This $100ish Amazon PC Is Apparently "Perfect for gaming"...

[@Eazon_]

There's another one with a J4125 for about the same price, it has double the cores, double the base clock, and intel graphics 600 instead of 500 ! How about this becomes a series, trying out mini pcs. Maybe you'll find a gem!

[@blizzzofficial]

Can i have the link plz cause I'm not getting

[@zon4L]

Ooh I love this idea. Second this!

[@CarbonPanther]

Don't we have @ServeTheHome for that?

[@MrMega200]

Four words, Lenovo Thinkcentre Tiny PCs. Used market on these are not bad and have much more capability once you get into the i5 and i7 models. Also, they are very easy to maintain and upgrade to SSD and better ram.

[@Stingrea51]

@@MrMega200 Agreed! I picked up a refurb micro form factor HP Elitedesk for just about $150(usd) and it won't go up to 11 without creativity but it runs 10 just fine and I'm planning to use it for a home server (I upgraded the ram and the nvme drive is on the way). Better price/specs than a Raspberry Pi with the current market rates

[@themightypen1530]

Honestly for a $110 miniPC I am impressed. The fact that it could even load GTAV was surprising to me.

[@whitetiger-7752]

I have an 80$ pc and i played farcry4 so i don't see this mini pc worth it 💀

[@NippyNep]

@@whitetiger-7752 the size

[@OfficialzThunder]

@@NippyNep the size isn’t worth it at all, can’t put a cheap gpu in it

[@farisakhtar4824]

​@@OfficialzThunderyou can attach an external one

[@felipeoue]

@@farisakhtar4824 no, you can't

[@jepoyburner]

I have a couple of Celeron machines like these deployed. These are actually perfect for very casual computing and for low power, always on application. I use one for my 3D printer, and another for a home file/media server.

[@3kids2cats1dog]

yep, I'm watching KZbin in my living room on a Celeron 2957U.

[@sebastjansslavitis3898]

what the hell is home file server?

[@j_r_-]

These mini pcs are awesome for office work

[@uhm175]

@@sebastjansslavitis3898 Google your question

[@TBL_stevennelson]

@@uhm175 lol. He was totally baiting that guy. I Love your response

[@jackhawkins2758]

This is most definitely a thin client workstation (hence the name). Used to connect to a server and run virtual machine environments. We use similar Dell branded ones, at 8x the price. So for $100, this thing is actually brilliant.

[@bandombeviews6035]

Thin clients are $800? At that point, why not just purchase a standard PC? Unless you’re remoting into a server for like CAD work or something

[@grimgoreironhide9985]

@@bandombeviews6035 I guess the IT or company want control over employees

[@Charles.Foster.Offdensen]

My guess is that's exactly why... things like CAD, 3D software, or specific environments that are able to be monitored and controlled like the other comment here mentioned@@bandombeviews6035

[@volvo09]

​@@bandombeviews6035large corporations will pay for the convenience of centralized management. When I worked IT in an office we were buying horrendously overpriced (I think like $700) Dell WYSE thin clients, but they could be remotely managed so all you had to do was know the 5 digit ID and you could connect to it and re image it all from another location. They took about 5 minutes to start up win10 which was locked down to only accessing edge, which was locked to accessing a single web site to log into your remote desktop session.

[@hwertz10]

@@bandombeviews6035 Fair question. I saw that going right back to the 1990s.. they'd sell X servers (for UNIX system use), then thin clients (typically X server and Windows Remote Desktop client basically) for prices like that, well into the territory where you could have just bought a PC and popped it on their desk even if it was just working as a thin client connecting into some remote system.

[@sleepym8486]

I been using my $125 J4125 mini pc with 256 ssd, 8Gb ram for 2 years. Worked great as media player and light web browsing. But recently I been doing more on it and it is struggling. So got Beelink Ryzen 5 5500u, 16Gb ram, 500Gb nvme ssd for $225. Big improvement from J4125. And this thing is so tiny but powerful.

[@aaz1992]

Nice

[@خلصذيب]

could have got a used gaming laptop lol

[@sleepym8486]

@@خلصذيب Laptop too large and can not be mounted behind TV. Would not work for my purpose.

[@Zerbey]

I supported a bunch of these for a medical clinic. Perfect for this application, all they did was run an app to connect to their medical billing database and occasional light web browsing.

[@brodriguez11000]

At the mid point between a thin client and a full computer.

[@QUIKCaspa]

bet all the people that work at the medical clinic are gaming on them and playing gta 5 😂

[@hitechredneck6366]

I'm going to consider this PC as a possible alternative to a Raspberry Pi 4. Try buying a Raspberry Pi 4 - 4 GB for $100...and that's if you can even find one for sale. That you can run Windows on it may mean a better experimentation platform than the Pi, that is, if you don't need the IO header pins offered on the Pi platform. It can be frustrating trying to get software to run on a Pi, but with an Intel architecture, it should be a LOT easier to compile and run Linux apps.

