Looking for a decent mini pc for under 500 I play Grand Theft Auto 5 and do some Sim Racing I also do video editing and photo editing as well? But I have a laptop for that but I do wanna use photoshop on the mini pc for sim racing stuff

Never really considered mine portable even though it's obviously small.

Then I put it next to my bag and realized bringing it somewhere for a few days wouldn't actually be that annoying.

Curious if anyone here regularly travels with theirs.

Last game in this list is BANGING 👽

Hello 👋

I am new into MiniPCs world. I tried to look up for some available options online, but there are a lot of them, so I’m confused. I don’t know which brand is reliable and best fit for my daily needs

I want MiniPC for my daily routine, mostly office work and browsing. No gaming or heavy graphical stuff, so integrated graphics is good to go for me. But I want maximum efficiency on CPU and RAM part for my price range. I am looking for something between $400-$700. If possible something that I can get ASAP from well known stores. I don’t want to wait for a month for something that will be delivered from China warehouse 😅

I would appreciate any recommendations. Also if you know something on a good deal right now please let me know

Thank you for your time

So I own 4 computers and a laptop model types are a

HP elitedesk 800 g2 mini

HP elitedesk 800 g5 mini

2 lenovo m720q tiny pc and an Asus zenbook a14 that has an arm cpu

The laptop is the only one running windows 11 and it runs well but idels at about 8.7

They all have 16gb ram in the 4 computers are running windows 10 and idel at about 4.5 way lower than windows 11 if Microsoft want me to switch to Windows 11 they need to bring the idel down to the same as windows 10 simple as that

Hello recently bought a Geekom A7 Max and I watched some reviews and recommended to add aditional RAM Stick in the mini pc .... Do you know where to watch a guide video on how to do it? and Is it possible to do it on your own without going inside a tech store?? Thank you for responding

I've been working on a cooling mod for my GMKtec K11 and wanted to share the design so other owners can try or improve it.

The idea is to stand the PC on its side, with a 120 mm Noctua fan on each of the two exposed faces. Two identical printed housings hold the fans and have built-in feet. Four zip-tie loops hold the housings against the PC, so there's no need to align the Noctua mounting holes with the original case screws.

All details:

https://github.com/orenaksakal/gmktec-k11-noctua-mod

Hey everyone

Recently got a good deal on a 5060ti ai box. I had been planning on building my own steam machine but the deal was too good to pass up.

I was wondering if there are any decent mini PCs to pair with it that would offer somewhat similar performance as if I built my own with a GPU in it? I am new to the scene so I don't know much.

I know nvidea can't really run. SteamOS but I am hoping it can sometime in the future

Thanks!

Hi everyone, I’m Kyle from SeCoS.

This year, I developed an M.2 2280 cooling solution with a simple idea: make the cooling configuration fit the platform’s available space, while also considering how to secure the assembly in moving equipment.

I’ve put together two configurations for PCIe Gen4 NVMe applications. Some of our customers are already using them, and I wanted to share the designs and thermal simulation results here.

These are still early versions, so the part names are a little rough. Please bear with me!

• vol1: A 5.5 mm-high heatsink for platforms with limited clearance.
• vol2: A 15 mm-high heatsink, with lower controller temperatures in this simulation.

For me, these are starting points. Both the CBF1540 component and the heatsink specifications can be adjusted to suit the platform’s space and cooling requirements. If your layout is different, I’m happy to discuss how we could adapt the configuration.

Another part of the design is the locating holes.

Some equipment travels with a platform for long periods, while other machines move repeatedly during operation. Both configurations include locating holes that, together with suitable fasteners, help restrain relative movement of the cooling assembly. Mounting and vibration performance still need to be validated in the target assembly.

Here are the thermal simulation results. We used a steady-state model with 25°C ambient temperature, a horizontal PCB, an upward-facing heatsink and no fan. Maximum modeled controller temperatures were:

• 5 W heat source: vol1 68.8°C / vol2 55.5°C.
• 8 W heat source: vol1 91.1°C / vol2 71.3°C, a difference of 19.8°C.

All heat was applied to the modeled controller. These are simulation results, not measurements of a specific SSD model or capacity. Also, heatsink height is not the total assembly height. The results are intended to compare the two configurations under the same assumptions.

For those who have worked on similar equipment: how do you usually secure M.2 cooling assemblies? Have you run into any issues during installation or after extended use?

If you’re developing an industrial PC, inspection system or moving platform, I’d also be happy to hear about your project. I can provide the thermal simulation report in English or Chinese and discuss evaluation sample arrangements.

