Methodology & sources
This is a data product, not a review site. We do not own this hardware and we do not test it. Every value in the table is read from a published source and carries a link to it; anything we cannot source is unknown and stays unknown.
The one rule
Where each field comes from
- Power and noise — third-party measurements, taken from the review that made them, credited on the cell. Chiefly NotebookCheck, whose mini-PC reviews publish idle minimum/median/maximum watts and idle/load dB(A) under a stated test setup. IdleWatt runs its own measured idle database with a published Kill A Watt methodology and is worth reading directly.
- CPU benchmarks — NotebookCheck's public processor benchmark lists (Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 6 medians). PassMark, Geekbench Browser, TechPowerUp and OpenBenchmarking all disallow our crawler in robots.txt, so they are not used.
- Configuration ceilings (maximum RAM, M.2 slots, SATA bays, ports, dimensions) — the manufacturer's own product page, because that is the page that states what the machine can be configured to, and it is the claim the manufacturer is accountable for. Where a manufacturer renders its specifications only in JavaScript, we have no static source and those fields stay unknown.
- Prices — polled daily from vendor storefronts that publish structured product data. The figure shown is the lowest listed configuration at the last snapshot.
Derived columns
Derived numbers are marked as derived and show their formula. They are computed only when every input is sourced:
$ per CB23 point— lowest listed price ÷ Cinebench R23 multi-core score.CB23 per watt— Cinebench R23 multi-core score ÷ measured maximum load watts.kWh/year at idle— measured idle watts × 8,760 ÷ 1,000.
Use-case tags
These are filters, not recommendations. Each is a rule applied to the sourced data:
| Tag | Rule |
|---|---|
| Homelab | Socketed (SO-DIMM) RAM with a stated ceiling of 32 GB or more, and at least two M.2 slots. |
| NAS | At least two SATA bays, or at least three M.2 slots. |
| Router / firewall | Two or more wired NICs and a stated link speed of 2.5 GbE or faster. |
| HTPC | At least one HDMI output and a measured idle noise level at or below 26 dB(A). |
| Thin client | Lowest listed price at or below $350 and measured idle draw at or below 10 W. |
| Small gaming | Cinebench R23 multi of 15,000 or more, in a chassis under 2.5 litres. |
| Portable dev box | Under 1.2 litres, Cinebench R23 multi of 10,000 or more, and a RAM ceiling of 32 GB or more. |
What counts as a mini PC here
A machine is in scope unless its measured chassis volume exceeds 12 litres, at which point it is a small-form-factor desktop rather than a mini PC. A machine whose volume we do not know is kept — the absence of a measurement is not evidence of size.
Coverage — what we actually have
Out of 335 models in the dataset:
| Field | Models with a sourced value | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| CPU identified | 276 | 82% |
| Cinebench R23 multi | 262 | 78% |
| Measured idle watts | 209 | 62% |
| Measured max load watts | 207 | 62% |
| Measured idle noise | 199 | 59% |
| RAM ceiling | 127 | 38% |
| RAM socketed vs soldered | 127 | 38% |
| M.2 slot count | 86 | 26% |
| NVMe generation | 86 | 26% |
| SATA bays | 6 | 2% |
| NIC count | 33 | 10% |
| NIC speed | 219 | 65% |
| USB4 / Thunderbolt | 115 | 34% |
| HDMI outputs | 246 | 73% |
| Chassis volume | 248 | 74% |
| Live price | 171 | 51% |
Which prices we track, and which we deliberately do not
Price history is built on direct-from-manufacturer storefronts — Beelink, Minisforum, GMKtec, Aoostar, Geekom — which publish structured product data and place no restriction on retaining it. That is also where the coupon stacks and flash sales actually happen.
Amazon prices are deliberately excluded from price history. The Amazon Associates Program Policies permit displaying an Amazon price only when it comes from Amazon's own API or widget, and cap caching of that pricing data at 24 hours. A historical Amazon price chart needs exactly the retention that forbids, so we do not build one. Amazon links carry no price.
| Source | Status |
|---|---|
| Beelink | polled daily |
| Minisforum | polled daily |
| GMKtec | polled daily |
| Aoostar | polled daily |
| Geekom | polled daily |
| Geekbuying | candidate — crawling permitted, price extraction not yet proven |
| Amazon | excluded — 24-hour cache cap on pricing data under the Associates Program Policies; history not permissible. |
| AliExpress | excluded — robots.txt disallows /items/*, /productdetail/*, /search/* and /api/* for general crawlers. |
| Banggood | excluded — robots.txt disallows /search/, so there is no permitted way to discover product URLs at scale. |
Price history
Prices are captured daily and never overwritten. The last snapshot recorded 1385 priced listings across 273 products from 5 vendors. Price history cannot be reconstructed after the fact, so collection started before any of it was displayed.
Crawling
Every source is fetched politely: robots.txt is honoured, one request at a time per host with a delay between them, and everything is cached so a page is fetched once rather than repeatedly.