[@Mini-z1994]

Yeah this or like a laptop from around 2012 - 2016 with an ssd in it & a fresh battery probably is another good option for like 20 - 150$. Two laptops i got around here is a samsung np355v5c hd 7670m, amd a8 4500m & 8 gb ram which i only needed a charger for (25$) & got free otherwise without a hdd & battery is gone as well. But i don't use it much anyway so i don't really need a battery. Bit low res screen from what im used too on my desktop pc but for webbrowsing & looking at KZbin perfect hooked up too said 1080p display instead of my desktop pc with mouse & keyboard its nice. Runs older singleplayer games like half-life 2, fear, stalker shadow of chernobyl fine, slapped in a leftover 240 gb pny cs 900 ssd after i put in a 1 tb m.2 as a games drive in my desktop pc running Atlas OS which is a bit slimmed down version of windows 10 pro, havent bought a license for the laptop for now at least. My secondary laptop the Lenovo T420 I'm running as a wifi repeater atm. 4 gb ram 320 gb spinning rust drive with like 38k hours probably at this point, bought it from my uni for 30$ a year after i graduated in 2016 with like 2500 hours on the hdd. Harddrive is slow as balls on it, specially with a stock windows 10 install but as it only runs as a wifi repeater it's fine too leave as is, it's literally just left too idle next too my desk with webcam & mic disabled.

[@MrMega200]

Look up Lenovo Thinkcentre Tiny PCs. You can pick up an used model with an i5-4570T, 8GB ram, 500GB HDD for about $55.

[@jedcheng5551]

I saw someone trying to compile mongoDB for Arm v8 (officially release compiled for Arm v8a) on a Pi. It was of course a diaster. A $100 x86 alternative is a no-brainer

[@Sunlight91]

If you don't need IO pins just buy a small used office. At least Intel 4th gen and part of the core series.

[@hihellothere9569]

@@Sunlight91 those are bulky

[@mruczyslaw50]

It is locked at 6W of power and for the CPU alone it may be fine at lower load tasks but when the GPU usage is high there is even less power left for the CPU and it throttles hard sometimes even under the poor base clock like you can see in this video in Bioshock gameplay, what I would do is install program like ThrottleStop and manually change power limit and boost clock time to higher value, I tried that on Intel Atom tablet and it gave performance boost of few hundred percent in some scenarios.

[@Stillxxen]

Good to know about this!

[@GewelReal]

6W even for a laptop is pathetic. ThrottleStop all the way!

[@kumar-rohit4]

Same thing happened with my old atom x5 tablet the CPU power limit was I think 2.41watts and the GPU was 4watts or something I tried some latest games on it the CPU clock get's down to 480mhz. It was an Acer Aspire Switch. Currently it is connected to my non smart tv

[@sihamhamda47]

And also 4GB of soldered RAM is of course the next thing that limited its capability. 4GB in Windows PC is barely enough for basic task in 2023 unless you are brave enough to debloat all the intrusive Microsoft stuff (like disabling telemetry and removing some unnecessary system apps to cut down the RAM usage)

[@HoveringAboveMyself]

What is seen in the Bioshock gameplay is the cpu adjusting to a more efficient frequency rather than staying at high, more power-hungry clocks just because. This is demonstrated by the utilization barely breaking 70% even at sub 1GHz, the game is entirely gpu bound. Still, I support the notion of the using ThrottleStop in a system like this, and the cooling can absolutely handle more power since it rarely went over 40C at 6w.

[@anthonygrimaldi9483]

The fact that it can even load those games is impressive. It probably would make a great emulation PC since raspberry pis can be expensive or hard to come by, and youd get a full windows system to boot.

[@chrisfoxart]

Word

[@jeanvaljean6433]

he literally tested emulation on it and it sucked ass,a windows 10 boot is seriously not that impressive if opening a web page takes 2 minutes lmfao mini pc's can be way more capable than this

[@anthonygrimaldi9483]

​@@jeanvaljean6433yeah, he tested emulation in windows 10, but anyone buying this as an alternative to a raspberry pi is going to have Linux on it and emulation station. I would love for you to do a review on a brand new complete windows computer that will run GTA 5 or Skyrim better than this for $100 or less.

[@leonidas14775]

@@jeanvaljean6433 Install lakka or a light linux distro on it then. Windows 10 is too bloated for this thing.

[@TheMaztercom]

They say gaming, but they did not specify what year of gaming, it will be fine in 1990 gaming

[@blake5665]

Honestly, for the size and price. This is a pretty badass product.

[@immortalsofar5314]

Actually, I kind of like it. I mean it's not a Windows gaming PC but it's a step up in power from a Raspberry Pi. 4GB of memory might be limited but I grew up squeezing the last bits of power out of a C64 so I've never actually _used_ 4GB of memory.

[@josephfuller6229]

​@@immortalsofar5314my first PC had a 8mb integrated graphics card and was using AOL you had it easy lol

[@thelonercoder5816]

not really. you can buy a laptop for like $125-150 thats more powerful than whatever this thing is lol. Heck, even a used laptop for $100 is more impressive.

[@stevennagley3407]

@@thelonercoder5816its form factor, its small and compact because it serves a niche purpose which you probably won’t understand

[@SoulRollerFIN]

Pro tip, disable telemetry, set all services to manual, set display for performance, disable cortana... a few things to make winblows run smoother on underpowered hardware. Chris Titus has a great script for this purpose.

[@onelinecoder]

Yes,with a little bit fine tuning it can be more efficient, I think ( in my case ) it can run as mqtt server,Kodi,Arduino IDE, PlatformIO and some more things perfectly.

[@flyingfajitas]

That's actually really cool to see for a machine like that. Having it to run older gen emulators is a good use case for it.

