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Three concerns:
This, this, and this.
As computer cases have gotten smaller the heat buildup has gotten bad. My mother in law had one of the SFF pc's from 10 years ago and after about a year the HDD died. Replaced it with a used one I had that was 7200rpm vs 5400rpm and it was dead in 6 months. That drives twin still works today but was always in a tower case.
Heat kills CPU's, RAM, MoBo's, and everything else in the computer.
Upgrades are limited to RAM and SSD but those upgrades generally mean even more heat so then you end up thermal throttling. You could get an external GPU but now you have a huge brick sitting next to your little box pc. IMHO they agree great fir something like retro gaming/emulation but you will generally be better suited by a full size computer especially if you buy a board that has a long lived socket.
Warranties are great but the issue is that the warranty fairy will try to get out of it as often as possible. Generally this is done by pushing the blame onto someone else, usually the purchaser.
I personally buy a cheap case without a psu, then get a good power supply. A mid range MoBo like an AM5 B850 with a cheap compatible processor. Add some RAM and a SSD with a budget GPU then you end up with something to get started and closer to the end of the socket lifespan you can grab a better cpu and GPU then buy a cheap case and MoBo and have something you can sell, give to someone else, or use a a server. You will start with a better computer and end with a MUCH better system.
I started with an x470 with a Ryzen 1600 and 16GB of RAM and a used 1080ti. I doubled my ram (not as easily done on with ddr5 sadly) upgraded to a 5800x and am waiting for a GPU that isn't outrageous in cost but will double my fps. My old cpu was dropped in a B450 with a used RX480 16GB of ram and a 1TB SSD for my stepson to use as a gaming machine similar to a steamdeck (ChimeraOS) and he upgraded the GPU to an RX7600.
I run an older sff office PC with ryzen 3400g. I don't have any issues running whatever I want on it. I don't play AAA games or fps so it's fine.
What games do you play?
Do you care about fps and graphics settings?
Is it solely for gaming?
I think the big negative is that you can't keep anything, even when just one aspect if the micro PC really needs an upgrade.
If I were you I'd try to build a cheap computer around the AM5 socket, using the PSU and Case you already have. Then you have a way forward open.
I think an important question is what is your current desktop? You might be able to upgrade a single piece and get better performance than that micro PC. Also note that micro PCs tend to run hot (which causes performance issues) and you can't replace or sell used parts easily.
I play with a Mini Itx and things do get a little hot so keep that in mind.
If your tight on money, building a system will always come out on top in the long term, specifically in terms of upgrade paths to keep up with the times. In that mini pc you won't have any upgrade option except maybe swapping the SSD, and not even this is guaranteed - could be soldered on too. So the only thing you can do is replace the whole thing again, having the full cost again.
Get yourself a mainboard, a nice Ryzen CPU, an dedicated GPU, 32 Gigs of RAM and an NVME drive, a Case and PSU your done.
I've done the works for you and slapped together an entry level gaming pc with lots of upgradeability:
https://geizhals.at/wishlists/4654924
This system is expandable in every way:
Disclaimer: i don't know where you are so i took that graphics card because it's a good price here and has nice performance without burning a hole in your purse, ymmv depending on where you live. You can definitely take a tad slower card and be fine - look up the card on https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ and look for a card in that range that is priced good at your location, but dont go below 8 gb vram or you wont be happy.
And the next time you think your pc is too slow identify the slowest part and replace it (and sell off the old part), meaning that every few years you invest a little bit instead of a completely new mini-pc. same with broken parts - simply replace the part instead of the whole pc. it's better regarding e-trash too.
Regarding the Steam Deck: it's a nice device and i love mine to death, but for a main gaming rig it's neither powerful enough nor upgradeable enough - you would be back at playing about the same stuff performancewise you do now.
The steam deck can only play pretty recent titles because it only runs on 1280*720, and uses upscaling, which doesn't matter on the small screen, but it matters a lot on a larger display - i haven't tried using my steam deck to play cyberpunk hooked up to the TV, and i won't try it, because it's clearly too underpowered for that and would simply suck.
That's a great midrange/budget rig!
Looking at OP's link it's still twice the cost though, and given their gaming requirements it may be overkill.
I would agree if space, portability, and modularity aren't factors then your build is a very good suggestion.
Edit: I'm looking at a different Amazon than you probably, i didn't think of that when i commented.
It really depends on the cost and availability of the GPU. I tried to look up the costs for the US, but those price spikes (some cards that go here in europe for 200€ run for 2300$ there, wtf?) make it hard - therefore it's really a case of "what is available and in the performance/buck range i'd like".
That said, you CAN get away with an about 1/3 Passmark score slower card for entry, which should open the field even on the US market.
Further probable cost reductions are the NVME drive - you can halve the space, but with game installations for AAA games cracking the 100GB mark, i wouldn't recommend it unless you have a lightning fast internet connection and dont have an issue with swapping the installed games in and out.
You can further reduce costs at the PSU by reducing efficiency (i went for 80 plus GOLD standard, which gives you around 88% efficiency according it's certificate), but what you save there at buying you pay with your energy bill.
Last thing you can do is reduce RAM to 16GB - for normal operation it's still enough, but we're very close to the point where 32GB become mandatory for good performance and it would be the first thing to upgrade - at least it would be easy and not very expensive to do so.
Taking all that together you can surely drop the costs here in the EU by around 100-150€ without losing upgrade potential, at the cost of dropping detail levels in AAA games to medium and probably some swapping issues with very RAM-dependent games (i'm looking at you, modded minecraft ⎝❮Ỡ益Ỡ❯⎠ ).
I think only you have a grasp of what’s important for you.
There’s obviously thousands of options here, and a micro pc is definitely one of them
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)?
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.