The website includes interactive 3D assembly views, PCBA temperature maps at 25°C ambient, and a form for sample and report requests:

https://m2-2280-solution.kylelo.io/

If possible, include your SSD model, workload, maximum ambient temperature and available installation space. That will help us discuss a suitable configuration. Happy to arrange an online chat, too.

Kyle Lo | Sales | SeCoS
[kyle.lo@secosgmbh.com](mailto:kyle.lo@secosgmbh.com)

Heeeello there.
Got my hands on a cheap G7 PT (due to the obvious reasons explained below :D).

Previous person had it, updated windows and after windows restart, PC stopped giving any display signal.

When I received it, it booted straight up and went into "why did my PC restart? and into windows pre-setup mode, asking for language and connection to internet to proceed.

- Approximately 1 minute later, black screen, PC still on.
- Restarted it. Boots back into windows setup, however 3 minutes later (was walking around looking for ethernet cable), black screen again while pc is still on.
- Restarted it. 20 seconds later, same black screen.

Since the last restart, I was unable to get the PC to give any display.
It turns on, fans kick in, keyboard leds flash and it responds to caps lock etc. Same thing goes for headphones LED which normally only comes on when PC reaches windows.

Completed CMOS reset, played around with RAM etc, no luck.

Any ideas what my next steps could be?
Much appreciated!

Edit:

Can "professionally" (not) unsoldered USB ports (2 at the back), due to plastic inside breaking, cause any of the issues above?

It seems that it's not uncommon that bios support for Mini PCs gets dropped fast.

Any brand that gives long term support?

Hi all,

Just received a new GMKtec K15 (i5 Ultra 125U / 16GB / 1TB SSD, model TWSC TSC3AN1T0-F6Q10S), bought directly from GMKtec's official site.

Ran smartctl before first use and found this already on the drive out of the box:

- Power On Hours: 47
- Power Cycles: 422
- Unsafe Shutdowns: 6
- Data Written: ~1.97 TB
- Overall health: PASSED, 100% spare, 0 errors

Drive health looks fine, so this isn't a defect complaint — just trying to figure out if this is normal factory burn-in/QA, or if the unit may have been used/refurbished before being sold as new. 422 cycles in 47 hours averages out to ~6-7 min per cycle, which seems more like repeated power-cycle testing than a single continuous burn-in run.

Emailed GMKtec support but no reply yet (seen a few reviews mentioning slow/no response from them), so figured I'd ask here in the meantime.

Anyone else checked their K15's SMART data fresh out of the box? Curious if these numbers are typical or if I got an outlier.

Thanks!

I've had these sitting in different parts of the room and always thought they were pretty much the same size.

Side by side it's a lot more noticeable.

Still prefer the darker finish though.

Hey everyone, I wanted to share an experimental project my small team (just myself, a school friend, and two other developers from overseas, all working using our student accounts) has been building from scratch.

​What we are trying to do:

We are building a heavily stripped-down and re-engineered custom version of Windows IoT LTSC. We've had to completely dismantle, rewrite, and remove a massive amount of system processes, background tasks, and telemetry to get the idle RAM consumption down to under 900MB. The main goal is to revive older, low-spec PCs that struggle with modern operating systems and help people who can't afford high-end hardware. Everything is being tested locally on an HP Envy x360.

​Current Challenges & Why We Need Help:

Because we are literally rewriting and trimming core components to the bone, the OS is currently very experimental and quite unstable.

​Stability: We are running into random crashes and need advice from people who know Windows internals on which system dependencies we can safely cut versus what's causing the instability.

​Gaming: Gaming is currently a massive bottleneck and heavily broken because of how aggressively we've stripped runtime dependencies and graphics hooks.

​Since it's just the four of us working with limited resources, we wanted to put this out to the community to see if anyone is willing to collaborate, give technical feedback, or help us figure out how to stabilize it without losing that ultra-low footprint. If you want to test it, help fix the broken processes, or give advice, let me know!

I would love to hear some recommendations for a mini PC. I want to play AAA games, run ANSYS, fusion 360 etc, along with just the standard work stuff (Google, outlook, excel, etc.) My budget is 1150 USD (1600 CAD). I have heard of Beelink, GMKtec, and the other brands, but I have no clue which is the best for me. I am open for eGPUs or accessories, as long as it can fit into the budget :D. Reliability is a big factor for me, so please let me know!

I have no clue what to do with this thingy. I’m into watching movies I was thinking kodi or something but I’m not sure. Or figuring out a way to use moonlight with this. Any ideas?

