Ultra compact PCs

[EdgeT]

Hey guys.
I see stuff like the Brix plastered all over tech sites nowadays, and I just wanted to know if and how would an UCPC be useful to you.

Because I can't for the life of me figure out why this is the new craze. They only seem useful as HTPCs/thin clients to me so why would anyone want an i7 in them when they can bearly handle 1 HDD/SSD?

It just reeks of minimalist but pointless design. A nettop I can understand, but an i7 in a nettop is too powerful for anything I can think of (not to mention expensive).

I've heard that some people use them as VM servers, but again, 1 HDD would force people to use a NAS or something similar for VM storage.

Besides, something so small and so powerful is bound to be heard when usage hits 100%

Proxy server, meh, no need for an i7, file server, not with 1 HDD, media server, same problem and still too powerful, so then what?

 

[DonkeyOatie]

How about as a do-it-yourself all-in-one? Many small cases have VESA mounts so they can be attached to the back of a monitor to make something like a a laptop in an all-in-one format, although the TDP of i7 is high. Although the small boards hold only one HDD, that can be quite big, and there is often room for mSATA, or M.2 SSD in the system too.

 

[EdgeT]

How about as a do-it-yourself all-in-one? Many small cases have VESA mounts so they can be attached to the back of a monitor to make something like a a laptop in an all-in-one format, although the TDP of i7 is high. Although the small boards hold only one HDD, that can be quite big, and there is often room for mSATA, or M.2 SSD in the system too.

Yeah but that's a nettop usage. Yeah but it's the same deal, with 1 or 2 HDDs, an i7 would be overkill for a nettop.
I've taken into account Folding@Home scenarios, but you can just as well stick an i7 into a desktop case and have much superior cooling (I wouldn't trust something so badly cooled to crunch numbers for more than a month for fear of it dying). I seriously can't see any scenario where an i7 would be adequate in such a small form factor.

An i7 would be reasonable as an AIO, they've got better cooling than things the size of a Brix or NUC (oh how I hate that name. Seriously, "Next" Unit of Computing? Sounds like a word a troll would make up to confuse us ).

 

[DonkeyOatie]

I teach school and do a bit of video editing and sound and photo mangling on my school PC, plus some CAD and then there's preparing the 3D forms for a 3D printer. I have a big old tower under my desk. A Brix would be a lot more convenient and compact and the i7 would be used. (There are at least 100 of these at school)

As a general thing, I dunno. If it isn't a really powerful APU, or can't run discrete graphics, I don't want it.

 

[EdgeT]

I teach school and do a bit of video editing and sound and photo mangling on my school PC, plus some CAD and then there's preparing the 3D forms for a 3D printer. I have a big old tower under my desk. A Brix would be a lot more convenient and compact and the i7 would be used. (There are at least 100 of these at school)

As a general thing, I dunno. If it isn't a really powerful APU, or can't run discrete graphics, I don't want it.

Nice one. But isn't media editing and CAD more depend on GPU power than CPU?

 

[DonkeyOatie]

Depends on the software OpenCL can offload a lot onto the GPU, but it's mostly CPU intensive for me.

 

[EdgeT]

Oh yeah I guess that could nicely work then.