The 17 Best Mini PCs for a Home Server

Off-lease office boxes that cost less than a game share the field with 10-gigabit workstations and a Mac. Some sip power under a desk for years; others want to run a whole cluster.

1. 1
   Intel NUC 13 Pro

   The last NUC generation Intel designed itself, a 13th-gen Core mini PC with Thunderbolt 4 and 2.5GbE.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Beelink GTi13 Ultra

   Core i9-13900HK mini PC with a built-in power supply and a PCIe expansion dock option.
   927pts
3. 3
   Beelink EQ14

   Intel N150 mini PC with dual 2.5GbE and an internal power supply for always-on duty.
   877pts
4. 4
   Minisforum MS-01

   Core i9-13900H workstation mini PC with two 10G SFP+ ports, two 2.5GbE ports and a PCIe slot, a favorite for homelab clusters.
   800pts
5. 5
   Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny

   Lenovo's one-liter business PC line, bought off lease in bulk as cheap, quiet homelab nodes.
   709pts
6. 6
   GMKtec NucBox G3

   Sub-$200 Intel N100 mini PC with a 1TB NVMe and dual 2.5GbE, a common entry point into Proxmox.
   600pts
7. 7
   Apple Mac mini M4

   Apple's 2024 palm-sized Mac mini with the M4 chip, used as a quiet low-power home server.
   600pts
8. 8
   Minisforum UM890 Pro

   Ryzen 9 8945HS mini PC with dual 2.5GbE, OCuLink and room for 96GB of DDR5.
   600pts
9. 9
   Beelink SER9 Pro

   Ryzen 7 H 255 mini PC with LPDDR5x memory and a vapor-chamber cooler built to stay quiet.
   600pts
10. 10
    Beelink SER8

    Ryzen 7 8745HS mini PC in a compact metal chassis with two PCIe 4.0 NVMe slots.
    466pts
11. 11
    Beelink ME Mini

    Tiny N150 cube with six M.2 slots, built as an all-flash NAS and home server.
    466pts
12. 12
    Minisforum UM790 Pro

    Ryzen 9 7940HS mini PC that set the template for powerful AMD homelab boxes in 2023.
    466pts
13. 13
    Minisforum MS-A2

    AMD Ryzen 9 take on the MS-01 with 16 cores, 10G SFP+ networking and a PCIe slot.
    0pts
14. 14
    GMKtec NucBox K8 Plus

    Ryzen 7 8845HS mini PC with dual 2.5GbE and OCuLink at a mid-range price.
    0pts
15. 15
    ASUS NUC 14 Pro

    ASUS-built continuation of the NUC line on Core Ultra chips, with a tool-free chassis.
    0pts
16. 16
    HP EliteDesk 800 Mini

    Off-lease HP business mini PC with vPro, widely resold for home servers and clusters.
    0pts
17. 17
    Dell OptiPlex Micro

    Dell's one-liter business desktop, sold in huge numbers and resold cheaply for home servers.
    0pts

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