Mini PCs on a budget, how I caught the bug!

[Rob_B]

My new found addiction to mini PCs started when my son wanted to build his own PC this Christmas, while researching parts I got back into it all (and came back to Hexus) but can't justify the cost or space for a full tower (being a grown up is so boring sometimes) so I looked for cheap mini PCs to hook up to the TV. It had to be small and be under £100.

I started with a Gigabyte Brix (Celeron J1900, 4GB, 500GB 2.5" HDD) to play around with, cost me £60 something.
Hooking it up and installing a fresh Win10 I was amazed it actually ran pretty well, I swapped in an 8GB stick to bump the RAM up and installed Steam for a laugh... Games actually ran! HL2, Portal 1/2 at 720p ish ran at 20/30fps which was more then playable.

This got me hooked.. So I went and bought a Dell 3020m (£60, i3 4160T, 4GB, 500GB 7200rpm) which has 2 RAM slots and a desktop CPU, I opened it up, repasted, stuck in 2 x 8GB sticks of RAM and oops, no WiFi. After some faff/user error and wasted money I ended up with a USB adapter to get Internet. Now this thing is great, bigger than the Brix but still pretty small, runs the same games at twice the fps (HL2 at 1080p 60fps mostly) so I tried some other games, Cryis warhead at 1366x768 on low @ 20fps, not bad I guess but I want more! It's only 2 cores 4 threads and is a 6yr old business PC after all.

I'm currently looking at getting a faster 4th Gen i5 to replace the CPU but they run at £40 + and will only give me a small boost, so I'm looking for my next fix, HP and Lenovo do some good little machines but they are above my arbitrary limit of £100

Has anyone else got the same addiction as me or how about some good suggestions for my next machine or newer games that get on well with lower powered machines?

Rob

[Zhaoman]

Haha reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8VXI4og8u4

There is something about throwing some cheap components together into the smallest possible enclosure that gets more and more satisfying. I'm on an itx system and I imagine I will slowly be going down this route.

[danq]

That's crazy! I like the idea of fitting loads of high end components into a small package. One day when I've got some extra cash lying around I'll do just that. At the moment I'm building a O11 Dynamic Mini. Although Mini by name, certainly isn't Mini by stature! But I do love a good small build. Can't stand massive towers.

[Kumagoro]

I am a bit of a fan of very small pc's. Though it is more as a whole PC replacement.

The problem is I can never find the perfect one at the right price. i.e. Dirt cheap.

I generally have two problems hardware wise though which are not enough usb ports at the back and no mini jack for audio out on the back to keep it tidy. I have been able to give up now though as I refurbed a 27 inch 2011 iMac for the wife. It effectively is therefore the tiniest PC I have, just it isn't portable anymore. Nice and easy to get into well compared to newer iMacs anyway. Also I could squeeze in an SSD on a spare unused sata port so it is quick and has a decent amount of storage. The only downside really is the number of USB ports but it has enough just about really and that there is no USB 3.

You can buy a thunderbolt 2 dock which is a bit ugly but the worst part is second-hand they sell for £80+. If I manage to pick one up I'll just hide it and attach at the back.

To me it counts as a mini one haha.

Hopefully by the time it breaks it is obsolete and they will finally have tiny ones which meet my requirements or at least tech has moved on sufficiently that what I need is no longer relevant.

[jimbouk]

Always a big trade off with embedded graphics. I was excited by the FM2 socket/chips which promised a step up in graphics performance but it was still too slow to be a main pc for me. I used to love my shuttle (SN45g2) and was disappointed when they went from reasonably priced barbones to very expensive. Was the perfect balance of size and flexibility with good performance and cooling at a reasonable price.

I do wonder about an old compact business desktop and a low profile graphics card, but low powered PSUs and non standard parts put me off, then you're back to a new mini-itx and the price rockets again!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I got my first Shuttle XPC in 2005,and ever since then I have only had SFF PCs. So I have had an addition for nearly 16 years!!

