Any suggestions for mini PC to run SL?

[IndiaRose Muircastle]

I'm in the market for a new tower PC, and am seriously considering a mini instead of a standard larger piece of hardware. And with the upcoming Prime Day event, I thought it might be a good time to take a look and see if I can get a good deal. However, I don't find the specs to be as easy to figure out as on a more traditional model. Does anyone have a mini that they have found to work well, or have any advice as to what specs I should look for?

I'm currently using a laptop to run SL It's about a year old, and was fine on mid-mid high settings (FS or LL viewer) before PBR. Now, it's struggling on Mid settings, no Shadows, Mirrors, etc. . So just about anything may be an improvement. It would be nice if I could mirror the mini PC to the laptop, and keep my option of working from my sofa as opposed to being tied to a desk. I'm not a creator, so I'm mostly looking to be able to go to clubs, shopping, hangouts, and make sure my pretty outfits rezz! I wouldn't mind being able to use ultra to take nice pictures on occasion. 

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

Here's what I have currently:

Operating System
    Windows 11 Home 64-bit
CPU
    Intel Core i5 @ 2.40GHz 
    Tiger Lake-U 10nm Technology
RAM
    32.0GB
Motherboard
    Dell Inc. 0XMF7W (CPU 1)
Graphics
    Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
    Intel Iris Xe Graphics (Dell)
Storage
    953GB NVMe INTEL SSDPEKNU010TZH (RAID (SSD))

 

 

[AmeliaJ08]

There's very few that are really suitable since you need a dedicated GPU in them if you just want one single device.

ASUS have taken over Intel's NUC business and expanded upon it, they now offer at least one mini PC with a mobile Nvidia RTX 4060/4070M in it under their ROG NUC line which is aimed at gaming but would be more than suitable for SL. Expensive though... https://www.amazon.com/Gaming-Desktop-Compact-Discrete-Graphics/dp/B0D7LX3NW3

Zotac have a similar product called Magnus One. Can't find one in stock but here is the 3070M model they offered: https://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-ECM7307LH-GeForce-i7-10700-ZBOX-ECM7307LH-U-W2B/dp/B09H2GR179 and there is apparently a newer 4070M "barebones" (add your own RAM and storage) model called ZOTAC MAGNUS EN374070W on Amazon as well, once again... expensive.

Then there is this msecore with an RTX4060Ti desktop GPU in it (!?) apparently...never heard of the brand, seen a review or am totally sure it qualifies as a mini-PC (but is definitely small) and its possibly the most interesting of the bunch: https://www.amazon.com/msecore-Powerful-i7-13700F-RTX4060Ti-Computer/dp/B0CD6T6XFD

Minisforum had this with a 3070M built in as well: https://www.amazon.com/MINISFORUM-NUCXI7-i7-11800H-Desktop-Thunderbolt4/dp/B0C37DPRQ3

There are other products with Intel ARC graphics and plenty now with AMD Ryzen CPUs that feature Radeon 680/780M integrated GPUs. The A770M based ones would probably be my pick but Intel ARC is a little bit of an unknown quantity with SL, I've only seen one person mention that it worked okay. The Radeon 680/780M iGPUs should also work on paper but I'm not sure graphics performance will really be adequate, at its best it seems a little worse than a budget Nvidia dedicated card from 2019.

Intel Enthusiast NUC with A770M: https://www.amazon.com/Enthusiast-NUC12SNKi7-i7-12700H-Threads-Graphics/dp/B0CHL9DXJN

A minisforum mini-PC (UM790 Pro) with a Ryzen 9/Radeon 780M. There's a lot of these though, searching for "780M" on Amazon should find you them all: https://www.amazon.com/MINISFORUM-7940HS-Radeon-USB3-2-PCIe4-0/dp/B0C7V29HBQ ... the 64GB/1TB model seems to be a special prime day deal today, probably more RAM than you need but there is also one with 32GB.

