Solved Looking for Suggestions on small desktop platform

B

bufo333

Hello All,

I am looking for a small platform about the size of an Intel NUC. There are a few competitors to the NUC out on the market now and I was wondering if anyone has any experience with any of these small form factor systems?

I want a small dedicated FreeBSD workstation that is low power and small enough to bolt to the back of my display, or not much bigger than that. I am looking for low power consumption and decent X acceleration. I usually run current or 10-stable. So I was thinking the Intel KMS drivers might be a good fit for something with the power of an Intel core i3. I am open to non x86/AMD64 architectures such as ARM, but I have not found an ARM setup that is reasonably supported with non proprietary SOC components that also provides core i3 level performance, which is why the Raspberry Pi is ruled out.
 
You may want to have a look at Zotac, they have a nice range of small PCs. I have two slightly older models, both with NVidia graphics, and they run FreeBSD quite good. Some models are small enough to be bolted onto the back of a monitor. These even come with the bracket for it.
 
I looked at Zotac, they may be a good place to start, their site is a mess though. It is hard to tell what the differences are between all the machines and what the chip-set differences are. However I did find this little beauty which might make a killer small server, firewall, or desktop.
ASRock%20C2750D4I%20Carousel_678x452.png

The ASRock C2750D4I motherboard has the following specifications:
  • Mini ITX motherboard
  • CPU: Intel Avoton C2750 64-bit 8 cores processor (passive cooled)
  • Graphics: ASPEED AST2300 16 MB
  • Memory: 4 x DDR3 DIMM slots, max: 64 GB memory
  • Controller: Intel C2750: 2 SATA3, 4 x SATA2 Marvell SE9172 2 x SATA 3, Marvell SE9230 4 x SATA3. Total of 12 SATA ports.
  • NIC: Dual Intel i210 Gigabit LAN adapter
  • 1 x PCIe 2.0 x8 slot
  • Remote Management: BMC Controller with IPMI dedicated LAN adapter
  • TPD of 20 watt
 
Use the Intel NUCs, they have Intel chipsets for pretty much everything which have very good driver support (except video but that isn't a NUC specific issue).

Other options might be the following:

Dell Optiplex 3020
Dell Optiplex 9020
Fujitsu Esprimo A525
Fujitsu Esprimo Q520
Fujitsu Esprimo Q920
HP 260 (G1)
HP ProDesk 400 (G1)
HP EliteDesk 705 (G1)
Lenovo ThinkCentre M83

//Danne
 
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