Since my laptop’s battery fried out last week, I’m finally considering switching to something that’s more solid (and trading portability with a tablet of sorts since my work doesn’t include too much computing power), but I don’t have the time or the space to assemble a desktop tower at the moment. Here’s the reason why I was thinking of a mini PC, at least to buy some components that I could reuse (starting from the whole monitor-keyboard-mouse-HDD shebang) in the future. I’m thinking of something in the 350-400€ range, like the Beelink SER5. Do you all think it’s a good option or I can aim for something else? I’m mainly looking for some light gaming, media handling (music and video), the usual.
I’ve never used a Beelink, but I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t fill your needs.
Mini PCs may not be able to fit a discrete GPU, which might be something you would want to consider if you do want to play some 3D games, as it’s an area where desktops without power constraints can have a benefit over laptops.
If you want to have very large amounts of media, you might want rotational hard drives, and there won’t be room for them in that case, though you could get a USB enclosure.
Other than that…shrugs
I think one of the best options currently in terms of price and power is the Chuwi Ubox, which costs around €250 on Aliexpress. It is more powerful than a Beelink SER5, has DDR5 RAM, a Ryzen 5 6600H processor, and easy access to the interior for future upgrades.
I’m running two beelinks. One n100 box for my Plex media center and a i5 one an sei14.
I’ve had 0 issues out of either one.
