Hi! So I’m considering…maybe having an NPU or something similar to be hooked to my proxmox server, which runs in a mini PC. It’s a EliteDesk 800 micro form factor. It has a Core i5 8500 CPU, which at the moment of purchase was good enough for live encoding HEVC video on Jellyfin…that was my main concern back then. But I’d like to consider the possibility of hooking maybe some docker instances or other containers to some local-only AI acceleration. Is there any NPU or cheap GPU I could hook on USB to this proxmox server to run? Has it been done before?
Thanks!


if all you need is a tiny NPU for things like image object identification or OCR the IGPU you already have will be better.
if you need slightly more than that, but not as much power as a large dedicated gpu, then you would have to look at a newer mini-pc with a more modern chip.
I do immich face/object detection and Birdnet audio analysis on the igpu of an intel 14600 and it’s fine, tiny amount of usage and plenty fast. my other node has a core ultra 235 and the igpu is faster than the on-chip npu in every regard, the npu is also a bit harder to actually get working and put to use.