Mini PCs (North America)

[mechtech]

I’m looking for a mini pc for the garage to browse pdf manuals and YouTube repair vids.

Basically know what I need/want (something like a nuc). Just looking for a brand/manufacturer that’s available in North America with decent support (warranty) if the issue arises.

I was looking at minisforum ones but must be a lot of others??

 

[Bill_Bright]

I can't offer specifics but just a reminder - though not sure it applies to you way up North. Garages typically are not environmentally controlled. So for those of us closer to the Equator considering a garage based computer, ambient (room/garage) heat may be an issue - especially for tiny computer cases which tend to be challenged from the start to keep their innards properly cooled.

In your case, while extreme cold itself is typically not a problem (unless using hard drives), humidity and possible condensation issues may be an issue - at least something to keep in mind.

I wonder if a tablet would be a better choice for you?

 

[mechtech]

I can't offer specifics but just a reminder - though not sure it applies to you way up North. Garages typically are not environmentally controlled. So for those of us closer to the Equator considering a garage based computer, ambient (room/garage) heat may be an issue - especially for tiny computer cases which tend to be challenged from the start to keep their innards properly cooled.

In your case, while extreme cold itself is typically not a problem (unless using hard drives), humidity and possible condensation issues may be an issue - at least something to keep in mind.

I wonder if a tablet would be a better choice for you?

Garage is insulated and heated. No colder than +10c and usually doesn’t get warmer than 20c unless the car door is left open. Currently has a desktop pc working fine for 10 years now issue is it’s big and takes up space on my workbench.

 

[evernessince]

Honestly you might be fine just buying one of those Dell or Lenevo mini PCs that can be had dirt cheap if all you need it for is YouTube videos or browsing PDFs. They won't be as efficient at idle as mini-pcs that use a mobile chip but you can just set it to sleep or turn off when you aren't using it so no big deal.

Personally I've had a very bad experience with minisforum. I bought 2 PCs from them and both ended up dying within a month and then the replacements (from amazon) died as well. I spent so much time trying to fix them and diagnose the issue (and all of them encountered the exact same issue where they wouldn't power on or they would power on then off). I ended up replacing those with AOOStar Gem10s and haven't had an issue since.

If you follow the complaints on reddit, Chinese Mini-PCs in general tend to have a higher RMA rate on average and honestly I wouldn't have bothered if they weren't the only option for people who want a super efficient always on PC that's also performant and expandable. If you don't need that I wouldn't recommend any of the Chinese brands because it's not worth the potential hassle.

Support on Minisforum was worthless. I had to wait 2 weeks for each of their replies. There are plenty of horror stories about minisforum RMA hell as well. There's a reason their products are all marked as high return rate on Amazon, it's because people buy a new one and return the broken one because they cannot get minisforum to honor their warranty.

 

[Mindweaver]

I’m looking for a mini pc for the garage to browse pdf manuals and YouTube repair vids.

Basically know what I need/want (something like a nuc). Just looking for a brand/manufacturer that’s available in North America with decent support (warranty) if the issue arises.

I was looking at minisforum ones but must be a lot of others??

I would just get a refurbished (Dell, Lenovo, HP) MFF pc.

 

[Frick]

Honestly you might be fine just buying one of those Dell or Lenevo mini PCs that can be had dirt cheap if all you need it for is YouTube videos or browsing PDFs.

This. My parents still has the HP Elite 8200 USFF (8GB RAM and an SSD) I got from the garbage bin at a previous job (with the boss's approval) and it's more than enough for stuff like that.

 

[cvaldes]

I have a couple of Beelink mini PCs in the house.

The Intel N100 unit is my daily Wintel driver for mundane productivity tasks (email, office, web browsing, light photo editing, etc.). There are more powerful PCs in the house, but this Beelink N100 (16GB RAM, 1TB m.2 SSD) idles around 1-1.2W.

There's also a Beelink with an Intel N95 (8GB RAM, 512GB m.2 SSD) in the bedroom that functions as a home theater PC. Both units are pretty quiet and they are quite capable at decent video playback since they have Intel CPUs. I think the price was between US$150-180 when I bought them a couple of years ago.

Beelink makes more powerful models but I chose these basic ones for price-performance and opted for Intel CPUs based on the intended video playback usage case.

They aren't speedsters and won't break any benchmark records but they fit my needs for energy efficient Windows computing at home.

