Top 5 Mini PCs Of 2022 _ $40-$499 The Best Small For Factor Computers You Can Buy
**The Best Mini PCs of 2022: A Comparison**
In this article, we'll explore some of the best mini PCs available on the market, each with its unique features and capabilities.
One of the top contenders for our list is the **Small Foreign Factor**, a compact PC that packs a punch. It has dual HDMI ports on the rear and USB Type-C video out on the front, making it easy to connect to your display or other devices. The RAM and storage can be easily upgraded, giving you flexibility in terms of customization. This mini PC is powered by a Ryzen 7 4800U, a mobile CPU that can handle demanding tasks like web browsing, photo editing, and video playback. With its eight cores, 16 threads, and max boost up to 4.2 GHz, it's perfect for everyday use.
However, the **Small Foreign Factor** may not be the most powerful option on our list. That distinction belongs to the **Menace Forum B550**, a bare-bones mini PC that can be picked up for just $319. But don't let its price fool you - this thing is a beast. It comes with an awesome carrying case and supports AAA gaming at 720p to 1080, making it perfect for indie gamers. But what really sets it apart is the included EGPU dock, which allows you to turn your mini PC into a full-fledged 4K gaming desktop. With its desktop APU, you can power through emulation like a much larger PC.
Another contender on our list is the **Small Foreign Factor**, which comes with an added EGPU dock. This unit is powered by a Ryzen 7 4800U and supports up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM running at 3200 MHz. It also has plenty of I/O ports, including audio in and out, USB Type-C, and two full-size HDMI ports. While it may not be as powerful as the **Menace Forum B550**, it's still a great option for everyday use and supports cloud gaming and indie gaming like a champ.
**The Menace Forum B550**
But what makes the **Menace Forum B550** so special? For starters, it comes with an EGPU dock that allows you to turn your mini PC into a full-fledged 4K gaming desktop. With its included APU, you can power through emulation like a much larger PC and support AAA games at 720p to 1080. The unit also supports up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM running at 3200 MHz, making it perfect for demanding tasks like video editing.
One of the coolest features of the **Menace Forum B550** is its ability to run PS3 games using emulation. And if you're into Switch emulation, this mini PC can handle that too. But what really sets it apart is its price tag - $319 is a steal for a mini PC with this level of performance.
In conclusion, each of these mini PCs has its unique features and capabilities. The **Small Foreign Factor** is perfect for everyday use and supports cloud gaming and indie gaming like a champ. The **Menace Forum B550**, on the other hand, is a beast that can handle demanding tasks like video editing and support AAA games at 720p to 1080.
Ultimately, the best mini PC for you will depend on your specific needs and budget. But with these options available, you're sure to find the perfect compact PC for your gaming or everyday use needs.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's going on everybody it's eta prime back here again if you're a regular viewer of the channel you know i love my mini pcs so i figured i'd go ahead and make a quick video on the top 5 best mini pcs of 2022 now i'm calling this video top five but we're actually going to be talking about seven different mini pcs and really three of them kind of fall in the same category so i'm going to kind of lump those together but for every pc we talk about in this video i have done a review on and i'll leave a link to the review in the description below and one more thing before we get started here i did want to kind of cap out the price at 500 now if you're interested in seeing a video with more expensive mini pcs just more powerful stuff let me know in the comments below but with everything you're going to see in this video it's going to range from 40 up to 500 so with that out of the way let's go ahead and jump right into it we're gonna start at number five and work our way down to number one which i think is one of the best mini pcs on the market right now in 2022 but coming in at number five we're going to be talking about three different pcs here these are small form factor office pcs that you can pick up used on ebay amazon and other sites like that and there's three main companies that put out pcs like this we've got hp dell and lenovo and these are great for emulation light indie gaming and some of the more expensive ones with the 7th generation i5s can do some pretty decent 720p gaming it's going to be some older stuff you're not going to run any newer aaa titles but on most of these systems with a 6th generation i5 and up you can do up to ps2 emulation with this and you can choose from several different operating systems you've got windows linux and i've seen some people install mac os when it comes to these older office pcs i personally like running something like photosera very similar to retropie it's just a linux based emulation front end and it does really well on each one of these so