Thinking about picking up a mini-pc for living room gaming for the family, to replace the old desktop computer that’s been filling the role but has developed terminal hardware issues as of late.
Main usage is emulators, up through PS1 at least, but would also love to leverage a hefty but long-neglected steam library too, so probably going with a Bazzite setup on this one. Had Batocera on the other one, but it was pretty annoying to get anything outside of retroarch to run, and a few times updates caused major issues I had to ssh in to fix.
Have been interested in the GMKTEC systems, but their stock is decimated and what they have left has jumped in price a lot, so I’m considering going with some wild no-name brand to get a higher tier cpu for a similar price. AMD only, of course. Trying to stay under 200 with ram and sdd included - looks like 3500u is pretty common in that range, but with a no-name I’m finding even 5700hs in that range too.
Anyone else have experience going this route? Not too worried about the shopping aspect, just the experience of running a device like this.
I bought this BOSGAME mini-pc back in January because I was tired of running all my server stuff on my desktop and having to leave my desktop running 24/7. This thing is freaking amazing and for most cases could entirely replace my desktop except that I have a big ol beefy nvidia card in it. I realize its more than what you’re budgeting for but I gotta say it has been an incredibly solid little server handling all my plex/downloading/pi-hole and everything else I throw at it with no issue. I sometimes forget it’s even in the little stand sitting behind me because it’s just quietly sitting there doing everything in the background for me.
Yeah that’s one of the generic brands I’m looking at. They’ve got skus all over the price range. Glad to hear a good experience with them!