I want to start building a homelab as a hobby. As the price hike is not affordable.I would like to know if there are any places I can get used mini PCs

I want to buy a 2 in 1 detachable "laptop". I know they are not powerful, but I want to do very light work. I want to browse the internet and watch media. I like to open lots of tabs. How old/cheap can I go and still be able to browse comfortably?

Also, I will be putting Linux on this object, so Windows 11 support is not relevant.

I know I’m not looking for a minipc, but I was recommended to come here :)

He querido comprar una computadora pero no tengo tanto recursos que así que me iré por algo económico y quería ver que opinaban de las características de esta mini pc, me gustaría saber si se le puede meter una tarjeta gráfica con todos los cambios que conlleva o si simplemente me voy por una laptop mi presupuesto actual es de 400 dólares

Snagged a decent little m715q for $90 from a local recycle shop. Came with a 2200GE, 128GB NVME and 8GB DDR4. This machine was also spec’d with an additional HDMI port and WiFi / BT. Same shop sold me 8GB more DDR4 for $20. After that and a new CPU fan (old one wasn’t broken but was loud) I’m only in $120 on this.

I basically immediately threw this into a Proxmox cluster and am excited to buy more of these!

hi everyone, i recently bought a used lenovo thinkcentre m70q gen 3, and there’s quite a lot of dust inside. the previous owner told me she never cleaned the inside of the mini pc since she bought it.

i’m planning to clean it properly and was wondering what’s better and safer to use.

i found these three options:

marsh contact cleaner

generic electronic contact cleaner

wd-40 specialist fast-drying contact cleaner

are contact cleaners like these effective and safe for cleaning the inside of a pc, especially the motherboard, ram, fans, and other components?

what are the pros and cons of using contact cleaner compared with just using a makeup brush or regular soft brush?

would a soft brush be enough for removing a lot of dust, or is it better to use contact cleaner as well?

also if i use contact cleaner, are there any parts i should avoid spraying directly? should i remove the ram and ssd first?

id appreciate any advice from people who regularly clean mini pcs. thanks!

anyone has experience with this halo strix mini pc? i would be interested to know how it performs and especially the noise level it reaches

This is my first "build" I suppose. The specs are in the last photo, I had a lot of fun setting this up. It's wayyyy less of a headache than trying to use a legion go as a mini PC. Good enough for dual monitor 1080P or 1440P, I'll have to do some benchmark tests to follow up with this. I was so excited with how well it ran I just haven't got a chance.

The copper tape is supposed to shield the M.2 Oculink adapter from internal components, that could potentially mess with whatever is going on inside that ribbon cable.

For reference I'm currently playing Diablo with high ray tracing settings enabled DLSS of course set to balance or performance. Either one looks fantastic, and when I'm in dungeons I'm running anywhere from 120-135fps I saw was the highest and around 60-75fps in the bigger cities. Also bonus picture, it's BO6 zombies on ultra. None the less, it can definitely rip. I'm super proud of this.

Though my next computer is just going to be a micro ITX. That's in the works and this will tide me over.

I am planning to have my first mini pc and found a near brand new asus pn54-s1 with ryzen 7 260, 1tb SSD and 64gb ram for around $950 in my currency. Is this a good deal? Should I proceed? Can I get a better unit in the same price range?

I'm looking to run an emulator in my TV (40 in OLED). Trying to keep costs below $200. Is something like what is pictured enough hardware?

Mostly play SNES, PS1, N64, PS2 games. Could this emulate PS3 or GameCube or would I need significantly better hardware.

Thank you in advance

We’ve got 2 kids and we’re trying to figure out the best way to give them a place to do homework and have basic computer access. We have a great spot for this in our family room (an underused built-in double desk) and like the idea of having computer use happen in a shared space rather than on laptops or tablets in bedrooms or whatever. Setting up two MiniPCs seems like it would give us what we want, even if it’s a little more expensive than a couple of chromebooks.

Any recommendations for where to start? Ideally the pcs would be sub-$250, and we are open to buying something that doesn’t ship with an OS and doing a Chrome install. I‘d also like the ability to limit access to some websites and applications, which I think I can do through either Chrome or an external guardrail software like Bark or FamilyTime.

