Mini-PC

One of the perks of modern mobile CPUs is that, being designed for laptops and their very limited cooling capacity, they can be placed in a NUC-sized (or smaller) miniature desktop PC with little difficulty. Better still, with desktops providing room for proper heatsinks (i.e. fins), even passively cooled mini-PCs using laptop-grade silicon are more than viable. The only real drawback to these mini-PCs has largely been the niche nature of the market – leading to high prices and limited choices for higher-performing systems – which is why Topgro has been turning heads as of late with the release of their aggressively priced Intel 12th Gen Core-based K3 Mini PC. Topgro is not a household name, but it sells a collection of compact desktop PCs...

Zotac’s Zbox Edge MI351 Packs Alder Lake-N and Offers Upgradeability

Introduced back at CES 2023, Intel’s Alder Lake-N platform is the company's newest and latest budget platform for entry-level PCs. With the hardware now shipping, Zotac is among the...

16 by Anton Shilov on 4/14/2023

MinisForum Launches NAB6 mini-PC With Dual 2.5G Ethernet Ports

MinisForum is a well-known manufacturer from Shenzhen, China, specializing in compact systems. The company recently added the NAB6 to its diverse portfolio of mini-PCs powered by Intel processors. The...

5 by Zhiye Liu on 3/27/2023

Intel NUC 13 Pro Arena Canyon Review: Raptor Lake Brings Incremental Gains

Ultra-compact form-factor PCs have emerged as bright spots in the PC market over the last decade after Intel introduced the NUC. The company celebrated the 10-year anniversary of its...

47 by Ganesh T S on 3/27/2023

ASRock Industrial NUCS BOX-1360P/D4 Review: Raptor Lake-P Impresses, plus Surprise ECC

Low-power processors have traditionally been geared towards notebooks and other portable platforms. However, the continued popularity of ultra-compact form-factor desktop systems has resulted in UCFF PCs also serving as...

31 by Ganesh T S on 1/29/2023

Intel NUC 12 Pro Wall Street Canyon Kits Review: Alder Lake in UCFF Avatar

Intel introduced the ultra-compact form-factor in 2012 to reinvigorate the PC market. The incredible success of the product line has now resulted in the brand name propagating to other...

26 by Ganesh T S on 1/26/2023

ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-1260P and 4X4 BOX-5800U Review: Alder Lake-P and Cezanne UCFF Faceoff

The past few years have seen Intel and AMD delivering new processors in a staggered manner. In the sub-45W category, Intel's incumbency has allowed it to deliver products for...

34 by Ganesh T S on 8/5/2022

Intel Atlas Canyon (NUC11ATKPE) and GEEKOM MiniAir 11 UCFF PCs Review: Desktop Jasper Lake Impresses

Intel's low-power Tremont microarchitecture has powered a range of products - from the short-lived Lakefield, to Elkhart Lake in the embedded space, and finally, Jasper Lake in the client...

23 by Ganesh T S on 7/14/2022

Jasper Lake Fanless Showdown: ECS LIVA Z3 and ZOTAC ZBOX CI331 nano UCFF PCs Review

Intel's Jasper Lake series of products based on the Tremont microarchitecture was launched in early 2021. Since then, we have seen a steady stream of notebooks and motherboards /...

52 by Ganesh T S on 7/8/2022

Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra Melds Desktop Alder Lake and NVIDIA Professional Graphics

Over the last decade or so, advancements in CPU and GPU architectures have combined extremely well with the relentless march of Moore's Law on the silicon front. Together, these...

11 by Ganesh T S on 6/21/2022

CES 2022: ZOTAC Unveils ZBOX MAGNUS EN173080C mini-PC with Tiger Lake and Ampere

ZOTAC, one of the major players in the SFF PC market, has two different mini-PC families equipped with discrete GPUs. The larger (~5L) one is equipped with desktop-class GPUs...

5 by Ganesh T S on 1/5/2022

ASUS PN50 mini-PC Review: A Zen 2 Business NUC

Ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) machines have been one of the major drivers in the resurgence of the PC market. The trend was kickstarted by Intel's NUCs in the early 2010s...

32 by Ganesh T S on 10/1/2021

Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS ONE SFF Gaming PC Review: Desktop Comet Lake Charges Up with Ampere

Zotac has been a pioneer in bringing compact small form-factor (SFF) machines to the market right since the ION days. A few years back, they also got into the...

19 by Ganesh T S on 8/13/2021

MinisForum Unveils Cezanne EliteMini HX90 and Tiger Lake EliteMini TL50 mini-PCs

MinisForum, a Shenzhen based manufacturer of compact computing platforms, has been steadily bringing both AMD and Intel-based systems into the market. While the mix has mostly involved platforms that...

42 by Ganesh T S on 8/4/2021

Computex 2021: ASRock Announces Mars 5000U Series Mini PC

During Computex 2021, ASRock unveiled the latest series in its Mars mini-PC range, the Mars 5000U. ASRock claims it's the thinnest AMD mini PC globally and comes equipped with...

21 by Gavin Bonshor on 6/4/2021

Intel's Tiger Lake NUC11: Panther Canyon for Asia Alone

The electronics industry supply chain is facing a number of issues due to the ongoing pandemic. Companies are unable to meet product demand, and are being forced to fine-tune...

27 by Ganesh T S on 2/4/2021

Intel Announces Phantom Canyon: Tiger Lake and Turing Tango in 3rd Gen Enthusiast NUC

As part of its CES 2021 announcements, Intel officially unveiled a number of NUCs based on their Tiger Lake SoCs. The NUC11 Performance lineup was covered earlier. This piece...

33 by Ganesh T S on 1/20/2021

CES 2021: Zotac MAGNUS ONE Gaming mini-PC Flagship Charges Up Comet Lake with Ampere

Zotac's mini-PC lineup received a new flagship as part of its CES 2021 announcements - the MAGNUS ONE. It features a Comet Lake CPU (Core i7-10700) along with NVIDIA's...

13 by Ganesh T S on 1/14/2021

Zotac ZBOX CI662 nano Fanless mini-PC Review: Second Stab at Silencing Succeeds

Zotac is one of the major players in the SFF PC space, having marketed ultra-compact form-factor machines even before the NUCs took off. The growth in that segment has...

16 by Ganesh T S on 1/5/2021

ASRock Brings Zen 2 NUC : 4X4 BOX-4800U Renoir Mini-PC Reviewed

AMD-based ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) systems are slowly gaining market acceptance, with the Zen architecture slowly catching up with Intel on both the performance as well as power consumption front...

53 by Ganesh T S on 11/25/2020

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