How many of you use a Mini PC or a laptop for your primary system?

I've been a fan of Mini PCs for a while now, but I finally just made the final transition - I have replaced my big desktop PC with a Mini PC.

Technically, I still have one desktop PC but it is getting packed up and tossed in the garage. It's an 11th gen i7 with 128GB RAM, but my new Mini PC outperforms it.

One of the problems for me is that I insist on keeping all of equipment spotless which means opening the desktop PC, cleaning out any dust residue and manually cleaning all 10 fans once a month. Then I wipe down all glass and rinse filters and put the machine back in service. With my back as bad as it has been lately, I simply cannot lug around a desktop like that any longer. Thus, the Mini PC.

But that got me wondering: How many of you use a Mini PC as your primary system? How many use a laptop? How many still prefer a desktop? I know that any serious gamer is likely going to be using a desktop only to get the most powerful GPUs, but how about the rest of you?

I have not even touched a laptop in over 20 years. Never owned one. I rebuilt a desktop a couple of months ago and considered a mini alternative briefly. Gave up on the idea for the standard reasons.

I'd be interested in knowing in what way your mini "outperforms" the 11th gen desktop now in the garage.

You state: "I insist on keeping all of equipment spotless which means opening the desktop PC, cleaning out any dust residue and manually cleaning all 10 fans once a month."............................if that were NOT true, would you have nonetheless gone to the mini?

My back is likely worse than yours and my new desktop is about 20 inches tall and weighs probably 25 pounds....far too much for me to sling around like I could 30 years ago. But I could easily not lift it at all or open the case for years, barring a parts failure.

I have not played a PC game in my life...other than some heated pinball and solitaire 15 years ago. Desktops are my default. Portability of laptops has zero appeal. I have not used a video card in 15 years.

I would guess that many mini users regard them merely as an appliance, not to be upgraded over time. Not sure how much the smaller size is critical to the average purchaser.

I switched from a desktop to a mini a bit more than a year ago and I've never looked back. I built my old PC myself in a cube case so it could sit on my desk because I didn't want to mess with something on the floor. It had an Intel i5 CPU and ran 2 4K monitors. Along with all the standard web stuff people do these days also I do a lot of 3D design work for my 3D printer. I use 2 software products for that (one on each monitor): Rhino for all the geometry calculations and Grasshopper, which is a graphical front end for all of Rhino's capabilities.

My first mini had an Intel i9 CPU which I thought would be good enough to handle the 3D work. It did that ok, but was noticeably slower, so I finally gave in to that and bought a new mini with an AMD Ryzen 5 5500U CPU. That one is slightly faster than the i5 and I'm happy with it.

This thread cries out for a poll. I have used only laptops for more than 20 years. A desktop ties you to one room and is no use for travelling.

There isn't need to keep a computer "spotless" inside. I even have a theory: electronics coexist WAY better with dust than with cleaning, although it's 100% fine cleaning the external dust with a cloth. The simpler case, the easier.

You're using 10 fans b/c many modern cases are ill-designed. Doing a good desktop starts with choosing a good case if possible, in general the most "classical" or directly "ancient" you can (last time I bought a case, a few years ago, I found a discontinued model, and I bought two to stock up; last days I've done the same purchasing 3 bargain HDDs). The next priority is a good high-end exhaust fan (a high-end fan costs 10 or 20 times less than a decent processor and like 3 or 5 times less than a good classical case). If you don't need a processor up of like 150W you only need a decent CPU cooler, if it's up of 200 W you have to do a tough decision: a new water cooler every 3 or 5 years or a very heavy and special air cooler (only up to 220 W or so).

Two years ago my CPU fan didn't start, just b/c it was like 16 years old and debatable quality (but not a single problem while it lasted). I could still start it with my hand until I got a replacement. The heatsink was just decent. 125 W processor. In the 90s (although high end processors of that age consumed like 30 or 40 W) this was fatal for the poor processor at least, but my computer did just beep continuously and only b/c it was programmed in the BIOS in case of CPU fan fail. So even w/o having precisely the best in air cooling my system was good and I only had to replace a bad quality fan, after 16 years.

Classical cases are a pack of good or simply correct decisions everywhere you look at. These "decisions" haven't been costly thought one by one measuring the effect of each, it's a full pack of common sense where the designers likely got more advantages than what they were thinking about (for example the heat rises and the design adapts to it and takes advantages from it, but it's unlikely that a sophisticated "engineering protocol" or technique has been applied to cover it, this is just human intelligence in action). "Correct" means "durable", "resistant", "reliable",...

Although all my cases have the PSU up, I'll admit the PSU down may have some advantages (and it's strictly necessary for the "kW GPUs" b/c they need the upper part of the case for their water cooling), but in general you only need a powerful exhaust fan in the rear's upper part, close to the PSU or the upper side (this way you also save cleaning needs), a relatively closed case so it can guide the airflow (it's fine it has openings in the left side for the cards and the processor, additional intake w/o fan needed), and stop inventing with the inner distribution: disks horizontally in the front's lower part (and an inconspicuous opening at the bottom to cool the disks and feed the general airflow in the case, from front to rear and from down to up), optical drives and cabling excess in the front's upper part (close to the PSU if up).

