$160 IBM PC compatible as companion

[sanfrancisofont1984]

So 160 (okay 159) is the price of cheapest AirPod. We could use that money to “build“ a little PC:

I think it plays games better than any Intel Macs with Intel iGPU. So I would guess AS Mac + companion out performs Intel Mac in every single aspect.

 

[Kostask]

I spent $US173 for a dual Xeon workstation two years ago. It had two E5-2609 CPUs, 8GB of RAM, optical optical drive. I added a 512GB Sata SSD, a 2TB rotating HD, and a GTX 1050ti video card. Downloaded Windows 7 from the Manufacturer's web site, then Microsoft offered to let me update to Windows 10. Total investment was under $500 at that time. I have since upgraded the CPUs to two E5-2680s, and found some cheap server RAM, so its now up to 64GB.

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

NVMe SSD might also work through a PCIe adapter?

SFF machines as shown in the video is a bit of pain to deal with. Full tower version doesn’t seem to be more expensive though.

 

[Kostask]

NVMe SSD might also work through a PCIe adapter?

SFF machines as shown in the video is a bit of pain to deal with. Full tower version doesn’t seem to be more expensive though.

If you are referring to the system I put together, NVME is not an option. It doesn't have BIOS/UEFI support for booting from the PCIe Bus. I could get an NVME adapter card, and add in one or more NVME drives, but it will not boot from the NVME drives.

The machine that I got was a Lenovo C30, a small tower type form factor. Has a couple of PCIe X 16 slots, 2-3 PCIe X4 slots, adn 2 PCI slots. Being a smaller form factor tower, it does not allow for very "tall" (as in the actual PCB being taller than the slot bracket) video card, so that is why I went with the GTX1050ti, which was available in a mini configuration, which is about half the height of a regular size video card.

It works really well, and is very solidly built, seeing as it was designed to be turned on, and pretty much never turned off. Solid little unit.