this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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I wonder why no one talks about mini PCs like this one they're around the same price range as a console (maybe even a bit cheaper) and don't require nearly as much work as building a PC with parts. If you get it with an OS just set up, install steam and start playing. If you want a couch experience, connect a controller, launch big picture and also start playing.
A majority of games support controller input so they're basically plug and play, and ones that don't usually also have a default preset. If anything steam has become almost the same as the console experience, just with extra functionality if you want it.
The integrated graphics on that system are still pretty mid at best tbh. You would want a system with a discrete gpu. Otherwise i agree with the sentiment
I would agree that for more power and demanding games you would want one with an external GPU, maybe even more powerful CPU. Though as a SteamDeck user and also looking at it from the perspective of a console gamer in terms of power and price range, something like this would probably fit the bill very well, especially for a cheap living room setup.
There definitely are more powerful options out there for living room setups though, but they also cost more money, which is the main reason they go for consoles, they are (like midrange APU computers) more cost effective.
Didn’t like the tone of my last attempt to reply, so here’s a rundown from a hardware enthusiast perspective.
Single board computers with no thunderbolt cannot have an external GPU, and have soldered permanent processors
The U sku on that cpu denotes low voltage. That cpu will have much worse performance than you expect. Ghz numbers usually advertise boost clocks, not stable performance.
Even when an external GPU is an option, the memory bandwidth of thunderbolt is not sufficient to run most cards and will result in micro stuttering and overall reduced performance. Usually you lose ~30%-50% of your performance depending on the card.
To top all of this off, you cannot use the steam deck as a reasonable expectation for this class of hardware. The deck runs a custom APU with a beefier than normal GPU. You will not get that performance from the linked micro pc.
I see, that does make sense.
I actually recently realized that the Mini PC shown in the listing I posted is not the same Mini PC as the one I have, the one I have seems quite a bit more powerful and also does have Thunderbolt/USB 4.0 (never tried connecting an eGPU though), I've actually been using it to play games at higher settings that would otherwise struggle on the steam deck, yes it's not as good as something with a bigger and dedicated GPU but still really good. Though I realize this probably isn't typical of Mini PCs, at least not yet anyway.