For someone who just wants to surf and check email on occasion or even every day, these kinds of computers are ideal. I turned an elderly couple's TV into a home computer by adding a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. A couple of lessons, and now they can email their grandkids and shop online. They liked it!
@@TheDreadNought22 Because writing computer code isn't necessarily relevant to whether a person uses Linux or not same as it's not necessarily relevant to a person using Windows or MacOS.
@@folksurvival - Why just why. Linux is not compatible with everything people do on a computer. Linux is still only for those enthusiasts. Until it catches up with user friendliness as windows or iOS it is a horrible idea for use cases like the op. Linux users need to get it through their thick skulls that Linux isn't for everyone.
@@mekko1413 "Linux is not compatible with everything people do on a computer. " I never said Linux is compatible with EVERYTHING people do on a computer. Read the original comment that I was responding to. Quote: "For someone who just wants to surf and check email on occasion" which many Linux distributions are absolutely suitable for and not only suitable but in most cases the *best* OS choice. "Linux is still only for those enthusiasts." False. "Until it catches up with user friendliness as windows or iOS it is a horrible idea for use cases like the op." False again. It's often easier and more user friendly than Windows and many inexperienced and senior users can attest. iOS is a smartphone operating system so not really comparable to operating systems typically used on desktops/laptops such as Windows, Linux, MacOS (and servers in the case of Linux and BSD). "Linux users need to get it through their thick skulls that Linux isn't for everyone." I never claimed Linux is for EVERYONE. People that want to play PC games are probably best to use Windows (even though the Steam deck uses Linux). People that want to use proprietary software such as the Adobe suite should just use Windows. People that want the Apple eco-system must, obviously, use MacOS.
I'm using a Trigkey with a Ryzen 7 5800H and 32GB for high end audio editing. It's rock solid and eats everything I throw at it. Save yourselves a fortune and get one.
@danielbradler6546 i dont have that pc but the ryzen 7 5800H has a max tdp of 45 W which is way below the ps5's 180 W tdp, so i suppose it consumes way less than a console
yeah no. Unfortunately I want to do more than google searching. I like mini PCs, they are cute, but there really isn't anything I need one for that isn't achieved better by my tower or my phone. I don't need something that is more powerful than a phone, but less easily portable than a laptop.
I bought one of these small footprint computers but I went more high end and I love it. I am not the normal 75 year old, I use my machine daily and I wanted more speed for business applications. First I had all of the peripherals that were needed and I went with an Intel i7 processor and 32 gig of memory with a 1.5 TB of SSD storage. I do program my own applications and run some larger commercial applications on it. I couldn’t beat the price and think it was a great buy. I believe that this type of machine can meet the demands of many individuals. Great informational review.
I have a beefy gaming PC and have not just played many high end games on it of late. I found I was simply surfing the web, reading web comics, and watching TH-cam mostly. You know, the chill life. I also love older or more retro like PC titles too, which are really overkill for my gaming PC. Beyond those issues, it was also really heating up my small office for no reason (as I was not pushing the system) and using a lot of watts as well. So I bought a SER5 (5560u) on sale and hooked up my 2 monitors and a USB switch so I can switch my USB devices back to my gaming PC easily if I really want to. It's been great as it's super quiet and only 25w vs over 300+ watts on my other system at times. It's been a big difference in heat and electricity use for this small office space I have. I'm also not sacrificing much in performance with the NVME and 6 cores and 12 threads for normal use. I can even play some chill more retro like games i.e. Vampire Survivors with no problem. Will I still use my gaming PC sometimes for newer/more demanding titles? Yeah, sure I will. But when I don't need it, I don't need it.
I saw a video like this in August, so I bought a MoreFine minipc for $159 to give it a try. It is WONDERFUL. I was not expecting much, so I went for the cheapest I could find. This is perfect, I love how small it is, I like that I can add to the internal storage and memory. The Minipc came with 16gb ram and 512g of storage, expandable to 32g ram and 4TB of storage. It is able to do everything I want. Now I have 20 HDDs usb'd to it with no problem. I will be adding to the memory and storage as I go by. Running 2160p videos with no problems. I will be buy another couple of these for different jobs later. It is working perfectly with all those drives attached. I am actually only using the one of the rear usb 3.2 ports. Never heard of MoreFine But this is a good little computer and has a 3yr warranty. I think my 2 big old desktop will now be storage for music and movies. I am totally sold on this computer.
I have 8 multi Terabyte USB HDDS totalling about 30TB connected to my microPC NAS; it runs faster than my WiFi so I really don't know what it's capable of.
I got my Beelink SER6 Pro recently and it cost me 50% less than an Apple Mac Mini M2 with similar specs. So far, I'm very pleased with it's performance and quietness.
Some people assume it's a niche interest, which is fair. But at this point in time, it really makes sense to get one of these on sale for $300 instead of building your own rig with older parts. It costs more to build something that performs the same now. Best you can do is an old microtower with an RX 580. Anything else performs worse and suffers from old backends
Of course, there are occasions when you can find a deal on ebay for a more modern pc for less, but those are rare. I actually ran into a few myself. Got an i5 8500 Elitedesk with 16gb ram for $120 in january. Saw a Thinkcentre with the same specs for $95 this week. I never stopped looking though - these prices are just that rare. But if you buy a 2018 or newer desktop for under $140 you can slap any DECENT GPU in and end up with a better deal. But it's a tough ask - especially if you;re looking for Ryzen. You pretty much NEED to get a prebuilt for this type of cost effectiveness -- a rig from an amateur seller. Not one of those guys that have choice dropboxes and stock photos.
There's tons of folks that say "just get a miniITX build or a laptop instead", but I find there's at least some use or appeal with these tiny computers.
I use to build my own PCs but recently bought a Beelink SER5 5800U on sale, which came with a nice 36 gigs of RAM. It was a great choice for my tiny office. It is also quick enough for my needs as I'm only a casual gamer and is nearly silent. It also uses less electric power than my old PC and has the ports if I choose to upgrade to dual monitors. Sure, its not the computer equivalent of a monster truck, but it does all I ask without a hitch.
I have a Minisforum mini PC and it's so good. It cost me £400. I didn't want a cheaper Celeron CPU because what I am using it for is quite CPU intensive, and the 11th gen i5 with 16gb I was using struggled at times, so I went for a more powerful system that will hopefully be good for years. It has Windows 11, a 12th gen i7, 32gb RAM and 2x 1TB SSD's, one NVMe and one SATA I added myself. It runs like a dream, I thought my old i5 machine was good but this is on another level. It boots up in about 5 seconds from a hard shutdown. Then there is the space it saves, it's on a shelf out of the way, and there's no huge tower in the way that makes a lot of noise any more. You can even mount it on the back of a monitor so it's out of sight. The only thing it's missing is an SD card slot, but that's easily remedied with a USB hub.
I got a Minisforum as well as I wanted to have a Windows computer on the side for some of the things I can’t run on my Mac systems. I had a spare 24” screen and mounted it behind that. I now have a Windows PC setup in the living room that barely takes any space. Just the monitor, keyboard and mouse. Great! I run Steam on it and mostly play the old games (Command & Conquer, Rollercoaster Tycoon etc.) but it can run more modern games pretty good as well. My old Windows PC was a 3rd gen Intel i7 with SSD and a 4th gen i7 laptop with an SSD as well but the performance of this Minisforum is miles ahead. It’s so smooth.
What people need most is a device that can stream videos, web browsing, do some light weight editing, office stuffs, play some popular games with decent frame rates without breaking their wallet. Laptop is overpriced for those needs and standard pc is overkill (also draw too much power)
I have 2 Lenovo Thinkcentre Mini's intel i7 3.3ghz c CPUs. 32gb RAM at less than £150 (used) Great little machines, almost completely silent. Almost the same price as a Raspberry Pin and a much more useful computer as a local web server, home computer, music and film machine. I love them.( I run Linux Mint on both )
I moved away from using a Ryzen 7 5800U based laptop to work from home to using a Ryzen 7 5800H based mini PC from Trigkey that was dirt cheap. It works really well and with 32 GB memory, it can easily run a lot of docker containers for my development workflow. I now have so many of these mini PCs that I am actually having a hard time finding a good use for half of them. I think I'll just use the remainders as a proxmox cluster.
Ryzen 7 5800H unlocked at 54W TDP (Beelink SER5 Max) is the best bang for buck. You get comparable performance with RDNA2 without paying a premium price. You can emulate upto PS3/Switch with the 5800H.
Don't forget the Geekom IT12 for those who don't game or game on a console. Intel 12th gen P series CPU, easy setup for non-technical people, and priced at $500. Add a Lenovo 27-inch QHD monitor for $300 and other accessories for $70. Total $870 for a modern setup.
those 12th gen processors have some serious horsepower when it comes to raw CPU performance. Shame that intel's iGPUs haven't seen a major revision since 11th gen, but seems like 14th gen is going to actually see a major upgrade to the iGPU. this will hopefully make both AMD and Intel more competitive with each other. The biggest winners are always the customers when the companies are in close competition. Hopefully the performance jump is big enough on 14th gen that 12th gen and 13th gen systems end up being extremely discounted. imagine a 1260P in a 300 dollar Mini PC. For something like photoshop or video editing, it's such an insane value for money.
I am looking to get one of those in a couple of years when windows 10 ages out. My reason is that they are a cheap way to switch to a secure version of Windows that will be supported. At the same time, they are relatively inexpensive and allow me to do what I need to do on the web and at the same time keep my old more powerful Windows 10 PC offline and safe. It is a cheap and safe alternative to go full bore buying my more expensive intense use PC. So, my current Gen 7 core PC will keep chugging along offline, while the mini will serve as an internet tool. Upgrade without killing the budget or giving up functionality.