 

Of course many mini-PC's (most?) also offer Thunderbolt 4 or even OcuLink ports for linking an eGPU to them and I can report SL works very well with eGPUs, it would probably negate the point of a mini-PC though since eGPU chassis are designed to hold full size desktop cards and are huge in comparison. If you're open to the idea though you could possibly make a big saving by doing this, it's not as ideal as just having it all integrated into one device and there is a performance penalty. Thunderbolt 5 becoming a thing (2025 maybe) might change this and open up some more options.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 16 by AmeliaJ08
added links

[IndiaRose Muircastle]

Thank you very much! The links are especially helpful, since I was getting overwhelmed with varying configurations. This gives me a much better idea of what would possibly work. 

It does look like, from the price points, a mini PC may not be what's best for me. I like the portability, the size (My home office is tiny, and saving space is always a plus!) and the whole concept just fascinates me. But I'm using an integrated graphics card now on my laptop, and that's not doing well with PBR. For the money I'd need to spend on a mini PC with higher end graphics, I'm looking at a regular PC price anyway. Ugh, decisions are hard! 

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, IndiaRose Muircastle said:

But I'm using an integrated graphics card now on my laptop, and that's not doing well with PBR.

You should indeed definitely avoid integrated graphics (AMD or Intel, it does not matter).

Only a discrete GPU with lots of VRAM (8GB is now a strict minimum) will do for decent frame rates and decent texture resolution (i.e. to avoid blurry textures everywhere).

Also, do not hesitate to pick up a PC with 32GB of RAM: the viewer on its own can easily consume over 20GB of RAM when used in scenic sims or with lots of avatars around, so even 16GB might not cut it (or at the cost of lowered draw distance and rendering quality).

Edited July 16 by Henri Beauchamp

[filz Camino]

2 hours ago, IndiaRose Muircastle said:

Thank you very much! The links are especially helpful, since I was getting overwhelmed with varying configurations. This gives me a much better idea of what would possibly work. 

It does look like, from the price points, a mini PC may not be what's best for me. I like the portability, the size (My home office is tiny, and saving space is always a plus!) and the whole concept just fascinates me. But I'm using an integrated graphics card now on my laptop, and that's not doing well with PBR. For the money I'd need to spend on a mini PC with higher end graphics, I'm looking at a regular PC price anyway. Ugh, decisions are hard! 

How about Mini ITX form factor? (Bigger than a mini PC but definitely takes up less space than a normal tower PC)

[AmeliaJ08]

3 hours ago, IndiaRose Muircastle said:

Thank you very much! The links are especially helpful, since I was getting overwhelmed with varying configurations. This gives me a much better idea of what would possibly work. 

It does look like, from the price points, a mini PC may not be what's best for me. I like the portability, the size (My home office is tiny, and saving space is always a plus!) and the whole concept just fascinates me. But I'm using an integrated graphics card now on my laptop, and that's not doing well with PBR. For the money I'd need to spend on a mini PC with higher end graphics, I'm looking at a regular PC price anyway. Ugh, decisions are hard! 

Look into "Mini-ITX" if this interests you, it's much more reasonably priced and it's very possible to make a nice powerful little computer if using a Mini-ITX motherboard.

[IndiaRose Muircastle]

19 hours ago, filz Camino said:

How about Mini ITX form factor? (Bigger than a mini PC but definitely takes up less space than a normal tower PC)

That's a great looking machine! Thank you for the suggestion. 

[Yorkie Bardeen]

I guess you don't want to build your own PC. I (re)built my ITX system in a KXROS S400 case, which I could fit in my carry-on and it includes a full size 2080 Super (Nvidia brand).

I have used remote desktop to stream SL (well, my whole Windows PC) to my Linux laptop and that actually worked great, so it might be an option for you without worrying about getting the tiniest PC possible.

