Buying a mini pc for game server hosting and cant decide between 6-core or 8-core, which should I choose?

[ImServs]

I am buying a Minisforum UM760 Pro or UM790 Pro and cant decide which to buy.
Ill be running a single install linux server and just switching the game server from game to game every week or so, and cant decide if 6-cores is enough or if ill need the 8-core variant.

 

The games im hosting are modded Minecraft, modded RUST, and other smaller indie games that only utilize a single core. The OS will either be Ubuntu server or debian.

Do I need the extra 2-cores or will the 6-core be sufficient?

[jaslion]

I have a feeling that quite soon one or 2 servers will stay up

 

Its what usually happens

 

Since the price difference is about 100 for quite decently higher single core (very important) AND more cores id get it even if just to have it last a loooooooooooooooooong time

 

that and resale value every single time :p. Like stupidly the upprr mid range of these mini's go for half of the higher end ones even if performance is extremely similar

 

 

[aisle9]

My thoughts on mini PCs are that you should always go with the highest reasonable spec that your budget allows. Once you've bought one, you can play with RAM and storage, but the CPU is the CPU, and if it's not holding up in a few months, there's nothing you can do about it other than buy a new mini PC. For all the hype they get, mini PCs still are not cheap, especially once you get into the current-gen higher-end models. You're better off spending $100 more on slight overkill and having it last for 3-4 years than you are finding out in 2 that it's not holding up.

 

Plus resale value, like @jaslion said. Resale value on high-end mini PCs is insane compared to full-size PCs or laptops of the same age because they are such niche, frankly cool products, and those high-end mini PCs are comically overpriced so much of the time.

[jaslion]

56 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

and those high-end mini PCs are comically overpriced so much of the time.

Like an i5 8600t mini is like 150 TOPS

 

The 8700t is like 400 EASILY

 

Its stupid because its barelt better and you cant game on em really anyway so the ht has niche actual use cept for virtualization stuff or whatever

[aisle9]

2 hours ago, jaslion said:

Like an i5 8600t mini is like 150 TOPS

 

The 8700t is like 400 EASILY

 

Its stupid because its barelt better and you cant game on em really anyway so the ht has niche actual use cept for virtualization stuff or whatever

I know so many people who bought a $700 R7 5700U mini PC a year ago then figured out almost immediately that while Vega 8 is a great iGPU, it’s still a really shitty GPU. The mini PC industry has done a really great job of buying YouTubers (rumor has it ETA Prime and the Toasty Bros both refer to Minisforum as “daddy”). They’ve leveraged that into artificial demand for a product that really not too many people need and, being honest about it, makes very little sense for most.

 

 When one of the YouTube channels mentioned above goes, “Oh, whoa, dude, I’m getting a thousand FPS on Fortnite, and all I had to do was take resolution down to 144p with details set to lowest,” I just roll my eyes and feel genuinely bad for whatever sap buys a mini PC with a crappy iGPU that can’t even sustain great speeds anyway because its heatsink is a slice of cheese. When Wendell says, “Hey, this thing sucks for gaming, but it’d make an awesome NAS,” I’m paying attention because he’s one of not too many people that actually should buy a mini PC. 
 

And, I’ll be real with you, all of this pent up rage is coming from someone who fking loves mini PCs.

[ImServs]

20 hours ago, aisle9 said:

I know so many people who bought a $700 R7 5700U mini PC a year ago then figured out almost immediately that while Vega 8 is a great iGPU, it’s still a really shitty GPU. The mini PC industry has done a really great job of buying YouTubers (rumor has it ETA Prime and the Toasty Bros both refer to Minisforum as “daddy”). They’ve leveraged that into artificial demand for a product that really not too many people need and, being honest about it, makes very little sense for most.

 

 When one of the YouTube channels mentioned above goes, “Oh, whoa, dude, I’m getting a thousand FPS on Fortnite, and all I had to do was take resolution down to 144p with details set to lowest,” I just roll my eyes and feel genuinely bad for whatever sap buys a mini PC with a crappy iGPU that can’t even sustain great speeds anyway because its heatsink is a slice of cheese. When Wendell says, “Hey, this thing sucks for gaming, but it’d make an awesome NAS,” I’m paying attention because he’s one of not too many people that actually should buy a mini PC. 
 

And, I’ll be real with you, all of this pent up rage is coming from someone who fking loves mini PCs.

I owned a mac mini once, and it was a impressive for its size, but the resale value on the base model was terrible. I have a massive overkill server atm but im shrinking it down significantly and selling most of the parts cause i am buying music equipment. But ive always wanted to try a min i pc, I just knew i couldnt really game on it. so I use an SFF for my main rig, as small as i could without losing a proper gpu.

[paddy-stone]

I'll be buying one soon, I am torn between the EM680 with a 6800U 8c/16t @4.7Ghz max, USB4 etc, or the UM780 with a 7840HS 8C/16T @5.1Ghz max, USB4 etc... both would be with 32GB DDR5 ram.

 

|EM680 is approx £435, also the DDR5 is LPDDR5 @6400Mhz which I can't see the price of even anywhere, but even 5600Mhz 32GB 2x16 is approx £160, whereas a single 32GB is £95... so the price of the Em680 is really very good considering how much the parts would have cost. Plus you get USB4 x 2, one of which is used for power.

 

UM780 again parts out pretty well considering the spec, and works out approx £660 after vouchers, also with USB4 x 2, except this time it also has a dedicated 19v power input... although you can use USB4 for powering if you want. DDR5 on this is lower at 5600Mhz.

 

Personally speaking I am leaning towards the Em680 as I would be using it more for things like media player/server/NAS usage than anything else... and works out at a fairly low energy machine for every day use, and would consider it for use for casual gaming and retro gaming machine too. My main desktop would get a lot less usage with the mini-PC in use... but would still be there for if I wanted to go high FPS gaming, video recoding and other high intensity usage.