I discovered Intel NUC's about 3 years ago with the NUC 8 i5. Needed a good ,cheap 4k movie and media streamer. The goal was under $500 complete. Small foot print and stupid powerful for daily surfing and streaming. It's not a pro gamer machine but it is a powerful audio and video machine.
I have three of the Minisforum UM690, two on DIY arcade racing setups (mostly for emulating Initial D and Mario Kart GP) and one in my RV. It is absolutely perfect for the RV for sure. I have it connected to a 32" Samsung Q60a (4K QLED) and we play family party games like Overcooked 2 and others while glamping or the kids play together while traveling, it only uses about 60 watts max which means we can pretty much play it for days without any issue. I love them!
For myself, I just ordered the one higher up, UM790Pro on a Christmas sale at Amazon Japan. I am really looking forward to getting this. My only concern though is being USB4 vs Thunderbolt 4. I hope it will connect to my external sonnet Edge 20 Thunderbolt 4 dock without any recognition problems.
These tiny systems are great for my little arcade cabs. I have a beelink ryzen 7735hs with a 680m agpu in my counter top arcade cab, and it runs MK11 at high on the 1366x768 at a constant 60fps, among other things. I got a beelink s12 n100 to go into what will be my “vertical” counter cabinet, because I don’t need more than that to run MAME. Awesome stuff.
@@JapanShopBrazil not sure if you're serious are being glib, but I'd expect that a mini PC with a Ryzen that had a Radeon 680m or 780m agpu would do any and all of those things just fine. I've seen people run Cyberpunk 2077 on these -- at super low settings and not quite constant 60fps, but playable.
I find this stuff fascinating. The 2010s were about netbooks, I bought a few and they are fun little writing and basic browsing machines. I just picked up a basic mini fanless system and it's working fine. I'm gonna get a more serious machine but wanted to test the waters with a little 64 GB, 4 GB RAM I3 thing. It'll work for basic DAW and plugin work no problem.. Laptops need a battery and those don't do great for a machine that is gonna spend most of its life inn a mixing desk or on a table somewhere crunching numbers. This mini stuff is way more my thing and doesn't have a battery that'll puff up and degrade over a few years. A cool potential plan I have later is to wire up a battery bank and have the option of running off mains power or portable cells.
Bought a barebone minisforum um790 to replace a 7yr old laptop. Installed Samsung 990 pro 1Tb, 32gb ddr5 5600mhz ram, Connected it behind a 50 inch 4K tv, wireless keyboard and mouse. Its great for gaming and streaming.
I have Trigkey S5 Ryzen 7 5800. I don't do gaming, just internet stuff. This thing is great. Came with W11 installed. Very fast, very small and quiet. I attached it to the back of my monitor. $269 on Amazon
Purchased a SER5 a few months back, absolutely happy with it. Been recommending them ever since to anyone who wants an affordable option for gaming and emulation.
@@adambriers1681 it can, but for best all around results I keep mine at 720p. Also, just got a Peladn 5800U on Amazon for like $280. Having great luck with it, and it does run wii at 1080p a lot more smoothly. runs wiiU very well and switch ehh..depends on the game.
I just purchased a GEEKOM i9 13th Gen to replace my old all in one desktop, and I love it. I will never go back to a traditional desktop computer again. This little pc is super powerful and fast and easy to upgrade. Just added a rotating 144hz monitor wireless keyboard and mouse, and that's it.
We've been buying them to use as firewalls (I work for an ISP and we buy hundreds of these at a time) and other appliances. Supermarket chains and retail buy them in the hundreds of thousands, since they are perfect as POS-es. (Point-of-Sale , not the other "POS") As I said- we use them as firewalls- from the 2-port, to the 4-port models. The 8-core Celerons make great firewalls once you install pfsense or Untangle or other firewalls on them. The 4-core Celerons in turn, make great SDWAN boxes. Many companies sell them as SDWAN boxes, firewalls, packet-inspection devices, general security devices, routers (with any one of the many open-source router software on the internet installed on it), head units for IP cameras, storage head units, and much more. That's why they disappear from stock. They make rather poor desktop PCs, but great servers! That's why it's not the general public that buys them so much... it's corporations- in order to repackage them as "appliances" with their own software pre-installed.
I'm on a Mac and I got one of these mini-PCs just for running programming assignments on Windows. If you're not gaming, it's fantastic, saves a ton of space, works great, and mine was under $300.
Perfect for amateur radio . I can fit my radio /digital interface /and mini pc into a small brief case. Ideal for quick setup and portable operation. Setup for offgrid when power is out or internet is down locally switches automatically . can email/and communicate world wide via radio through various digital modes by using the Radio's Tx/Rx and passing it through a digital interface allowing data to travel to and from the mini pc.
if these mini pcs will rock RDN4 alongside higher speed ddr5 rams in the future, i can’t wait to swap my main pc to one of these due to how efficient they are
Just bought one for my mom to replace her crappy Chromebox. The reason is because they work perfectly as long as you aren't gaming, video editing, etc. She just needs something that surfs the web, plays TH-cam, email and basic stuff on her HDTV. I use mine as my main work PC and media player. I only use my gaming PC for gaming. These tiny PC's are great to just leave on all the time because they use very little power.
People are sick and tired of laptops, that are expensive, have battery time issues, overheat, burn components, insufficient RAM, and so on. I never had a laptop, and never will. With mini or micro, I hook up with any TV while traveling and end of the story. Reliable, simple, amazing, affordable.
@@brownj2Allow me to second his trashtalk, I had over 10 laptops so far, still have one and use some occasionally when I'm too lazy to get off the bed. Laptops are garbage because manufacturers don't give a fck about thermals nowadays, doing moderately resource-consumptive tasks will overheat it to the point you'd have to place it on a coolpad/desktop or whatever. I currently have 3 laptops, an Asus ROG G14(2022), a mid-range lenovo I use for work and an older Acer Aspire 5742G i rarely use for some older applications (compatibility issues), I can grill a whole cow on them after 10-15 minutes. The heat issues with the ROG were so bad that I had to vhange 2 sets of speakers!! So calling nowadays LAPtops is stupid, considering you'll burn your ....lap....
Laptops are useful, although they really make no sense today, when you have a super powerful computer in your pocket, your android phone. There are cheap plain screen/keyboard combos for the purpose of connecting them to your phone and using them as a laptop, not all phones support this though, the market did not want this, they tried to delay it as much as possible, and they still do. I was looking for that kind of inexpensive solution for ages, it was not possible, they only now started becoming available. As for micro/mini PCs, not all people are gamers you know, an inexpensive small factor PC would probably be the best for them. Even gamers, you can have an external GPU nowadays. Mini PCs is also nothing new. I remember those small factor PCs since roughly more than 2 decades ago. The market kept them away from people on purpose. In the past, they have done the same to dirt cheap thin clients. There should be no reason a business, a school or any organization to have stand-alone expensive PCs and computing power at each seat. They kept this a secret and away from people. It's all about profit, and delaying progress as much as possible to cash the cow.
You really miss the point of laptops. Mini PC’s still require separate peripherals, don’t allow portability (still have to plug in keyboards, mouse, monitor) and still require a location in your home much in the same way as a full-sized desktop. Laptops are complete PC’s, portable to any room, coffee house, airport, plane, patio or park. I own tablets, smart phone, laptop and desktop and every one of them have a specific use. You need to “qualify” what will be your primary purpose of using data: entertainment/games, maintaining a website, productivity, business or investment charts, writing a blog or editorializing online documents. There’s a reason and purpose for each device. Mini’s have their benefits but they’re still PC’s used as space saving desktops.
Honestly as a hardware and software technician for over 7 years now, I completely agree, laptops these days are literally pieces of trash Mini PCs do offer better thermals, upgradability and performance depending on the selection
I bought a GEEKOM A5 mini pc a few months ago to use as a second pc and love it. I found out of the box it didn't have any additional bloatware installed, unlike other pc manufacturers do. I easily installed a 2.5 hdd for additional storage and the only thing I can find wrong with it is the fan can be noisy sometimes which depends on the task at hand.
These cheaper Celeron and Pentium units can even handle pro audio production, if you freeze your tracks and resource intensive plugins once you get them how you want them, or just use it for actual audio capture and then relocate the project to a more capable machine. They can also use amp sim suites in stand alone mode just fine, so if you want a small system to use for a "custom guitar pedal" of sorts, these are the systems to do it with. Also, these mini PC's are cheaper than the laptops with the exact same hardware specs, so if you don't need to actually be mobile, but still want a system that is "portable" to an extent, or small enough to put in your TV stand, they more than do the trick. And the beefier systems with newer Ryzen 5, 7, or 9 platforms absolutely CAN keep up with gaming, especially if you put something like Steam OS 3 HoloISO or Chimera OS Linux on it.
That sounds awesome but I feel like if I was going to get one of these for audio production I'd just get one of the higher end ones since they still don't break the bank.
Used is not necessarily a problem. You can find used systems with manufacturer warranties. I bought a 1 year old Lenovo m70q with 12500T for $170. It has three years left on the warranty and is fully transferable. It is not the best computer in the world, but it is good enough for basic stuff. I bumped it up to 64gb RAM and installed a 2TB ssd. The result is a decent machine for internet, watching streaming stuff, and running a few VMs.
