Desktop vs Mini ?

[Lindley]

Hi,

We have a basic desktop updated some time ago with an Asus 610M mobo and Intel i3 12100 and 8gb ram
That cpu is rated at 13,454 Multi Thread and 3410 Single Thread which gives good performace for our needs ( no gaming but Fusion 360 etc)

Reading about the GMKtec Mini M5 that uses a Ryzen 7 5825U with similar figures of 18,321 MT and 3063 ST  with 16gb ram.

So woud the Mini really be as powerful as our desktop ?

Our desktop PSU and all the cooling fans are old and need replacing soon plus the mobo doesn't have USB C or Wifi  all of which would cost almost as much as a new Mini .

So is the Mini as good as it sounds  or in the real world are those figures misleading ?

[brucehoult]

I don't know what "rating" you are using. The i3-12100 is nowhere near those figures on Geekbench 6, for example, but around 2300/7700. The 5825U is around 1900/7000 which is a little lower but you wouldn't notice without a stopwatch.

So woud the Mini really be as powerful as our desktop ?

Well, why not?

Cooling is the main problem with a small enclosure (and not having room for lots of hard drives, PCIe cards etc). It's a lot easier to cool the 15W 5825U than the 60W 12100.

In 2018 I went from a desktop i7-6700 to a tiny NUC with an i7-8650U that I could literally put in my jeans front pocket with no problems at all. Newer CPU generation: every bit as fast, at much lower energy use.

Similarly a year ago I replaced a massive water cooled tower ThreadRipper 2990WX that cost $4800 in 2019 with an i9-13900HX laptop costing $1600. The new(ish) laptop is faster than the ThreadRipper at absolutely everything (sometimes not by much) while using a fraction of the energy -- about 40% maxed out, and 20% at idle. Plus I can take it to cafes, on planes etc.

[hans]

Yes, I think its reasonable to expect that mini desktop PC is as fast. Computers efficiency usually sky rockets pretty fast. Getting 10% more performance is usually what hurts the peak power consumption most. Laptop chips are typically power throttling quite severely, so that by itself makes them quite a bit more efficient than desktop parts anyway.

But in 2-3 generations the laptop parts should have caught up. Especially when you compare a low-end desktop part vs a upper-mid range laptop chip.

I've seen this plenty of times with my own PCs. I was comparing my current desktop (Ryzen 3900X) vs a Apple M4 10-core chip. They go head-a-head in multi-core, but the Apple SoC is supposedly up to 2x as fast in single thread. And it sips power (30-40W?) vs the 125W of this AMD chip. Don't get me wrong, when that Ryzen released it was  amazing, but 5 years later I'm thinking of getting 1 of those in the 600$ Mac Mini.
(The only problem being I can't see myself cope with anything under 32GB of RAM though)

[edavid]

We have a basic desktop updated some time ago with an Asus 610M mobo and Intel i3 12100 and 8gb ram
That cpu is rated at 13,454 Multi Thread and 3410 Single Thread which gives good performace for our needs ( no gaming but Fusion 360 etc)

Reading about the GMKtec Mini M5 that uses a Ryzen 7 5825U with similar figures of 18,321 MT and 3063 ST  with 16gb ram.

So woud the Mini really be as powerful as our desktop ?

For a light/intermittent load yes, but the mini PC would be more prone to thermal throttling under sustained load.

Our desktop PSU and all the cooling fans are old and need replacing

Why?   Power supplies don't normally wear out.  You probably don't need any chassis fans with this setup, so if they are noisy you could just unplug them.

soon plus the mobo doesn't have USB C or Wifi

Why do either of these matter?  You can buy USB adapters and WiFi dongles very cheaply.

I don't know what "rating" you are using.

Obviously PassMark.

[Coordonnée_chromatique]

Just keep in mind that a quadcore at 1.5Ghz will be slow on single theaded application, your CPU is running at 3.3Ghz.

[brucehoult]

So woud the Mini really be as powerful as our desktop ?

For a light/intermittent load yes, but the mini PC would be more prone to thermal throttling under sustained load.

Not if well designed.

That i7-8650U NUC I mentioned could build the GNU toolchain for RISC-V in 20 minutes. An X1 Carbon laptop with exactly the same CPU (and the same speed on short jobs) took 35 minutes to do the same thing. That NUC had very effective cooling, as do Apple's Mac Minis.

I don't know what "rating" you are using.

Obviously PassMark.

Never heard of it. Is that a Windows thing?

[mikerj]

Never heard of it. Is that a Windows thing?

Windows, Linux, macOS, Android & iOS.  The company has been around for around 25 years.

https://www.passmark.com/products/performancetest/index.php