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I have a 13 year old tower PC system with a Intel Core 2 Q6600 CPU and 4GB of RAM. This was pretty much high-end back then. It still does what it should and I use it as a Linux-based server for my personal applications which tend to be quite CPU-heavy using all cores. Graphics don't matter.
However, this thing is just heavy and loud especially since it runs 24/7. Also, I can't really use a modern SSD with it as it has only SATA2.

So I wish to replace the PC with a slim modern equivalent. With all those miniPCs and alike computers on the market I thought I could put a nice small one of those on my desk and still have the same or better performance.

I have looked into the HP ProDesk 405 G4 6QS11EA. It has 16GB of RAM, a quadcore Ryzen 5 CPU and a 512GB SSD. This seems just perfect for my own personal calculation-heavy server use.
However, this little guy is marketed for office use so I am unsure if am missing anything.

Would you have other ideas? By budget is up to 600/700€ or $.

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  • NUC is made of laptop parts in a small box, it has little cooling and has low-power chips. It may not be suitable for "cpu-heavy" tasks, fanless versions can be slow and fans can get loud. But if your Q6600 can do it then it is probably not much of a load according to modern standards.
    – Ott Toomet
    Dec 9, 2020 at 23:14

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It shouldn't matter if it's marketed for office use. If it has the specs you need, which it sounds like it does, it should work fine for your use case. Double check that it has any ports that are essential for you before purchasing.

You may want to consider a fanless design which would be silent, as you mentioned noise is an issue. The performance may be worse than with fans but if well designed with a large heatsink they should still perform very well. Here are some examples: Fanless NUCs - these are pricey, but at least intel is a known entity. A no-name fanless mini pc - not sure what to expect from this brand.

One last thing: you mention this is to be a linux server. It is possible (but unlikely, I think) that you could have difficulty installing your OS of choice based on a given devices motherboard firmware. I don't know a reliable method of determining this besides looking for examples of others installing the OS on the same system, or contacting the manufacturer.

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I haven't used it myself but one I've got my eye on with a view to maybe getting a couple of them in the not too distant future is the Kingdel NC860 Mini Desktop Computer (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B087JCPDZB/ref=twister_B087M15RVB?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1).

They have a range of models but a lot of them are dual-core, so watch out for that.

As said, I haven't used it myself but pretty much all the models I've looked at get pretty consistently glowing reviews, which is why (having been looking for something of its like for a while now), I'm particularly interested by it (it not only matches my needs by spec but the OEM gets good press as well).

So, you might want to look into them and see if one of the models doesn't match your criteria too.

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