 

[overclockedamd]

For that use case scenario I would just get a Dell Micro Desktop. You can find them secondhand by the literal truckload from businesses phasing them out (i know I have imaged and replaced thousands). No need to spend Minisforums kind of money when a second hand pc will do the job a fraction of the cost and if it breaks...just throw it away and replace it. Just my two cents.

 

[mechtech]

Thanks for feedback
Looks like this should fit the bill

 

[cvaldes]

I'm glad you found something that will work for you.

Personally, that seems to be a bit pricy for the intended usage case. We don't know how many hours a week you spend in your garage but if it's only a few hours, it seems like a waste to have an idle PC just sitting there doing nothing for most of the time.

I would grab my iPad mini and just walk over to the garage, get my stuff done, then pick up the tablet and go do other things. (I have multiple uses for my iPad, it's not a pureplay, single usage case device.) Sure it costs more than my Beelink mini PCs or your refurb Dell, but then again it gets plenty more use. It's not like I can read books on my Beelink out by the pool or watch movies on airplanes.

And for sure my Beelinks have much lower power consumption than this HP. Will this HP play YouTube videos or display PDFs any better than my Beelink or iPad? Doubtful. If you live with family members, perhaps they have usage cases where a tablet might come in handy but we don't know your living situation.

But if you're happy with your purchase, that's all that really matters.

Best of luck.

 

[silentbogo]

Just for what you've described - anything will work. There are a bunch of Dell and Lenovo mini-PCs which you can buy for less than $100 (or even under $50 for older models).
Something like Dell Optiplex Micro or Lenovo Thinkstation Tiny. These are my to-go options for my friends industrial use cases, like running a production line, or random CNC machines, or being used as a general PC in a dirty workshop. The only "downside", if you can call it that, is some older tiny/mini/micros don't have TPM2.0 and won't run stock win11, which TBH is not critical at all.
On the plus side - fully upgradeable design, lots of replacement parts, desktop socket, and relatively decent expandability.
I'd look at Dell 3070 micro. It's 8th/9th gen intel socket, but more than enough for your needs. Wanna go even cheaper - Lenovo M700 tiny(6th/7th gen). Got me a motherboard from one awhile ago for ~$10, still working on a 3d-printed chassis for it (wanted to build a home NAS). Both have NVMe slot and 2.5" caddy.
Another good option is AsRock DeskMini x300. They are already quite old (read - cheap), have a desktop AM4 socket with 2 SODIMM slots, and can be updated to support 5000-series APUs, which is a total blast.

While Minisforum stuff looks cool and relatively cheap, I'm always discouraged by soldered CPUs and lack of parts. Just because PC is tiny doesn't mean it shouldn't be repairable or upgradeable.

The Intel N100 unit is my daily Wintel driver for mundane productivity tasks (email, office, web browsing, light photo editing, etc.). There are more powerful PCs in the house, but this Beelink N100 (16GB RAM, 1TB m.2 SSD) idles around 1-1.2W.

Those aren't bad, but still feel sluggish for every day productivity. I had a small N100 industrial box(don't remember the name, but it was a "brain" of a giant video banner/LED display matrix or something). Cost me around $90, while similar chinese no-name boxes were about twice as expensive(and had wa-a-a-y less I/O). I think I used it in my office for about 1-2 weeks and went back to my x79 rig. Now it's happily running Ubuntu Server somewhere in the datacenter. Occasionally I needed to do things like open a schematic/boardview or draw a small simple part in Fusion360 - and it was already choking. So, not bad for a glorified typewriter or chromebox alternative, but still no more than that. BTW, mine had a BIOS with adjustable TDP.

 

[Pets4Ever]

Just for what you've described - anything will work. There are a bunch of Dell and Lenovo mini-PCs which you can buy for less than $100 (or even under $50 for older models).
Something like Dell Optiplex Micro or Lenovo Thinkstation Tiny. These are my to-go options for my friends industrial use cases, like running a production line, or random CNC machines, or being used as a general PC in a dirty workshop. The only "downside", if you can call it that, is some older tiny/mini/micros don't have TPM2.0 and won't run stock win11, which TBH is not critical at all.
On the plus side - fully upgradeable design, lots of replacement parts, desktop socket, and relatively decent expandability.
I'd look at Dell 3070 micro. It's 8th/9th gen intel socket, but more than enough for your needs. Wanna go even cheaper - Lenovo M700 tiny(6th/7th gen). Got me a motherboard from one awhile ago for ~$10, still working on a 3d-printed chassis for it (wanted to build a home NAS). Both have NVMe slot and 2.5" caddy.
Another good option is AsRock DeskMini x300. They are already quite old (read - cheap), have a desktop AM4 socket with 2 SODIMM slots, and can be updated to support 5000-series APUs, which is a total blast.

