Minisforum seems to be the best with many options with UpTo 4 MNNe slots. One can add a frame for old SATA disks.
There is enough room inside and I believe one can change the CPU.
Oculink port is there for external GPU.
But it is very expensive but worth the money spent.
DDR 5 UpTo 64 GB RAM.
Storage no problem at all.
Cooling system is pretty good and no thermal throttling at high work load.
It is a power house.
It does not have a touch screen on top which is my current craze. This is box shaped but I prefer a oblong or rectangular (cellphone like) design.
Box shaped design generally makes the components cramped up inside.
Minisforum Atomman X7 has a touch screen design which is an excellent addition to Mini PC Domain.
Uses
Multiple Monitors with 4K display with high frame rates
Gaming
Video Editing
Video Playback
AI compatible
Setup
One can change the setup for Graphic Memory but they are optimally set at boot time and one should not fiddle with them without knowing how graphic cards perform in a given setting.
1. Minisforum
2. Beelink is AMD
3. Acemagician
4. MSI
5. GMK Tech is Intel
6. Intel NUC
7. Morfine
8. Karui Plus
9. Geekom
Intel series are cheaper whereas AMD are expensive but performance efficient.
All these are better than Apple Mac cheaper and ungradable. With Apple one is stuck with their design, generally for two years at a time, whereas the rest of Chip Industry is moving forward extremely fast and dose not follow the old Moor's Law of incremental development.
It is actually exponential.
Chips have come down from 250 nanometers to almost 3 nanometers.
Samsung is on top with TSMC closely following.
Dell, LG and HP are way behind.
Intel NUC in the middle. NUC is bare bone but upgrade with a cost.
Ryzen is the CPU brand name
Radeon is the GPU brand name
Redeon is AMD proprietary Trade Mark.
Iris Xe is Intel at 1000 dollars whereas
Geekom gives a better unit for 850 dollars.
This is the reason Intel NUC bowed downed to ASUS. Less people would be buying Intel NUC.
Graphic cards are expensive to produce and NVIDIA has been ruling the market.
RDNA is probably a Generic term for Graphic Cards
RDNA 5000,6000 and 7000 series.
Choices
? Bare bone and cheap
? Ready to go and expensive
Deciding on a unit is almost impossible.
If you are new to mini PC, I recommend list your requirements before purchasing one.
Then go to the dealer and look for a Mini PC that fits your requirement and the budget.
The plan is not to fiddle with the internal components inside once your operating system is installed.
I use Debian Linux which looks after the components and updates the system regularly. I have no comments on other operating systems that are power hungry and resource hungry.
Adding components as and when one's money supply improves is not the way about. In that scenario waiting for a year or so is a good option, hence most of the old units with good performance invariably down their price when they introduce new designs.
I do not recommend buying second hand one from Ebay (refurbished units), unless it is used as a spare unit. Managing two units is not are good idea. May be the spare unit one can take home over the weekend.
Mini PCs are in development for over a decade now, and they vary from the bare bone units to the top of the range units with many fancy brand names.
I will let you know my own preferences later and I am not a gamer.
If you are are a compulsive game addict go for a top of the range unit and do not try to upgrade (it takes the vorantee away). Besides, go for a 3 year vorantee instead of one year as is the case of usual vorantee.
One year differnce is very big time in Mini PC Domain.
Limitations
Has Integrated Graphic Card which cannot be upgraded. There are units with Thunderbolt and a port for external graphic cards but they are exoensive. Problem with high end graphic cards is they consume lot of electricity and contribute to the thermal throttling.
These units are meant to run on low power consumption.
Basic units do not have fans for cooling and use moderate resolution Iintegrated Graphic Cards which do not consume lot of power.
But high end units will have well designed cooling system and fans but do not expect Water Cooling Systems in a Mini PCs.
RAM is not a problem with many units but single RAM units are undesirable. Two RAM slots is a necessity, simply because when running the system everything runs on RAM with only shared rendering with the Graphic Unit. Spending a lot on RAM is sensible. I use 8GB RAM in my NUC which is DDR4. I have a spare slot if I decide to do some graphic intensive work.
I use Stacer (Linux Utility) to test my work load and my general consumption never exceeds 2GB out of 8GB.
I run many Linux utilities in the background to test my user experience and never use cynebench marks.
CPU with single core is good for basic work but not good if heavy works loads are intended.
Multicore CPU is a necessity by default.
CPU is almost idle in my daily use.
Storage Hardware
With Nvme hard disk coming to market one must check what is the type of storage option and capacity.
I still use old (I have several), SSD SATA disks, and I look for whether the PC can accommodate one.
I do not look for terabyte hard disks.
That's about it.
Only other thing, one has to worry about is how many ports are available for extensibility. Ports for mouse and keyboard cannot be used for other purposes. Stick them to the back and leave the ports in front for additional devices.
More ports there are it is better.
This is especially so for monitors.
Do not forget about audio / video outputs.
I bought a cheap NUC without audio and I have to stick a USB Audio jack for music and video.
Having a stand for mounting is mandatory.
My Craze
The units with Touch Scree is my craze.
It is two units in one.
Cellphone and Computer Unit integrated.
I do not like the box or cube shaped units.
I prefer the rectangular shape units.
They are expensive but more units with new designs will come from China, if not from the West.
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