[IndiaRose Muircastle]

On 7/18/2024 at 6:53 AM, Yorkie Bardeen said:

I guess you don't want to build your own PC. I (re)built my ITX system in a KXROS S400 case, which I could fit in my carry-on and it includes a full size 2080 Super (Nvidia brand).

I have used remote desktop to stream SL (well, my whole Windows PC) to my Linux laptop and that actually worked great, so it might be an option for you without worrying about getting the tiniest PC possible.

I honestly haven't looked into building my own PC, but that does sound like an interesting option. I've got a family member who might be able to help me with physically doing it. Thanks very much for the suggestion! (I'm open to component suggestions if you have any you'd be willing to share.) 

[Yorkie Bardeen]

I'm a bit loathe to recommend specs because that takes over a whole topic with all the opinions. Here is my gubbins as reported by Firestorm though:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core Processor              (3693.06 MHz)
Memory: 32690 MB (Used: 1092 MB)
Concurrency: 12
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22631.3880)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 6144 MB*
Graphics Card Memory (Detected): 7987 MB

I built this last year, the stuff is years out of date, and that was my choice so I could a) stick with DDR4 memory which was dirt cheap compared to the newer DDR5, and b) the cpu is rated for 65 watts and there is a jump in power (and heat) past that. The only reason I redid the PC was because my old intel motherboard failed, and this setup is over three years out of current date, but it kept my costs down.

It's not the fastest at anything but it plays my games (including Star Citizen and Cyberpunk 2077) fine. My video card is the oldest thing in the PC now. I recommended 3060s to friends for more modern PCs and they seem to be happy with that.

If you get a laptop, things like the CPU and video card won't be as powerful as the desktop versions even with the same names, but they may still be fine.

*I'm currently overriding automatic vram detection, as recommended in the FS wiki for the current situation with freezes in world.

[AmeliaJ08]

Building a PC has never been easier given there's an endless amount of detailed tutorials, videos etc. and it's basically Lego... you can't really do anything too wrong, all the critical steps are well documented and there really isn't many of them anyway. Hard to go too wrong!

With Mini-ITX the main thing to do is the research, since the cases are so small you have to have parts that actually fit. Graphics cards and CPU coolers are the big ones to make sure fits, usually with any particular case someone has built in it before though and there's often discussion of what parts fit or not. Sometimes they can be a little fiddly to build due to how small they are, use of PCI-E riser cables etc (since the graphics card is usually in its own little compartment) but it's not usually that difficult.

Mid-range CPU and GPU is probably a good idea, you can use higher power/faster components too but it makes things more difficult to keep cool given the space constraints.

 

 

Edited July 19 by AmeliaJ08

[IndiaRose Muircastle]

On 7/19/2024 at 4:59 PM, Yorkie Bardeen said:

 

This is extremely helpful, thank you very much! 

[IndiaRose Muircastle]

On 7/19/2024 at 5:05 PM, AmeliaJ08 said:

Building a PC has never been easier given there's an endless amount of detailed tutorials, videos etc. and it's basically Lego... you can't really do anything too wrong, all the critical steps are well documented and there really isn't many of them anyway. Hard to go too wrong!

With Mini-ITX the main thing to do is the research, since the cases are so small you have to have parts that actually fit. Graphics cards and CPU coolers are the big ones to make sure fits, usually with any particular case someone has built in it before though and there's often discussion of what parts fit or not. Sometimes they can be a little fiddly to build due to how small they are, use of PCI-E riser cables etc (since the graphics card is usually in its own little compartment) but it's not usually that difficult.

Mid-range CPU and GPU is probably a good idea, you can use higher power/faster components too but it makes things more difficult to keep cool given the space constraints.

 

 

Thank you, that's very helpful to hear. I've replaced a keyboard on a laptop before; I was anxious while doing it, but I got it done. I've also helped add memory to an old PC. I probably could manage a build if I research it beforehand. Actually, it could be a lot of fun!