I’ve been wanting a dedicated emulation machine for my TV for a while, especially to revisit some of my favorite old DS/3DS games and Pokémon runs. I ended up using a GEEKOM mini PC for this project, and it turned out way better than I expected. I set it up with EmulationStation as the frontend to keep everything clean and controller-friendly. So far, everything I've tried has run really smoothly at 1080p, and the fan hasn't been too distracting. I stuck with Windows instead of going with a dedicated gaming OS because I still wanted the flexibility to use it like a normal PC when needed. It now sits next to my TV and honestly looks like a tiny console sitting there. It’s been a lot of fun revisiting these classics on a bigger screen.

Have any of you turned a mini PC into a dedicated gaming box? Do you prefer Windows with a frontend, or a dedicated gaming OS?

Hi, I'm completely new to mini pcs or pcs in general and I wanted to know if this was a setup that actually works or is good?

I read lot of things about this company... Never thought I would end up like this... I wanted to give them a chance...

Now I hope to get some reply from the assistance...

I paid with PayPal at least.

GEEKOM MINI PC

For the past few years, I've been using a cheap Beelink mini PC as my main personal computer, and it works okay for basic web browsing, VS Code, and a Plex server, but struggles with much beyond that. So I guess it's time for a new computer (before prices increase even more), but I don't want to spend more than $800ish.

I'm looking at the GMKtec K8 Plus 8845HS with 32gb DDR5 and a 512gb SSD.

What sort of performance can I expect when it comes to stuff like LLMs, Plex, gaming, video editing, etc.? I know this isn't a top-of-the-line computer, but I'm just trying to figure out what limitations I might encounter.

Been doing research for a couple weeks now, and honestly, there are so many options, but more importantly, everything has gotten so expensive. I remember when top of the line Beelink minis were being sold for $500 to $600 Canadian 🥺

Anyways, I was hoping for a couple specific recommendations based exactly on what I plan to do with the Mini PC...

Budget $500 to $600 Canadian (so like $400-450 USD?)

Planning to hook up to a 70 inch 4K television. It's not like the new fancy OLED ones, much older, but still 4K.

I already have a PS5 hooked up for gaming, and can also stream on the PS5.

The PC is mainly for streaming as well, accessing websites, YouTube, other browsing activities. Viewing 4K video. Streaming 4K video and using IPTV off it. Ideally, I do want to be able to do some very light gaming, like older emulator stuff (NES, SEGA, etc), as well as older games on Steam (example: Red Alert, SC1&2, HOMM3, other random classics).

I would like the system to be able to do all that with no lag though. Be smooth and seamless. Also, needs to last at least 5 years let's say?

Please, if people can just narrow it down to 1 or 2 systems, I'm eager to just buy it already.

I assume I need minimum 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD. Also been reading about risk of cheaper Chinese parts, rather than name brand ones?

Thanks in advance 😁

I would like some suggestions for a good MiniPC that can do some emulation, maybe up to GameCube, some psp and maybe some PS2. And if possible under $500, preferably in the $300 to $400 range? 😬 Or is that just very wishful thinking.

As mentioned, I appreciate all the help as I'm not that knowledgeable on PC specs. So thanks all that post and help out, much appreciated 🙏

plz someone! i need a suggestion under $400!

I am searching for best mini PC that i can use for casual gaming on a budget(Around 600$). I have seen a lot of minisforum but none of them are available for buying especially here in Europe. I also conaidered building my own mini ITX computer but i would leave this as last resource because they are still... well not mini PCs 😄 I don't need to run games on maximum setting but it would be nice to be able to play games like Oblivion Remastered or Assassin's Creed. I would like to run steamOS/Bazzite on it. Any recommendations?

I’m looking for a small PC for the living room, mainly for games like OSRS and League of Legends.
I found these two and the prices seemed pretty decent:

Firebat F1 – €380
Ryzen 5 7640HS
Radeon 760M
24GB LPDDR5
512GB SSD

Firebat F1 P – €430
Ryzen 7 H 255
Radeon 780M
24GB LPDDR5
1TB SSD

The soldered LPDDR memory is one thing I’m unsure about. I also found some posts about the F1 P performing much worse than expected, especially the GPU performance.

