How to choose a mini PC

A mini PC is a full desktop the size of a book. The right one depends on three things: what you run, how much graphics you need and which ports you cannot live without. Below is a short checklist, then how our mPCt score works.

Current picks from the table

• Highest mPCt: ASUS ROG NUC 2025 — 6329 · $3199
• Most mPCt per dollar: GMKtec NucBox K12 — 1435 · $359
• Best under $300: ACEMAGIC AM06 Pro — 597 · $289
• Strongest graphics: ASUS ROG NUC 2025 — 5277 · $3199
• Strongest processor: Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) — 1196 · $3999

Start from the task

Office, browser, media, home server — Intel N150/N97/N355. Quiet, 6–15 W at idle, $150–250. Enough for Docker, Home Assistant, Plex direct play and 4K video.

Work and light creative — Ryzen 7 8745HS/8845HS/8945HS or Intel Core Ultra 5/7 (125H–255H). Fast in every everyday task, light photo and video editing, $400–700.

Heavy work and 1080p gaming — Ryzen AI 9 HX 370/HX 470 or Core Ultra 9 285H. The Radeon 890M handles many games at 1080p low–medium.

Local AI and big models — Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (Strix Halo) with 64–128 GB unified memory, or NVIDIA GB10 (DGX Spark family). These run 70B-class models locally; ordinary mini PCs do not.

Graphics

Integrated graphics decide gaming: UHD (N-series) is for video only, Iris Xe and Radeon 680M/780M play older and esports titles, Radeon 890M and Arc 140T are a step up, Radeon 8060S (Strix Halo) is close to a laptop RTX 4060.

Want more later? Look for the Oculink tag: an external desktop GPU over OCuLink loses far less performance than over USB4/Thunderbolt.

Memory and storage

Fixed RAM (soldered LPDDR5X) is faster but cannot be upgraded — buy enough from day one: 16 GB for office, 32 GB for work, 64 GB+ for VMs and AI. Modular RAM (SO-DIMM) can be upgraded later.

Two M.2 slots are worth having: system on one drive, data on the other. NAS-style boxes have four to six.

Ports and network

USB4/Thunderbolt gives a single-cable dock, fast external SSDs and monitors up to 8K. Two 2.5 GbE ports turn a mini PC into a router or firewall; 10 GbE is for a fast NAS.

Check how many displays the box drives and whether HDMI is 2.1 if you use a high-refresh TV or monitor.

Noise and power

The same chip behaves differently in different cases: a 65 W box with a weak cooler is louder and slower than a 54 W box with a good one. That is why we keep device-specific benchmarks where possible — the cooling shows up in the numbers.

How mPCt is calculated

mPCt is the single number in the first column of the table. It adds processor points and graphics points, both built from public benchmarks: Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 6 (single and multi core) for the CPU, 3DMark Fire Strike and Time Spy graphics scores for the GPU.

CPU  = R23 single / 19.4 + R23 multi / 77
     + GB6 single / 30.4 + GB6 multi / 50.2
GPU  = Fire Strike graphics / 18 + Time Spy graphics / 8
mPCt = CPU + GPU

The weights are chosen so each test contributes a comparable share, so a box that is strong only in one test cannot top the table. A model gets an mPCt only when all six results are known; otherwise the column shows a dash, but you can still sort by any single test.

Numbers come from reviews of the specific device. When a device has not been reviewed yet, we use the typical result of the same CPU/GPU from other reviews and mark it with ≈. Apple and NVIDIA GB10 boxes have no native 3DMark, so they have CPU points but no mPCt.

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