I bought the following Motherboard & RAM
and combined them with a pico PSU and a modified case I had taking up shelf space
assembled & ready for testing. Note the pico PSU plugged into the ATX power connector.
EndeavourOS KDE Plasma installed.
The idle Watts from the wall outlet in the picture is 7 Watts. Most of the time idle is 8 to 9 Watts.
The highest I saw during EnOS install was momentarily 17 Watts, but mostly jumping between 14 to 16 watts. The install feels smooth and quick.
I think this will be my Wife’s new Linux daily driver. This is more than enough for her use case and a reasonable power consumption.
pico PSU-80 with 60 watt power block
M350 mini-itx-enclosure
Pudge
EDIT:
I forgot to mention. The specs for this motherboard says 8 GB DDR4 2400 RAM Maximum.
I personally can confirm that the J5040 itx will work with 16 GB of RAM maximum, and have 2 of these motherboards plugging away with 16 GB RAM. I have read in reviews that it will also handle 32 GB of RAM maximum but I have not confirmed this.