While Minisforum stuff looks cool and relatively cheap, I'm always discouraged by soldered CPUs and lack of parts. Just because PC is tiny doesn't mean it shouldn't be repairable or upgradeable.


Those aren't bad, but still feel sluggish for every day productivity. I had a small N100 industrial box(don't remember the name, but it was a "brain" of a giant video banner/LED display matrix or something). Cost me around $90, while similar chinese no-name boxes were about twice as expensive(and had wa-a-a-y less I/O). I think I used it in my office for about 1-2 weeks and went back to my x79 rig. Now it's happily running Ubuntu Server somewhere in the datacenter. Occasionally I needed to do things like open a schematic/boardview or draw a small simple part in Fusion360 - and it was already choking. So, not bad for a glorified typewriter or chromebox alternative, but still no more than that. BTW, mine had a BIOS with adjustable TDP.

TBF CAD seems like a lot to ask from a 4 core cpu with no multithreading, 6mb cache, and a max turbo boost of 3.4 GHz

 

[silentbogo]

TBF CAD seems like a lot to ask from a 4 core cpu with no multithreading, 6mb cache, and a max turbo boost of 3.4 GHz

Very light CAD, like make a tiny block with a dent and two holes, or create a bog-standard box of custom size and thickness. Same things were perfectly doable on a very-very old Xeon E5-2650, or on my other miniPC with i5-6500T, which at least in synthetic benchmarks are not that far from one another.

Intel N100 vs i5-6500T vs Xeon E5-2650 [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software

 

[bonehead123]

Thanks for feedback
Looks like this should fit the bill
View attachment 404410

Wow, that's really major overkill for the uses you described, both in specs & also price.....but it would definitely work that's for sure...

I'm giving another vote for Beelink, as the one in my system specs is an 11th gen/i5 model which is about 3 years old and STILL chuggin along just fine like it has since day 1....my main uses are browsing, email, creating some PDF's, some spreadsheets, database, light CAD viewing/markup, and watching some U-toober clips here & there

I can't speak to their service or support, SINCE I'VE NEVER NEEDED IT, hahahaha

Also, my wife has a lower spec'd HP EliteDesk that is similar to the above, for similar tasks, but just a tad smaller.

And of note is that we didn't pay anywhere near that price for either of these machines, so there's that !

 

[Pets4Ever]

Very light CAD, like make a tiny block with a dent and two holes, or create a bog-standard box of custom size and thickness. Same things were perfectly doable on a very-very old Xeon E5-2650, or on my other miniPC with i5-6500T, which at least in synthetic benchmarks are not that far from one another.

Intel N100 vs i5-6500T vs Xeon E5-2650 [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software

I wonder what your N100 industrial box had for storage and ram. The N100 does look pretty similar to that old i5 on paper.

 

[mechtech]

I'm glad you found something that will work for you.

Personally, that seems to be a bit pricy for the intended usage case. We don't know how many hours a week you spend in your garage but if it's only a few hours, it seems like a waste to have an idle PC just sitting there doing nothing for most of the time.

I would grab my iPad mini and just walk over to the garage, get my stuff done, then pick up the tablet and go do other things. (I have multiple uses for my iPad, it's not a pureplay, single usage case device.) Sure it costs more than my Beelink mini PCs or your refurb Dell, but then again it gets plenty more use. It's not like I can read books on my Beelink out by the pool or watch movies on airplanes.

And for sure my Beelinks have much lower power consumption than this HP. Will this HP play YouTube videos or display PDFs any better than my Beelink or iPad? Doubtful. If you live with family members, perhaps they have usage cases where a tablet might come in handy but we don't know your living situation.

But if you're happy with your purchase, that's all that really matters.

Best of luck.

Thanks. It’s cad $ ya enough but if it lasts 10 years like the other one then whatever. An iPad mini here is probably $700 wo tax

I have excel on the pc I use it for maintenance logs. Power not a big deal I only turn it on when I need it and shut it down. Lucky if it sees 4 hours runtime a month.

