Most “Proxmox vs Windows” articles online are opinion pieces written from different hardware, different workloads and different expectations. This one is narrower: we spent weeks operating a Beelink EQi12 (Intel Core i3-1215U, 16 GB RAM) as a Windows 11 + Docker Desktop home server, measured it repeatedly, and then installed Proxmox VE 9.2 on the same physical machine. The goal of this page is not to crown a winner. It is to show you exactly what we measured on the Windows side, what Proxmox changes structurally, and which decision each kind of evidence can actually support.
Every number on this page comes from our public measurement repository (eqi12-measurement-data, CC BY 4.0), with the source file named next to each table. Where we have no Proxmox-side measurement, we say so instead of inventing one.
The hardware baseline: same box, two worlds
Before comparing operating systems, pin the hardware, because none of these numbers transfer to a different machine without re-measurement:
| Component | EQi12 unit under test | Evidence file |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i3-1215U, 6 cores / 8 threads | power/EQi12_Power_EQi12_功耗测试记录_2026-07-13.txt |
| RAM | 16 GB (16,147 MB reported to Memory Diagnostic) | memory/EQi12_MemoryDiagnostic_04_RESULT_EVENTS_XML.txt |
| Internal SSD | WD PC SN540 512 GB NVMe | storage/EQi12_InternalSSD_50GiB_Result.txt |
| Wired NIC | Realtek PCIe GbE, 1 Gbps negotiated | network/EQi12_Wired_Direction1_4GiB.txt |
If you are still choosing hardware rather than an OS, start with the mini PC home server buying guide, which lists the specification checks that matter before any of this matters.
What we measured on the Windows + Docker side
Power: seven scenarios from a wall power meter
All values below were read from a physical power meter between the wall socket and the EQi12 power brick, with photographs taken at read time (source: power/EQi12_Power_EQi12_功耗测试记录_2026-07-13.txt):
| Scenario | Measured power |
|---|---|
| Boot surge | 23 W |
| Windows desktop idle | 14 W |
| Docker stack idle (4 containers healthy) | 12 W |
| Jellyfin QSV transcode (4K60 → 1080p60, ~10 Mbps) | 13 W |
| All-core CPU load (8 threads at 100%) | 37 W |
| S3 sleep | 1 W |
| Normal shutdown | 1 W |
Two details matter more than the raw numbers. First, the Docker stack idles lower than the bare desktop (12 W vs 14 W), because Docker Desktop was fully stopped for the 14 W reading — the headless container workload is not the expensive part of a Windows home server. Second, QSV hardware transcoding barely moved the needle (13 W), which is why a 24/7 media server is viable on this class of hardware at all. The transcode side of this is documented in Jellyfin with Intel QSV on Windows.
Long-run stability: 12.57 hours, 150 samples, zero failures
A monitoring script sampled the stack every ~5 minutes for 12.57 hours (stopped early at the user’s request, past the 12-hour minimum target). Source: stability/EQi12_LongStability_12h57_Summary.txt:
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Samples collected | 150 |
| HTTP failures | 0 |
| Container health/running failures | 0 |
| Container restarts (max across stack) | 0 |
| Maximum sampled CPU | 52% |
| Minimum sampled available memory | 5,472 MB |
| Final status | 3 containers Up 18 h, healthy |
The event log picture over a 24-hour window was similarly quiet at the system level — 4 system warning/error events (two routine DCOM 10016 permission warnings, one kernel-processor-power event, one third-party updater service error) and 28 application-level events (source: stability/EQi12_Event_Summary_24h.txt). This is the evidence that a Windows mini PC can hold a steady state; it is not evidence that it never reboots for updates, which is precisely where the comparison with Proxmox gets interesting.