the first one out of these three i would recommend would be something like the lenovo m92p it is getting a bit older with that fourth generation intel i5 but these go anywhere from forty dollars to ninety dollars on ebay and amazon they're readily available and you can get your hands on these really easily they're great for video playback up to 1440p indie gaming works really well on these along with cloud gaming i would definitely use ethernet for cloud gaming but if you want to do geforce now xcloud or even stadia it's going to work out just fine now this will handle some ps2 games but i wouldn't recommend one with a 4th generation i5 or i7 specifically for ps2 because you will need a little more power but if you want to do some gamecube and anything under that you're going to have a great time with this 4th generation i5 in the lenovo m92p another one that's been coming down in price recently is the hp elite desk 705 g4 you can pick these up with ryzen 5 2000 or 3000 series apus great for 720p gaming indie gaming cloud gaming it'll handle ps2 wii gamecube and anything below that but prices can be a bit all over the place when it comes to these 705s i've seen them going for 70 dollars up to 200. but when it comes to these small form factor office pcs one of my favorites is the dell optiplex 3050. they range anywhere from 65 up to 130 you can pick them up with 6th or 7th gen intel i5s or i7 cpus it doesn't handle pc gaming like the hp elite desk but older pc games will run fine along with indie gaming and cloud gaming but this does better emulation than that ryzen chip mainly because of the opengl performance ps2 3ds wii gamecube and anything below that will run fine on this whether you use the 6th gen i5 or up to the 7th gen i7 you'll have a really good time with emulation on this thing and like i mentioned every pc i'm going to be talking about i have done a video on links for those are in the description so that's it for the first section here in the small form factor office pcs if you don't mind buying used and you know what you're doing you can get out with a really good deal no matter which one of these you choose but if you're looking for something new a bit smaller and pulls a little less energy then i would recommend the new m6 mini pc now these range anywhere from 120 dollars up to 220 depending on the ram and storage configuration but as you can see this thing is absolutely tiny it does have an actively cooled cpu so there is a fan in here it's not the most powerful mini pc on the market and when it comes to emulation you're basically good up to gamecube with this but it doesn't pull more than 15 watts from the wall and takes up no space at all as you can see if you want to use this as an everyday desktop for web browsing email checking document editing we do have more than enough power it'll also handle 4k video playback really well but with the m6 you get the intel celeron n5105 it's only four cores with the turbo up to 2.9 you can pick this up with 8 or 16 gigabytes of ram and i would highly recommend picking up the 16 gigabyte version because that will be running in dual channel it's just going to give you a little better gpu performance these usually come with 128 gigabytes of internal storage but you can also add a one terabyte drive to this unit great for indie gaming and cloud gaming it does have wi-fi 6 and 2.5 gigabit ethernet built in these will run windows 10 windows 11 or linux but i'd say the main draws to this mini pc here are the form factor itself very small i mean not much bigger than a cell phone and power consumption it'll only pull up to 15 watts from the wall and you could run this on battery power if you needed to it runs on 12 volts but if you don't mind having a little bit of a larger form factor then another one i could recommend coming in at number three is the aerofara 2 they also make the 2 pro it's still a very small pc it is actively cooled so there's a fan in here runs on 12 volts it's got a full aluminum chassis you can get this with 8 or 16 gigabytes of ram and even the 8 gigabyte model is running in dual channel it's got a single hdmi out vga got a few usb 3.0 ports on here but we basically have the same specs as the m6 because this is using that celeron n5105 four cores up to 2.9 gigahertz the one that i reviewed had eight gigabytes of lp ddr4 running at 2933 megahertz and it was in dual channels so it did help out with that intel uhd gpu they usually come with a 128 gigabyte m.2 ssd but this is easily upgradable only ac wi-fi and bluetooth 4.2 but we do have gigabit ethernet and it runs windows 10 or windows 11. price on these is around 150 dollars with the coupon they always have on amazon and i think this is a great little retro gaming machine again just like the m6 it'll handle indie gaming just fine cloud gaming and up to gamecube anything under gamecube on these n5105s does run really well n64 dreamcast psp even upscale so those were two of the newer mini pcs with a lower price tag that i wanted to mention but the next two we're gonna take a look at do have a higher price point but for good reason because they are putting down some really good power so coming in at number two is the b-link ser4 so this is actually a great little