The beelink is interesting though. I will have to look into it more. Might find a use for something like that too.

Edit. Hmmm. Could return that HP and get this instead

 

[cvaldes]

I have excel on the pc I use it for maintenance logs. Power not a big deal I only turn it on when I need it and shut it down. Lucky if it sees 4 hours runtime a month.

A dedicated garage PC for 4 hours of usage per month? This is exactly what I would try to avoid. That is a massive waste of money.

At least with the Beelink, it would be easy to unplug it and carry it back inside (they're compact and lightweight). Assuming your garage already has the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, you'd just need a standard 12V AC adaptor for the Beelink (if you don't want to schlepp that along). That way you could still use it elsewhere in the house the other 726 hours of the month rather than just accumulate dust.

As for tablets, I'm not saying you have to use an iPad, you are free to use some cheap Android tablet as well. I assume Excel will run on those just fine, as Excel runs fine on iPads; you never mentioned that in your original post. Apple also has their own free spreadsheet application called Numbers with has decent Excel compatibility for mundane spreadsheet functions. And there are cloud spreadsheets (Google comes to mind). There's also Zoho -- a longtime software company -- that also has office productivity tools.

Like I said, I have plenty of other uses for my iPad elsewhere. But it's great for things like document reading, watching videos. And yes, you can even connect mice and keyboards these days to them.

Tablets are sometimes the better solution depending on the situation. Occasionally I find myself needing to refer to a recipe or a video while cooking or baking in the kitchen. In this case, my iPad is way better than my notebook PC because I can easily wipe off the iPad display. No worrying about wet hands, flour, oil, etc. whereas I'd worry more about that with a notebook PC's keyboard. Not sure what you are doing in your garage but if it gets your hands dirty and cleanup is not convenient, a tablet might be a better device. I assume you aren't writing 10 paragraph work e-mails or multi-page customer contracts out there.

And weirdly you selected a particular Beelink model that's more expensive than the aforementioned Dell model. No real savings there.

To buy a dedicated PC for 4 hours of month isn't how I would allocate my tech budget. Here in 2025, almost anything will let you read PDFs, watch videos, and edit spreadsheets, it's not like you need a specialized device for those tasks. Heck, my ten-year old iPod touch 6th generation can do all of that. And so can a $100 Raspberry Pi 4 running Raspbian (Linux).

You are better off pondering if the device you plan to purchase has other uses the other 726 hours of the month rather than fixating on the archaic paradigm of a dedicated desktop PC for this situation.

 

[silentbogo]

I wonder what your N100 industrial box had for storage and ram. The N100 does look pretty similar to that old i5 on paper.

16GB DDR4 and an old 250GB NVMe. The keyword is "on paper". Temperatures weren't an issue either.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Thanks for feedback
Looks like this should fit the bill
View attachment 404410

Take that, add in an RTX 3060, 4060 or 5060 and you will have a very solid system that will last you a few years for under $600.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

A dedicated garage PC for 4 hours of usage per month? This is exactly what I would try to avoid. That is a massive waste of money.

At least with the Beelink, it would be easy to unplug it and carry it back inside (they're compact and lightweight). Assuming your garage already has the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, you'd just need a standard 12V AC adaptor for the Beelink (if you don't want to schlepp that along). That way you could still use it elsewhere in the house the other 726 hours of the month rather than just accumulate dust.

As for tablets, I'm not saying you have to use an iPad, you are free to use some cheap Android tablet as well. I assume Excel will run on those just fine, as Excel runs fine on iPads; you never mentioned that in your original post. Apple also has their own free spreadsheet application called Numbers with has decent Excel compatibility for mundane spreadsheet functions. And there are cloud spreadsheets (Google comes to mind). There's also Zoho -- a longtime software company -- that also has office productivity tools.

Like I said, I have plenty of other uses for my iPad elsewhere. But it's great for things like document reading, watching videos. And yes, you can even connect mice and keyboards these days to them.

Tablets are sometimes the better solution depending on the situation. Occasionally I find myself needing to refer to a recipe or a video while cooking or baking in the kitchen. In this case, my iPad is way better than my notebook PC because I can easily wipe off the iPad display. No worrying about wet hands, flour, oil, etc. whereas I'd worry more about that with a notebook PC's keyboard. Not sure what you are doing in your garage but if it gets your hands dirty and cleanup is not convenient, a tablet might be a better device. I assume you aren't writing 10 paragraph work e-mails or multi-page customer contracts out there.