Yeah, I recently thought about buying one of these to throw in my backpack going to Thailand, because some of them have a HDMI Port on them, and I could just Plug the Hotel TV into the HDMI Port and use it as my Monitor, to edit my Videos with. It would be smaller to carry around than a Laptop, and I think it would Perform better than a Laptop. Thailand has restrictions on what you can actually bring into the Country, so I figured I would just pick one of these up in Bangkok and throw it in my Back Pack and go. 😁
I've got two HP minis from my previous company as the office closed. They are pretty awesome. I keep the older one for coding, and the newer one is capable enough to be upgraded to Win 11. The only bad thing about them is the cooling. When they are doing a major download they sound like they are going to burst into flames. I touched the case and it was red hot. They are super useful for space saving.
I have a lappy from 2012 with an AMD A6 and 6 Gb of RAM. The antiX distro runs it. It runs better than most laptops I have touched running Microsoft Windows 10, last build. While I own a new lappy, I will never ditch the old one. A mini PC is a better buy than a raspberry pi.
Theyre perfect for home theater or media tvs. They last way longer and dont slow up like the overpriced firecube, roku, or other built in media tv devices.
After years of trying to build micro footprint systems capable of light gaming I finally bought a beelink mini pc with the AMD Ryzen 7 6800H with radeon 680m graphics. It is my main gaming PC.... and I have an 18 gaming laptop with a rtx 4080 as well as two other high end machines. Its near silent, takes up zero space and there isnt a game it cant play with lowered settings... Older games run amazingly well. A simple wireless keyboard and controller and you have an amazing, cheap home entertainment system. These are not going to fade away like netbooks or other handhelds... APUs are getting better and better and for normal netflix, email, browsing even the lowest cost one does the trick.
For someone that just needs some basic office work on a decent machine those mini PC's are ok. I'd say even for casual gaming and some more intensive work... Or say, some 90% of the entire market can to live out of those mini PC's... Wonderful.
I got a Beelink SER5 at the end of 2022 and am still very happy with it. I upgraded the ram to 48 Gigs and am able to push a third monitor at 1080p over USB 3 (yes 3 not C) with a powered USB adapter. I don't see any need to upgrade any time soon.
You know I'm have been hearing a lot of good things about these Mini-Pc's lately & it sounds promising. I only care about retro gaming like PS2, MAME, Dreamcast etc. & those gaming PC's that cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars is too much. These mini-pc's sounds like a good alternative & they hardly take up space, something I'll think about in the future.
I use my Trigkey for everything. I started playing Palia on Switch but the Switch is way underpowered to run it so I ended up buying the Mini. I bought the model with 32gig ram with 1Tb storage. I can be playing Palia and have a browser opened with numerous tabs and browse my library for a photo at the same time with no problem. The Trigkey Mini doesnt skip a beat or suffer any heat issues. When running all the above you can hear the fans kick in but you have to listen for it. 😃
can you imagine going into the past 20 years ago, with this thing. that little box is more powerful than the giant machines we used to run starcraft with.
I recently got my Beelink SER4 4800U Mini PC back up and running. Two years after having used Windows 11 on my system, the OS has succumbed to permanent BSOD’s with every reboot and all subsequent reinstallations of said OS have completely stopped detecting the internal Wi-Fi card. I’ve completely given up on Windows 11 and ultimately switched to Linux Mint, which detected the internal Wi-Fi card right out of the box. Fortunately, this wasn’t my first time using Linux in general. For my Linux Mint installation, I created and mounted the / and /efi partitions on my primary 1TB NVMe SSD, and the /home partition on my secondary 2TB SATA 2.5” SSD.
The one we had from AZ was Mini PC Windows 11 Pro J4125(up to 2.7GHz), 16GB DDR4/256GB M.2 SATA SSD, 2 HDMI/VGA Port,Dual Band Wi-Fi,Bluetooth 4.2,4K HD . It had windows already initialized which was a bit worrying. Recently I took it apart to harvest the parts and there were NO RAM sticks, the only thing I could use was the SSD. Expansion was either plug something external in or open it and add a small SSD to the connector inside the lid.
I use 3 of these low spec boxes, one running OpenMediaview as a NAS, one running HomeAssistant automation and one with windows as a media player. Each of them cost less than £125 (~$170). They also run on about 8W :)
My odyssey mini computer integrates well into my RV system. With an adult size wireless keyboard and trackball, I can do everything I need. With a small 12 volt DC-DC inverter/charger, I don't have to deal with shore power or inefficient AC inverters. And when I eventually switch to Zorin OS, I will be able to do more for less power.
These are great PCs for people who primarily use their PC for browsing the web and maybe a little office work. When my mother-in-laws 10+ year i3 mid sized tower system dies I will purchase her one of these and maybe even get a vesa mount and mount it to the back of her monitor.
I recently got my self a GenMachine mini PC worth around $190 with AMD Ryzen 7 4700U + 8GB of RAM and 120GB NVMe SSD. I purposely went for the cheapest option that comes with the low RAM and storage specs because I know that I will be upgrading the RAM and SSD to a better one. Probably my best purchase this year and it's totally worth it.
I am a gamer I have a "beast PC" my wife on the other hand surfs the internet, reads a couple chat websites, looks for coupons and does online shopping so she got a Beelink mini PC, it meets her needs and she said "it's cute" so she bought one and likes it. I have a 1908's style full soze arcade and I am to throw one of these in that for arcade emulation.
My next laptop replacement is going to be a mini PC. I'll just take it along with a USB screen and a keyboard. That way the next time I want to upgrade the PC, I don't throw away a keyboard and screen onto the trash heap.
the most you can do is adjust the TDP. clock speeds on both the igpu and CPU are locked and can not be adjusted. RAM also needs to follow JDEC spec so it does not support XMP or overclocking.
First time coming across your channel. Thanks for putting this out. This particular title was of interest to me because it seems like one of these would be perfect for running Adobe Lightroom. Which product would you recommend for that, and IF I could, I would also prefer to be able to hook up two monitors
I'm very tempted to buy one and an extra before the price gets jacked up since they're getting so popular. I've been getting into PC gaming more and more lately but I only have a basic laptop. I have so much trouble downloading bigger games like Genshin for example. Mini pc's might have just opened a whole new world for me.
Thanks a lot for the great video, I want to use one of them mini PC's as a smart tv console, which one would you recommend? It's really just to watch movies and streaming. Thanks a lot
Oh wow this video was a good YT recomendation, I didn't know these existed. I have a laptop from about 8 years ago and a screen, keyboard and mouse connected to it. I didn't want to get a big tower PC. I will for sure buy a good mini PC. sometimes do video editing but I don't play games
I own a couple of 7th gen i5 Dell OptiPlex's that I bought off Ebay for about 50 quid each, they make great home servers used for things like file sharing (Nextcloud) and media streaming (Plex). I also have a home lab setup with Windows Server, hyper-V etc. Add extra storage via USB 3 and upgrade the RAM and they make great little home servers, but you could probably use them as a small office server too. Great little versatile PC's imo.
The reason why the Celeron is a single channel machine is not an artificial limitation. The processor is not fast enough to saturate the bus on that single channel of memory. It would not benefit from a dual channel bus. It also makes the chip package smaller and the boards cheaper. It's a win/win for a machine of this scale.
I've recently bought a Beelink SER5 for emulation and installed Batocera and it plays most PS3 game well. These mini PCs are well worth it and the SER5 is a good option as a starter.
For the price they're asking and the purposed said, I would rather do a system with CPU:1230v2 Any cheap 3gen mother board 32G DDR3 memory A pretty new MATX case A cheap power 30 minutes of your time All can be done for around $110 bucks and can pretty much do anything Threw in a RX580 to make it $150 total and you can play 95% of the games on the market right now
They are handy for home media .im on my Livingroom tv right now. i have plex media server on it with hundreds of movies and loads of tv shows hooked to several usb3 hard drives. I can play anything from any site on the 87 inch tv and unlike the built in the tv aps i get it all with no ads thanks to powerful ad blockers available for PC
Pay $600-800 for a laptop with a small screen and lousy keyboard I never use, or $300 for a mini PC with 2X more RAM and an upgrade slot for a 4TB SATA SSD or HDD. Got an acemagic on black friday, lets see if i can get ubuntu running on it.
They are packed with affordable power. They offer a lot of versatility. With so many of them out there, they are getting cheaper. You can get used HP/Dell minis dirt cheap! I would recommend something like the HP 600 series.
My Ultra HD TV is superior to most monitors so I bought a Mini PC ( €140) and added a spare keyboard and mouse. Runs Windows 11 like a dream. 1080p is perfect on the TV. Then I bought a Mini PC for each TV. I scrapped 3 desktops which didn’t have the hardware to run Windows 11. No regrets.
I've been using these little systems as inputs to my TV for a decade now, and I don't understand why most people, including tech people I know, are using "smart" TVs. I go over to their houses and they have these limited "smart" TV browsers that will probably not be supported in a few years, with which you must interact with a horrid TV remote, requiring you to type by selecting characters from a grid using the remote's pushbutton joystick. In contrast, I have one of these "bricks" runnning Windows and using the TV as its monitor via its HDMI output. My interface to the machine is the Logitech K400 Plus wireless keyboard, which is a combined keyboard and trackpad. It runs on two AA batteries and comes with a dongle that you plug into any USB port on your machine. It's as nice and as fast as any keyboard & mouse combo I've ever used. I simply put it on my lap and type from any chair in the room. With this setup I am free to feed my TV with any software that will run on Windows, and I interact with the system using the same sorts of interfaces I've been using for decades. Why would anyone want a "smart" TV???