mini pc you can install linux on it it does run really well you can get this with up to 32 gigabytes of ram we've got plenty of io does come with ac wi-fi and bluetooth 5.2 love the design here super small foreign factor i think it's got a really nice look to it dual hdmi on the rear we also have usb type c video out on the front ram and storage can be easily upgraded whether you just want to swap out that m.2 drive or add a 2.5 inch drive it's really up to you but when it comes to the specs this is using a ryzen 7 4 800 u it's a mobile cpu but you can run this up to 45 watts in this mini pc eight cores 16 threads we've got a max boost up to 4.2 up to 32 gigabytes of ddr4 running at 3 200 megahertz but the lower end model comes with 16 and these are priced right at 4.99 but you can find coupons for amazon and their own website if you do a little bit of searching online when it comes to overall performance you're not going to have any problems at all using this as your everyday pc web browsing 4k video playback and up to three displays on this unit you can do some video editing on this photo editing it'll basically handle anything you want to throw at it that you use in your everyday life and when it comes to gaming obviously this is going to handle cloud gaming and indie gaming like a champ but this will also run some aaa games at a really good frame rate really depends on the game but anywhere from 720p up to 1080 i've always been a big fan of the 4800u especially when we can run it at a higher wattage and for emulation it even handles up to ps3 you can do some switch emulation on this too if you're into that so it's a very powerful small form factor pc but it is coming in with a higher price tag so i do think that this is a great little small form factor pc but number one on the list has been my favorite mini pc of 2022 and that's the menace forum b550 so this thing is actually pretty crazy you can pick up a bare bones model for 319 or you can pick up the 4700g version for 4.99 and the 5700g version is going to come in a little more but we're just going to focus on that 5700g version because of that price tag isn't exceeding 500 comes with an awesome little carrying case and by itself with the 4700g you're going to get some really great aaa gaming out of the way 720 up to 1080 depending on what game you're running it powers through emulation like a much larger pc and that's really because we've got a desktop apu in this as opposed to a mobile apu or a mobile cpu like we saw with most of the other mini pcs in this series but what makes this special is it actually comes with an egpu dock this is pretty crazy for a mini pc but you will need to add your own power supply and gpu but you can turn this into a full-fledged 4k gaming desktop depending on what video card you use in the included dock so with the 4700g version you're gonna get eight cores 16 threads you can do up to 64 gigabytes of ddr4 running at 3200 megahertz in this unit plenty of i o on the rear as you can see here audio in audio out usb type c which does support video out two full size hdmi ports a display port we've got 2.5 gigabyte ethernet but like i mentioned what makes this mini pc so cool is the addition of that e egbu dock now with the igpu built in with that 4700g you can do a lot of the aaa stuff at 720p and really game on it i mean you can have a good time with it or connect something like an rtx 3080 and turn it into a 4k gaming monster all of your favorite new aaa games 4k ultra settings on this thing and i think it looks really cool when it's set up properly so yeah that's my top five best list for 2022 at least when it comes to the 500 and under mini pc market if you're interested in seeing a video like this with more expensive more powerful mini pcs just let me know in the comments below and if you want to see reviews on any of these units links to those videos are in the description i'm also going to leave links to where you can buy any of these that i mention and if you've picked up a mini pc in 2022 for under five hundred dollars let me know what it is and what you like about it or what you don't like about it in the comments below but that's gonna wrap it up for this one and like always thanks for watchingwhat's going on everybody it's eta prime back here again if you're a regular viewer of the channel you know i love my mini pcs so i figured i'd go ahead and make a quick video on the top 5 best mini pcs of 2022 now i'm calling this video top five but we're actually going to be talking about seven different mini pcs and really three of them kind of fall in the same category so i'm going to kind of lump those together but for every pc we talk about in this video i have done a review on and i'll leave a link to the review in the description below and one more thing before we get started here i did want to kind of cap out the price at 500 now if you're interested in seeing a video with more expensive mini pcs just more powerful stuff let me know in the comments below but with everything you're going to see in this video it's going to range from 40 up to 500 so with that out of the way let's go ahead and jump right into it we're gonna start at number five and work our way down to number one which i think