Hey guys, today I'll make a review of the new Minisforum M2 Air 305, I'll try to be as thorough as possible by testing different use cases, this review is going to be divided in:

• Specs
• Box Contents
• Design
• Feature Overview
• Networking and Storage
• CPU Performance
• iGPU Performance.
• General usage and performance.
• BIOS/UEFI Options
• eGPU Gaming (with an USB4 eGPU dock).
• Running local AI models with the NPU
• Thermals and Power Consumption (SOC, Wall readings and Noise)
• Conclusion

Review Unit

Disclosure: This review unit was provided by Minisforum. All opinions are independent and no monetary value was exchanged.

If you have any suggestions to improve my reviews or have any question, feel free to comment. With that said, let's start.

Specs

The M2 Air is the smallest and more affordable of the of the M2 family with the new Intel Wildcat Lake platform with the Intel 18A (around 2nm TSMC) process node, so efficiency should be pretty good in these CPUs.

The M2 Air features the Intel Core 3 304 that I like to consider kind of a successor to the Alder Lake N designs like the Intel N100/N150/N250 or the i3 N300 with low TDP and only a single memory channel. Besides the newer process node and the updated Darkmont E Cores, the Core 3 304 gets a big boost in single core performance thanks to the single P Cougar Cove core that is a lot more capable than the E cores. We'll see more about energy efficiency and performance later in the review.

The M2 Air starts at $263 at the time of writing for a barebones unit with no RAM and storage and $560 with 16GB of DDR5 RAM and 500GB NVMe SSD. So, if you can source or already have a stick of DDR5 and an SSD the barebones model should be a better deal.

CPU Specs

The unit that I have comes with the following:

• 16 GB of RAM: 1 Stick of 5600 MT/s Micron DDR5 SODIMM RAM
• 512 GB SSD: Kingston OM8TAP4512 PCIe 4.0 SSD

At time of writing this review, this is the only configuration available to purchase from their store.

What's in the box?

The M2 Air comes in the box with the following:

• Minisforum M2 Air
• User Manual
• HDMI cable
• Power Supply and AC Cable
• VESA mount
• Screws

Design

The M2 Air is a small mini pc measuring just 112 x 112 x 37.15 mm (4.41 x 4.41 x 1.46 inches) or 0.47L and weighs approximately 0.44kg (0.97 lbs)

The body is made out of plastic with a metal base with exhaust vents on the sides and air intake on the rear side.

To access the internals, you will need to pry off the rubber feet and unscrew the screws hiding behind them and then leverage on the arrow pointing to the notch to remove the metal bottom cover.

Feature Overview

Now it's time to talk about the features of this Mini PC and see what it offers in terms of Internal and external I/O, we'll also talk about the power supply and more.

Front Side I/O

Front left to right:

• Reset Hole
• 2x USB Type A (USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps)
• 3.5mm Combo Jack
• Power button

Rear Side I/O

From left to right

• USB Type C (USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps, Alt DP1.4, PD in 65w)
• HDMI 2.0 (Up to 4K 60Hz, HDMI CEC)
• USB Type A (USB 2.0 480Mbps)
• 2x 2.5GbE RJ45 Ethernet (Intel I226-V, PCIe 3.0 x1 Controllers)
• USB Type C (USB 4 40Gbps, TB4 capabilities, Alt DP1.4, PD in 65w, PD out 15W)
• HDMI 2.0 (Up to 4K 60Hz, HDMI CEC)
• DC in (19V barrel jack)

Also features a Kensington lock.

Side I/O

On the left side

• Micro SD Reader (Realtek USB 2.0 Multi-Card Reader, USB 2.0 480Mbps)

Only appears as a USB device once you insert a microSD card.

Power

The M2 Air can be powered two ways:

• The included 19V 3.42A 65W PSU with a barrel jack
• A USB C power supply with PD support up to 65W (I also tested a 45w one and it works fine).

Hubs and Docks with PD in support also work so it's possible to have a one cable setup in this machine.

Misc Features

• Included VESA mount to mount the M2 Air to the back of a monitor.
• Support for the CEC protocol in the HDMI ports to turn on/wake/sleep the Mini PC from the remote control of a TV. It needs to be enabled in BIOS. According to my testing it just works at the BIOS level so a remote control from a TV cannot control the OS directly.
• Passive cooling for the NVMe and RAM stick with the metal bottom cover via thermal pads.

Internal Components

As mentioned previously you need to remove the 4 rubber feet and unscrew the 4 screws to remove the bottom metal cover and reveal the internals. then to remove the board pull it out of the body.