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I prefer desktops, actually I've only had desktops except this Win11 fanless miniPC that I bought in emergency to have a quick and economical solution with a modern OS. Although I bought it in 2021, it's slower than my year 2009 or so desktops (50-60% of the speed) b/c the latter have 95 or 125W processors vs 10W the Celeron J4125, but it's enough for tasks that don't require high power (it also does well with heavy web pages).

PS: for some reason I've needed like 6-8 attempts to log in. All were successful apparently but when clicking on post my reply it said I wasn't logged and offered me the form to log in, inconsistent behaviour and it seemed not to know if I was in or out...

I use a laptop for almost everything recreational, including gaming and blogging, but all my real work is done on a Dell Precision tower that runs fedora.

For years, I had large self-built tower PCs with masses of internal space and several drives. It became just too big.

I've now had a Geekom Mini IT13 (Intel i9, 32Gb RAM, Win11 64bit) for a couple of years and love it.

I needed a powered USB3 extender for an old scanner and backup drives but apart from that it's been very reliable.

Some previous discussion... How many of you are switching to Mini PCs? I Finally made the switch.

JLArranz said:

You're using 10 fans b/c many modern cases are ill-designed.

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Actually, I was using ten fans for the cool lighting effects and for quiet. I know how to design for best airflow. Been doing it since the 1980's . But seriously, with ten fans, each fan spins at extremely low speeds and the system runs whisper quiet. My laptops and Mini PCs are MUCH louder than the desktop when a fan kicks in.

I've always loved desktop PCs, have owned literally dozens of them. But lugging them around is a pain any time I relocate plus for cleaning as I had noted. I also don't do any serious gaming any longer, so I don't need a discrete GPU. Mini PCs and laptops have everything that I need.

Plus, I came to realization that even if I buy a cutting-edge desktop, in two generations the mobile CPUs will be just as powerful. My desktop was an eleventh gen i7. My new Mini PC is 14th gen i7 mobile and has better performance than the 11th gen desktop CPU.

hsehestedt said:

Technically, I still have one desktop PC but it is getting packed up and tossed in the garage. It's an 11th gen i7 with 128GB RAM, but my new Mini PC outperforms it.

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Holy cow, you are making an 11th Gen i7, with 128gb, redundant !?

I guess you were running Win 11 on it, so it didn't seem so quick.

My main machine is a HP Z640 workstation, with Zeon 2680 V4, 48gb ram, 2x nvme (4x port card), and 2x 1TB HDD for long term storage.

I'm running Fedora 43 with KDE plasma, so never run out of horsepower, or wait for anything..

I'm a Moore's law kinda techie, so I don't spend piles of cash, on shiny new hardware, I stay behind the trend for few a years.

@hsehestedt


Made a poll for you.

So when people complain that the poll is inadequate in some way, do we blame Ghot or hsehestedt? Asking for a friend.

Only laptops for me now. Two are high performance which meets all my needs.

Over the past 17 years all my primary systems have been Windows laptops. Four of them are decommissioned so now two of them are still in use. All of them were/are 15 inch with the sole exception of my current one, which is 16 inch (and WUXGA). Also, all of them were/are Intel-based. Four of them were/are low-mid priced Medion Akoya two of which had/have no Nvidia GPU. Two of them were/are mid priced Asus with an Nvidia GPU. I quit gaming a very long time ago. The other main reason why I abandoned desktop PCs and why I never got a mini PC is twofold.

Firstly, a laptop battery will last a lot longer than a decent, yet reasonably priced Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and, secondly, I can pull out the cables e.g. during a blackout or when the TV breaks so I can then take just the laptop, the mouse, and the wireless keyboard with me to a different room until the power is restored or until the TV has been replaced with a new one. Not that I expect the Sony Bravia to break anytime soon yet, but with electronics devices (any electronics devices) there's always a risk.

Knowing that I can move the laptop onto the kitchen table or into the living room and make it disappear from sight again with minimal effort and time spent before other residents of the house will start to complain about my being such a moron for "constantly" cluttering up half their space gives me peace of mind.

It's purely a matter of personal preference.
My Big Box with its 5 HDDs (12TBs) now sits in the corner running Sonarr, Radarr, SABnzbd, Plex, and acting like an entertainment NAS.
I occasionally check it out via Remote Desktop and use my ASUS PN54 mini as my daily window on the web and my desktop office.

I purchased a Geekom AX7-Pro last year. So far, I'm satisfied with its performance. Desktops were my main rigs for many years and I still have one that is used daily. When it is time to replace the desktop, I just may get another mini-pc. I have an older Dell laptop with a 10th generation Intel i7 processor, which I mainly use as a test machine.

Mini PC's are great for file servers, backup repositories, NAS's etc. I still like some i7 powered decent laptops as I still travel a bit for some gigs. But for home use you can't beat these mini PC's - small and cheap enough sometimes to dedicate to a single task -- I use one just by itself for Video security -- general property / street video and door bell video which calls me on a phone if someone calls and I'm away so I can answer the caller.

I have another two -- one for testing various Windows builds and another for running a Linux NAS and testing loads of stuff on VM's.

Most actually come with Windows already installed - that's worth a bit too. These things are well worth looking at.

Cheers
jimbo

I might be tempted to get a mini PC, but then I'd need a monitor and keyboard...