is one of the best mini pcs on the market right now in 2022 but coming in at number five we're going to be talking about three different pcs here these are small form factor office pcs that you can pick up used on ebay amazon and other sites like that and there's three main companies that put out pcs like this we've got hp dell and lenovo and these are great for emulation light indie gaming and some of the more expensive ones with the 7th generation i5s can do some pretty decent 720p gaming it's going to be some older stuff you're not going to run any newer aaa titles but on most of these systems with a 6th generation i5 and up you can do up to ps2 emulation with this and you can choose from several different operating systems you've got windows linux and i've seen some people install mac os when it comes to these older office pcs i personally like running something like photosera very similar to retropie it's just a linux based emulation front end and it does really well on each one of these so the first one out of these three i would recommend would be something like the lenovo m92p it is getting a bit older with that fourth generation intel i5 but these go anywhere from forty dollars to ninety dollars on ebay and amazon they're readily available and you can get your hands on these really easily they're great for video playback up to 1440p indie gaming works really well on these along with cloud gaming i would definitely use ethernet for cloud gaming but if you want to do geforce now xcloud or even stadia it's going to work out just fine now this will handle some ps2 games but i wouldn't recommend one with a 4th generation i5 or i7 specifically for ps2 because you will need a little more power but if you want to do some gamecube and anything under that you're going to have a great time with this 4th generation i5 in the lenovo m92p another one that's been coming down in price recently is the hp elite desk 705 g4 you can pick these up with ryzen 5 2000 or 3000 series apus great for 720p gaming indie gaming cloud gaming it'll handle ps2 wii gamecube and anything below that but prices can be a bit all over the place when it comes to these 705s i've seen them going for 70 dollars up to 200. but when it comes to these small form factor office pcs one of my favorites is the dell optiplex 3050. they range anywhere from 65 up to 130 you can pick them up with 6th or 7th gen intel i5s or i7 cpus it doesn't handle pc gaming like the hp elite desk but older pc games will run fine along with indie gaming and cloud gaming but this does better emulation than that ryzen chip mainly because of the opengl performance ps2 3ds wii gamecube and anything below that will run fine on this whether you use the 6th gen i5 or up to the 7th gen i7 you'll have a really good time with emulation on this thing and like i mentioned every pc i'm going to be talking about i have done a video on links for those are in the description so that's it for the first section here in the small form factor office pcs if you don't mind buying used and you know what you're doing you can get out with a really good deal no matter which one of these you choose but if you're looking for something new a bit smaller and pulls a little less energy then i would recommend the new m6 mini pc now these range anywhere from 120 dollars up to 220 depending on the ram and storage configuration but as you can see this thing is absolutely tiny it does have an actively cooled cpu so there is a fan in here it's not the most powerful mini pc on the market and when it comes to emulation you're basically good up to gamecube with this but it doesn't pull more than 15 watts from the wall and takes up no space at all as you can see if you want to use this as an everyday desktop for web browsing email checking document editing we do have more than enough power it'll also handle 4k video playback really well but with the m6 you get the intel celeron n5105 it's only four cores with the turbo up to 2.9 you can pick this up with 8 or 16 gigabytes of ram and i would highly recommend picking up the 16 gigabyte version because that will be running in dual channel it's just going to give you a little better gpu performance these usually come with 128 gigabytes of internal storage but you can also add a one terabyte drive to this unit great for indie gaming and cloud gaming it does have wi-fi 6 and 2.5 gigabit ethernet built in these will run windows 10 windows 11 or linux but i'd say the main draws to this mini pc here are the form factor itself very small i mean not much bigger than a cell phone and power consumption it'll only pull up to 15 watts from the wall and you could run this on battery power if you needed to it runs on 12 volts but if you don't mind having a little bit of a larger form factor then another one i could recommend coming in at number three is the aerofara 2 they also make the 2 pro it's still a very small pc it is actively cooled so there's a fan in here runs on 12 volts it's got a full aluminum chassis you can get this with 8 or 16 gigabytes of ram and even the 8 gigabyte model is running in dual channel it's got a single hdmi out vga got a few usb 3.0 ports on here but we basically have the same specs as the m6 because this is using