[merpkz]

Not sure about the CPU performance being much more powerful for some shit-stained NUCs found on ebay, but one selling point for these minisforum machines are hassle-free dual 10G interfaces which are required for decent cluster performance - see ceph or proxmox ( with ceph ) or even kubernetes with, you guessed it - rook-ceph. Getting 10Gbit interface to work on ThinkCentre is possible, but not guaranteed to be reliable. This machine is perfect for such application and price point is not that terrible all things considered.

[TacticalCoder]

> Not sure about the CPU performance being much more powerful for some shit-stained NUCs found on ebay

The 10 GBit/s NUCs you find on eBay are enterprise-grade stuff: 10 Gbit/s hasn't really been a consumer thing. A used Fujitsu, Intel or Mellanox dual 10 Gbit/s bought on eBay isn't a "stained shit" that's "not guaranteed to be reliable". It's enterprise grade hardware.

(that said the machine in TFA looks nice)

[vladvasiliu]

I'd argue they're actually much better than some bargain-bin realtek cards, especially if you want raw performance.

They'll also probably work out of the box on whatever "server" distro you throw at them, which seems to be an issue with the machine in question.

However, GP was most likely talking about actual NUCs, not NICs. I mean, there wasn't a typo. The point probably being that the CPUs in some of those mini boxen are likely to be woefully undercooled, so performance may not be what you expect by just looking at the CPU model.

[merpkz]

My point was they are not guaranteed to work reliably when shoved into a NUC, with janky adaptoprs and lack of airflow