Anyone here have experience with either of these? Or any better options around the same price or maybe around 5 to 600 max?

Well, the motherboard burned out on my Geekom A7, which I've had for just under two years. I loved that machine.

I'm looking for a mini PC to replace it. I don't do much gaming, but I do edit video (in DaVinci Resolve), as well as some audio work. I also use my PC to back up CD's and DVD's and play music and video. Sometimes I do live streams, in 30fps. Other than that, it's for casual home use.

So, I'm looking for something with good storage and reasonably fast, but doesn't have to have gaming capabilities.

Should I go with another Geekom? Or what are some good recommendations today, as opposed to two years ago?

Thanks!

Edit: A couple people pointed out the long warranty of Geekom mini pcs. I had actually forgotten about this. I'm getting the data recovered from it, and when I get it back, I'm going to contact Geekom and see about getting a replacement. Thanks for the tips.

I am looking make a mini setup to use to play clone her and some other simple couch co-op games. I am not looking to spend a ton as I already have a PS5 and a high end gaming PC. But this is my first mini PC. I was considering systems with the 7840HS cpu and 16gb ram. Will this be good enough? I know some systems seem to lock TDP lower than what these chips are rated for so I am curious if there is anything I should look for as far as making sure I can use the full TDP range for the CPU/iGPU.

I have spent the last few weeks testing the Olares ONE as a compact local-AI workstation rather than treating it as another spec-sheet mini PC.

The machine measures 320 × 197 × 55 mm and weighs 2.15 kg without its power supply. Inside it has:

• Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop with 24 GB GDDR7
• 96 GB DDR5-5600 RAM
• 2 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
• 2.5 GbE, Thunderbolt 5, HDMI 2.1, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4
• 330 W power adapter

The word Laptop matters. This is not a desktop RTX 5090, and the 96 GB of system RAM does not become 96 GB of VRAM. Models can spill work into system memory, but fitting a model and running it at a practical speed are two different things.

Instead of only measuring tokens per second, I wanted to know whether local models could complete real multi-step work: maintaining state across conversations, using tools, creating and checking files, handling contradictory evidence, respecting privacy constraints and recovering from failed operations.

What I tested

Across the full project I tested more than 30 model variants through llama.cpp, vLLM and Ollama. My archive contains 236 rows in the main comparison and more than 1,400 deduplicated checks across roughly 20 hours of measured model execution.

Those runs used different batteries and environments, so I did not combine them into one misleading score. For the most useful comparison, I made five finalists run the same 33-check battery twice under controlled conditions.

The common setup was llama.cpp commit 6d5a910, OpenClaw 2026.7.1-2, a 98,304-token context, one slot, Flash Attention, Q4 KV cache and a maximum output of 8,192 tokens. The model was already loaded before timing.

Prompts, tools, inputs and checks were identical, but sampling was tuned per model family: temperature 0.1 for Ornith, Qwopus and Qwen3.6, and 0.7 for Qwen3.8. This compares practical configurations, not isolated model architectures with every parameter held constant.

Repeated results

Ornith 1.0 35B Q4_K_M was the best overall result on this machine: both audited passes completed in 442/445 seconds. Qwopus also completed both runs and used less VRAM, but took about 2.3 times as long in this particular battery. That does not mean Ornith will be 2.3 times faster on every prompt.

I also recorded generation rates, where Ornith reached 239.89 tok/s and Qwopus 221.34 tok/s. They are not the same as end-to-end agent speed: tool calls, prefill, web requests and recovery loops are included in the suite times instead.