that celeron n5105 four cores up to 2.9 gigahertz the one that i reviewed had eight gigabytes of lp ddr4 running at 2933 megahertz and it was in dual channels so it did help out with that intel uhd gpu they usually come with a 128 gigabyte m.2 ssd but this is easily upgradable only ac wi-fi and bluetooth 4.2 but we do have gigabit ethernet and it runs windows 10 or windows 11. price on these is around 150 dollars with the coupon they always have on amazon and i think this is a great little retro gaming machine again just like the m6 it'll handle indie gaming just fine cloud gaming and up to gamecube anything under gamecube on these n5105s does run really well n64 dreamcast psp even upscale so those were two of the newer mini pcs with a lower price tag that i wanted to mention but the next two we're gonna take a look at do have a higher price point but for good reason because they are putting down some really good power so coming in at number two is the b-link ser4 so this is actually a great little mini pc you can install linux on it it does run really well you can get this with up to 32 gigabytes of ram we've got plenty of io does come with ac wi-fi and bluetooth 5.2 love the design here super small foreign factor i think it's got a really nice look to it dual hdmi on the rear we also have usb type c video out on the front ram and storage can be easily upgraded whether you just want to swap out that m.2 drive or add a 2.5 inch drive it's really up to you but when it comes to the specs this is using a ryzen 7 4 800 u it's a mobile cpu but you can run this up to 45 watts in this mini pc eight cores 16 threads we've got a max boost up to 4.2 up to 32 gigabytes of ddr4 running at 3 200 megahertz but the lower end model comes with 16 and these are priced right at 4.99 but you can find coupons for amazon and their own website if you do a little bit of searching online when it comes to overall performance you're not going to have any problems at all using this as your everyday pc web browsing 4k video playback and up to three displays on this unit you can do some video editing on this photo editing it'll basically handle anything you want to throw at it that you use in your everyday life and when it comes to gaming obviously this is going to handle cloud gaming and indie gaming like a champ but this will also run some aaa games at a really good frame rate really depends on the game but anywhere from 720p up to 1080 i've always been a big fan of the 4800u especially when we can run it at a higher wattage and for emulation it even handles up to ps3 you can do some switch emulation on this too if you're into that so it's a very powerful small form factor pc but it is coming in with a higher price tag so i do think that this is a great little small form factor pc but number one on the list has been my favorite mini pc of 2022 and that's the menace forum b550 so this thing is actually pretty crazy you can pick up a bare bones model for 319 or you can pick up the 4700g version for 4.99 and the 5700g version is going to come in a little more but we're just going to focus on that 5700g version because of that price tag isn't exceeding 500 comes with an awesome little carrying case and by itself with the 4700g you're going to get some really great aaa gaming out of the way 720 up to 1080 depending on what game you're running it powers through emulation like a much larger pc and that's really because we've got a desktop apu in this as opposed to a mobile apu or a mobile cpu like we saw with most of the other mini pcs in this series but what makes this special is it actually comes with an egpu dock this is pretty crazy for a mini pc but you will need to add your own power supply and gpu but you can turn this into a full-fledged 4k gaming desktop depending on what video card you use in the included dock so with the 4700g version you're gonna get eight cores 16 threads you can do up to 64 gigabytes of ddr4 running at 3200 megahertz in this unit plenty of i o on the rear as you can see here audio in audio out usb type c which does support video out two full size hdmi ports a display port we've got 2.5 gigabyte ethernet but like i mentioned what makes this mini pc so cool is the addition of that e egbu dock now with the igpu built in with that 4700g you can do a lot of the aaa stuff at 720p and really game on it i mean you can have a good time with it or connect something like an rtx 3080 and turn it into a 4k gaming monster all of your favorite new aaa games 4k ultra settings on this thing and i think it looks really cool when it's set up properly so yeah that's my top five best list for 2022 at least when it comes to the 500 and under mini pc market if you're interested in seeing a video like this with more expensive more powerful mini pcs just let me know in the comments below and if you want to see reviews on any of these units links to those videos are in the description i'm also going to leave links to where you can buy any of these that i mention and if you've picked up a mini pc in 2022 for under five hundred dollars let me know what it is and what you like about it or what you don't like about it in the comments below but that's gonna wrap it up for this one and like always thanks for watching\n"