When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. The Acemagic M1 packs Intel's i9-13900HK into a surprisingly compact housing, promising desktop performance in a minimum of space. The Acemagic M1 with i9-13900HK is a very fast, surprisingly compact mini PC that brings classic desktop performance and near silent operation. Although it lacks an NPU and some GPU power compared to the latest AI mini PCs, it impresses with a powerful processor, many ports and an attractive price. If you mainly run office, development, and moderate media workloads, you'll get a lot of computing power in a small form factor.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. The Minisforum AI X1 Pro sets new standards among mini PCs: compact, quiet and ideal for smart homes, offices and media centers. In recent years, Minisforum has developed from an insider tip to a firm name in the mini PC market. The manufacturer has become renowned for its compact systems with high computing power, innovative cooling, and sophisticated designs. With the new AI X1 Pro, Minisforum wants to prove this claim - as a powerful all-round PC with integrated AI acceleration, which is not only intended for professionals and developers, but also for smart home enthusiasts and creatives.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. You might not need as much computer as you think. I didn't expect it to change my entire computing setup. But here I am now, using the $319 Beelink SER5 Mini PC as my daily workhorse, powering an ultrawide 1440p 100Hz monitor and smoothly handling any productivity task I've thrown at it. This little computer has been so delightful to use that I've relegated my full-sized desktop tower PC to the basement television, where it's now serving exclusively as a gaming rig.

MSI's latest Cubi NUC AI 2MG mini PC is as much smart speaker or laptop as it is a small, compact, desktop NUC: It boasts a dedicated hardware Copilot button as well as a dedicated fingerprint reader, and you can talk to it, too. Starting at 899, MSI's little mini PC is also Copilot qualified, with either a Core Ultra 9 288V or Core Ultra 7 258V chip inside. Both are Core Ultra Series 2 "Lunar Lake" chips. The hardware design, however, is something special. This isn't the first mini PC with a dedicated Copilot button -- that was the Asus NUC 14 Pro AI, launched at the 2025 edition of CES. However, this is the first mini PC that I can recall with a dedicated fingerprint reader underneath the power button, a feature normally associated with laptops like the Samsung Galaxy series.

I didn't expect it to change my entire computing setup. But here I am now, using the 300 Beelink SER5 Mini PC as my daily workhorse, powering an ultrawide 1440p 100Hz monitor and smoothly handling any productivity task I've thrown at it. This little computer has been so delightful to use that I've relegated my full-sized desktop tower PC to the basement television, where it's now serving exclusively as a gaming rig. Consider this a lesson on technological overkill. Outside of some specialized use cases, the required compute power for getting things done might be a lot less than you think.

The Raspberry Pi 5 is several times faster than previous models of the compact and cheap computer. For less than a couple hundred bucks, you can have a computer that can do many tasks that previously required a regular PC, that consumes very little power, and for which the web is overflowing with exciting tutorials and projects you can take on. In this guide, I'll first walk you through how to build a Raspberry Pi 5 with maximum performance so you can use it for everything it's capable of. To do that, you'll need to take advantage of the board's new ability to connect an SSD via PCI Express. You will also need a power source, either a USB charger that supports USB-PD and a USB-C cable or the official charger from Raspberry Pi.

When I first saw that photo of Nvidia's new Project Digits mini PC unveiled at CES 2025, I couldn't help but notice the Apple influence -- minimalist, sleek, next to a monitor that looks like Apple's Studio Display. Apple's latest Mac Mini is revolutionary in many ways, delivering the company's impressive M4 silicon in an efficient, affordable package. Windows PCs haven't yet been able to reach the same level of design beauty and overall balanced unit. Could Nvidia's new Mac Mini-like small-form-factor AI supercomputer usher in a major disruption for Windows PCs? Let's dive into Project Digits, what it is, and what it brings to the table for the future. It's a little unfair to compare the Mac Mini and Nvidia's Project Digits, mainly because they target vastly different users and markets.

You never know what you're going to get with CES. Of course, we knew we'd hear a lot about AI -- check -- and that there'd be announcements of new CPUs and GPUs -- also check. But you just never know how the all the pomp and hoo-ha of this annual mega tech event is going to pay off in the real-world, for regular consumers. Does the average PC user have something to be excited about now that the veil has come off of this year's product launches? If the PCWorld staff is any indication, the answer is yes!

ASUS is now outfitting its NUC 14 Pro mini PC with a neural processing unit (NPU) capable of reaching 48 trillion operations per second (TOPS). The new model, the ASUS NUC Pro AI, will have up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 288V processor. With a height of only 1.3 inches, this mini PC can be carried anywhere and won't get in your way. Most of the features like ports and internals should be similar compared to its predecessor. To prevent overheating, ASUS installed some advanced thermal management solutions that meet EPEAT Climate energy efficiency requirements. Other features include Secure Boot, built-in speakers and voice command-ready microphones.

I didn't expect it to change my entire computing setup. But here I am now, using the 300 Beelink SER5 Mini PC as my daily workhorse, powering an ultrawide 1440p 100Hz monitor and smoothly handling any productivity task I've thrown at it. This little computer has been so delightful to use that I've relegated my full-sized desktop tower PC to the basement television, where it's now serving exclusively as a gaming rig. Consider this a lesson on technological overkill. Outside of some specialized use cases, the required compute power for getting things done might be a lot less than you think.