Which mini PC to get?

Still pondering over the HP EliteDesk G2 mini. They do look like great little machines.

Bought a 1TB Western Digital M.2 drive in the meantime as that will be going in whatever I buy.
 
I just couldn't bring myself to buy something with a quad core i5, with an ancient iGPU that wasn't good at release, in 2024.
Unless it's dirt cheap (as in nearly free), in which case I think it'd have been bought already!
 
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For some unknown reason I want

AtomMan X7 Ti - minisforum

The World's First Intel Core Ultra 9 AI Mini PC with a 4-inch Touchscreen.,minisforum
www.minisforum.com

with a whopping Oculink eGPU enclosure and meaty GPU, no idea why, it's all just peaked my interest.

I'll do my normal thing, spends too much money, build it, then instantly lose interest :)
 
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HEADRAT said:
For some unknown reason I want

AtomMan X7 Ti - minisforum

The World's First Intel Core Ultra 9 AI Mini PC with a 4-inch Touchscreen.,minisforum
www.minisforum.com

with a whopping Oculink eGPU enclosure and meaty GPU, no idea why, it's all just peaked my interest.

I'll do my normal thing, spends too much money, build it, then instantly lose interest :)
Click to expand...
i wan it to :/ but im getting its out of my price range.
also sounds to good.
also why do we need a 4" screen...
and thinking pre-installed spyware at least on software level
 
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HEADRAT said:
For some unknown reason I want

AtomMan X7 Ti - minisforum

The World's First Intel Core Ultra 9 AI Mini PC with a 4-inch Touchscreen.,minisforum
www.minisforum.com

with a whopping Oculink eGPU enclosure and meaty GPU, no idea why, it's all just peaked my interest.

I'll do my normal thing, spends too much money, build it, then instantly lose interest :)
Click to expand...

No price displayed. AKA if you have to ask you cannot afford it. :)
 
Emlyn_Dewar said:
Nonsense. Minisforum aren't inept like AceMagic. Paranoia these days is out of hand.

The Spyware gets installed by the user, when they install Windows 11.
Click to expand...

Quite a few of the generic brand mini PCs have some form of spyware or backdoor functionality/vulnerabilities either in the pre-install and/or hardware :( (There are a few noname brands which are just rebadged Ace Magic products) not always active.

I've not seen anyone finding it with some of the better known names though - Minisforum, Beelink/Trigkey and MeLe so far seem to be fine.
 
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Some AceMagic/Derivatives had, and they have fixed this now. It's pretty inexcusable, and I agree with the GamersNexus that a blunder that big should warrant the company going under.
The notion that "it's Chinese, it's must be spyware" is a bit silly. Especially when we're all using apps/operating systems that are harvesting everything and selling it off/supplying it to god knows who.

Minisforum are a solid company.
 
Emlyn_Dewar said:
Some AceMagic/Derivatives had, and they have fixed this now. It's pretty inexcusable, and I agree with the GamersNexus that a blunder that big should warrant the company going under.
The notion that "it's Chinese, it's must be spyware" is a bit silly. Especially when we're all using apps/operating systems that are harvesting everything and selling it off/supplying it to god knows who.

Minisforum are a solid company.
Click to expand...

It isn't entirely uncommon with the cheapy generic brand, usually Chinese, Android boxes, travel routers, etc. for them to either have active malware or backdoors/vulnerabilities which probably aren't there by accident so I don't think it unwarranted to be suspicious of generic brand mini PCs either - I'm no fan of what Microsoft is doing with Windows but they are unlikely to steal your credit card information or passwords, etc. which can/has happen with some of these devices.

There was some noname brand NAS type devices awhile back found to have a modified NTP client which was regularly "syncing" with a dodgy server and was capable of remote code execution, though no instance of it being used that way was known - almost certainly foreign intelligence agency doing with a high chance of being Chinese state.
 
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Oh, those Android boxes should be nowhere near anyone's networks. I have watched a few videos on those, and the shady calls to servers, or with dodgy pre-loaded apps.

The thing is, it's been a few years since Minisforum was a no-name brand.
 
Emlyn_Dewar said:
The thing is, it's been a few years since Minisforum was a no-name brand.
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Agreed but I understand why people would be wary and while I'd have no problem buying them, I'd be more likely to buy an established Western brand given the choice.
 
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Philtor said:
China then say ‘all your data belong to us’ :D

I know Windows 10 is going EOL but they need to fix Windows 11 before then imo.

If you are not gaming with a PC then I firmly believe the small form factor kit is the way forward these days rather than a small tank with fans inside :D

Tempted to pull the trigger on that Lenovo above but will have a think and check out the suggestions :)

Thanks for the input guys.
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Bit late to this thread...

I bought a second hand m900 (6th gen Lenovo tiny i5-6500T) in 2017 and used it all the way up until last year. Great machine, almost silent, Browsing, downloading, very light gaming, retro emulation, even ran a Plex server to stream content to my TV. It was quite easy to get W11 onto it but I reverted back to 10 in the end. Over time the Ram went up from 8 to 16 to 32 (The 32 was unnecessary!). Storage went from just nvme to added SATA ssd later.

Replaced it with a 2nd hand M90q (i5-12500) last year. Performs same duties, just with Windows 11. Supports 2 Nvme + 1 SATA and you can tell the difference in speed easily (mainly due to the faster nvme I suspect) Both machines cost around 400Euros as I bought them only 1 year old and they still had long warranties on them.

BUT, both machines do ramp up fans every now and then, especially during windows updates! I would say the newer one moreso, but hard to compare as I sold the old one.


rp2000
 
GMktec got mini pcs for as low as £340 with AMD 8th gen and Intel Meteor lake mini pcs barebones but cheaper then spending £400-500 for them. Just get the ram and sdd yourself and plug it in.

Good thing about these GMktec mini pcs are they usually come with dual 2.5gb ports so you can set up servers.
 
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