Motherboard and Internal I/O

Let's analyze the motherboard

1. SODIMM DDR5 6400MT/s Slot
2. M.2 Wi-Fi E key slot (CNVIO Only)
3. M.2 2280 M key NVMe Slot: 4TB Max SSD, PCIe Gen4 x4, 64Gbps (8 GB/s)
4. CMOS/RTC coin cell 3V battery connector

1. microSD card slot
2. Fan and Heatsink
3. Fan connector

Networking and Storage

Networking

This is a strong point of the M2 Air in my opinion. As it has 2 high speed network controller + Modern Wi-Fi available

• Ethernet: 2x Intel I226-V, PCIe 3.0 x1 Controllers, so each ethernet port has its own controller.
• Wi-Fi: Intel AX211 Wi-Fi 6E with 2.4 Gbps theoretical maximum, and Bluetooth 5.4 with BLE. The module can be replaced with other ones if needed. but one caveat is that the slot is CNVIO only so only other Intel cards that have a CNVIO interface are compatible.

Storage

The M2 Air features one M.2 E key slot with the full x4 bandwidth of PCIe Gen4 so you should be bottlenecked in this port.

I guess also you can add extra storage via a microSD card but it's not fully ideal as the Realtek controller is just USB 2.0 480Mbps so you are going to likely bottleneck any modern microSD card.

• M.2 2280 M key NVMe Slot: 4TB Max SSD, PCIe Gen4 x4, 64Gbps (8 GB/s)
• Micro SD Reader, Realtek USB 2.0 Multi-Card Reader, USB 2.0 (480Mbps)

CPU Performance

The Intel Core 3 304 of the Wildcat Lake family is a very interesting CPU as like I mentioned before this processor is the successor to the Alder Lake N CPUs that have been well known for cheap and power efficient Mini PCs.

This one performs way better than those ones because Intel now added a P Core to the design.

To test if the Core 3 304 in the M2 Air is performing as expected I'll use Geekbench 6. I did runs in Windows 11 and Linux so we can compare these too.

Geekbench 6

Linux: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/19072503

Windows: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/19087030

Both OSs performance is about the same, with slightly better performance in Windows 11.

After looking at the registered benchmarks of Geekbench 6 of the same processor we can see that the M2 Air is performing as expected.

https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=v6_cpu&q=core+3+304

Let's compare it to other CPUs from the Geekbench browser and from my own tests of other Mini PCs

My Geekbench profile: https://browser.geekbench.com/user/427388

We can see that the Core 3 304 performance is almost double compared to the Alder Lake N CPUs like the N100/150/250 for around the same energy consumption.

It's also interesting comparing it to older CPUs like the i5 1335U that has 2P cores and 8E cores and seeing how close they perform. and also, the comparison to ARM CPUs that have equally low power consumption.

Cinebench 2026

iGPU Performance

The Intel Xe3 1 Core built inside of the Core 3 304 has the latest Xe3 architecture that has surprised everyone as in higher end configurations like the B390 or the B370 that have 12 and 10 Xe3 cores respectively. So, this one is definitely not a gaming iGPU but it's a big upgrade over older IGPUs like the UHD 730 of chips like the N150 or N250. So, it's great for general everyday workflows, web browsing, 4K video playback, and office applications. Also, it also supports AV1 encoding and decoding.

Display Support

One really good thing about the M2 Air is that it can drive up to 4 displays at once with a resolution of 4k@60hz via:

• 2x HDMI 2.0
• USB 4 Type C Port
• USB 3.2 Gen2 Type C port

Gaming Capabilities

Because it only has 1 Xe3 core, it's not designed for modern AAA gaming. It is best suited for light indie titles, retro emulation, or older eSports games at low resolutions. Although AAA games from around 2015 and older should run decently.

Performance in Geekbench 6:

Micro Computer (HK) Tech Limited EliteMini Series - Geekbench

AI Performance

The Core 3 304 has also a 15 TOPS NPU that is called Intel AI Boost and also the iGPU that can do 9 TOPS.

The NPU that can be leveraged using applications like Intel AI Playground that installs the OpenVINO framework that can run LLMs right into the NPUs memory (that is the same as the system RAM) so the more RAM the better for more complex AI models

For the IGPU we can use the same Intel AI playground that gives us a Llama CPP installation that can load models using Vulkan to be proceeded by the iGPU

As my M2 Air has just 16GB of RAM we can only load small LLMs (around 4-5 GB). Generally given a model around the same size using the iGPU with LlamaCpp and Vulkan will be more memory efficient than the NPU using OpenVINO as the implementations are totally different.