Memory and storage health
A full Windows Memory Diagnostic pass on the same unit returned CompletionType: Pass with NumBadPages: 0 across 12 test rounds (16,147 MB tested; source: memory/EQi12_MemoryDiagnostic_04_RESULT_EVENTS_XML.txt). If you want to reproduce this on your own box, our unattended Memory Diagnostic guide shows the scheduling and result-reading steps.
Sustained storage is often the hidden weak point of mini PCs. A 50 GiB sequential write/read-hash baseline measured 623.29 MiB/s sustained write and 468.2 MiB/s read on the internal SN540 (source: storage/EQi12_InternalSSD_50GiB_Result.txt) — comfortable for self-hosted services, but a reminder that a single consumer NVMe is both your boot disk and your data disk in this class of machine.
Where Proxmox structurally changes the picture
We installed Proxmox VE 9.2 on this same EQi12 and documented the hardware checks in Proxmox on a Mini PC (EQi12): VT-x and VT-d confirmed active, the 16 GB memory budget for host + VMs, and two real traps — the single-NVMe risk and a rear USB port that repeatably negotiates near USB 2.0-class throughput (~39 MiB/s). We have not yet published Proxmox-side power or stability benchmarks, and we will not extrapolate them from the Windows numbers.
What the move changes structurally, before any benchmark:
- Updates stop being a platform event. Windows Update can reboot a home server on its own schedule; Proxmox updates are apt packages you apply deliberately. For an unattended box, removing an OS-driven reboot from the risk model is worth more than any performance delta.
- Backups become a platform feature. Our Windows-side drill — Docker backup and restore with measured recovery times — proved that per-service dumps (pg_dump, Redis DUMP/RESTORE) can restore a stack in seconds if you build and rehearse the scripts yourself. Proxmox ships vzdump and integrates Proxmox Backup Server at platform level: the same goal, but you do not own the scripting.
- Container vs VM semantics. Docker Compose on Windows runs through WSL2 — a real layer where reboot recovery can break in ways that take debugging. Proxmox gives you LXC containers and VMs under one supervisor, with dependency ordering handled at boot rather than across a login chain.
- A hypervisor costs RAM. The same 16 GB that hosted Docker comfortably (minimum 5,472 MB free in our 12-hour run) now has to fund the PVE host before a single VM boots. Our HA capacity estimator (home-assistant-capacity tool) exists precisely because this budget question changes shape under virtualization.
The honest decision framework
Choose Windows + Docker when all of these hold:
- Your services already run there, verified and healthy, and your pain is configuration rather than platform.
- You need QSV media transcoding with the fewest moving parts — our measured 13 W transcode path runs on native Windows drivers.
- You depend on Windows-only software alongside the server role.
Choose Proxmox when any of these dominate:
- You want OS-level updates and reboots to be your decision, not the platform’s.
- You want VM/LXC snapshots and platform-integrated backups instead of hand-built dump scripts.
- You plan to run multiple isolated workloads (a VM for experiments, an LXC for Home Assistant, a NAS container) and need supervision between them.
And choose to re-measure before believing either stack’s numbers on your hardware: our 870 Mbps wired sender result (network/EQi12_Wired_Direction1_4GiB.txt) and the SSD baseline above are this unit, this cable, this week. The measurement scripts ship in the repository so you can generate your own tables in an afternoon.
What this comparison deliberately does not claim
Three things we cannot yet support with data, stated plainly so you can discount any article that claims them:
- Proxmox idle power on this box. Not measured. If desktop-layer overhead matters to you, watch this page — the same power meter protocol will be run against the Proxmox install.
- Proxmox VM performance vs bare-metal Docker. Not measured. The 12.57-hour Windows run and the Proxmox install have not been run through an identical workload yet.
- Long-term update resilience of either stack. Our Windows evidence covers 12.57 hours of steady state plus event-log snapshots, not a year of patch cycles.
When we complete the Proxmox-side runs, the numbers will be appended to the measurement repository and this page will be updated with the same sourcing discipline. If your decision cannot wait for that, the framework above is the part that will not change.