TINY Barebones PC – AsRock DeskMini Review
|If you need the ultimate tiny PC, I don’t think it gets better than this. This is the AsRock DeskMini, the 310 intel version, although they do make a Ryzen compatible version alongside a more “gaming” option with a full fat GTX 1080 inside, but this is the more “average mans’” option.
It’s tiny, and quite frankly it fits anywhere you’d need it. On your desk? Done. On your monitor with the VESA mount? Done. On your TV stand? Done. In your shoe? Well, not quite. But it’s close.
So what’s the use case for this tiny machine then? Well, it’s pretty much the perfect office PC. Home or at work. It’s also a brilliant HTPC, you can even run it with something like Kodi or as a plex server if you wanted.
A quick tour of it will reveal that while it’s a bit limited on USB ports, with one type C on the front, and a total of 3 type A’s all round, it’s able to pack a pretty decent punch inside. It’s using an H310 chipset which means it only supports 8th gen CPUs – I’m currently using an 8700K because that’s all I have, but if you were buying new I’d aim for an 8400. It’s also got 2 DDR4 SODIMM RAM slots, which is great as it supports up to 32GB of RAM – although for me I’ve got this great Corsair Value Select stick they sent over that I actually highly recommend as it’s amazing, well, value.
It also has 2 M.2 Slots – now don’t get your hopes to high, only 1 is for an SSD, the other is for an E-Key WiFi module – which is great to see supported. And if one M.2 SSD isn’t enough for you, they’ve actually got 2 SATA ports on the back of the board and space for 2 2.5” drives – which is awesome. That means if you throw in 2 of these 5TB Seagate Barracuda drives you can use the thing as a freaking NAS. Or more likely a 2TB HDD and 500GB SSD…
There is also a little hidden MicroSD card slot back there too, which means if you want to say run FreeNAS or a linux distro off an SD card, that’s also supported too which is brilliant.
Actually using this is pretty nice, I’m running Windows 10 here, but this could easily run any OS you like and is crazy versatile, especially for it’s price.
Speaking of the price, this one, barebones, is only about £150. Add in the 8GB of RAM I’ve got, the 240GB M.2 SSD and an 8400 and you are looking at around £400 for a pretty powerful and super versatile mini PC, and I really can’t argue with that. Would I put this on my desk? Well, I tend to need a bit more GPU horsepower than this, but for a mini HTPC or for an office PC, 100% yes. Highly recommended.
Want one? Amazon: http://techteamgb.co.uk/deskmini310
Products shown provided by: AsRock
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