[@deanasher2155]

Why not just use a raspberry pi 4 for like cheaper if you want emulation for the same price

[@flyingfajitas]

@@deanasher2155 Because you likely won't be offered a free Pi from your office job when they cycle out the old machines? This kind of device is common, as is them being given out to employees when retired from use.

[@MrBearyMcBearface]

​@@deanasher2155there is a use case for x86 mini pcs over arm boards

[@PaulStevensonPinball]

I actually have one of these powering a custom homebuilt pinball machine (physical, not virtual). I write my own pinball machine control software that runs on Windows, and to challenge myself to make my code extremely efficient I picked up one of these weak PCs. It did expose a few flaws in my code, but after some development time I've got my code running nearly perfect. Not only does this tiny PC handle all the I/O for the lights, switches and solenoids (via a USB breakout board, oh and pinball is extremely latency sensitive), but also handles running the DMD animations. Bonus, I use a 27" monitor as the pinball backglass, and my control software GUI can even play videos during gameplay without affecting gameplay latency. So I agree, gaming is a big YES and 5-stars! That said, I wouldn't mind doubling the cores for some processing headroom and faster NVMe storage for quicker startup. It's surprisingly hard to find tiny, decent little PC's like this with good-enough performance at dirt cheap prices.

[@curtisbrummitt5470]

Headphone jack? Man, even flagship phones and Dells can't manage that sort of raw power.

[@RenshoYT]

Honestly would like to see this with some sort of emulation focused Linux distro like Batocera and see how it handles emulation. For the price, with the thoughtful IO and mounting options this could be a neat little TV mounted emulation box

[@whippy89]

My thoughts excactly. It would be nice to see this tested for a realistic use case like an Android TV box.

[@spookymunky1]

Something with a chip like the rk3588 would be much more suited than this I think, though they might cost a touch more... I just noticed a newer one with a cut down rk3588s being announced on liliputing in my rss feed on me phone called the Radxa Rock5 model A which seems to be on pre-order for $89 (30 discount) for the 8gb LPDDR4 version however. That is just a bare board similar to buying a pi, mind, but a kind of tempting price for an 8 core chip with a quad core mali gpu :).. the model B has more usb and hdmi and PCIe3.0 from what I can tell and came out for sale last year but is quite a bit more pricey, at least compared to the preorder discount. There are a few reviews of devices with the rk3588 being used for emulation up to ps2 and gamecube in android which is pretty good going, but it seems they have also gotten it fully supported in reborn os arch linux now which also makes it more of an actual budget mini pc competitor. Even for things like a plex server I guess since they claim it can encode 16 channels of 1080p30 and comes with 1gig ethernet and wifi 6e, lol.. not sure, I am tempted to grab one for a nosey however :)

[@Xanduur]

I’m thinking of picking it up with just that in mind.

[@Sunlight91]

I had a netbook with an N3350 CPU and only 2GB ram. It run pretty well with Lubuntu. The good battery life and low weight meant I could hike into nature and write articles while sunbathing. It even played youtube videos well in 720p. You just had to wait 2-3s for the transition into fullscreen.

[@raven4k998]

how well did it game?🤣🤣🤣

[@seymourgainz5505]

@@raven4k998 but did it game..... lol

[@hjj430]

my chromebook that was like 130 dollars can run vids in 1080p and also 4k

[@JRose-zn7iw]

Looks like a neat emergency-rig, I think I'll put one inside my case.

[@cosminmilitaru9920]

lol

[@Nalianna]

Useful for 'downloading network drivers', when you have no internet access because of lack of network drivers.

[@Chaos_God_of_Fate]

Notice at 5:15... the tracing on the board steps back and forth in MANY places adding extra unnecessary length- are they just trying to make it look like there are more traces on the board? That's incredibly strange.

[@VRIceblast]

I have one with a J4105. It works great, it's only 10watts, and I use it for my security cameras, and that's pretty much all I do with it. So if you want a tiny computer, that uses very little power, and is silent, for your security cameras, it really gets the job done quite well. Apparently, it can be upgraded to windows 11 as well. You can also hook up 3 monitors to it. Wifi, and Bluetooth.

[@Ran7IX]

You can use it to test software

[@Ran7IX]

I mean Cracked Software and torrent shit

[@swirrllfolfsky9803]

Seems like it'd be great as an alternative to a lot of smart tv accessories, like Roku.

[@soumyadeep3180]

finally, not a video fo yours that I'm watching which is decades old. jokes aside, I appreciate the amount of time and effort you put into your videos, truly unimaginable how hardworking you are! keep up the good work, Dawid!

[@handlemonium]

I'm surprised he didn't see how well it handles decoding an Xbox Game Pass or GeForce NOW cloud gaming stream.

[@tylerelson3715]

This comment doesn't apply directly to this video but I've wanted to broadcast this feeling for a while and it is general Dawid appreciation anyway. Dawid was the first tech channel I'd ever seen who taught me that you don't need the top of the line hardware every time the new model is released if your use case is 1080p gaming; and that actually you can make a pretty fantastic gaming PC at a very accessible price point. He's is relatable and entertaining and is pretty much the only tech channel I watch. Glad you're back from your holiday, here's to a great year of more shenanigans!

