from a file can often be a smoother experience than some streaming services.
Thanks again for the tip, looking forward to trying this out🍻
@wonderboy4: no worries - though a heads up as it's a command line program, no gui / windows version.. I'd recommend make a new folder for it - say 'yt', then download and unpack the file to that folder. Also download ffmpeg windows version and copy to the same folder as it will be used to repair any downloaded streams which may have issues with them.
to use 99% of the time it's just type ''yt-dlp.exe URL' where the url is the link to the online video.
eg" yt-dlp.exe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9moL1Qxbe8o' would download team pandory's video review of the GM Ktec G3 plus mini pc at the best video and audio streams it could find (most likely would be AV1 encoded video and saved with .webm extension (which happily plays for me under KODI, streamed from jellyfin on my NAS).
You can faff about with command line options to select specific audio and video CODECs and have ffmpeg auto convert stuff for you etc. if you want to meddle with that side of things.
@gizmomelb: Ah thanks so much for all that info! That really helps a lot👍
I'll follow these instructions, it seems pretty straight forward the way you've laid it all out. Really appreciate the effort to be so thorough in explaining, especially a command line program and needing extra knowledge of addons etc, I'm sure you just saved me a tone of time there😅
Big cheers! You're a champion 🏆
@Sfh1975: @Sfh1975
Another legendary post! Just bookmarked all these links, thankyou so much for your kind assistance👍
I'm off to a flying start with this one! 😀🍻🍕
how long do these usually last? i think the cmos battery scares me the most,
umm pretty much every computer has a cr2032 battery for cmos.
Would either of these be good as a NAS running Xpenology? Main use for the NAS is primarily Plex.
Understand that it would need an external drive caddy of some sort to be able house the 3.5" HDD's. I currently have an old Dell 9050 SFF i5 setup running that I transplanted from the SFF case into a full sized case.
Just curious about other options.
Cheers
I've got a dedicated Intel N5095 CPU NAS (slower than both of these mini PCs) and I use jellyfin and intel iGPU hardware transcoding (maximum 1080p is all I've tried.. I do have 4K content but I watch it direct on a 4K screen, so no need to transcode) - anyways, the CPU/iGPU content happily transcodes 3-4 1080p streams to different devices without breaking a sweat. Though if you're streaming stuff direct to your loungeroom tv, then one of these would make a great media playback box with KODI.
@gizmomelb I stream to an Nvidia Shield in two rooms and a Fire stick in another so hardly any transcoding would be needed.
Does anyone know of a decent 4 drive external 3.5 HDD enclosure that could pair well with these mini PC's?
most external drive bays are literally just dumb bays.. they won't do any RAID or JBOD or anything. If you want to do that (join / collate all the drives into one storage array) then you can find some simple NAS cases which will just handle SMB shares.
@gizmomelb: I think I just want a dumb bay. As long as the mini PC recognises all four drives, then Xpenology which is what I use as my NAS software, can use Synology Hybrid Raid to re-create the Raid capability.
That is how it is set up at present in my main PC.
@jollster101: ahh I have 2x HP n36l microservers running xpeneology / DSM 5 and 6 - time to upgrade to auxxxilium and DSM 7 ;)
hmm to connect to an external bay though - you'd probably need to remove the M2 wifi card and see if an M2 SATA controller can be connected. Otherwise you need a not-so-dumb bay with SATA controller at least.
EDIT: approaching it from the other angle.. a mid tower PC case would have the space for the ATX power supplyand the 4x 3.5" drives.. take the top off the mini PC, take out the wifi card, put in an m2 sata controller and have the mini pc inside the mid tower case. does away with the convenience of the mini pc, but having the full size drives external is going to be messy otherwise and the all in one 4 bay cases i could see on amazon are mostly USB and no way to set up SHR with something like that.
@gizmomelb: @gizmomelb Thanks for the info. Removing the wifi card wouldn't be an issue as my current setup is hardwired to my AX88U router anyway.
I get it that a SATA controller is needed so a standard HDD enclosure wouldn't cut the mustard.
@jollster101: ahh someone used an nvme to 6x SATA adapter (they are running the O/S from the M2242 SATA SSD slot) and the SATA cables go to an external HDD bay - https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/1gzthxx/nucbox_g3_…
@gizmomelb: @gizmomelb Hmmmm, that looks really cool. I wonder what would be a suitable enclosure that would allow for the external cables to feed in. This looks exactly like what I was hoping for
Presumably the enclosure is just a standard offering given the SATA adaptor that is being used.
@jollster101: that enclosure just has the power and sata cable sockets on the outside, it's meant to slide into a case to replace 2x 3.5" hdd slots. fairly common on amazon etc. the jonbo or aquarius 8 bay cases have the sata/power backplane inside the case but they're generally use SFX PSUs (which are horribly overpriced in my opinion).
@gizmomelb: @gizmomelb I'm all for skunkworks if it does the job. Functionality over form any day of the week.
If I need to have sata cables on the outside then all good. It's not just whats on the inside that counts.
I agree that horribly overpriced is very evident, which is what I'm trying to avoid :o)
@gizmomelb: @gizmomelb I found this on eBay which isn't stupidly priced
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/166339674790?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mk…
@jollster101: that's a nice case, but it's USB-C - so you won't be able to run synology SHR or any other form of RAID (so some data redundancy in case of drive failure) with it. It has it's own controller on board which adds the drives to a JBOD (just a bunch of disks) pool, which data can then be sent over the USB-C cable.
