Thursday, December 25
Okay, I Think I Have It Out Of My System Now
So I got that $99 OCuLink dock, which solves the one real problem with these mini-PCs - limited graphics performance. I already have a couple of Radeon 580s that I was planning to use in cheap PCs to be built later, but with the DRAM Apocalypse there are no more cheap PCs.
Well, the MinisForum AI X1-255 hasn't increased in price - is actually on sale right now - and comes with 64GB of RAM, but as I said, it's not very upgradeable beyond that external dock, and the external dock is completely open making it great for experiments but not ideal for long-term use.
Razer has an enclosed external dock, but it's Thunderbolt 5 and I only have USB4, so for me it would be 40Gbps where OCuLink is 64Gbps. And it costs A$600.
What if I want to reuse that memory to populate a desktop system now that memory prices are insane? Are there some good mini-ITX motherboards that take SO-DIMMs and can take the CPU from my existing desktop when I upgrade that?
Basically, no.
So I got that $99 OCuLink dock, which solves the one real problem with these mini-PCs - limited graphics performance. I already have a couple of Radeon 580s that I was planning to use in cheap PCs to be built later, but with the DRAM Apocalypse there are no more cheap PCs.
Well, the MinisForum AI X1-255 hasn't increased in price - is actually on sale right now - and comes with 64GB of RAM, but as I said, it's not very upgradeable beyond that external dock, and the external dock is completely open making it great for experiments but not ideal for long-term use.
Razer has an enclosed external dock, but it's Thunderbolt 5 and I only have USB4, so for me it would be 40Gbps where OCuLink is 64Gbps. And it costs A$600.
What if I want to reuse that memory to populate a desktop system now that memory prices are insane? Are there some good mini-ITX motherboards that take SO-DIMMs and can take the CPU from my existing desktop when I upgrade that?
Basically, no.
But MinisForum - them again - makes a mini-ITX desktop motherboard that takes SO-DIMMs and has a PCIe x16 slot and costs A$640 - including a 16-core laptop CPU that is actually faster than my existing desktop.
Yeah, I bought that too. Two of them. And a fourth X1-255.
That's my toy budget spent for the next several months, but I've got 256GB of RAM, 4TB of SSDs, four 8-core CPUs in mini-PCs, and two 16-core CPUs on mini-ITX motherboards. That should see me through until things settle out one way or another.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:13 AM
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1
"Are there some good mini-ITX motherboards that take SO-DIMMs"
Apparently, there are adapters that will let you use an SO-DIMM in a regular DIMM slot.
Apparently, there are adapters that will let you use an SO-DIMM in a regular DIMM slot.
Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, December 25 2025 10:49 AM (1zWbY)
2
Apparently those are better suited to DDR4 than DDR5. Higher speeds cause trouble.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, December 25 2025 01:23 PM (PiXy!)
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