[@santiagolopezdeharo9031]

Yo, maybe for main pc this is trash, but this makes a great Raspberry pi alternative, if you want to use the raspberry just as a server. You could have this mini PC running a minecraft server or a smart home server , I find it to have a lot of intresting uses as a cheap and small computer

[@sf1178]

I bought one late January 2023. Didn't even tried to start Windows on it. Instead I installed DietPi with nothing but ssh, pihole and unbound. It was cheaper than buying a raspberry this time and does this job since than without any issues.

[@Jay_the_Caffeinator]

Yes!! Saturday morning with Dawid. It just doesn't make you smile more.

[@thekiddshow]

honestly yes

[@DawidDoesTechStuff]

😃

[@mattblatchley2061]

all things considered, that thing did admirably well...especially basically running off of a glorified SD card...GLAD you're back Dawid!

[@halfwaytomars]

I really wish he removed all the cynicism from his videos. It's a $100 mini pc and he's insulting it because it won't run triple A games. That mini pc has many use cases where it would be amazing.

[@bm1066]

@@halfwaytomars No, Actually, he is insulting it because it is marketed for gaming and it CLEARLY is NOT a gaming PC.

[@halfwaytomars]

@@bm1066 At the beginning he mentions it was not marketed as a gaming PC. "Gaming" was part of a generic list of use cases.

[@SilverReviews]

​@@halfwaytomars what triple a games, GTA 5 came out ten years ago, bioshock came out 16 years ago, and half life 2 came out like 19 years ago, and it struggled to run any of them

[@SilverReviews]

@@astro-ooz age of the game changes what computers can run it. It's why portable handheld PCs can run GTA 5... File sizes are one of the simplest things to fix to run a game lol.....

[@femator1]

With such low computer specs you should test youtube multimedia. How it performs as a media player at different resolutions.

[@TheBamaChad-W4CHD]

To justify the use of the word pro on the box. I've seen places like Walmart use these types of mini pc things. They use them in their hr offices where they have a line of about 25 of them hooked to monitors, keyboards and mouse. The employees can use them at any time for training and such. Primarily the training is watching videos and just clicking page after page of OK buttons. It's a quick and affordable way to allow secure access to their internal network for top secret Walmart tactical plans and such.

[@TheBamaChad-W4CHD]

Oh and each one has its own horrific little headset. I mean freaking terrible little things. They have obviously been purchased after much research of the cheapest, easiest to destroy and cheapest feeling headsets in the world. They look like the oldest of the Walkman headphones with a tiny little mic that is falling apart brand new out of the box.

[@davmbol]

These make great little Linux boxes for home server use. Hook it up to an external drive and you’ve got a $100 nas, internal vpn, dns server, torrent stack, etc in tiny lil box.

[@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep]

I'm glad you pointed out that new computers have some high CPU utilization early on in their lives. It's frustrating on the subreddit for my laptop seeing people with Ryzen 9 processors say they returned it within the first hour because it was too hot. Be patient! Let the thing update

[@My_Old_YT_Account]

Hey, be happy! Returns get sold for cheaper to us poor plebs

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

New as in newly bought or as in newly released?

[@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep]

@@HappyBeezerStudios Both

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep So if I buy an i5-9600K now I would have to wait a couple months until it gets patched colder?

[@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep]

@@HappyBeezerStudios No, not like that haha. It'd be a fresh install of Windows so it wouldn't be the same as a laptop

[@Azurko]

I could see using this in a shop, hooked up to a monitor & a laser engraver. So long as it can run Lightburn, it would work perfectly after removing the windows bloat.

[@linkpalmer]

I deploy this EXACT computer for work regularly. I've never thought to game on it. Cool to see what it could do. Can you do an Intel NUC from 2013 next?

[@bobowon5450]

im curious what you use it for. I could see maybe using something like this as a digital signage player. MAYBE a thin client.

[@linkpalmer]

@@bobowon5450 that’s exactly it, digi signs

[@immortalsofar5314]

My main machine died when I was broke and I ended up using an Asus EEE netbook (with external everything) to run my business for a year _and_ play a few games. This one is probably about as powerful so stick Linux on there and it's perfectly usable. Just probably not as a windows AAA gaming machine.

[@intellatek]

Amazon has the Minisforum HX90 with Ryzen 9 5000 series processor and 32gb of ram for ~$600. Now THAT is a good deal!

[@king-zayy-tv]

The PC I have said is $155.99, its refurbished, very good for Proxmox, Ubuntu Server, streaming/video decoding, and possibly gaming, I have not tried gaming on it, but I own 2 of them and they are VERY good, its the HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Mini Desktop Computer, Intel Quad-Core i5-6500T, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 256GB SSD, Keyboard&Mouse, VGA, DP, Windows 10 Pro (Renewed)

[@Adanos_ger]

I feel like in a thinclient environment this thing could be really nice. Like just being a terminal for running citrix. Or when it comes to gaming .. this lookes like the dream hardware to be used as a steamlink device.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Exactly. Not a machine that should do heavy tasks on end. Just short bursts of acceleration.

[@tacos863]

Video starts at 1:10

[@tt3233]

I always wanted to find one of those mini PC with a Ryzen apu in it. Then put a 7 inch screen on it. To see if you could turn it into a gaming handheld for the cheap

[@pfifo_fast]

Nvidia Jetson... thank me later

[@immortalsofar5314]

Oh, yes!

[@mrbekong]

I'm buying one. I'm a heavy mac user BUT I don't feel like shelling out moola for parallels every year for some light windows work(Nothing against them).