I have a similar setup, though I've been using a desktop I built 15yrs ago w/ a wireless keyboard/touch pad. Some parts have been updated, but it quickly went from gaming primarily to sharing media server duties. I couldn't ever imagine those "smart TVs"
I think one thing helping mini pc's these days is manufacturers realized folks buying them don't want an "appliance". They don't want something with everything soldered on and not upgradeable. So, it's nice seeing more mini pc's showing up that aren't just "laptop hardware in a box". Or, worse, "netbook hardware w/ emmc in a box". Folks want multiple storage options, and SSD + NVME provides that. Folks want dual monitors on the mini pcs. They want option expansions they can customize. They want multiple ram slots "just in case". Some small pci slots or such help. Mini pc's actually feeling like real pc's you can mess with in a home lab helps, b/c that's what some folks want. Others just want a "buy a tiny pc and use it like an appliance". That's another target demographic. Folks that are turned off at the thought of having a massive PC sitting on or under their desk just to surf the web or whatever... they used to crinkle their nose and just go "yeah, i'll stick with my phone". But, now, they see these mini book-sized pc's and go "wow, I can see myself buying that. Park it behind the monitor out of site." But then if they need it upgraded, it can actually get upgraded. And, the hardware has reached a "good enough point" that even 5 yr old mini pc's are still very viable. I just bought an HP EliteDesk 800 G3 mini. I could force it to update to Win 11, but instead I'll just use it until Windows expires in 2025, then buy a G4 and turn the G3 into my new Linux experimental box. Hardware has reached a "good enough" point for day-to-day stuff. If you want to do AI algos or gaming or other special stuff, you buy a bigger desktop and specialize it for that. But, these mini's are probably going to become the mainstream "pc" most folks buy, and hobbyists / gamers / workstation folks will have a big beast as their secondary computer they remote into or use for those occassions. Mini pc's are going to become the daily drivers for most folks.
Power/performance/price have really met a crossroads now... a cheap 2nd hand PC is perfectly capable of most things, including GTA5, or most work things.... so... for an every day? Why pay more? My main system is an AMD 5600X, 32GB DDR 4... but.... I'd have no proplem using an old mini like this as a back up. Right now I am replacing the Hard drive... I'd really appreciate a little system like that on hand to work with whilst I piss about rebuilding.... I'll be offline for a day or two..... would prefer to have a little pc working in the corner....
I have the GEEKOM i9-13900H. i have three 27" monitors, 32TB NAS Server, DVD-RW, HP Lazer Color printer, USB 4K computer camera, bluetooth 32" soundbar and a C-Type 11 port hub hooked up to this bad boy. The only thing I did to this mini-pc was to add 64TB DDR4 SO-DIMM RAM. I come to the conclusion this young guy doesn't know whats he is talking about. He is a gamer acting like a certified computer tech.
I'm looking at one of these as I want to go back to a desktop, partly so I can run 2 monitors. Tired of the bulky boxes taking up desk space. I can hook up my backup HD and call it good.
What would you recommend for a triple display trading setup? I want it to be snappy and not lag up when loading charts. And i might do some light gaming like, fortnite and Battlefield 5 occasionally.
The thing with the mini PCs and Laptops in general is they are NOT designed to be left on 24/7 as a traditional PC can. Sure a smaller footprint is idea for a lot of folks, but very little can be customized in these smaller form factors. Ever hear of anyone building laptops from the ground up? Nope, because the parts are not available for that. You can't swap a motherboard easily from mini's or laptops. Customizing is beyond the RAM or SSD swaps. (I have excluded Raspberry and Orange Pi builds from this discussion as that is more universal to customize). Cooling can be another issue with smaller form factors (hence why they can't be left on 24/7 or rather should not be). It would be very easy to block the vents on mini's and cause the unit to overheat potentially damaging the circuits inside. Don't get me wrong the mini PC is neat and a good product for a lot of people. But I won't give up my PC rig and replace it with a mini. I'd rather have both with each doing their own thing.
Yeah, but the Ace Magician has Dual Network (Gb and 2,5GB), a Display port and USB-C Power......that has to account for something right? Someone needs to do a side by side compare of these with some detail...
They are great for doing Uni research and printing work while living in a cramped Dorm... For business they are very space conscious and inexpensive. For basic home use also takes up no space .
These cheaper Ryzen PCs are a great value for their performance. They typically draw about 65 watts of power under their most demanding uses. They're easy on the wallet from when you buy it to daily use. Not only that, but they tend to support two or more 4K monitors simultaneously. Some models still support 1 or more 2.5 inch drives which can be laptop sized hard drives or short-lived SSDs. The dual channel models tend to support anywhere from 32-64 GBs RAM, making them ideal for certain render and game emulation workloads. Plus, there are models that have terrific modern graphics cards in them or can be used with external GPUs for top-notch gaming and rendering.
mini pcs' are getting the kind of attention netbooks got when they came out. We've reached a point where some tech can get micro-sized for daily driving. That way folks don't have to use their "big beast" as a daily driver. Maybe you've got a really primo gaming rig or workstation. But, for day-to-day stuff, you just want a small pc to hop on that runs quiet, low-power, and still gets everything done you want.. save for BIG tasks. But, even then, as long as the network speed on the mini is fast enough, you can use it like a thin client to remote into your bigger machines. It just makes more sense having a few compute options around, and using the one that suits your needs at the time, than having some big "all in one" that sometiems feels like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer when all you want to do is check mail or surf the web.
yep bought one to replace my RPi4 setup (due to non existence of RPi5) then bought a few more as gifts to brothers and sister they were shocked by the size and good performance for "usual PC workload" and some retro-games my GMKtek N100 is my current "daily linux grinder" + W11 WOWs
Hell yeah, a fellow N100 linux user! The GMKtec G1 and G3 are currently set up with Mint and Nobara. These lower end chips absolutely scream with performance once the OS isn't eating up all the cores and ram just existing.
Size & silence are why these miniPCs are so popular: Typical "micro-ATX tower" desktops cases are about 14.5'x7.5"x15" (volume V=1575 cu. in.). Typical Mini PCs are about 4.5"x4.0"x2.0" (V~35 cu in). That's about **1/15th** the volume of typical (non-gamer) desktop cases!! Old cases typically have 2-4 fans and often sound like vacuum cleaners under load. MiniPCs have 1 CPU fan, and are near-silent. (need to make the fans larger-diameter & turn slower to be even quieter) All this for about the same or lesser price. Amazing.
I have one cheap PC connected to my TV as a hybrid entertainment centre. It's way better than the under-powered, locked down and bloated crap delivered with my 'smart' TV. Just install your light weight Linux distribution of choice and whatever software you want. Firefox, Thunderbird, MPV, Libre Office, Calibre and Okular are just a few examples. Works just fine with a wireless keyboard and headset.
I prefer something I can get my hands into as I like doing my own repairs,updates etc.Saying that I do also have an M1 MacMini,I've never had problems with Macs,so the small size don't matter.
There are several reasons: 1: They are much cheaper, easier to maintain and upgrade than a laptop. 2: You can have a minimalist setup if that's your thing.
For someone who just wants to surf and check email on occasion or even every day, these kinds of computers are ideal. I turned an elderly couple's TV into a home computer by adding a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. A couple of lessons, and now they can email their grandkids and shop online. They liked it!
I hope you set up Linux for them too.
@@folksurvival Why use linux for ppl that dont code? (genuine question)
@@TheDreadNought22 Because writing computer code isn't necessarily relevant to whether a person uses Linux or not same as it's not necessarily relevant to a person using Windows or MacOS.
@@folksurvival - Why just why. Linux is not compatible with everything people do on a computer. Linux is still only for those enthusiasts. Until it catches up with user friendliness as windows or iOS it is a horrible idea for use cases like the op. Linux users need to get it through their thick skulls that Linux isn't for everyone.
@@mekko1413 "Linux is not compatible with everything people do on a computer. "
I never said Linux is compatible with EVERYTHING people do on a computer. Read the original comment that I was responding to. Quote: "For someone who just wants to surf and check email on occasion" which many Linux distributions are absolutely suitable for and not only suitable but in most cases the *best* OS choice.
"Linux is still only for those enthusiasts."
False.
"Until it catches up with user friendliness as windows or iOS it is a horrible idea for use cases like the op."
False again. It's often easier and more user friendly than Windows and many inexperienced and senior users can attest.
iOS is a smartphone operating system so not really comparable to operating systems typically used on desktops/laptops such as Windows, Linux, MacOS (and servers in the case of Linux and BSD).
"Linux users need to get it through their thick skulls that Linux isn't for everyone."
I never claimed Linux is for EVERYONE. People that want to play PC games are probably best to use Windows (even though the Steam deck uses Linux). People that want to use proprietary software such as the Adobe suite should just use Windows. People that want the Apple eco-system must, obviously, use MacOS.
I'm using a Trigkey with a Ryzen 7 5800H and 32GB for high end audio editing. It's rock solid and eats everything I throw at it. Save yourselves a fortune and get one.
How’s the temperature?
@danielbradler6546 i dont have that pc but the ryzen 7 5800H has a max tdp of 45 W which is way below the ps5's 180 W tdp, so i suppose it consumes way less than a console
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😅😊😊😊😊@@3702251a
What is TDP??
yeah no.
Unfortunately I want to do more than google searching.
I like mini PCs, they are cute, but there really isn't anything I need one for that isn't achieved better by my tower or my phone.
I don't need something that is more powerful than a phone, but less easily portable than a laptop.
I bought one of these small footprint computers but I went more high end and I love it. I am not the normal 75 year old, I use my machine daily and I wanted more speed for business applications. First I had all of the peripherals that were needed and I went with an Intel i7 processor and 32 gig of memory with a 1.5 TB of SSD storage. I do program my own applications and run some larger commercial applications on it. I couldn’t beat the price and think it was a great buy. I believe that this type of machine can meet the demands of many individuals. Great informational review.
