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Comment by jabbany | Hacker News Reader

Wait how do you get a N5105 at $75? The lowest I've seen still go for over $100 and they're barebones units.

x86 pricing is getting down to ARM SBC levels for sure, especially considering the recent rounds of decomissioning older non-Win 11 prebuilt mini boxes, but AFAIK it's not there yet.

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I haven't been able to find them for cheaper than say ~$120 USD. I purchased two "GMKtec Mini PC Windows 11 Pro Intel 11th Gen N5105" on amazon for $115 each after a coupon. These are the 8GB Memory and 128GB SSD version. I'm okay with that price for an x86 CPU (even though it doesn't support AVX). There are a few other brands you can find out there with either a N5095 or N5105 (Alibaba even had 16GB memory versions).

Right, but an 8G RPi is $75 MSRP, so this is over a 30% - 50% higher cost!

For most projects that really _need_ a Pi (for the GPIO, CSI etc.), most don't require the 8G version, and you can get by with a 2 or 4G which is closer to $50 or less.

If the goal is compute/$ (or for that matter, compute/W) though, Pis are nowhere near being the most efficient for that and haven't been for years.

It’s annoying but for whatever reason these vendors have special coupons randomly on their direct site or clip and save on Amazon (but there’s 50 listings for the same product so you have to get lucky). I got a N5105 with 16/256 for $130 shipped. Cheaper brands like ace magician has them at them at the cusp of $100.

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