A 'normal' (or jonsbo etc.) PC case may suit you best, as you can know how many drives you want (so that will dictate what size case it is) and also the PSU will go inside the case (though it may need some 'jury rigging' as there won't be a motherboard to connect it to to 'switch it on' - be aware you're working with MAINS VOLTAGE so be bloody careful. Use a thick, insulated wire and triple check everything - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIDarSg2jqk )
Maybe an old HP microserver (if found cheap enough) could be gutted and used with it's 4 bay drive enclosure and a replacement PSU - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HLF-46Das4&t=2s
@gizmomelb: @gizmomelb Ah I didn't twig on that one. I do have my current case with drives in so I could just drop the motherboard out of there, leave the drives in and add the N150 into the mix with an M2 SATA controller.
I will look at the videos you provided.
One of the key things I am trying to achieve is a bit less power consumption across the life of the device that I'm using.
@jollster101: re: power saving..I undestand. my HP n36l with 4x drives uses about 60W, whereas the N5095 (which is still more power hungry than the N100) and 5x drives uses 50W.
Are these any good at mame emulation? A very quick Google suggests maybe.
For MAME they'll be absolutely fine.
Ta. I'd like to repurpose my pis to other projects, figured one of these might be a fun swap
@LaTerrible
Should be a nice upgrade to your Pi, from what I can tell 👍
agreed.. these have much better CPU power than any raspberry pi. MAME, Neo Geo, CAPCOM - probably arcade up to the more recent NAOMI 2 etc. will be fine at 1080p, Wii, PS2, Gamecube upscaled to 1080p for most games (God of War notorious for running slow though). even switch emulation for 'lighter' 2D games.
A very thorough review here (I'm not sure if it's the exact same spec but seems to be close at least, but better double check) and it shows very decent emulation performance including Mame, GameCube and PS2 etc. Although they do mention that there are some better (but I think considerably more expensive) mini PC alternatives, if gaming is more your focus.
Beauty thanks
No problem, I had just watched it about 20 minutes before I saw your comment, so I'm glad I could help 👍
I'm a big Mame and emulation fan too! 🕹️😃
Videos worth the watch just for the song at the end. Gold. Thanks!
No Problem👍 I missed that video at the end, went back and watched it now, haha, that was unexpected!
Thank you. Been watching the N150 for months now but wasn't checking it at 3AM in the morning.
Check my link above, they test DOTA in that video
Is either of them good enough as an everyday pc? Mainly dozens of chrome tabs, and office.
I'd say so, don't expect anything super great as you will be limited by the number of chrome tabs as it is a resource hog. Should be fine for Office as well. Your main limitation will be the 12GB ram.
I have their G3 model (Intel N100 8GB ram). The 12GB ram will be fine.
I've been using a CHUWI branded Intel n100 (12GB RAM) as an everyday box for almost a year - I don't know about DOZENS of tabs open (since I tend to close tabs when 've finished reading whatever I was investigating) but it handles web email, browsing, 1440p youtube playbaack (my monitor being the 1440p limiting factor), and near 24/7 torrenting and usenet.
@Hiphopopotamus
Thankyou for posting this deal, I ended up going for the $150 one, especially because it has WiFi, where the second link doesn't seem to?
Anyway, it seems like a good mini PC (although I never had one before, but reviews and comments are good) and compared to all other sources that I checked, eBay, the Camels etc, a stonking good price!
Cheers 🍻👍
Once you've had mini you'll never go back
Haha, maybe you're right 😅
Would either of these be good to run home assistant on? Overkill?
depends what you want to do within home assistant. It should be good for most cases though.
Not overkill at all, these mini PCs are perfect for Home Assistant, they run it like a dream. I have mine running HAOS (bare metal) on the GMKtec G5 N97 12GB RAM with 256GB SSD, with the TDP set to 8W and C-states enabled for more power efficiency, so it idles at around 6W.
Way, way better and cheaper than a Raspberry Pi 5.
Apologies for riding on this, but do you know how to expose an electricity smart meter to HA?
totally guessing but you may need a zigbee usb module for it to communicate with the smart meter.
@gizmomelb: Yeah that makes sense to me. I've seen talks of using a CT clamp + zigbee transmitter but not sure if this means in the switchroom or in my unit as I live in an apartment.
I never bought these mini PC before, anyone can recommend how good are they with running basic office task? Like DOCX, PDF edit, emailing, several Chrome tab…
TIA
Link to a review of one of these, or at least a very similar one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9moL1Qxbe8o
They seem to say, office use and web browsing are not a problem at all.
Good to know, thank you for the video link
Will grab one to try for WFH
No problem 👍
What is WFH? *Edit: I just worked it out "work from home" 😅
N100 and N97 etc series are fine for light use only, but I would NOT recommend these for office or daily driver use at all, they are too slow for that — and their price point reflects that. These are super energy efficient mini PCs and well suited to specialised tasks (like Home Assistant or home lab use). It's an excellent Raspberry Pi 5 alternative.
wrong! I've been using an intel n100 with 12GB RAM for daily usage for nearly a year. Webmail, www browsing, 1440p youtube watching and near 24/7 torrenting / usenet downloads. I wouldn't be using it if your daily usage includes managing large spreadsheets etc. but then again most of the Lenovo SFF WORKSTATIONS we have in over 100 stores only have 8GB RAM and equivalent 6th gen CPUs, so take that as you may.
TL:DR daily usage is fine if you're consistently doing heavy work which requires lots of CPU or RAM usage. Even better - buy from amazon and if it doesn't meet your needs then return it within 30 days for refund.
Yes, fine for all that stuff.
thanks. i got one. purpose unknown right no
the way of the true ozb-er
yeah im going to try and convince my wife why i need this lol
atm we just have a spare laptop that we use but thinking if we really need this lol
its so small, cute and cheap haha
It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission lol
Thanks OP, got one, perfect for a home firewall setup…