Which one did you get?
No one cares 😊
I have a beefy gaming PC and have not just played many high end games on it of late. I found I was simply surfing the web, reading web comics, and watching TH-cam mostly. You know, the chill life. I also love older or more retro like PC titles too, which are really overkill for my gaming PC. Beyond those issues, it was also really heating up my small office for no reason (as I was not pushing the system) and using a lot of watts as well.
So I bought a SER5 (5560u) on sale and hooked up my 2 monitors and a USB switch so I can switch my USB devices back to my gaming PC easily if I really want to. It's been great as it's super quiet and only 25w vs over 300+ watts on my other system at times. It's been a big difference in heat and electricity use for this small office space I have. I'm also not sacrificing much in performance with the NVME and 6 cores and 12 threads for normal use. I can even play some chill more retro like games i.e. Vampire Survivors with no problem. Will I still use my gaming PC sometimes for newer/more demanding titles? Yeah, sure I will. But when I don't need it, I don't need it.
I have had a Beelink GTR6 since September 2022, I use it everyday for 12 hours straight. Great system.
I saw a video like this in August, so I bought a MoreFine minipc for $159 to give it a try. It is WONDERFUL. I was not expecting much, so I went for the cheapest I could find. This is perfect, I love how small it is, I like that I can add to the internal storage and memory. The Minipc came with 16gb ram and 512g of storage, expandable to 32g ram and 4TB of storage. It is able to do everything I want. Now I have 20 HDDs usb'd to it with no problem. I will be adding to the memory and storage as I go by. Running 2160p videos with no problems. I will be buy another couple of these for different jobs later. It is working perfectly with all those drives attached. I am actually only using the one of the rear usb 3.2 ports. Never heard of MoreFine But this is a good little computer and has a 3yr warranty. I think my 2 big old desktop will now be storage for music and movies. I am totally sold on this computer.
I have 8 multi Terabyte USB HDDS totalling about 30TB connected to my microPC NAS; it runs faster than my WiFi so I really don't know what it's capable of.
I got my Beelink SER6 Pro recently and it cost me 50% less than an Apple Mac Mini M2 with similar specs. So far, I'm very pleased with it's performance and quietness.
Are you guys concerned about its proprietary power plug? That was the only major downside I was reading for Beelink's newer stuff
@@alanyoung159 it just uses a barrel jack.
@@arnorobinwerkman ahh thanks, I was thinking of their newer ones
What's better? Ryzen or Nvidia??
@@petermccavington8232 based on my experience, Nvidia is superior.
Some people assume it's a niche interest, which is fair. But at this point in time, it really makes sense to get one of these on sale for $300 instead of building your own rig with older parts. It costs more to build something that performs the same now. Best you can do is an old microtower with an RX 580. Anything else performs worse and suffers from old backends
Of course, there are occasions when you can find a deal on ebay for a more modern pc for less, but those are rare. I actually ran into a few myself. Got an i5 8500 Elitedesk with 16gb ram for $120 in january. Saw a Thinkcentre with the same specs for $95 this week. I never stopped looking though - these prices are just that rare. But if you buy a 2018 or newer desktop for under $140 you can slap any DECENT GPU in and end up with a better deal. But it's a tough ask - especially if you;re looking for Ryzen. You pretty much NEED to get a prebuilt for this type of cost effectiveness -- a rig from an amateur seller. Not one of those guys that have choice dropboxes and stock photos.
There's tons of folks that say "just get a miniITX build or a laptop instead", but I find there's at least some use or appeal with these tiny computers.
@@SwordfighterRed its cheap its tiny. not everybody plays games. you can get the same for smart tvs but thats expensive
I use to build my own PCs but recently bought a Beelink SER5 5800U on sale, which came with a nice 36 gigs of RAM. It was a great choice for my tiny office. It is also quick enough for my needs as I'm only a casual gamer and is nearly silent. It also uses less electric power than my old PC and has the ports if I choose to upgrade to dual monitors. Sure, its not the computer equivalent of a monster truck, but it does all I ask without a hitch.
36 gigs of ram? :O
36GB ram means 4 + 32?
Naw bro, just a total of 32 Gigs of RAM instead of the usual 16 most of the Beelink 5800U have as standard.
@@johnhulse4124 Beelink doesn't make a SER5 5800U.
I have a Minisforum mini PC and it's so good. It cost me £400. I didn't want a cheaper Celeron CPU because what I am using it for is quite CPU intensive, and the 11th gen i5 with 16gb I was using struggled at times, so I went for a more powerful system that will hopefully be good for years.
It has Windows 11, a 12th gen i7, 32gb RAM and 2x 1TB SSD's, one NVMe and one SATA I added myself. It runs like a dream, I thought my old i5 machine was good but this is on another level. It boots up in about 5 seconds from a hard shutdown. Then there is the space it saves, it's on a shelf out of the way, and there's no huge tower in the way that makes a lot of noise any more. You can even mount it on the back of a monitor so it's out of sight. The only thing it's missing is an SD card slot, but that's easily remedied with a USB hub.
I got a Minisforum as well as I wanted to have a Windows computer on the side for some of the things I can’t run on my Mac systems. I had a spare 24” screen and mounted it behind that. I now have a Windows PC setup in the living room that barely takes any space. Just the monitor, keyboard and mouse. Great! I run Steam on it and mostly play the old games (Command & Conquer, Rollercoaster Tycoon etc.) but it can run more modern games pretty good as well.
My old Windows PC was a 3rd gen Intel i7 with SSD and a 4th gen i7 laptop with an SSD as well but the performance of this Minisforum is miles ahead. It’s so smooth.
What people need most is a device that can stream videos, web browsing, do some light weight editing, office stuffs, play some popular games with decent frame rates without breaking their wallet.
Laptop is overpriced for those needs and standard pc is overkill (also draw too much power)
I have 2 Lenovo Thinkcentre Mini's intel i7 3.3ghz c CPUs. 32gb RAM at less than £150 (used) Great little machines, almost completely silent. Almost the same price as a Raspberry Pin and a much more useful computer as a local web server, home computer, music and film machine. I love them.( I run Linux Mint on both )
I moved away from using a Ryzen 7 5800U based laptop to work from home to using a Ryzen 7 5800H based mini PC from Trigkey that was dirt cheap. It works really well and with 32 GB memory, it can easily run a lot of docker containers for my development workflow. I now have so many of these mini PCs that I am actually having a hard time finding a good use for half of them. I think I'll just use the remainders as a proxmox cluster.
Nobody cares dude 😂😂
i feel you
Set them up as Crypto Nodes or Miners
Ryzen 7 5800H unlocked at 54W TDP (Beelink SER5 Max) is the best bang for buck. You get comparable performance with RDNA2 without paying a premium price. You can emulate upto PS3/Switch with the 5800H.
Yup that is a good deal I am going to get mine here soon too I look forward to testing it out.
@@FlintG Been super happy with mine. I have the SER7 but I like the SER5 MAX more. It's more stable and reliable.
What's the frame rate on switch like on it? Mario kart ok?
Don't forget the Geekom IT12 for those who don't game or game on a console.
Intel 12th gen P series CPU, easy setup for non-technical people, and priced at $500. Add a Lenovo 27-inch QHD monitor for $300 and other accessories for $70. Total $870 for a modern setup.
those 12th gen processors have some serious horsepower when it comes to raw CPU performance. Shame that intel's iGPUs haven't seen a major revision since 11th gen, but seems like 14th gen is going to actually see a major upgrade to the iGPU. this will hopefully make both AMD and Intel more competitive with each other. The biggest winners are always the customers when the companies are in close competition. Hopefully the performance jump is big enough on 14th gen that 12th gen and 13th gen systems end up being extremely discounted. imagine a 1260P in a 300 dollar Mini PC. For something like photoshop or video editing, it's such an insane value for money.
I am looking to get one of those in a couple of years when windows 10 ages out. My reason is that they are a cheap way to switch to a secure version of Windows that will be supported. At the same time, they are relatively inexpensive and allow me to do what I need to do on the web and at the same time keep my old more powerful Windows 10 PC offline and safe. It is a cheap and safe alternative to go full bore buying my more expensive intense use PC. So, my current Gen 7 core PC will keep chugging along offline, while the mini will serve as an internet tool. Upgrade without killing the budget or giving up functionality.
I discovered Intel NUC's about 3 years ago with the NUC 8 i5. Needed a good ,cheap 4k movie and media streamer. The goal was under $500 complete. Small foot print and stupid powerful for daily surfing and streaming. It's not a pro gamer machine but it is a powerful audio and video machine.
Love the little N95 i bought. 😊 Older Games are no problem at all!
I have three of the Minisforum UM690, two on DIY arcade racing setups (mostly for emulating Initial D and Mario Kart GP) and one in my RV. It is absolutely perfect for the RV for sure. I have it connected to a 32" Samsung Q60a (4K QLED) and we play family party games like Overcooked 2 and others while glamping or the kids play together while traveling, it only uses about 60 watts max which means we can pretty much play it for days without any issue. I love them!
For myself, I just ordered the one higher up, UM790Pro on a Christmas sale at Amazon Japan. I am really looking forward to getting this. My only concern though is being USB4 vs Thunderbolt 4. I hope it will connect to my external sonnet Edge 20 Thunderbolt 4 dock without any recognition problems.
These tiny systems are great for my little arcade cabs. I have a beelink ryzen 7735hs with a 680m agpu in my counter top arcade cab, and it runs MK11 at high on the 1366x768 at a constant 60fps, among other things. I got a beelink s12 n100 to go into what will be my “vertical” counter cabinet, because I don’t need more than that to run MAME. Awesome stuff.