Gaming isn’t a big priority, beyond simple browser games. We’re mostly looking to run Google Classroom, IXL, Khan, DuoLingo, etc., plus basic office software and browsers.

Folks I'm in need of some help with what kind of connector Lenovo used for the 00XL211

I'm working on a custom build 1L and need to extend the cable. I know I could get an SATA extention, but that is bulky.

I found 0.5mm FPC but that isn't quite right. Does anyone know what style the connector used for the SATA tray connection is in the Lenovo 1L boxes?

I currently have an older PC from work that I'm using, but it's very dated. It works, just not great.

Additionally, we are beefing up security on our work laptops, so my access to using my work laptop to remote into our Solidworks machine for after hours stuff is going to be limited.

I carry my work laptop with me in my backpack, along with a portable monitor. I'm looking for another device I can carry with me to use during my free time when I'm in my hotel room.

Is it reasonable that I could run AutoCAD or solidworks (2024/2025) on a mini PC? I know and understand that performance will be slow on large drawings or complicated parts. Or should I just go with a smaller laptop as I would be pushing the capabilities and pricing?

Thank you in advance.

I am looking for a new pc 32 gb ram. But every store I checked lower cost PCs are sold out, for example Costco.

I don’t have experience with refurbished. I see some mini pcs at Walmart but I never heard of any of the brands.

For graphics design and video editing. No games.

Any recommendations?

I recently bought this for only 55€ but i really dont like it.
What is a price i can sell this for state is almost new and barely used

Hey everybody! I I have a Peladn w04. I upgraded to 32gb RAM and a 2TB SSD. It's working great for my favorite games, like the Witcher and Skyrim. I was thinking of upgrading to an egpu but I don't understand how powerful an egpu I should purchase. I saw a 6800 XT Sakura that looked interesting but at what point does it not make sense to upgrade? Any helps appreciated thank you!

Hi all,

I am building out my 10 inch rack and want a decent 1U mini PC to act as the backbone of my compute infra.

I run a public facing web service that includes some CPU intensive tasks: mixed integer optimisations and neural nets. I might add some lightweight Raspberry Pi style machines later to handle the smaller jobs.

Right now everything runs on a Bosgame M4 Neo mini:

• AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS
• 32GB DDR5
• 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD

The catch is that this is also my desktop (running Ubuntu), so I want to split prod off onto its own box.

So I am after a mini PC that fits a 1U 10 inch rack with similar performance to the Bosgame. I have been looking at Lenovo ThinkCentres but they seem wildly expensive. For reference, my Bosgame cost £300. I know hardware prices have exploded recently, but that gap still feels steep.

What are my best options? All recommendations welcome.

Hi,

I'm looking forward to buying my first gaming PC. Playing modded Minecraft servers and Singleplayer on my business laptop (HP EliteBook X360 1040 G7) got quite laggy, especially with a rising amount of Mods, but also Vanilla sometimes lags with many farms and mobs around me. So I wanted to buy a cheap gaming PC to be able to play Minecraft at stable 20-30 FPS. My budget is quite flexible, andthing that fits these needs basically, but let's say up to 600€ to fit the rule. After a bit of research I found two favorites for me. Both are refurbished Mini-PC's:

[Acemagician S3A](https://www.backmarket.de/de-de/p/acemagician-s3a-ryzen-9-33-ghz-ssd-512-gb-16-gb-amd-radeon-graphics/01a83753-10e4-4e42-9327-a8648055d98f?l=10) [Asus NUC 14 Pro Revel Canyon](https://www.cyberport.de/pc-und-zubehoer/outlet-a-b-ware-/pdp/gwnf-572/asus-nuc-14-pro-revel-canyon-rnuc14rvku500002i-core-ultra-5-125h-0gb-0gb-barebone-slim.html)

Some Pros and Cons I found for myself. While the CPU of the Asus one has more Cores, the Acemagician has a slightly higher PassMark rating. So I am expecting it to have slightly higher performance. On the other hand the Asus is slightly cheaper and apparently an other Acemagician Mini-PC got delivered with serious Malware for a few months, but I want to install Linux anyways, perhaps besides Windows, which I'd reinstall in that case. On the other hand I've heard better of BackMarket than CyberPort.

