I'm running two beelinks. One n100 box for my Plex media center and a i5 one an sei14.

I've had 0 issues out of either one.

I think one of the best options currently in terms of price and power is the Chuwi Ubox, which costs around €250 on Aliexpress. It is more powerful than a Beelink SER5, has DDR5 RAM, a Ryzen 5 6600H processor, and easy access to the interior for future upgrades.

The indirect lighting solution is very good for illuminating the space, as it reduces eye strain. I have been using mini PCs for two years now, and they are the best choice if you are not going to use the PC for gaming. They are powerful enough for normal use.

I've never used a Beelink, but I can't see any reason why it wouldn't fill your needs.

Mini PCs may not be able to fit a discrete GPU, which might be something you would want to consider if you do want to play some 3D games, as it's an area where desktops without power constraints can have a benefit over laptops.

If you want to have very large amounts of media, you might want rotational hard drives, and there won't be room for them in that case, though you could get a USB enclosure.

Other than that...shrugs

ASUS NUC 15 Pro Barebone Desktop PC - Black (Intel Core Ultra 5 225H/Intel Arc 130T Graphics)

For people installing Linux on this hardware, PSA: the ethernet controller uses the I226-V chipset (igc kernel driver) and, out of the box, has a severe problem: TCP connections downstream are limited to just around 40Mbps regardless of the ethernet port speed. Eg. I connect it directly to gigabit switch and was initially confused to see that download speed was terrible in this otherwise powerful little machine. speedtest-cli shows 35Mbps, terrible.

When I tested iperf3 locally with 20 simultaneous connections, I could see that the downstream could fill the 1Gbps pipe. Then testing iperf3 with just one connect, the speed slows down to about 40Mbps. Bizarre.

Two solutions:

• Disable PCIe ASPM in BIOS/UEFI. This works fine, speedtest-clie went up to 900Mbps, but also had a consequence in CPU temps, NVME temps and power consumption. Not terrible, some 6 C degrees, and some 5 Watts on average.

I monitor this box closely, it's my new home server / HTPC. It runs 24/7 homeassistant, frigate, a bunch of other docker containers, kodi flatpak, retroarch flatpak etc.

My solution: enable ASPM globally in UEFI (the default), but disable it for the I226-V after boot:

# find the address of the controller
#   sudo lspci -vv | grep -i ethern                                                                                                                                   
#    > 57:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I226-V (rev 04)
# then at boot do:

sudo setpci -s 57:00.0 CAP_EXP+10.w=0000

specifically are 70b models at 8bit quant, usable at all on 780m?

Main application is getting a USB monitor to the front edge of my desk with my drawer keyboard and mouse setup. Stands permit easy reorientation.

A laptop alternative can have better performance with discontinued products, need a hub, and take up useless space with keyboard and trackpad, with monitor further back then I want. 2in1 flip laptops all suck at graphics/gaming. Laptops with "good" gpus will get loud, and right in front of you. Display shakes when you type.

A desktop means more clutter under desk, but, as with laptop, need a usb hub, and it seems hard to find one with even usb 3.1 (dp alt mode) that allows powering usb monitor with single cable.

laptop advantages include ups, doing something in power outage, and transportable computing. minipc + usb portable monitor not quite as portable. Tablets and phones beat the portability need, but ups is nice, and then if I think its nice, I should get one for pc/mini pc.

desktop advantage is gpu per price, and unlimited storage expansion. mini pc with 780m is simply good enough gpu with much better cpu than competitive gaming PCs. APUs also allow for very high GPU memory allocation, that could benefit some games, but also compute applications.

seems like most miniPCs still need a hub/docking station for wired key/mouse.