The new 600m and 700m series agpu's have blown me away with its performance. It's crazy to think it will only get better and better.
@@Shazizle it really is crazy. The 680m is about on par with a GTX 960m, which makes these things crazy good relative to the power usage and size.
Can it play Aura Kingdom, Starbound, Terraria, Stardewvalley, minecraft medium at 60 fps and photoshop/Illusttator/corel draw just fine?
@@JapanShopBrazil the build in gpu is comparable to a gtx 1060 6gb, if you look up benchmarks for that it'll be about the same.
@@JapanShopBrazil not sure if you're serious are being glib, but I'd expect that a mini PC with a Ryzen that had a Radeon 680m or 780m agpu would do any and all of those things just fine. I've seen people run Cyberpunk 2077 on these -- at super low settings and not quite constant 60fps, but playable.
I find this stuff fascinating. The 2010s were about netbooks, I bought a few and they are fun little writing and basic browsing machines. I just picked up a basic mini fanless system and it's working fine. I'm gonna get a more serious machine but wanted to test the waters with a little 64 GB, 4 GB RAM I3 thing. It'll work for basic DAW and plugin work no problem..
Laptops need a battery and those don't do great for a machine that is gonna spend most of its life inn a mixing desk or on a table somewhere crunching numbers. This mini stuff is way more my thing and doesn't have a battery that'll puff up and degrade over a few years.
A cool potential plan I have later is to wire up a battery bank and have the option of running off mains power or portable cells.
Bought a barebone minisforum um790 to replace a 7yr old laptop. Installed Samsung 990 pro 1Tb, 32gb ddr5 5600mhz ram, Connected it behind a 50 inch 4K tv, wireless keyboard and mouse. Its great for gaming and streaming.
where are best place to buy parts and how much did you pay in total?
I have Trigkey S5 Ryzen 7 5800. I don't do gaming, just internet stuff. This thing is great. Came with W11 installed. Very fast, very small and quiet. I attached it to the back of my monitor. $269 on Amazon
Purchased a SER5 a few months back, absolutely happy with it. Been recommending them ever since to anyone who wants an affordable option for gaming and emulation.
Can the SER5 handle wii emulation @1080p?
@@adambriers1681 it can, but for best all around results I keep mine at 720p. Also, just got a Peladn 5800U on Amazon for like $280. Having great luck with it, and it does run wii at 1080p a lot more smoothly. runs wiiU very well and switch ehh..depends on the game.
@@adambriers1681I'm wondering this as well
i'm glad people are starting to see the vision with mini PCs cuz i've had a beelink SER4 since august 2022, and it's been my main PC ever since
I just purchased a GEEKOM i9 13th Gen to replace my old all in one desktop, and I love it.
I will never go back to a traditional desktop computer again.
This little pc is super powerful and fast and easy to upgrade.
Just added a rotating 144hz monitor wireless keyboard and mouse, and that's it.
We've been buying them to use as firewalls (I work for an ISP and we buy hundreds of these at a time) and other appliances. Supermarket chains and retail buy them in the hundreds of thousands, since they are perfect as POS-es. (Point-of-Sale , not the other "POS")
As I said- we use them as firewalls- from the 2-port, to the 4-port models. The 8-core Celerons make great firewalls once you install pfsense or Untangle or other firewalls on them.
The 4-core Celerons in turn, make great SDWAN boxes.
Many companies sell them as SDWAN boxes, firewalls, packet-inspection devices, general security devices, routers (with any one of the many open-source router software on the internet installed on it), head units for IP cameras, storage head units, and much more.
That's why they disappear from stock.
They make rather poor desktop PCs, but great servers! That's why it's not the general public that buys them so much... it's corporations- in order to repackage them as "appliances" with their own software pre-installed.
And, consider the savings in power! Luma, the electric power thieves that collect money from us, have not billed us more than 50$ every month.
Watching this on a Beelink PC. Works great, even does some occasional basic gaming and video editing. Great value for the money.
I'm on a Mac and I got one of these mini-PCs just for running programming assignments on Windows. If you're not gaming, it's fantastic, saves a ton of space, works great, and mine was under $300.
Perfect for amateur radio . I can fit my radio /digital interface /and mini pc into a small brief case. Ideal for quick setup and portable operation. Setup for offgrid when power is out or internet is down locally switches automatically . can email/and communicate world wide via radio through various digital modes by using the Radio's Tx/Rx and passing it through a digital interface allowing data to travel to and from the mini pc.
if these mini pcs will rock RDN4 alongside higher speed ddr5 rams in the future, i can’t wait to swap my main pc to one of these due to how efficient they are
I have a Mele Quieter 3C and the best thing is it's silence. For writing a novel without distractions it's damn perfect
What is your novel title?
Yep i've been quite impressed with Mele, i got the PCG02 which is small and silent and hides behind my monitor for a nice, clean setup.
Just bought one for my mom to replace her crappy Chromebox. The reason is because they work perfectly as long as you aren't gaming, video editing, etc. She just needs something that surfs the web, plays TH-cam, email and basic stuff on her HDTV. I use mine as my main work PC and media player. I only use my gaming PC for gaming. These tiny PC's are great to just leave on all the time because they use very little power.
My SER5 Pro 5800H 32GB has been holding up strong even with my dual monitor setup and 2 USB expansion hubs.
People are sick and tired of laptops, that are expensive, have battery time issues, overheat, burn components, insufficient RAM, and so on. I never had a laptop, and never will. With mini or micro, I hook up with any TV while traveling and end of the story. Reliable, simple, amazing, affordable.
First you crap talk laptops then you say you never had one. . They use the same memory and processor hardware as the Mini PCs.
@@brownj2Allow me to second his trashtalk, I had over 10 laptops so far, still have one and use some occasionally when I'm too lazy to get off the bed.
Laptops are garbage because manufacturers don't give a fck about thermals nowadays, doing moderately resource-consumptive tasks will overheat it to the point you'd have to place it on a coolpad/desktop or whatever.
I currently have 3 laptops, an Asus ROG G14(2022), a mid-range lenovo I use for work and an older Acer Aspire 5742G i rarely use for some older applications (compatibility issues), I can grill a whole cow on them after 10-15 minutes.
The heat issues with the ROG were so bad that I had to vhange 2 sets of speakers!!
So calling nowadays LAPtops is stupid, considering you'll burn your ....lap....
Laptops are useful, although they really make no sense today, when you have a super powerful computer in your pocket, your android phone. There are cheap plain screen/keyboard combos for the purpose of connecting them to your phone and using them as a laptop, not all phones support this though, the market did not want this, they tried to delay it as much as possible, and they still do. I was looking for that kind of inexpensive solution for ages, it was not possible, they only now started becoming available. As for micro/mini PCs, not all people are gamers you know, an inexpensive small factor PC would probably be the best for them. Even gamers, you can have an external GPU nowadays. Mini PCs is also nothing new. I remember those small factor PCs since roughly more than 2 decades ago. The market kept them away from people on purpose. In the past, they have done the same to dirt cheap thin clients. There should be no reason a business, a school or any organization to have stand-alone expensive PCs and computing power at each seat. They kept this a secret and away from people. It's all about profit, and delaying progress as much as possible to cash the cow.
You really miss the point of laptops. Mini PC’s still require separate peripherals, don’t allow portability (still have to plug in keyboards, mouse, monitor) and still require a location in your home much in the same way as a full-sized desktop. Laptops are complete PC’s, portable to any room, coffee house, airport, plane, patio or park. I own tablets, smart phone, laptop and desktop and every one of them have a specific use. You need to “qualify” what will be your primary purpose of using data: entertainment/games, maintaining a website, productivity, business or investment charts, writing a blog or editorializing online documents. There’s a reason and purpose for each device. Mini’s have their benefits but they’re still PC’s used as space saving desktops.
Honestly as a hardware and software technician for over 7 years now, I completely agree, laptops these days are literally pieces of trash
Mini PCs do offer better thermals, upgradability and performance depending on the selection
I bought a GEEKOM A5 mini pc a few months ago to use as a second pc and love it. I found out of the box it didn't have any additional bloatware installed, unlike other pc manufacturers do. I easily installed a 2.5 hdd for additional storage and the only thing I can find wrong with it is the fan can be noisy sometimes which depends on the task at hand.
These cheaper Celeron and Pentium units can even handle pro audio production, if you freeze your tracks and resource intensive plugins once you get them how you want them, or just use it for actual audio capture and then relocate the project to a more capable machine. They can also use amp sim suites in stand alone mode just fine, so if you want a small system to use for a "custom guitar pedal" of sorts, these are the systems to do it with. Also, these mini PC's are cheaper than the laptops with the exact same hardware specs, so if you don't need to actually be mobile, but still want a system that is "portable" to an extent, or small enough to put in your TV stand, they more than do the trick. And the beefier systems with newer Ryzen 5, 7, or 9 platforms absolutely CAN keep up with gaming, especially if you put something like Steam OS 3 HoloISO or Chimera OS Linux on it.
That sounds awesome but I feel like if I was going to get one of these for audio production I'd just get one of the higher end ones since they still don't break the bank.
@@Spladoinkal valid, and same, but the point is that these lower the cost of entry.
Used is not necessarily a problem. You can find used systems with manufacturer warranties. I bought a 1 year old Lenovo m70q with 12500T for $170. It has three years left on the warranty and is fully transferable.
It is not the best computer in the world, but it is good enough for basic stuff. I bumped it up to 64gb RAM and installed a 2TB ssd. The result is a decent machine for internet, watching streaming stuff, and running a few VMs.