I even tried putting a PC into an aluminium phone box once!

[Spreadie]

I honestly thought you were going to say you'd bought one of these, Rob:

https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/syste...-gb-bxi5g-760/

[mulven]

I'm a fan of small form factor builds myself, anything sub 20L in volume. Those are full on gaming pcs but I really enjoyed setting up an Asrock Deskmini A300 for a friend. Definitely the smallest pc i've put together!

[DanceswithUnix]

Small PCs are great, but everyone in the house games so the smallest we can usually drop to is shoebox due to the gpu requirement.

My daughter has the smallest everyday machine, an ITX build in an old Cooler Master Elite 120. It has a 2200G, but the integrated graphics aren't quite up to scratch so she has a GPU in there.

For work I really wanted an Asus PN50. 8 cores is fine for my engineering use, more CPU grunt than the big Dell Xeon workstations I had not that long ago. All in something so tiny I could fix it to the back of a monitor. Then came the requirement to plug in two x8 PCIe cards

I do have a smaller ITX case kicking around, but it is low enough that I have found it hard to find a motherboard with a low enough CPU cooler. It has an Atom D510 board in it atm, a dreadful unusably slow waste of silicon so the case is just sitting there unloved!

[Rob_B]

I honestly thought you were going to say you'd bought one of these, Rob:

https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/syste...-gb-bxi5g-760/

I would buy that in an instant! I ws quite impressed by my previous Brix, well built but to have a dedicated GPU would be great for the gaming side of things.

I'm trying to avoid a 'normal' small build as the space is still an issue, this 3020 is about a DVD length squared and 2/3 DVD widths tall, that's what I'm aiming for but yeah it reaaaaaly limits the possibilities if you're on a budget

[mulven]

Small PCs are great, but everyone in the house games so the smallest we can usually drop to is shoebox due to the gpu requirement.

My daughter has the smallest everyday machine, an ITX build in an old Cooler Master Elite 120. It has a 2200G, but the integrated graphics aren't quite up to scratch so she has a GPU in there.

For work I really wanted an Asus PN50. 8 cores is fine for my engineering use, more CPU grunt than the big Dell Xeon workstations I had not that long ago. All in something so tiny I could fix it to the back of a monitor. Then came the requirement to plug in two x8 PCIe cards

I do have a smaller ITX case kicking around, but it is low enough that I have found it hard to find a motherboard with a low enough CPU cooler. It has an Atom D510 board in it atm, a dreadful unusably slow waste of silicon so the case is just sitting there unloved!

Have you had a look into sandwich layout cases? Lets you get a full size gpu in a tight space! quite a few available on aliexpress (worse since brexit with +20%). I overpaid for mine but went for a very high quality one from zs cases. 8.3 Litres in volume and currently running a 5600X and RX 6800. I'm a massive fan of the sg13 and other shoebox/microwave cases especially for the price they cost!

[Kumagoro]

Saw this the other day, https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/7/21...rdown-ces-2020

A bit big for me but I thought it was quite nifty. I am more of an under 2 litre tiny mini PC like the nuc, brix and similar guy.

[Rob_B]

Wow, starts at a grand! Great bit of kit though

[jimbouk]

Saw this the other day, https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/7/21...rdown-ces-2020

A bit big for me but I thought it was quite nifty. I am more of an under 2 litre tiny mini PC like the nuc, brix and similar guy.

Except it's intel so you'd need a whole new box for every sub-generation of CPU...

[Rob_B]

Has anyone got good suggestions for ex business type mini PCs that might be around £100 with a 5th or maybe even 6th gen cpu?

I'm thinking the better onboard gfx will make a big difference even if the CPU is similar, I've seen pretty big increases for gfx from generation changes from but much smaller cpu increases.

[DanceswithUnix]

I expect that is just down to luck of what turns up on ebay from office clearance companies.

I would have thought you would struggle to get near a £100 budget at that point though.