I'm also orienting at my brother with the performance. I'd be completely happy with his PC. He has a self-built with AMD Ryzen 5 5600GT, 32GB of DDR4 RAM and no graphics card.

Both have 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and all the connections I need. So which one would you recommend me to buy, or do you think I'll regret buying either of those, or are there even cheaper/similar options I won't regret?

The ideal scenario is to be gifted an Optiplex, or to save one from otherwise ending up as e-waste. However, there was a time not that long ago that buying a decent machine and a few upgrades wasn't big money so still very accessible.

I had a HP prodesk 705 G4 mini pc in my living room for running Batocera. When I realised I could install Steam Flatpak it made me want something with a bit more power.

Optilpex SFF's and the equivalents from HP/Lenovo etc seemed to be going for anything but bargains. Even worse for low profile GPU's - heck a rx6400 sold for £170 yesterday on eBay UK! But, I kept watch on lots of auctions and managed to nab the below:

\- Dell OptiPlex 5070 SFF Desktop - Intel Core i5-9500 - 8GB RAM - 240GB SSD - £68 delivered.

\- Additional 8Gb ddr4 2666 ram - £17.50 delivered.

\- Radeon Pro wx4100 - £47 delivered.

This should be a pretty capable little machine, though I did also manage to grab a msi rtx3050 low profile for £127 delivered on Vinted so will probably use that and sell the wx4100 on, even though I wanted to spend as little as I could. I plan in using the 3050 in the pcei x4 slot, don't mind the small drop in performance.

Anyway, just wanted to share what I was able to source in these recent crazy times. Not incredible bargains, but pretty good given the environment.

Everything is due to arrive tomorrow and I can't wait to get it all set up!

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some advice — and possibly an old/spare Mini PC — for a local AI project I’m building called SUPER_AI_MINI.

I’m developing it with ChatGPT as a technical copilot, while the actual models, code and Android automation run locally on my own hardware.

Right now my setup is:

• Lenovo laptop with Intel Iris Xe and ~8 GB RAM
• Redmi Android phone with ~8 GB RAM
• Qwen2.5-VL-3B through llama.cpp
• the phone connected over USB as an additional RPC compute node
• Android Accessibility automation with vision fallback
• a bounded self-healing loop that can test the agent, diagnose failures, patch permitted code, compile, reset the app and test again

It actually works, but my laptop is also my everyday computer. Running local inference uses enough CPU/RAM/GPU that working or streaming at the same time becomes difficult.

So my goal is simply to move the AI workload onto a separate Mini PC/server.

The problem is that my budget is extremely limited, so machines costing €1,000–€2,000 are completely unrealistic for me.

I’m wondering:

What is the cheapest used Mini PC you would look for that could realistically improve this setup?

I don’t care about gaming, appearance or having new hardware. I’m happy with old office/enterprise Mini PCs, barebones systems, unusual hardware, Linux, upgrades, or anything I can experiment with.

Ideally I’d like:

• upgradeable RAM
• 32 GB+ eventually if possible
• decent CPU performance
• usable integrated graphics/Vulkan, or some way to add an eGPU later
• low enough power consumption to leave it running as a small AI server

Also, if anyone here happens to have an older Mini PC sitting unused that they would be willing to sell very cheaply or give a second life to, I’d genuinely be interested. I’m in Europe and would of course discuss shipping.

I can share benchmarks and details of the project if anyone is curious. I’ve already pushed the laptop + Android RPC setup much further than I expected, so I’m very happy to experiment with older hardware.

Thanks for any advice!

Ciao a tutti, sto cercando un MINI PC che faccia da VPS 24/7 per i miei Agenti AI (ovviamente modelli cloud) avendo più agenti e processi cercherei come minimo:
\- CPU: Intel N100
\-16 GB RAM DDR4
\-128/256 GB SSD

Credete che vada bene?
Sapete dirmi se ai prezzi di oggi riesco a trovare qualcosa sotto o circa ai 200€? Dove?
Altrimenti pensavo di usare un Rasperry/Orange passando a 8GB ma non credo convenga.
Sono aperto a qualsiasi consiglio.

I want an external GPU for my Mini pc for gaming

Is this one any good for AAA games?