I have a budget of $1,000-1,300 and I am looking to purchase a mini pc for spreadsheet business work and some occasional gaming (RuneScape and Minecraft). What are your recommendations for the best in my price range ?

I was thinking of buying the Apple mac mini M6 with 32 gb memory.

I'm looking to get a mini pc for mostly work and some light gaming. My only requirements are 32GB+1TB as I need to run Windows VMs and Linux containers for work, alongside casual browser usage. I've gone around the sub and found quite a few recommendations for the K8 Plus and found it at amazon.ca going for CAD1,259. I do not plan on getting an eGPU in the future.

I was wondering -

1. Is there a better alternative under CAD 1300?
2. What can I get away with at a lower budget, around CAD 800-1000 range or even lower?
3. Is it worth waiting for Black Fridays, would prices go down then or are we expecting the prices to stay the same even after the 'discounts'?

Thanks in advance!

Hi, new Minisforum's club member here

After some extensive research, I've bought some days ago in Amazon Spain a X1 Lite-255 with these specs:

- AMD Ryzen 7 255
- Radeon 780M
- 16 GB RAM (13,8 GB usable)

Price: u$s 600

I bought it at Amazon Spain because:

- I had a 150€ on a gift card given from a freelancer client
- It is one of the few stores that calculates customs taxes in advance and add to final price
- Not all the MiniPC brands/models can be shipped to Latam

Now I'm looking forward to add an additional nvme, swap ram sticks and make it go 32gb, install Linux Mint (if possible), etc.

I'm looking forward to suggestions, opinions, links, etc. to put Linux on this.
I'll try to set up Plex, Proxmox, etc. and make a little home server

unboxing

I am looking to buy my first MiniPC and currently I am a little overwhelmed with the options
The things I want to use it for are Pi-Hole/Unbound (or an alternative), set up VPN for my local network and use it as a hub for an LED matrix I own. Other usecases will probably be added down the road. But in my understandig it's not that much. The things I would appreciate are something energy-efficient, quiet and not that expensive. What would you recommend?

Thanks in advance!

This Razer Core X V2 is crying out for one.

Purchased and installed Process Lasso in hopes of keeping fan noise down on my MSI AI+ 2MG miniPC. The Intel 288V runs at 30w TDP base so fan noise tends to be audible in balanced and performance mode under light load but silent running in quiet mode with 30% fan speed. In addition the quiet mode appears to disable boost and maxes at around 3200mhz instead of 5100mhz.

I noticed that running certain older games will peg a single core hard and ramp up fan speeds and noise so this is what I did.

1. create new power plan, name it, and set max processor frequency to 99. This effectively disables boost. Keep your active power plan to Balanced or Performance.
2. Start up game. In process lasso find the active process in the game and set the power profile to the power plan you created in step 1. This will stop the game from boosting and the cores are plenty fast enough to still run them. Once you close the game the system will go back to the default power plan.
3. Repeat step 2 for any other processes you want to tone down. Note that lunar lake CPUs are very efficient and even disabling boost will provide excellent performance.

I keep the default power plan on Balanced for snappier performance overall and fan noise isn’t bad when just web browsing or streaming with my custom fan curves. I've only done this workflow with old games but can see this extending to other types of applications as well.

Note that I don’t use MSI Center and set custom fan curves in the BIOS.

Is there a way to use the regular i7 8700 or 9700 in the Fujitsu mini PCs instead of the T models?
The regular ones are a lot cheaper. Would I need to change some Bios settings?

I wanna run open models there and serve them via an endpoint so that I can use it in my other applications. So I want a powerful one.

I recently purchased an ASUS NUC 13 Pro for ₹38,000 and wanted to get your opinions on whether it was a good deal or if I overpaid.

Configuration:

• Model: ASUS NUC 13 Pro
• Processor: Intel Core i5-13420H, 13th Gen
• RAM: 16GB Samsung DDR4-3200
• SSD: 512GB Micron NVMe
• Operating system: Windows 11 Pro (OEM license)
• Price paid: ₹38,000

I'm based in India, where mini-PC pricing and availability can be quite different from the US market.

I'd appreciate feedback on the following:

1. Is ₹38,000 a reasonable price for this configuration in the Indian market?
2. How does it compare with similarly priced mini PCs or a custom-built desktop?
3. Is the i5-13420H still a good CPU for development, Docker containers, Kubernetes labs, virtualization, and general productivity?
4. Are there any known thermal, fan-noise, reliability, or BIOS issues with this model?
5. Would upgrading the RAM to 32GB and the SSD to 1TB be worthwhile?
6. If the unit doesn't come with a proper purchase invoice or manufacturer warranty, would that significantly affect its value?
7. Would you keep it at this price, or sell it and build a desktop instead?

My primary use cases are software development, DevOps, running local Kubernetes environments, AI/ML experiments, and everyday productivity. I may also explore an external GPU setup, although I understand that this mini PC has integrated graphics and external GPU compatibility and performance need to be evaluated separately.

Would you consider this a good buy at ₹38,000, or would you choose something else? Honest opinions are welcome.

Thanks!

Powerful mini PC has 128GB RAM and a 1TB SSD. This silver and black GMKtec EVO-X2 model is equipped with an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor. The unit has multiple ports including USB4, HDMI, and DisplayPort. It has a triple cooling fan system and supports quad screen displays.
Also selling 3 monitors with it. 2x27” curved monitors and 1x49” curved monitor.
All is 2 weeks old. Will sell with all the cables.

I tried putting a qtb1(10900 es) cpu in my p340 tiny. Well it did not work as half expected. However, unlike most 'unsupported component' behavior, it did not beep any code, nor it died a second after boot. Just trying to post but it fails and renders just black. It is also true when other components are missing, like when I pulled out both of my ram sticks it still didn't make any beeps. Is there any bios mods to fix this issue? like I seriously need hopium I paid like 150$ on that cpu

Ps. CPU is working on other motherboard, checked it showing intel genuine 0000 in bios

Btw why do I have line on my text and why can't I get it off

Is this worth taking on as a project ?

My total budget is ₹2.3 lakh (including monitor).

I'm a professional video editor and motion graphics designer working with After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Illustrator. My work involves complex compositions, heavy effects, masking, and 3D camera tracking.

I'm considering a Mac mini M5 Pro (24GB RAM, 512GB SSD) with an external SSD, but I'm worried about RAM limitations and gaming compatibility.

Alternatively, I could build a Windows PC with an NVIDIA GPU within the same budget.

If you had ₹2.3 lakh to spend, which setup would you choose for the next 4–5 years, and why?

I also play games like GTA V but sometimes like weekend

I'd especially appreciate advice from people who use After Effects professionally. Honest real-world experiences would help me make the right investment!

#MacMini #AppleSilicon #AfterEffects #VideoEditing #MotionGraphics #MacVsPC #PremierePro #VFX