It seems to me that mini ITX is small enough to cost a little bit more. The cheapest seem to be micro ATX boards.
Sorry for the unfamiliar platform, but here's a comparison I recently made for a friend looking to build a computer around the AM5 socket.
1 CHF = 1.25 USD, but of course prices are different across the continents, so a direct comparison would be difficult. I just hope the fundamental price difference between sizes holds globally.
mITX is more expensive but is smaller and has some other advantages.
Are there any advantages that are worth it for that budget range?
The only one I know of so far was short DDR traces and a reduction to two slots for extreme memory overclocking.
I think the packaging also leads to better audio quality due to inherently lower emi.
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.
I agree with most of the comments in this thread, and I'll add: there is zero need to purchase Windows 11.
Something something, Mass Grave.
Also, if you specifically want Windows, get Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC edition. It's Windows 11 minus the crapware.
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.
Seconding steam deck, but also need to add in the docking station. That formfactor has stolen my heart, it does mobile gaming, along with having the horse power to be a PC substitute at home.
In addition to SteamOS, but ill let others promote linux and sticking it to microsoft now that linux desktops are finally crossing the "it just works" finish line.
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.
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.
Are they cheaper, though?
GPU prices being what they are an equivalent full size card, and the same CPU aren't far off the full build cost of the micro unit I linked to, and that's before cases, power supplies and whatever.
I understand the service situation; but that's not worse than my laptop/integrated devices - and this still has some scope for replacing non-soldered parts, presumably.
Are they cheaper, though?
Yes, always. Between 2 not second-hand machines with comparable hardware, a "normal" one would be significantly cheaper than a "mini".
How would you break it down?
PC Partpicker disagrees with you, especially at the reduced price on the Amazon micro option - making some assumptions on equivalence between the 'baked in' chips and proper GPU etc.
I'd assume that economies of scale play a part too.
But I'm willing to accept that I'm wrong!
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.
Yeah. You're basically buying a laptop crammed into a small box. May as well get a laptop if you need the small footprint and portability or a desktop if you need the price-to-performance.
Also, the Steam Deck thing people keep repeating is terrible advice. Even these can power their components somewhat robustly. A docked Steam Deck is still a 10W APU for no good reason. It depends on use case, in that you also get a handheld out of the deal, but if you're looking for a primary device even a laptop would be a better choice.
+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?
I suppose it's not solely for gaming which turns me off the deck option; it would also be serving as the entry point for some self hosted stuff I'm running on the clunky old unit that's still chugging along.
Ah, well, it does have a desktop mode, but it’s Linux + KDE, not Windows. It can probably do what you want, but it would be some adjustment to the new environment.
At that point just buy a Steam Deck.
What's the benefit of that Vs this? I don't care for portability and I like the option to at least crack this open and expand a few bits (if I need to).
If you don't want portability, and do want expandability, then I don't think Steam Deck is a good choice for you.
Much as it is a brilliant devicel it's also a wee bit old now.
And anyone who wants the anti-cheat games is still stuffed.
I disagree with any others saying it is openable and repairable. It's better than modern slimline laptops - which is not saying much. I don't think it's as accessible asa Mini PC - and frankly if you want to upgrade, go desktop. If you can get a used old case with a decent PSU - then buy the rest of the guts - you'll end up with something way better - and you'll be able to make sure you can fully power your GPU and CPU for the things you want to do with it. And far easier to cool it properly and avoid throttling if you're really pulling a load of watts into it. This probably does matter if you want to game at high resolutions with high frame rates for modern games. If you don't mind dropping to lower resolutions or <=60FPS, or turning off some fancy GFX features, then the mini PC would be fine. Of course with a desktop you can adapt the components a bit to your budget, and maybe swap in cheap second hand stuff as a stop gap until you upgrade a component.
For steamdeck - the only reason i could think that remains is if you had a desperate need to get out from under microsoft's thumb - and didn't want to go for a full DIY linux install - then SteamOS is excellent in both gaming and desktop mode. It really shows how user friendly linux can be if you pay full time devs to maintain a distribution with a specific customer group and specific hardware in mind. And IMHO ( I only use MS at work so maybe I'm a bad source) it actually shows up how fucking awful windows is. SteamDEck really is just turn it on and get on with what you want to do , no bother; games console level usability. I think even computer-illiterate people would find desktop mode pretty easy to get on with.
But it's only half-arsed "proper linux", and half-arsed independence from big tech, as you're just substituting Valve as the ones who you rely on to curate your OS for you. And if ever Steam gets bought out you might have to move to something else. So it doesn't have the independence of full open source; though it's a lot closer to that than MS.
It's also quite a lot of money to pay for an old device just to try a different OS. To do that I'd get a cheap real PC and experiment - a used miniPC from 5-10 years ago with some of the retro gaming linux distros are a fun and cheaper way to do that.
... end of pro linux bullshit
A lot of those mini PCs don't really have enough graphics power, even for older games. I have one and unless it's something really low powered like Stardew or something, the experience is not great.
The Deck is designed for gaming, and it can double as a desktop PC.
Steam deck is very repair friendly. I swapped my SOs SSD for a 2tb and it was very easy to work with. For the price, it's extremely hard to beat. You can get a 30 dollar dock, and you're off to the races.
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.
Size gives you options. How many expansion cards. How many nvme or ssd's do you want to connect. How many USB ports.
I think micro atx is a good compromise on size. Not huge, and not tiny.
Packing powerful components in a tiny case is just asking for them to get thermally throttled and avoid you getting most out of your purchase.
It’s not a “gaming pc”. What you are asking is why shouldn’t you just use a small basic pc to play old games instead of buying a gaming pc.
“Why should I get a PS5 when I can get a PS2 for way cheaper?” Is essentially your question.