I've got a couple Win10 desktop machines. They work fine, but are 10+ years old, too loud, use too much power, etc. Primarily kids machines for playing Minecraft. Am considering picking up a mini PC as replacement.

I see a bunch of options new on Amazon (Beelink being a big one), but I am also at least tangentially aware of offerings from other manufacturers like Lenovo, etc.

If I'm looking for equivalent or better performance than my 10 year old PCs, does anyone have recommendations on what I should be looking at? My quick search turned up this Beelink which is $170 right now, but I'm guessing it's no speed demon: [www.amazon.com]

Start here perhaps?

Top 5 miini PCs for 2024

[www.youtube.com]

or the GMKtec NucBox G3:

[www.youtube.com]


Disclaimer: They look interesting, but I have no actual experience with any of them. YMMV.

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=TC

There are a lot of cheap PCs out there. You need to define what specs it needs.

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I have a Minisforum UM780 XTX and it's an excellent machine with very good thermals and a 65W power limit (may actually be 70W if you want, I don't) and the best integrated GPU in a non-Apple machine so can play many games, even current ones at respectable settings. My biggest complaint of Mini PCs has always been the thermal solution and this one does it right.

$580 with 32GB and a 1TB SSD @bezoszille
[www.amazon.com]

I've been watching Beelink reviews on Youtube and they always get good reviews. I would spend an additional $80 and get the Beelink SER5 AMD Mini PC, Ryzen 5 5560U (Up to 4.0 GHz) 6 Cores Mini Computer, 16GB RAM +500GB SSD Micro Desktop, which is selling on Amazon for $249. The AMD Ryzen 5 5560 is a 6 core, 12 thru CPU that posts 3X the benchmark scores of the Intel N100 and the graphics benchmark score is 3.5X of the Intel N100.

Dang Forrest, why'd you post that! I've been looking for a way to run Project Online/Desktop this past week. The link is showing 299 for me, was it 249?

PS I've tried running EMU/UTM/Windows ARM (a bit slow ) and Bringing home the Boat Anchor PC laptop they envision is everyone's pinnacle of computing (just plain irritating). Few Hundred bucks to (cross your fingers) plug and play project is very tempting.

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“Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it."

On the Beelink with AMD CPU, check around at Amazon. There are multiple listings and I believe the $299 model has a 1 TB SSD, compared to the 500 GB at $249

Thanks, still goin' broke saving money!

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“Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it."

Quote
August West
Dang Forrest, why'd you post that! I've been looking for a way to run Project Online/Desktop this past week. The link is showing 299 for me, was it 249?

PS I've tried running EMU/UTM/Windows ARM (a bit slow ) and Bringing home the Boat Anchor PC laptop they envision is everyone's pinnacle of computing (just plain irritating). Few Hundred bucks to (cross your fingers) plug and play project is very tempting.

Agreed, that's a ridiculous deal. I think when I looked up the benchmarks it was about as fast as an M1, but not as efficient, of course. That's a lot for the money though.