[@alanmoore78]

I've an Acer laptop with a 32GB eMMc drive and 4GB memory with the N3450 Celeron. It's actually great with a 128GB USB port drive and runs older games like GTA San Andreas and Driver Parallel Lines just fine. I can even run American Truck Simulator at a lower resolution. Paid $150 for it in 2016 and it still goes with me on out of town trips. If I had to replace it I'd look for an 8GB/256GB with the J4125 which seem to be close in price today.

[@jamesvespucci5527]

You should use an hdmi passthrough capture device for things like this that can't run screencap, makes it so you don't have to resort to pointing a camera to a screen

[@aeaeaeaeoaeaeaeaeae]

This seems like a pretty kickass streaming box tbh

[@thatgoddamnpotato3367]

When these videos show up, it's like Christmas but without the yelling, crying, and I actually get something out of it.

[@weegle.]

the fuck is going on at your christamases

[@bassben004]

I know it could run Doom3, because I remember when I had an Asus Z8350 laptop, and as a joke I put doom 3 on it and it ran perfectly

[@SBVCP]

What about making a powerful full size PC in a custom mini-pc-like case, to scale as everything else from keyboard to screen so you can say its a mini pc and you just shrank?

[@comixof2morrow]

Who doesn't want to play a game in slow motion?

[@CaptainZombeh]

Could be a good little machine for emulator games up to Dreamcast with Linux or Android x86.

[@JohanlastZa]

Do some retro gaming stuff on it. Things like this has a place somewhere where they will be perfect to operate it.

[@paulgavian90]

Omg cnc series

[@GuiltyKit]

I mean honestly for a little emulator box that I wouldn't weep over if it got stolen by hotel cleaning staff, lost luggage, etc, this is actually not that awful. Still these days you can just... buy a dedicated handheld emulator that actually comes with firmware built for it, is its own controller, etc, for less. But still if I needed a little throwaway to run a bunch of old games, cause I'm an old fart myself, something like this might be the thing. I know you can run them off a smartphone but it'd be nice to play them on a hotel tv or something. At least it comes with a surprising number of usb ports and the two hdmis!

[@tz8785]

A pity it needs 20V, otherwise you could try to power it with a regular (5 V only) USB charger and a simple USB-A to barrel jack cable. I did that with an even weaker Cherry Trail mini PC.

[@glitchy_weasel]

Also, it would have been cool to show how well it can game stream - given that it has an Ethernet for better connectivity and Bluetooth for controllers, it would be nice to hook it into a TV.

[@natanaelwieland5137]

when the 100$ pc has better IO then the 2000$ MacBook M2

[@JE-zl6uy]

This is a very good PC for a POS situation or any kind of front end reception kind of deal where you want the PC to be hidden, likely mounted on the monitor someone is using. It's so well designed though!

[@volvo09]

Yeah, that's a good price for a kiosk type PC. My company (before I left) was paying well over that to buy Dell wyze thin clients with similar specs, they were restricted down to a browser login for citrix to launch Citrix hosted apps. The dells were probably 250. Although this won't have remote management... Can't reimage one of these remotely, so I get why they paid for the professional product... But for a small company? Perfect.

[@JE-zl6uy]

@@volvo09 oh yeah, and I've worked on worse specced POS thin clients. This is the only time I will say soldered RAM and storage is good: when the goal is a device whose whole life is to logon to a web interface and do data entry. Like, this PCa entire life is going to be sitting under a dust filled desk with terrible ventilation while someone hammers on a greasy keyboard all day long as it sends data to a backend server to do the actual compute work.

[@BastetFurry]

Well, for 120€, whatcha gonna expect for a new device? For 120€ one could build a better PC out of used parts, but for a new one in that form factor the results aren't half bad. I would install some form of Linux tough, depending on the game that should give you five to ten more FPS as the overall system is doing less bullshit in the background.

[@leonidas14775]

I'm guessing he left windows update and windows defender running, and windows 10's default of over 120 background processes running. As someone who's got windows 10 running decently on a chromebook, you really have to strip it down to make it usable.

[@NikTek]

But does it run Cyberpunk lol XD

[@Diffferencial]

4k 69FPS else trash pc

[@loxymods]

@@Diffferencial 69k 420 fps

[@Diffferencial]

@@loxymods 420k 69.420FPs

[@loxymods]

@@Diffferencial even better

[@SilentdragonDe]

To be honest this could be a great contender for things you'd normally use a Raspberry Pi for like home automation, media streaming or even a small NAS (given it has that many USB 3 ports). Especially right now since Raspberry Pis are hard to get and therefore pretty overpriced. Also don't forget that with a Pi you'd need to add a case, heatsink, power supply and SD card, whereas this little box already comes with all of those things.

[@joe--cool]

Hmm, for that price you could build a 3 rPi supercomputer cluster.

[@SilentdragonDe]

@@joe--cool uh... Have you checked prices on the Raspberry Pi recently? If they were available at MSRP yes but they sure aren't, sadly

[@joe--cool]

@@SilentdragonDe There was one 4B 1GB in stock for 60 bucks when I checked but they are gone now. Crazy. I ordered some with 2GB last year for 40 bucks. Pretty insane. All you get now is a Pine A64+ 2GB for that price.

[@fedordedov783]

Yeah but they also have kits that include all of that for about the same price.