The failures were more useful than a perfect score

Passing 33 checks once did not make any model reliable in every situation. In the longer tests:

• Qwopus exhausted its output limit during a research task and failed to create the required files.
• Ornith missed indexed evidence after a retry and, in a different long conversation, exposed private information.
• Qwen3.8 had a genuine privacy failure in one pass and passed the same check in another.
• An Ornith MTP variant produced the fastest single pass, but its second pass was much slower and included a privacy leak, a search loop and insufficient evidence.
• One optional MTP sidecar could not load because it lacked a tensor required by this llama.cpp build. I counted that as a packaging/runtime compatibility problem, not a VRAM or intelligence failure.

I manually reviewed suspected false negatives from the automatic verifier, but only corrected cases where the output was demonstrably right and the checker expected an exact phrase or field name. Missing files, wrong paths, unsafe actions, weak evidence and real timeouts remained failures.

My practical take on the hardware

For a machine of this size, the 5090 Laptop GPU makes 27B–35B quantized models genuinely useful for local agentic work. The 24 GB VRAM ceiling is still the defining limit: the Olares ONE is fast when the model fits well on the GPU, but it is not a compact substitute for a workstation with a very large VRAM pool.

My current choice on this hardware would be Ornith 1.0 35B Q4_K_M, with Qwopus3.6 27B v2 MTP IQ4_XS as the lower-VRAM alternative. I would still start any agent with read-only access, test it on disposable data and require approval before it sends messages, changes permissions or modifies services.

Olares supplied the machine, but did not pay for the video. The company only checked technical facts; the methodology, tests and conclusions are mine.

I documented the hardware and several of the tests here: What can a local AI actually do? Real tests on an RTX 5090 Laptop mini PC

For a follow-up comparison, what would be most useful here: a 128 GB Strix Halo mini PC, an NVIDIA DGX Spark, or a desktop RTX 5090 system?

Hi there I have this mini PC from Acemagic. I am looking to sell it and have literally no idea how to price it? I can’t find a single one online

i was thinking of needing a unit willing to run modern games with an actual gpu that should have its rightful place instead of being limited to being an integrated cpu/gpu processor​, and its own power supply HOPEFULLY still in a size of a phone

Making a project of a handheld PC paired with my xreal ​one pros. ​Or instead of a handheld pc it will be a redmagic 11s pro (+liquid cooling) and can actually run games like dying light 1 really good and dying light 2 as well, heck even RD2 with 720p, no idea about 1080p though​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Any mini pc ideas i haven't checked that ticks the boxes of my first claim? ​

Hey guys, Looking to pull the plug on this: https://www.gmktec.com/products/amd-ryzen%E2%84%A2-7-pro-6850u-mini-pc-gmktec-m7-ultra?variant=47330575548570

Before pulling the trigger, I wanted to get the community's input. Plan to use this for:

- plex media server: hosting my media library.
- local ai models

anyone have experience with this?

- how is the fan noise and thermal behavior when running 24/7

- has anyone used OCuLink port on this specific model with an eGPU setup? is it good

Appreciate any advice, warnings.

Alternatively, should I consider something else. Price range is 400 - 600

Does anyone else have a similar experience that F7 won't get into the boot menu? Getting into the BIOS using F2 works fine. I wrote to Minisforum customer support, and their advice was to try replacing the keyboard and try again.

Good Morning

I have been looking to purchase a mini pc and i have 2 x 32gb corsair vengeance ddr4 so-dims 260 pin cmsx64gx4m2a2666c18.

So i would like to ask is there a mini pc that will accept this corsair ram. I am not super knowledgeable but am wondering if the 2666mhz speed will be a no no as most of the ddr4 powered min pcs i have looked at advertise a 3200mhz speed.

Main purpose is to get away from this tower pc although its a lian li 011 and runs well i just want something smaller and tidy looking.

I could just say to heck with it and get a ddr5 powered allsinging all dancing but wow those prices are something else. So is there any hope for re using this corsair ram

Thanks in advance

Hi! someone with Minisforum mini pc experience this too?? whenever this happens to my minipc I tried using keyboard and mouse to wake it up but was unable there is still light on the power button and in the power supply. the only option for me to have it on again is pulling the plug and putting it back on again.