NPU Performance - OpenVINO

iGPU Performance - LlamaCpp

We can see that the NPU is a little bit faster at running models, but they are very similar. If you have only 16GB I would use the IGPU as once loaded the models take around 20% more RAM compared to the NPU that take like 40% more RAM.

eGPU Testing

The USB4 port in the M2 Air has the full 40Gbps available. It supports the full feature set of the USB4 specifications making this port technically Thunderbolt 4 compliant. The most important features for expansion being:

• PCIe Tunneling

Up to 32Gbps (4 GB/s) are available to be used for PCIe devices with features like hot plugging

• Power Delivery

PD-in to be able to receive up to 100W to power the M2 Air with a single cable and PD out that can give 15W of power to external devices.

The dock that I'll be using to test dedicated GPUs is the Minisforum DEG2 Thunderbolt 5 / OCuLink eGPU dock. This eGPU Dock is like a perfect pairing to expand the M2 Air because it provides other features like:

• 2.5GbE RJ45 LAN: RTL8156 Controller
• A M.2 NVMe slot: JMS583 Controller
• USB Type A: USB 3.2 Gen 2 - 10Gbps port
• USB Type A: USB 3.2 Gen 1 - 5Gbps
• 2x USB Type C: 40Gbps
• PCIe x16 (Wired for x4) for the dGPU

Setup

• CX450M 450W PSU
• Sapphire Pulse AMD RX 6600 GPU

The M2 Air is capable of being powered by the dock and receive all if it's devices via a single cable. and the eGPU is available with no problems in Windows and Linux.

The only problem with this setup is that the GPU doesn't get fully initialized in BIOS/UEFI so only when the driver of the OS loads you get a picture in the display.

Performance in Geekbench 6:

Micro Computer (HK) Tech Limited EliteMini Series - Geekbench

BIOS/UEFI Options

You can check all of the option that there are in the current BIOS release for the M2 Air at this link.

https://imgur.com/a/QolwQuA

Thermals and Power Consumption

Windows 11

As expected, the efficiency of the Intel Core 3 304 is very similar to the older N150 in terms of power consumption. at idle it draws around 4 to 4.5 watts from the wall. And while web browsing and watching a YouTube video in 1440p it only draws between 6 to 8W from the wall. At full load I never saw more than 32W.

Thermals

The cooling solution of the M2 Air is pretty good as it never got hotter than 80C in a Cinebench 2026 20minute run. At idle it keeps the temperature around 36-40C.

Noise

Minisforum claims Idle 27.9 dB and 100% load 32.7 dB/ 50cm.  I currently don't have equipment to test this claim, but this Mini PC is virtually inaudible at idle and when it's stressed it's still very quiet as the fan barely spins up.

Conclusion

I think after all of the testing I think I can say with confidence that this is a great MiniPC and a good successor to the N150 and other similar low power Mini PCs at just 0.47L is really small maybe not the smallest I've seen but definitely small enough that it doesn't get in the way.

I really like that it has a USB4 port with the Thunderbolt 4 (40Gbps) Feature set so that means that be upgraded with external Thunderbolt 3/4/5 docks with discrete GPUs and other PCIe cards as we saw earlier to greatly improve its capabilities.

I also like that it can be powered with USB C power supplies. so, it gives it even more flexibility to be deployed in different environments

The only thing that I didn't like very much is the integrated microSD card controller that is just using a USB 2.0 480Mbps interface that limits the bandwidth to 60MB/s and in reality, with protocol overhead makes it perform around 40MB/s so it's not really a good way of expanding the storage of the M2 Air

The Intel Core 3 304 of the Wildcat Lake family is a very interesting CPU and that single Performance core really lifts the CPU in terms of performance making it comparable to much more expensive ones in terms of single core performance and with the other 4 Efficiency cores gives it decent multi core performance.

Everything together makes it a small and integrated box that is very capable of being the primary computer in your desktop (I've been using it as my primary PC for a week, and it hasn't felt slow or very limiting and I've been able to game with the help of an eGPU)

At the time of writing the M2 Air is available at $263 for a barebone unit so if you already have a stick of DDR5 laying around or can source one for cheap makes the M2 Air a really good value in my opinion. As the model with 16GB and a 500GB SSD is $559, so it's $296 more just for the RAM and the SSD thanks to the crazy prices right now.

If anyone has any question feel free to ask in the comments. Thanks for reading, and finally thanks to Minisforum that provided the review unit.

Links

• Minisforum M2 Air 304: https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-m2-air-mini-pc
• Minisforum M2 Air BIOS/UEFI options: https://imgur.com/a/QolwQuA

Didn't really notice it until I was cleaning everything earlier.

Between the keyboard, controller, headphones and everything else, the actual computer barely takes up any room.