There is nothing wrong with that PC but there is an opportunity cost to be aware of - upgrades.

A PC like that is static - you pay £600 and you get the PC, but after a few years if you’ve out grown it then you need to get a whole other PC. It’s the same with laptops.

However if you spend the £600 on a case, a motherboard, a cpu with a gpu, ram and storage you have a full starter PC. You can even save money by not paying for windows (built into the price of the mini PC) and get Linux for free. PCs are modular and any component can be upgraded and switched out at any time later.

So in a couple of years you may decide the PC is slowing down, or you’re out growing it, and you can swap in some more RAM or upgrade the CPU. Or you decide you can afford a dedicated graphics card, you can just buy the card and slot it in, and every £ goes into getting a great graphics card instead of starting again from scratch

Think of it like this: if you buy an all in one device you might spend £600 now and say another £600 in 3-5 years if you need to upgrade and fully replace it, and probably are still very limited in what you can get. A replacement will still have integrated graphics and still be behind cutting edge games, and just be a newer version of the same problem you have now. But with a full PC build you might spend £600 now for an OK PC and in 3-5years time you pay £600 just to add a great graphics card and have something way better than any mini PC. Or you spend £400 now and £200 in 2 years and £100 in 3 years and £500 in 4 years and gradually keep the PC how you want it without having to start from scratch. You end up with a decent PC now and gradually something powerful but without the upfront cost and without “wasting” money having to get a new device with a new motherboard, new cpu, new power supply, new RAM every time.You want an uplift .

It’s a crude example but the point is a full size PC can be expanded and switched up continously, and you can adapt it, and likely get something far better for the same money long term, while a fixed spec all-in-one device can serve a purpose for now but then needs total replacement when you outgrow it.

Building a full PC from scratch is easy - genuinely it’s plug and play, and only takes a bit of basic research to see what components are best to buy. There are loads of tutorials on how to put it together. Meanwhile your money goes much further over the longer term as you’re not having to buy a whole new PC everytime you need/want an upgrade - you can instead focus your money on the bits that need to change.

Even if you get a prebuilt tower PC now (ATX or Mini ATX) your money will go further AND you have something that you can upgrade and adapt. Although I think building from scratch is the best option as prebuilt Pcs are a false economy - they save money with cheaper components and you pay for labour on the build, when you can build it yourself for free and put every £ into better components.

Don’t be intimidated by building a PC - it’s nowhere near as difficult as it seems, and is an easy to obtain skill but worth learning as it’ll save you money, and allow you to fix and problem solve if you ever have problems in the future.

If.you have a PC now - even if it’s a pre build from a manufacturer - you can very likely open it up and start upgrading it now, and your money can go much further.

You are FAR better off buying a used gaming rig than a mini PC…

Those boxes have heat issues, are not at all user-servicable, and really are only designed as a web browser box.

Great for media players / HTPCs, attrpcious for trying to game on.

Buy a 5 year old gaming system

These types of machines certainly have their place, and if it meets your needs, go for it.

The big downside is going to be a lack of upgradability. Most of the core components will be soldered to the motherboard, so no CPU or GPU upgrades, and no replacements if something breaks. I know the one you linked was just an example, and not necessarily “the one,” but its on-board graphics are similar in power to a GTX 1650. Lots and lots of games available at that level, but you’ll be locked out of anything newer with no clear upgrade path later.

For reference, I own something similar, but even older, as a secondary machine. It’s fine for what it does. Just be aware of the limitations. There are ways to build a similar-powered full desktop for about the same price. At that point it’s a tradeoff: would you rather be able to upgrade later, or do you want the simplicity and small form factor (portability, aesthetics, etc)?

From a cooling standpoint, you probably don’t want go any smaller than a Small Form Factor desktop. These are large enough to have a proper heatsink and fan on the cpu, enough space for a dedicated video card, have the motherboard connections for a card, large enough power supply, and can support a case fan.