[@underhatches88]

By "gaming" they meant Solitaire!

[@Rickyp0123]

I totally could see this being used professionally. Actually, that seems like its intended use. With 2 HDMI and a small, mountable form factor, it seems like it would be great for POS systems or kiosks or something like that. You also don't need a fast processor or much storage for those applications.

[@silverfeathered1]

Kinda missed opportunity to give that thing a fair test. Sure, it can't run games on it's own. I don't think anyone would have assumed it could. But can it compete in the cloud gaming arena. For $100, the only thing i would have wanted to know: Can it be used for GeForceNow?

[@iarcco]

Would be interesting to see Dawid get one of the Ryzen 9 6900HX powered Mini PCs (with Radeon 680M graphics) and find some "interesting" test/use case for it, like testing 8K 60Hz gaming. Dawid's Deathmatch Arena of Death: Minisforum UM690 (or Beelink GTR6) vs. something silly.

[@DigitalJedi]

So I have a laptop that is basically that. R9 6900HS and 680M. I get similar performance to a 1650 mobile when I unlock the power limit. With that limit unlocked though I have seen 45W on the iGPU alone. The RDNA3 APUs should be even faster. We might even see 2060Max-Q performance out of them.

[@harshbarj]

I see Celeron and I run away screaming! Even a good arm chip is going to be better.

[@Smartcom5]

The worst part is, that people actually cherishing being ripped off $100 USD for some ultra-cheap (as in _shoddy_ in terms of quality, contrary to _inexpensive_ …) low-performance compute-box with utter sub-standard performance-metrics and horrible price-performance ratio, which is based upon a low-grade Dual-core of 2016, without any Hyperthreading mind you! *I mean, even the Raspberry Pi has a quad-core since years now!* A darn dual-core, even _with·out_ anything Hyperthreading in 2023, being tortured to death by of all things Windows 10 … Let's face it, it would be better of with either FreeDOS or anythign Linux/Unix. Since anything Windows past Windows 7 reduces this box to actually environmentally polluting e-waste and Intel should be charged huge fines to even issue such scrap-hardware in the first place … insurmountable

[@TheSteveTheDragon]

​@@Smartcom5 It's funny that if you don't mind getting an old computer, you actually get a far more powerful PC if you buy a corporate one. I've been using an i5-2400 based corporate PC that only cost 40 dollars for a long time now.

[@Smartcom5]

@@TheSteveTheDragon You likely misunderstood me, I've nothing against older hardware per se. I'm just stupefied by the amount of people who cheer upon being actually ripped off with glorified Intel e-Junk and pay hundreds of dollars for substandard shoddy hardware. This stuff is just e-Waste and nothing more.

[@TheSteveTheDragon]

@@Smartcom5 On that, I agree.

[@Smartcom5]

@@TheSteveTheDragon For real, _I'm serious here_ ... *It should be a criminal offense to utter this outdated junk into the market, by anyone!* - Everyone who is evidently complicit in putting such low-grade stuff or other obsolete substandard hardware alike in circulation (read: retailers), should be fined by law with substantial amounts of fines over environmental pollution by proxy, due to spread and imminent distribution of e-waste in the form of electronic rejects. … and in any case of whatsoever recurrence or contraventions, clandestine or overtly, the amounts of financial penalties shall be doubled up to 50 percent of yearly revenue, to make it worthwhile - but no less than at least $1M/months of distribution. No offense, but these discards are nothing but literal _electronic scrap_ (apart from the fact that the pure manufacturing of such stuff is a waste of precious earth and resources). These CPUs are so damn shoddy, low-grade and of such under-performing and for sure inefficient nature, that it's economically insane to even fab this e-waste in today's world in the first place. Bear in mind, that these low-grade Intel Atoms are just more or less enhanced original-Pentiums from back in the nineties (look it up, it's actually true) and are by no means comparable to anything of today's Ryzen- or Core-class CPUs. These pieces are so weak computational-wise, that it only can sufficiently run anything DOS or grass-root Windows (as in Win 3.1/95), if anything. Look up the actual processor, and you'll see, that it's often some age-old 14nm scrap, which by itself was merely some refreshed 28nm and re-issued single- or dual-core chip from back in 2009. At this particular SKU, it's the Intel Celeron Processor N3350, a dual-core on 14nm from 2016! *This is literally a EIGHT YEARS OLD CPU being sold and repackaged as 'new' ..* -- The sole reason why the marklet is flooed with it and why these useless CPUs are found to be literally in every Mini-PC or NUC-class barebone, is a) since Intel sells these bits for outrageous inflated price-tags north of $100 USD/apiece, just so that Intel can literally pay the OEMs huge 'rebates' to equip their products with it and b) Intel uses these waste-CPUs to clean their fabrication-lines and keep their fabs running (since it's exceedingly more costy to leave a fab running than to fab literally anything). Please don't think I would've anything against Intel here, I don't. I would warn people being ripped off by AMD just as likewise - It's just that AMD doesn't even _produces_ anything below a Quad-core since easily 2009 or so (AMD Athlon Phenom X3) and at least doesn't try to dupe customers into buying age-old obsolete feeble hardware ever since. You can't even buy anything below a quad-core from AMD in the first place, and rightfully so! Though Intel does this shenanigans since the 80s already and floods the market with low-grade CPUs ever since, just for them to ramp up their fabrication-lines and improve yields, until actual stuff is fabricated. It's still eWaste though, adn the usual way it goes, is, that people buy this crap, see for themselves that it's unable to run anything decent and later on it gets just tossed aside into the bin for naught (meanwhile Intel made their unfair share and pollutes the world even further with mountains of electronic wastes).

