Top 4 Budget Windows Mini PC’s

By Kyle Venter, Senior Engineer, Dial a Nerd

Mini PCs can be a great way to save space, power, and money so we at Dial a Nerd looked at a few models that can replace your home PC while still running the same operating system you’re familiar with, Windows.

Have a look at our top 4 below:

4. Revo One Windows PC

The specs on the Revo One are a bit older compared to other PCs on the market as it comes with Windows 8.1. A nice add on is the smartphone app which allows you to control the PC from your phone. The Revo One would pack a pretty punch if you were to upgrade the disk storage and the RAM.

3. Acer Aspire Mini PC

The Acer Aspire is a great start for anyone wanting to go “mini”. It has the basic RAM, CPU and power consumption you would expect from a mini PC and comes at a very fair price tag of R4 200.

2. Mecer Extreme Jupiter Mini PC

The Acer Aspire and Mecer are very similar in terms of specs, however, the Mecer can be upgraded to 32GB RAM. The Mecer also has an upgrade option to SSD to allow for a faster machine. Unfortunately, the Mecer has the highest power consumption of the devices compared.

1. CloudGate X

CloudGate X is the silent winner of our list. With no moving parts, the CloudGate is a quiet mini machine that consumes less power to boot. The CPU is powerful enough for the device to be used as a home center or business computer and it ships natively with an SSD hard drive to make it as fast as possible. This device is the most energy-efficient out of the devices that we looked at using 15 – 24 W of energy and can be purchased with a security cage to allow it to be mounted under a desk if required.

Compare our top 4 below and let us know what you think in the comments!

	Acer Revo ONE Windows PC	CloudGate Square	Acer Aspire XC830 Celeron J4005	Mecer Extreme Jupiter Intel Pentium
Processor Name	Intel Celeron Dual-core	Intel Quad-Core Apollo Lake	Intel Celeron J4005	Coffee Lake Pentium G5400
Processor Speed	1.40 GHz	Up to 2.2 GHz	2.7Ghz	3.7GHz
RAM	2 or 4 GB DDR3 (upgradeable to 8GB)	4 or 8 GB DDR4	4GB DDR4 (upgradeable to 8GB)	4GB DDR4 (upgradeable to 32GB)
Storage Capacity	500GB Sata (Upgradeable to 2TB,2.5″)	64 GB EMMX SSD (Upgradable to  128GB/256GB	500GB 3.5 SATA	500GB 2.5 Sata(supports 1 x m2 For SSD)
Graphics Card	Intel HD Graphics	Intel HD Graphics 500	Intel UHD Graphics 600	Intel HD Graphics
Operating System	Windows 8.1 64 bit	Windows 10, Linux or Chrome OS	Windows 10 Home 64-Bit	Windows 10 Home 64-Bit
Power consumption	65 W	15 W, 24W max	N/A	19V, 90W AC
Price	R4,806	64GB: R3 799 ex VAT or 192GB: R4599 ex VAT	R4,200	R5,189
Seller Details	https://www.takealot.com/acer-revo-one-windows-pc-media-player/PLID40362316/product-information	www.cloudgate.co.za	https://www.takealot.com/acer-aspire-xc830-celeron-j4005-4gb-500gb-win10h-desktop-pc/PLID53824721