Yeah, I recently thought about buying one of these to throw in my backpack going to Thailand, because some of them have a HDMI Port on them, and I could just Plug the Hotel TV into the HDMI Port and use it as my Monitor, to edit my Videos with. It would be smaller to carry around than a Laptop, and I think it would Perform better than a Laptop.
Thailand has restrictions on what you can actually bring into the Country, so I figured I would just pick one of these up in Bangkok and throw it in my Back Pack and go. 😁
I've got two HP minis from my previous company as the office closed. They are pretty awesome. I keep the older one for coding, and the newer one is capable enough to be upgraded to Win 11. The only bad thing about them is the cooling. When they are doing a major download they sound like they are going to burst into flames. I touched the case and it was red hot. They are super useful for space saving.
Ryzen 7735hs, 1TB SSD, 32GB of RAM on Amazon for like 600-700 bucks and you're asking why? 🤔🤔🤔🤔
One thing to be aware of is the 5000 series apus don't support AV1 decoding which is becoming very common now, a lot of youtube uses AV1 for instance.
I have a lappy from 2012 with an AMD A6 and 6 Gb of RAM. The antiX distro runs it. It runs better than most laptops I have touched running Microsoft Windows 10, last build.
While I own a new lappy, I will never ditch the old one. A mini PC is a better buy than a raspberry pi.
Theyre perfect for home theater or media tvs. They last way longer and dont slow up like the overpriced firecube, roku, or other built in media tv devices.
not to mention adblocker and the ability to host your own jellyfin or plex server
After years of trying to build micro footprint systems capable of light gaming I finally bought a beelink mini pc with the AMD Ryzen 7 6800H with radeon 680m graphics.
It is my main gaming PC.... and I have an 18 gaming laptop with a rtx 4080 as well as two other high end machines.
Its near silent, takes up zero space and there isnt a game it cant play with lowered settings... Older games run amazingly well.
A simple wireless keyboard and controller and you have an amazing, cheap home entertainment system.
These are not going to fade away like netbooks or other handhelds... APUs are getting better and better and for normal netflix, email, browsing even the lowest cost one does the trick.
For someone that just needs some basic office work on a decent machine those mini PC's are ok. I'd say even for casual gaming and some more intensive work... Or say, some 90% of the entire market can to live out of those mini PC's... Wonderful.
I got a Beelink SER5 at the end of 2022 and am still very happy with it. I upgraded the ram to 48 Gigs and am able to push a third monitor at 1080p over USB 3 (yes 3 not C) with a powered USB adapter. I don't see any need to upgrade any time soon.
You know I'm have been hearing a lot of good things about these Mini-Pc's lately & it sounds promising. I only care about retro gaming like PS2, MAME, Dreamcast etc. & those gaming PC's that cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars is too much. These mini-pc's sounds like a good alternative & they hardly take up space, something I'll think about in the future.
I use my Trigkey for everything. I started playing Palia on Switch but the Switch is way underpowered to run it so I ended up buying the Mini. I bought the model with 32gig ram with 1Tb storage. I can be playing Palia and have a browser opened with numerous tabs and browse my library for a photo at the same time with no problem. The Trigkey Mini doesnt skip a beat or suffer any heat issues. When running all the above you can hear the fans kick in but you have to listen for it. 😃
can you imagine going into the past 20 years ago, with this thing. that little box is more powerful than the giant machines we used to run starcraft with.
I recently got my Beelink SER4 4800U Mini PC back up and running. Two years after having used Windows 11 on my system, the OS has succumbed to permanent BSOD’s with every reboot and all subsequent reinstallations of said OS have completely stopped detecting the internal Wi-Fi card. I’ve completely given up on Windows 11 and ultimately switched to Linux Mint, which detected the internal Wi-Fi card right out of the box. Fortunately, this wasn’t my first time using Linux in general. For my Linux Mint installation, I created and mounted the / and /efi partitions on my primary 1TB NVMe SSD, and the /home partition on my secondary 2TB SATA 2.5” SSD.
I was very pleasantly surprised at the low cost, huge performance, and feature set they now have.
Worth mentioning is that you can buy "barebone" versions, whereby, you can insert your own ram and hd cards.
The one we had from AZ was Mini PC Windows 11 Pro J4125(up to 2.7GHz), 16GB DDR4/256GB M.2 SATA SSD, 2 HDMI/VGA Port,Dual Band Wi-Fi,Bluetooth 4.2,4K HD . It had windows already initialized which was a bit worrying. Recently I took it apart to harvest the parts and there were NO RAM sticks, the only thing I could use was the SSD. Expansion was either plug something external in or open it and add a small SSD to the connector inside the lid.
I use 3 of these low spec boxes, one running OpenMediaview as a NAS, one running HomeAssistant automation and one with windows as a media player. Each of them cost less than £125 (~$170). They also run on about 8W :)
My odyssey mini computer integrates well into my RV system.
With an adult size wireless keyboard and trackball, I can do everything I need.
With a small 12 volt DC-DC inverter/charger, I don't have to deal with shore power or inefficient AC inverters.
And when I eventually switch to Zorin OS, I will be able to do more for less power.
These are great PCs for people who primarily use their PC for browsing the web and maybe a little office work. When my mother-in-laws 10+ year i3 mid sized tower system dies I will purchase her one of these and maybe even get a vesa mount and mount it to the back of her monitor.
I recently got my self a GenMachine mini PC worth around $190 with AMD Ryzen 7 4700U + 8GB of RAM and 120GB NVMe SSD. I purposely went for the cheapest option that comes with the low RAM and storage specs because I know that I will be upgrading the RAM and SSD to a better one. Probably my best purchase this year and it's totally worth it.
I am a gamer I have a "beast PC" my wife on the other hand surfs the internet, reads a couple chat websites, looks for coupons and does online shopping so she got a Beelink mini PC, it meets her needs and she said "it's cute" so she bought one and likes it. I have a 1908's style full soze arcade and I am to throw one of these in that for arcade emulation.
My next laptop replacement is going to be a mini PC. I'll just take it along with a USB screen and a keyboard. That way the next time I want to upgrade the PC, I don't throw away a keyboard and screen onto the trash heap.
I bought four Coofun (Ryzen 5) miniPCs on sale and built a Kubernetes cluster from them. These are great for home lab setups.
We we're just talking about these mini PC last night. Then you published a video to clarify things up. Very very helpful sir!
Glad I could help!
sir are these Ryzen mini pc over clock ready?
CPU, GPU and RAM oc unlocked?
the most you can do is adjust the TDP. clock speeds on both the igpu and CPU are locked and can not be adjusted. RAM also needs to follow JDEC spec so it does not support XMP or overclocking.
@@EVOTech1 thank you so much sir. That clarifies my thoughts. Then TDP adjustment is the way to go then if I wanna pull the most out of these things.
First time coming across your channel. Thanks for putting this out. This particular title was of interest to me because it seems like one of these would be perfect for running Adobe Lightroom. Which product would you recommend for that, and IF I could, I would also prefer to be able to hook up two monitors
I'm very tempted to buy one and an extra before the price gets jacked up since they're getting so popular. I've been getting into PC gaming more and more lately but I only have a basic laptop. I have so much trouble downloading bigger games like Genshin for example. Mini pc's might have just opened a whole new world for me.
Thanks a lot for the great video, I want to use one of them mini PC's as a smart tv console, which one would you recommend? It's really just to watch movies and streaming. Thanks a lot
Oh wow this video was a good YT recomendation, I didn't know these existed. I have a laptop from about 8 years ago and a screen, keyboard and mouse connected to it. I didn't want to get a big tower PC. I will for sure buy a good mini PC. sometimes do video editing but I don't play games
I own a couple of 7th gen i5 Dell OptiPlex's that I bought off Ebay for about 50 quid each, they make great home servers used for things like file sharing (Nextcloud) and media streaming (Plex). I also have a home lab setup with Windows Server, hyper-V etc. Add extra storage via USB 3 and upgrade the RAM and they make great little home servers, but you could probably use them as a small office server too. Great little versatile PC's imo.
Great summary. I think having built in bay for 2.5 inch sata additional drive is desirable feature.
The reason why the Celeron is a single channel machine is not an artificial limitation. The processor is not fast enough to saturate the bus on that single channel of memory. It would not benefit from a dual channel bus. It also makes the chip package smaller and the boards cheaper. It's a win/win for a machine of this scale.
I've recently bought a Beelink SER5 for emulation and installed Batocera and it plays most PS3 game well.
These mini PCs are well worth it and the SER5 is a good option as a starter.
What’s the CPU you got?
@@prometheusbinhayyan6741 Not sure, think it's the 5500U?
@@prometheusbinhayyan6741 The SER5 Max I bought for my son this last Christmas carries a R7 5800H.
Due to people can’t afford living in 3000 sq ft house but only 900sq ft apartment no matter is buying or renting. So people need things smaller 😂
Apart from PCs getting smaller, cheaper and more powerful we're seeing similar cases Transmitters and Ham Radios.
For the price they're asking and the purposed said, I would rather do a system with
CPU:1230v2
Any cheap 3gen mother board
32G DDR3 memory
A pretty new MATX case
A cheap power
30 minutes of your time
All can be done for around $110 bucks and can pretty much do anything
Threw in a RX580 to make it $150 total and you can play 95% of the games on the market right now
They are handy for home media .im on my Livingroom tv right now. i have plex media server on it with hundreds of movies and loads of tv shows hooked to several usb3 hard drives. I can play anything from any site on the 87 inch tv and unlike the built in the tv aps i get it all with no ads thanks to powerful ad blockers available for PC
I bought one two years ago and love it. $400 and is literally 50-75xs smaller than my home built 2014 pc and 100xs faster.