Mini desktops have minimal cooling capacity, definitely no case fan.

For example, I run a Dell SFF (OptiPlex 7050) as a server for virtual machines, Jellyfin host, file server, and media converter. It’s an older machine with an 80 watt power supply (barely enough for my use case), no case fan, and the stock cooler/fan is fortunately well designed.

That stock cooler also evacuates the case, but can’t move enough air to keep the large drive I installed at reasonable temps. Adding a case fan (centrifugal, which can handle restrictions) dropped the drive temps by more than 20F.

Without the sizeable cpu cooler and it’s fan, there’s no way to keep the cpu cool when doing anything more than basic desktop functions. A mini pc would quickly overheat, unless it had a good fan.

I have almost this exact mini PC. It was ok for things like StarCraft 2 and the Sims 4. I tried playing a newer game like Stormgate and it couldn’t keep up.

I’ve since spent a bunch of money getting an eGPU set up, and have yet to have more than 5 gaming sessions in a row without a crash.

I probably could have saved a lot of money if I’d just gotten a PC with some headroom for upgrading, but I really didn’t think I’d want to.

You can do better. I’d get a miniITX form factor of your choice that supports a video card, but omit the card for now.

An amd with igpu might be decent for your needs today and slap a dgpu in later if your needs change.

Can we persuade you towards a Steamdeck?

Main thing with those is a lack of extensibility and support from Chinese manufacturers.

At worse you buy one of those, find its limits and then upgrade to something else and use it for homelabing. I have some of them for that purpose.

I have one almost exactly like the one you posted. Same processor, same brand.

It’s fine. It can do 1080 on most games. BG3 runs at 40fps at 1080. My wife uses it mostly, and she doesn’t mind.

One big annoyance I have with it is it’s got terrible Bluetooth connection. The controller needs to be within ten feet to have a reliable connection.

All in all, I would say it’s worth it if your needs are a good fit.

You’ll get a lot better performance if you spend a bit more (like ~$650) to get a system with a dedicated graphics card. Even an RX 6600 will be quite a bit better.

What games? Note that I’m not just asking about the 5+ year old games you are playing today, but also asking about some potential game that isn’t even announced yet that it might turn out you really enjoy in the near future? I’m also asking about non-game things that you might do (though for most games are what needs the most power it is worth mentioning that you might do something non-game that needs are powerful machine.

Some games will be better on a more powerful machine. Most such games have a limit though, and so you may be just fine with a less powerful machine (particularly if it really only is 5 year old games). However without knowing what game nobody guess how much power you need.

For my uses machines such as you link are good enough. Sure they can’t be expanded much, but everything I’d want to expand them with that isn’t built in sits off a USB hub anyway. That doesn’t mean that will work for you though.

A “proper” desktop is cheaper to buy and cheaper to maintain. And that maintenance is actually possible.

I agree with most of the comments in this thread, and I’ll add: there is zero need to purchase Windows 11.

So possibly a false economy then?

I guess the scale of the unit is appealing - even a micro HPX doesn’t come close; but that’s the trade off I suppose.

At that point just buy a Steam Deck.

The machine you linked should be fine for light gaming. But for not much more money you could get a full blown gaming PC. That will be a lot more powerful and you can upgrade it. If convenience is your main priority, go with the mini PC.

+1 on the Steam Deck train. I’ve been in the hospital the last few days, it’s been a godsend, playing Silksong between doctor visits.

You can get a dock if you want a full sized monitor or a real mouse & keyboard. The deck also has two trackpads, which is sufficient for slower mouse games like city builders while in handheld mode.

Because Valve is selling a lot of Decks, game developers are starting to use it as a watermark for low-end performance when tuning their games.

I will admit the Deck’s CPU is a few years old, you can probably get a faster portable if you really want, but SteamOS makes things pretty easy. Technically I can drop the Deck into desktop mode with a Linux KDE environment, but I can’t remember the last time I had to. Maybe when I was trying Minecraft?