And weirdly you selected a particular Beelink model that's more expensive than the aforementioned Dell model. No real savings there.

To buy a dedicated PC for 4 hours of month isn't how I would allocate my tech budget. Here in 2025, almost anything will let you read PDFs, watch videos, and edit spreadsheets, it's not like you need a specialized device for those tasks. Heck, my ten-year old iPod touch 6th generation can do all of that. And so can a $100 Raspberry Pi 4 running Raspbian (Linux).

You are better off pondering if the device you plan to purchase has other uses the other 726 hours of the month rather than fixating on the archaic paradigm of a dedicated desktop PC for this situation.

What you see as a waste of money another may see as a huge improvement in QoL. Used desktops are cheep cheepy cheap.

Pardon Our Interruption...

$59. No power supply or HDD, but you could just plug a live USB in and use that to view PDFs on google drive. Power supplies are $7-15. For one with an internal SSD and power supply you're looking at ~$120 or so.

For $120, I'm not going to obsess over the number of hours per month my "investment" is being used. That would be a huge waste of my time. Anything in the house that needs a desktop.....already has one. Why would I want to move one around like a laptop? To save $100 every 10 years?

 

[mechtech]

Take that, add in an RTX 3060, 4060 or 5060 and you will have a very solid system that will last you a few years for under $600.

Lol any of those cards here are $450 to $500 without tax. Don’t game in the garage wife hasn’t kicked me out yet lol

 

[lexluthermiester]

Lol any of those cards here are $450 to $500 without tax.

No they're not.
A 3050 is $150 used shipped;

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Or $250 new;

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A 4060 is $350;

NVIDIA Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4060 OC Low Profile 8GB Graphics Card GPU PLS READ | eBay

For sale is a used Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4060 low profile GPU. I used the card regularly (albeit with low power consumption) over the course of 16 months. Condition is as shown in the images and described below.

www.ebay.com

And a 5060LP is $380;

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I just recently looked up prices because I already have a LP SFF system I want to upgrade the GPU for.
While Canadian prices are always a bit different, they're not THAT different.

 

[mechtech]

No they're not.
A 3050 is $150 used shipped;

ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 3050 6GB LP Graphics card GF RTX 3050 6 ZT-A30510L-10L for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 3050 6GB LP Graphics card GF RTX 3050 6 ZT-A30510L-10L at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

Or $250 new;

MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Graphic Card - 6 GB GDDR6 - Low-profile 824142348697| eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Graphic Card - 6 GB GDDR6 - Low-profile at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

A 4060 is $350;

NVIDIA Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4060 OC Low Profile 8GB Graphics Card GPU PLS READ | eBay

For sale is a used Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4060 low profile GPU. I used the card regularly (albeit with low power consumption) over the course of 16 months. Condition is as shown in the images and described below.

www.ebay.com

And a 5060LP is $380;

Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Graphic Card - 8 GB GDDR7 - Low-profile 889523050699| eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Graphic Card - 8 GB GDDR7 - Low-profile at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

I just recently looked up prices because I already have a LP SFF system I want to upgrade the GPU for.
While Canadian prices are always a bit different, they're not THAT different.

Well exchange rate is 1.37, then kick in shipping then kick in 13% sales taxes
so 350x1.37 = $480 + $20 shipping so $500 + tax ($65) so $565
For $480 though I could get new for that

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The 6GB 3050 isn't too bad though.

Came in, guess I should cpuz it and open it up to confirm physical/actual specs match the paperwork........

 

[lexluthermiester]

Well exchange rate is 1.37, then kick in shipping then kick in 13% sales taxes
so 350x1.37 = $480 + $20 shipping so $500 + tax ($65) so $565

Ah, ok. Fair enough, I'll hush about it.

The 6GB 3050 isn't too bad though.

It really is a solid offering. I have a GTX1050 in my machine currently and the 3050 stomps it into the ground. It's effectively a 2060 that needs less power to get slightly better performance.

Just make sure you get a low profile card for that SFF system. That system requires half height cards.

 

[ShiBDiB]

For your use case I'm also team tablet. And even that can be an older refurbished ipad or something. A pc of any type is the wrong tool for the job.