[@Macky4941]

Would be a good "gaming" machine for some older time prier to HL2 or even retro gaming.

[@watsgoinonhere1]

Ahh, the GTA V segment brought me back to a few years ago, playing on my (then) 5 year old Dell laptop, getting a WHOPPING 17 fps at 450p. Yes, 450. A 900p screen, native resolution, with 1/2x image scaling. So at least the hud looked good. I literally beat the game 5 times like that. Fallout 4, I beat 4 times at about 13 FPS.

[@Roaxes]

Ima be real, it's really funny how in my head I actually considered the 720p Skyrim somewhat playable. Really shows how bad my old lagtop was that it has lowered my standards so much. xD The half life 2 gameplay didn't bother me at all either till it was cranked up. I really got use to low end gaming.

[@ÆSH379]

I can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not

[@dewaldsteyn1306]

Nah he just thinks hes funny😂

[@legitimo1788]

I'm happy to see that some brands are making products cheaper, smaller and a lot better than raspberry pi

[@RowanBird779]

I personally use my Dell Studio with a Core 2 Duo for that. It's a lot bigger and less efficient, but oh well.

[@Shimeih]

I like this. So happy to find out about it. I was considering getting raspberry pis but they’re famously difficult to run software on so this with intel architecture is perfect for me. I’m working with an NGO to provide basic computers to kids in rural villages in my country for homework, computer literacy and exposure and this might just be the low cost solution we’re looking for.

[@gen_angry]

I would highly recommend getting surplus mini PCs like a HP ProDesk mini rather than these things. I got mine (has a 4590T CPU) off a bulk seller from ebay for $65 CAD that had everything minus RAM and SSD. Throw in a cheap $15-20 120GB SSD and maybe $10-20 for a 4gb ddr3 sodimm (may even be able to get cheaper per stick from a bulk lot), you end up paying around the same for a substantially better machine.

[@E231986]

@@gen_angry I was almost certain the problem with this solution was too much power draw, but I had to double check by researching... Apparently those little prodesk computers are fairly low in consumption. It looks like the one in the video still has a bit less than half the power draw. It's a really important consideration for developing countries in rural environments that might run all run off of one power generator and might need to turn off sections of a "grid" at certain times of day for basic needs that we take for granted in the developed world.

[@snarkasticdouche3863]

Got one of these for my mom. Was actually pretty impressed with how capable it is. Never tried it, but I have to think this would be able to run Fallout 3 or New Vegas with acceptable framerates.

[@snarkasticdouche3863]

I did order a slightly upgraded version though. Paid next to nothing on Aliexpress. For what it is, it's an impressive little box.

[@myafidk]

bought this las month, I love how manjaro KDE runs pretty well on it very much faster than win10. And some linux native games run without any problem, stardew valley, terraria, shovel knight, & retroarch can emulate up to dreamcast games.

[@yassinnajjar3044]

Can you test one of these pc boxes, perhaps for gamestreaming, either via moonlight or some cloud gaming service? Would be really interested to see the results.

[@mrglwatson]

Actually this seemed pretty decent little machine for general use. Comes with Windows which must cost some money in itself.

[@r0xis]

It would be interesting to see how it handles game streaming. Might be a super cheap option for that.

[@rayharvey1330]

Yeah...my 10 year old super weak PC runs high end 3D games like Gears 5 really well through XBOX PC Game Pass (cloud).

[@longbottle]

So... it plays games a few years old just fine, even though the hardware is cheap as hell. I can see this being perfectly reasonable for some use cases. I like playing older games, they take up less disk space, they're cheaper, etc.

[@mockier]

Feedback: Please add video playback testing for little PCs like this. I would be interesting if it even works for it's likely intended use case of video playback. ie: 4k, 1080p, 720p video playback, and youtube. It looks like something I could strap to my spare 27" monitor for movies in bed. But after that HL2 performance I'm skeptical

[@mockier]

If it doesn't manage 4k playback it's basically ewaste

[@DavidH373]

You’re being pretty rough on a Thin Client. I could see it working well for 16-bit and older emulation. For the most part these are to run remote desktop connections to VMs.

[@Quadromodo]

Leaves me wondering how long it will be before the wrist watch PC.

[@Faded_Psyco420]

Brooo same lol just a usbc to usbc and can emulate like gamecube games or something 😂

[@nana-chan4550]

I never understand why someone would buy these instead of just getting a used PC. You can get a desktop with an i5-6500, 8GB RAM and an actual SSD for the same price. And if you really need a PC that small, there's these tiny Lenovo Thinkcentre machines that don't cost much more but perform way better...

[@prawnis]

This is completly off-topic but yesterday while electric scooting around, I saw dawids office. I have no idea where exactly it is, but its to the right of a bridge

[@IntergalacticPants]

This looks exactly like the ones they use at Walmart in the tire and lube shop. I guess if you need a cheap point of sale system, this wouldn't be bad.

[@DasIllu]

Wouldn't rule out gaming on this thing. A lot of people buy these kind of SBCs to run emulators for 80's and 90's consoles.

