Mini PC & Hardware, part 1

I mentioned in a prior post that my current desktop machines are mini PCs. The one I picked up for my home office and testing purposes is a Trigkey S6, running an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS CPU, with 32GB DDR5 & 500GB SSD. Mini PCs come in a variety of configurations, but most are small boxes (the Trigkey is about 5″W x 5″D x 2″H) that run CPUs and RAM designed for low power applications like notebooks. As I understand it, the Intel NUC opened the door to this form factor and there are options available from established hardware makers like ASUS. There are also a number of lesser known manufacturers, of which Trigkey is one. The name brand units are substantially more expensive.

I gave about $310 for my S6, which is just a crazy low price for that much hardware, and was originally very pleased. The performance is excellent, the fan is relatively quiet unless it’s under load (gaming would be loud). I installed Debian as my operating system (dual boot with Windows) immediately, and everything worked out of the box.

But something is wrong with the hardware, which problem either didn’t exist at first or perhaps I just didn’t notice. To wit: the machine simply shuts down from time to time, as if there was a hard reset or temporary power loss. This has been difficult to troubleshoot because the system often stays up for days and even weeks at a time, and because it’s a hardware issue there are no telltales in the log to help understand what’s going on.

Ultimately, Trigkey agreed to warranty the unit so I’m going to do that and see how the replacement unit does. Trigkey support has been good thus far. I emailed, they responded with some troubleshooting steps, and when those didn’t solve the issue they offered to send a replacement. My only complaint is that they’re not cross shipping the replacement.

In the meantime, I picked up a refurbished HP Pordesk G6 (business class PC in a small form factor). SFF PCs are bigger than the minis, and typically run desktop class processors. Given the processing power needed by legal work is generally minimal, even an older unit like the G6 should be plenty powerful. I’ll update once I know more.

It’s hard to draw conclusions when n=1, but my current recommendation for anyone looking to build out their desktop with a PC is to consider carefully whether it’s worth paying more for a machine with local and/or established support.