The MiniPC Revolution

Summary

The MiniPC Revolution 2025-08-24 1611 words 8 minOver the past couple of years I’ve been experimenting with MiniPCs, and the more I do, the more I’m convinced this is the future I want to invest in.The Many Advantages Of MiniPCs #Before I ramble on about how great something I like is, first let me assure you that I know they’re not perfect either, and might not be what some people want. Nevertheless, here are my own reasons and explanations for how I came to be swayed in this direction, why I think it’s a good idea, and why I would recommend this to others.Cheap and Replaceable #MiniPCs are all-in-one, factory built, shipped as-is products. The converged supply chain and economy of scale usually leads to MiniPCs being cheap, or at least with very high bang per buck all things considered.However, because of these same reasons, they are usually not repairable, and theoretically produce more E-waste. I don’t worry about this too much: they are fully solid state machines, running on low power and low-ish temperatures, thus making their rate of degradation much slower than some beefy machine churning 24/7.Small and Compact #It’s called mini because it is. These adorable devices don’t take up space, and in a pinch, are portable as well! If you need lots of computers around the house, this is the way to go.Need a living room HTPC to browse the internet and such on a big screen at social gatherings? Get a MiniPC and chuck it behind the TV. No one will even notice it.Have a small desk nook where you do some light work? Connect the monitor, mouse, and keyboard to a MiniPC. It looks like a dock, but it’s actually the entire computer!Power Efficiency #Most MiniPCs are based on low-voltage hardware. The power draw can vary in peak usage based on how beefy it is, but they are the kings of idle power consumption. You can expect average power draws of 20-50W in usage and 6-12W in idle.Put that in perspective with high-end machines with hardware concerned with performance and not po...