[@ThomasGamble-bn4bb]

We don’t see enough humor in tech content today, which is why I love this channel

[@BerettaBoom]

right. what I got out of this is that League of Legends players would love this lil guy... for $100 and to play the only game u play for years on end seems like a good investment to me.

[@fuleo]

For that price, you could have scored a latest Intel N100 mini PC nowadays. Intel N3350 is circa 2016 years old.... win Amazon seller.

[@nunyabusiness4651]

In 2003 I paid $1500 us dollars for a pc that could play half-life 2 as well as this pc. This is kind of impressive considering!

[@stijnvandamme76]

The thing I really hate about these thin pc's is the external AC/DC transformer. IF somebody would just realize that it would be perfect to build the AC/DC bit IN the thin client.. and put a pass through power cable on that bugger so you can simply doublesided tape the bugger to the back of your monitor... and plug in the pass through 220 cable in the monitor PRESTO, you just turned your Monitor in an All in 1 pc.. with 1 power cable .. clean. I have a refurbished dell USFF celeron for garage pc.. To just look up somming on the internet to work in my car, or play some music or order parts. plenty powerfull

[@PlaySA]

Yeah this is something where you'd want to focus on indie games, older games, 2D games in general. Which is a lot of the gaming I do, actually, although I wouldn't buy this personally because I've already got a computer.

[@dustinsmith245]

how would something like this handle running a slicer like chitubox or cura? Im wanting something for my hobby room and all i would be doing with it is browsing the web, watching youtube vids and running those slicers for my 3d printers. Im just not sure how system intensive the slicer programs are.

[@djmadmax9486]

Actually this would be a fantastic "first pc for your child" where you just deactivate the WiFi / Internet connection completely, install some learning software and light child-appropriate games (from your own youth :D ) and off you go. This thing is amazing and puts an at this time way more expensive Pi 4 to shame :)

[@MonsterConrad]

GTA Online will always have a long loading time. I don't know if it has been patched, but one modder noticed that a line of code was endlessly re-reading itself and patching that through his mod seemed to have fixed it. IDK if the patch is live on stock GTA V.

[@guessundheit6494]

I bought a different cheap $100 amazero PC, the "bmax". Its alleged "2.4GHz burst mode" doesn't exist, it's just a 1.1GHz crapbox. It's useful as a data sorting PC (organizing stuff on old USB drives, thanks to its 3.0 ports) and as a home file server. But other than that and maybe to do document editing, it's junk. I would never use it online.

[@riseabove3082]

I own a couple of these that replaces Raspberry Pi's but I run Linux on them. One is used as a NAS storage server and it works really well for that. Much better performance than a RasPi. Would have never tried gaming on this thing but was hilarious to watch.

[@poseidon3032]

I have an old Dell Optpllex XE with a Pentium Dual Core E5300 at .2.6 GHZ I guess. Was thinking of fixing it up for the living room to stream video, browse internet, and maybe play games. Trying to decide to either go ahead with it or try and upgrade upgrade it. I hate throwing anything out, I'm an electronic hordesman, but if it won't do the job, it won't do the job.

[@williamBryan-k2e]

the reason that it is slow on first boot ( my opinionj ) is that windows 10 - by default - does not allow the user to run patching manually - and can only delay it for approx 1 week ( then again and again ). so when you boot, patch city. and when patching has caught up - it will run better ( probably ). I purchased a laptop during windows 10 transition. 5400 rpm drive and 8 gb ram. It was a brick while patching. so the first time I booted - I think I had a min or 2, then brick city for a while. Left it overnight - and ok. I up'd ram to 16 gb and replaced 5400 rmp drive for nvme ssd - what a change. Ran pretty well. If it patched - not too bad. but I really do not like non - control patching. Found out admin level changes to fix the patching problem - you turn if off completely and I guess - turn if back on to patch. I am on that laptop right now - with Kubuntu 22.04 - MUCH BETTER.

[@KaiRaphixx]

As I mini home server this would be fine for some things. Like running pihole or a unify controller. But I wouldn’t do more than that with it. And that all for 100 USD, it’s great.

[@AsciiWolf]

If it had at least 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD, it would actually be a pretty cool little PC for a great price. The high CPU usage on first boot is caused by Windows.

[@fakofakoson1667]

CPUs like that can perform much better, it is all about tweaking. I owned a 12.2" ACER switch 3 tablet a few years back with that same processor and specs, I performed a clean install of W10 LTSB2016 to get rid of all bloat with a few OS tweaks and it worked great. It ran games like hitman absolution @ 720 medium preset stable @ 35 FPS, performing about the same it also ran NFS most wanted 2012, aliens VS predator 2010, alien isolation, battlefield BC2, war thunder, black squad....., emulated consoles up to psp, nds and gamecube plus Android on bluestacks all running from a 128GB micro SD card due to the lack of space on the 64GB SSD.....

[@mschosting]

There is no point in testing games on this kind of hardware by installing them, but you can check if they run with stuff like geforcenow or gamepass.

[@MNSweet]

Would you consider revisiting this PC but swap for Linux and load Batocera on it, to make it into a dedicated retro gaming living room PC? In Windows, if it can do PS1, then all the 8 and 16bit consoles are already covered, but I'm curious if it can handle N64 and PS2 without the Windows bloat.

[@pascalfust1035]

I haven't seen any blue screen, which is sort of a good sign in the windows world, right?