One of these would be PERFECT for running OBS for church's livestream! One for ProPresenter and another for OBS all for around $500!
Pay $600-800 for a laptop with a small screen and lousy keyboard I never use, or $300 for a mini PC with 2X more RAM and an upgrade slot for a 4TB SATA SSD or HDD. Got an acemagic on black friday, lets see if i can get ubuntu running on it.
They are packed with affordable power. They offer a lot of versatility. With so many of them out there, they are getting cheaper. You can get used HP/Dell minis dirt cheap! I would recommend something like the HP 600 series.
My Ultra HD TV is superior to most monitors so I bought a Mini PC ( €140) and added a spare keyboard and mouse. Runs Windows 11 like a dream. 1080p is perfect on the TV. Then I bought a Mini PC for each TV.
I scrapped 3 desktops which didn’t have the hardware to run Windows 11. No regrets.
I just got an Intel NUC manufactured in 2021 NUC7CJYH from the college surplus store. Good little PC. $70.00 but well worth it.
I've been using these little systems as inputs to my TV for a decade now, and I don't understand why most people, including tech people I know, are using "smart" TVs. I go over to their houses and they have these limited "smart" TV browsers that will probably not be supported in a few years, with which you must interact with a horrid TV remote, requiring you to type by selecting characters from a grid using the remote's pushbutton joystick. In contrast, I have one of these "bricks" runnning Windows and using the TV as its monitor via its HDMI output. My interface to the machine is the Logitech K400 Plus wireless keyboard, which is a combined keyboard and trackpad. It runs on two AA batteries and comes with a dongle that you plug into any USB port on your machine. It's as nice and as fast as any keyboard & mouse combo I've ever used. I simply put it on my lap and type from any chair in the room. With this setup I am free to feed my TV with any software that will run on Windows, and I interact with the system using the same sorts of interfaces I've been using for decades. Why would anyone want a "smart" TV???
I have a similar setup, though I've been using a desktop I built 15yrs ago w/ a wireless keyboard/touch pad. Some parts have been updated, but it quickly went from gaming primarily to sharing media server duties. I couldn't ever imagine those "smart TVs"
I think one thing helping mini pc's these days is manufacturers realized folks buying them don't want an "appliance". They don't want something with everything soldered on and not upgradeable. So, it's nice seeing more mini pc's showing up that aren't just "laptop hardware in a box". Or, worse, "netbook hardware w/ emmc in a box". Folks want multiple storage options, and SSD + NVME provides that. Folks want dual monitors on the mini pcs. They want option expansions they can customize. They want multiple ram slots "just in case". Some small pci slots or such help. Mini pc's actually feeling like real pc's you can mess with in a home lab helps, b/c that's what some folks want. Others just want a "buy a tiny pc and use it like an appliance". That's another target demographic. Folks that are turned off at the thought of having a massive PC sitting on or under their desk just to surf the web or whatever... they used to crinkle their nose and just go "yeah, i'll stick with my phone". But, now, they see these mini book-sized pc's and go "wow, I can see myself buying that. Park it behind the monitor out of site." But then if they need it upgraded, it can actually get upgraded. And, the hardware has reached a "good enough point" that even 5 yr old mini pc's are still very viable. I just bought an HP EliteDesk 800 G3 mini. I could force it to update to Win 11, but instead I'll just use it until Windows expires in 2025, then buy a G4 and turn the G3 into my new Linux experimental box. Hardware has reached a "good enough" point for day-to-day stuff. If you want to do AI algos or gaming or other special stuff, you buy a bigger desktop and specialize it for that. But, these mini's are probably going to become the mainstream "pc" most folks buy, and hobbyists / gamers / workstation folks will have a big beast as their secondary computer they remote into or use for those occassions. Mini pc's are going to become the daily drivers for most folks.
Power/performance/price have really met a crossroads now... a cheap 2nd hand PC is perfectly capable of most things, including GTA5, or most work things.... so... for an every day? Why pay more? My main system is an AMD 5600X, 32GB DDR 4... but.... I'd have no proplem using an old mini like this as a back up. Right now I am replacing the Hard drive... I'd really appreciate a little system like that on hand to work with whilst I piss about rebuilding.... I'll be offline for a day or two..... would prefer to have a little pc working in the corner....
Btw GTA 5 is over 10 years old but these minipc looks nice for average users
Affordability will forever undercut capacity in the drive to reduce utility to advantage profit margins.
I have the GEEKOM i9-13900H. i have three 27" monitors, 32TB NAS Server, DVD-RW, HP Lazer Color printer, USB 4K computer camera, bluetooth 32" soundbar and a C-Type 11 port hub hooked up to this bad boy. The only thing I did to this mini-pc was to add 64TB DDR4 SO-DIMM RAM. I come to the conclusion this young guy doesn't know whats he is talking about. He is a gamer acting like a certified computer tech.
I'm looking at one of these as I want to go back to a desktop, partly so I can run 2 monitors. Tired of the bulky boxes taking up desk space. I can hook up my backup HD and call it good.
What would you recommend for a triple display trading setup? I want it to be snappy and not lag up when loading charts. And i might do some light gaming like, fortnite and Battlefield 5 occasionally.
The thing with the mini PCs and Laptops in general is they are NOT designed to be left on 24/7 as a traditional PC can. Sure a smaller footprint is idea for a lot of folks, but very little can be customized in these smaller form factors. Ever hear of anyone building laptops from the ground up? Nope, because the parts are not available for that. You can't swap a motherboard easily from mini's or laptops. Customizing is beyond the RAM or SSD swaps. (I have excluded Raspberry and Orange Pi builds from this discussion as that is more universal to customize).
Cooling can be another issue with smaller form factors (hence why they can't be left on 24/7 or rather should not be). It would be very easy to block the vents on mini's and cause the unit to overheat potentially damaging the circuits inside.
Don't get me wrong the mini PC is neat and a good product for a lot of people. But I won't give up my PC rig and replace it with a mini. I'd rather have both with each doing their own thing.
99% of people NEVER customize their computer.
Yeah, but the Ace Magician has Dual Network (Gb and 2,5GB), a Display port and USB-C Power......that has to account for something right? Someone needs to do a side by side compare of these with some detail...
They are great for doing Uni research and printing work while living in a cramped Dorm... For business they are very space conscious and inexpensive. For basic home use also takes up no space .
People are buying them because they're the same size and price of a raspberry pi, but these will play 4k video and you can add an eGPU for gaming.
I got i9 Ryzen 5900 I'm happy, I play everything ‼️, 64 Ram, M.2, M.2 SATA, HDD sata 3
These cheaper Ryzen PCs are a great value for their performance. They typically draw about 65 watts of power under their most demanding uses. They're easy on the wallet from when you buy it to daily use. Not only that, but they tend to support two or more 4K monitors simultaneously. Some models still support 1 or more 2.5 inch drives which can be laptop sized hard drives or short-lived SSDs. The dual channel models tend to support anywhere from 32-64 GBs RAM, making them ideal for certain render and game emulation workloads. Plus, there are models that have terrific modern graphics cards in them or can be used with external GPUs for top-notch gaming and rendering.
YE I got a mini PC the other day and dam it runs rings around my big desktop PC and great for video editing
mini pcs' are getting the kind of attention netbooks got when they came out. We've reached a point where some tech can get micro-sized for daily driving. That way folks don't have to use their "big beast" as a daily driver. Maybe you've got a really primo gaming rig or workstation. But, for day-to-day stuff, you just want a small pc to hop on that runs quiet, low-power, and still gets everything done you want.. save for BIG tasks. But, even then, as long as the network speed on the mini is fast enough, you can use it like a thin client to remote into your bigger machines. It just makes more sense having a few compute options around, and using the one that suits your needs at the time, than having some big "all in one" that sometiems feels like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer when all you want to do is check mail or surf the web.
yep bought one to replace my RPi4 setup (due to non existence of RPi5)
then bought a few more as gifts to brothers and sister
they were shocked by the size and good performance for "usual PC workload" and some retro-games
my GMKtek N100 is my current "daily linux grinder" + W11 WOWs
Hell yeah, a fellow N100 linux user! The GMKtec G1 and G3 are currently set up with Mint and Nobara. These lower end chips absolutely scream with performance once the OS isn't eating up all the cores and ram just existing.
Size & silence are why these miniPCs are so popular:
Typical "micro-ATX tower" desktops cases are about 14.5'x7.5"x15" (volume V=1575 cu. in.).
Typical Mini PCs are about 4.5"x4.0"x2.0" (V~35 cu in). That's about **1/15th** the volume of typical (non-gamer) desktop cases!!
Old cases typically have 2-4 fans and often sound like vacuum cleaners under load.
MiniPCs have 1 CPU fan, and are near-silent. (need to make the fans larger-diameter & turn slower to be even quieter)
All this for about the same or lesser price. Amazing.
I have one cheap PC connected to my TV as a hybrid entertainment centre. It's way better than the under-powered, locked down and bloated crap delivered with my 'smart' TV.
Just install your light weight Linux distribution of choice and whatever software you want. Firefox, Thunderbird, MPV, Libre Office, Calibre and Okular are just a few examples. Works just fine with a wireless keyboard and headset.
I prefer something I can get my hands into as I like doing my own repairs,updates etc.Saying that I do also have an M1 MacMini,I've never had problems with Macs,so the small size don't matter.
There are several reasons: 1: They are much cheaper, easier to maintain and upgrade than a laptop. 2: You can have a minimalist setup if that's your thing.
You can upgrade replace/add more RAM,SSD like most laptop .
I concur they are often easier to service than laptop