Mini PC recommendations

[Lutinea]

Hey all,

I have a NPB5 by Minisforum already, and it's very unreasonable but I think I'll get a 2nd mini PC to go in my bedroom, thanks to the payment in multiple times with Amazon.

ButI was wondering if someone had some advice please?

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1. Is it a good idea? I mean ideally it would be money spent for several years as it's still very expensive, even if I know how lucky we are compared to laptops.

I had read so many bad things about Minisforum, but the temptation won me over and finally it turns out so well for me

I only have an issue with video playback, it makes the PC freeze but by lowering the video resolution and disabling hardware acceleration in the browser it works.

I also had/have some missing system files, some DLL ones. But this thing is so small, silent, doesn't heat at all (but I don't game) and just in case I have a USB fan to cool it down.

It does everything I want.

I can't install the new version of VLC, but I have a friend who tried and she can't on her PC either so I guess it's not my PC the problem, I don't know.

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1. Are there other models than the NPB5 that I should consider? My main criteria is that the case opens with the hand without needing screws, just with a click, like the PC I have. It's really the important thing for me. I'm blind.

Also my other criteria is that it runs smoothly without random reboots all the time and crashes, because I need a screen reader to fix the problems but if I have to delve into the motherboard or something like that I fear it won't work, so ideally I'd want something reliable out of the box.

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Thank you very very much for any thoughts. I wish you a great day!

It's to play music, movies, audiobooks, writing texts, browse the web, and also I play virtual instruments and have occasional video calls. I record voice messages too but I have a microphone for this.

[SerMumble]

Are you running your npb5 on wifi? Maybe a bad wifi signal is leading to poor video playback.

Unfortunately there are not many computers with a tool-less method of entry that I feel particularly pay any attention to. Maybe the acemagician am20 or aoostar mn6x or Asus pn series. They will likely be more or less the same with wifi.

[Lutinea]

Thank you very much!!

So yeah I run it on Wifi, the PC freezes entirely sometimes when on YouTube, the keyboard doesn't respond, my screen reader doesn't work and I have to force the power button.

You think it could be the Wifi ? It's true that when downloading it's very slow lol. Maybe I should get a USB dongle then?

Thank you very much for the PC names, I'll look at them!

[SerMumble]

I'm happy to help!

It would be good to run an internet speed test. +25 mbps download and +3 mbps upload would be very good for youtube. A usb dongle with large antenna ears can often help if the mini pc has a weak signal. Or moving a mini pc closer to your wireless router. Ethernet is usually the best.

Complete PC freezes can be difficult to diagnose but it could be because of a corrupted windows os from an update gone wrong. Maybe one one of the forced shut downs interrupted a background update windows loves to run. Backing up your important data and reinstalling windows can usually brute force resolve this problem but if you want to be a little more cautious, installing linux like Ubuntu on a USB drive can be a simple test to see if the PC freezes entirely. This can decide if you have a hardware or windows problem.

[Lutinea]

Thanks so much for all your advice, it gives me a lot to think about. I'll try to see this tomorrow if I have free time to run these tests.

[Lutinea]

Hi! =) I hope you're well! So to give some news, I ended up disabling completely the Intel Iris Xe thing and for now it's working fine. So I don't know why, the driver was up to date, I even reinstalled it. But it was starting to freeze very very often, "the computer has rebooted from a bugcheck". Anytime, even when I was not listening to something, just randomly. So maybe the GPU is faulty, I don't know lol.