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Anyone here have a mini PC that lasts?

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skyglider

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I'm thinking about buying a Beelink mini PC from Amazon. But I see reviews on Amazon that say that their Beelink mini PC only worked for 1 week up to a year.

Do those small mini PCs about 5" square last for years or do they usually die soon? I'm wondering maybe they don't have enough cooling so the heat kills them.

Thoughts?
 
I have a small Minisforum PC, super cheap, that has run 24/7 for the last 4 years to download cloud backs as a secondary offsite backup. Personally, I also have 2 Beelink PCs (old Ryzen 7s) that I run a Proxmox cluster, 24/7 for about 1 year so far.

I have 4 Beelink mini PC I installed for my office. They also run 24/7 for about 1.5 to 2 years each, as they are used by remote workers.

I have a couple Intel NUCs in the office as well, similar 24/7 operation about 2 years running.

No particular logic, I like the Beelinks better. Never had one of these mini PCs fail so far.
 
Sean Nelson said:
Is failure of mini PCs a thing? I've never had any of my desktop systems fail, all the way back to the original IBM PC I bought in 1981.
Click to expand...
I have three mini PCs and the total number of failures experienced is zero.

Two Minisforum machines and an old Intel NUC purchased in February 2015 and still going strong.
 
bridge77 said:
Sean, do you build or buy your desktops? i stopped building when i found refurbished to be so cheap.
Click to expand...
Ever since that original IBM PC I've been building my systems. I like choosing my case to include removable and cleanable filters that trap dust before it gets into the system, and I've come to view ECC memory as a must-have after experiencing intermittent memory failures on an earlier system.
 
Sean Nelson said:
Is failure of mini PCs a thing? I've never had any of my desktop systems fail, all the way back to the original IBM PC I bought in 1981.
Click to expand...
My corporate environment is using Dell SFF 9020 PCs, and I would say that 3 out of 15 power bricks have failed over the 10 years they have been in use. My own work PC is a self-built unit, and the motherboard died after about 5 or 6 years (it's an ASUS board).

Over all, I think these devices are dead on arrival, or they're going to last at least 5 years, and usually well past their warranty. Only time will tell with these inexpensive PCs like Beelink, but for the most part I can afford to get a spare PC in my office environment and replace any failures in minutes. I love redundancy.
 
Mario Giannini said:
Over all, I think these devices are dead on arrival, or they're going to last at least 5 years, and usually well past their warranty. Only time will tell with these inexpensive PCs like Beelink, but for the most part I can afford to get a spare PC in my office environment and replace any failures in minutes. I love redundancy.
Click to expand...
No failures with any of my 3 mini-PC's but the point is taken on redundancy.

Some years ago when I ran a business from home redundancy was a very big issue. I setup a decent laptop as a hot-standby for my mission critical desktop. Now I'm retired the need is not as great but I still maintain the same basic setup.

Indeed, at the end of last year I did a major rebuild/upgrade on the desktop which took a couple of days. The laptop took over the normal duties of email etc. and was available to research any issues or questions that came up.

And when I travel, I can just sync my laptop data drive in less than 5 minutes and take everything important with me.
 
Mario Giannini said:
I have a small Minisforum PC, super cheap, that has run 24/7 for the last 4 years to download cloud backs as a secondary offsite backup. Personally, I also have 2 Beelink PCs (old Ryzen 7s) that I run a Proxmox cluster, 24/7 for about 1 year so far.

I have 4 Beelink mini PC I installed for my office. They also run 24/7 for about 1.5 to 2 years each, as they are used by remote workers.

I have a couple Intel NUCs in the office as well, similar 24/7 operation about 2 years running.

No particular logic, I like the Beelinks better. Never had one of these mini PCs fail so far.
Click to expand...
I just responded to a similar post on another forum: I've been running minis for about 12 years. I started with a Fujitsu in 2013, moved to a NUC in 2017, and added a second NUC in 2022, I think it was. The Fujitsu started to overheat and I had to run a USB-powered compact fan next to that (which I still now run over my integrated amp). The NUCS have run cool and flawlessly. I considered a Beelink in 2022, but chose to stay with Intel for its telephone support which I used once when my Bluetooth radio disappeared from the 2017 5th gen NUC. They just took remote control of the NUC and re-installed everything. That was in 2018, so who knows what kind of support they provide now.
 
Rodolfo said:
Mario Giannini said:
I have a small Minisforum PC, super cheap, that has run 24/7 for the last 4 years to download cloud backs as a secondary offsite backup. Personally, I also have 2 Beelink PCs (old Ryzen 7s) that I run a Proxmox cluster, 24/7 for about 1 year so far.

I have 4 Beelink mini PC I installed for my office. They also run 24/7 for about 1.5 to 2 years each, as they are used by remote workers.

I have a couple Intel NUCs in the office as well, similar 24/7 operation about 2 years running.

No particular logic, I like the Beelinks better. Never had one of these mini PCs fail so far.
Click to expand...
I just responded to a similar post on another forum: I've been running minis for about 12 years. I started with a Fujitsu in 2013, moved to a NUC in 2017, and added a second NUC in 2022, I think it was. The Fujitsu started to overheat and I had to run a USB-powered compact fan next to that (which I still now run over my integrated amp). The NUCS have run cool and flawlessly. I considered a Beelink in 2022, but chose to stay with Intel for its telephone support which I used once when my Bluetooth radio disappeared from the 2017 5th gen NUC. They just took remote control of the NUC and re-installed everything. That was in 2018, so who knows what kind of support they provide now.
Click to expand...
that's pretty disconcerting

scary invasive since they could also "snoop around" for whatever by whoever

what OS was it running ?

was it a full disk wipe ?
 
No, sorry about the implied over-statement --he only "re-installed everything" Bluetooth-related.
 
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