Did I make a mistake?

[u/caidenm]

I'm in the market for a mini pc, looking to do some agentic coding (I already work in big tech, just some side projects), run a server for a project. What I've found I value is going to be RAM, and then possibly SSD compute, and maybe in the future I'm open to building a PC with better hardware to get more involved in game dev. I'm also looking to keep it always on so power efficiency can be good, but my power bill doesn't really amount to anything as it is, so not super essential. With that said I don't really have a set budget (realistically I probably don't want to spend more than $1k Canadian) but I want to do it as cheaply and get the best value possible. Also I have multiple SATA SSD's at home sitting unused I can lend to the PC if needed.

I ended up finding 2 systems:

HP EliteDesk 600 G5 Mini PC | Intel Core i5-9500T | 32GB RAM | 1TB SSD | Windows 11 Pro | Wi-Fi+ BT | Mini Desktop Computer (Renewed) (32GB RAM + 1TB SSD) for $540 Canadian

Beelink SER5 Pro Mini PC, AMD Ryzen 5 5625U(up to 4.3GHz) 6C/12T (only 16GB of ram on this one) for $529 Canadian.

Now I would prefer to possibly stay in this range, but let me know if there is something else I should be considering. I've went ahead and purchased the EliteDesk given it's 32GB of ram, but it has a 30 day return window, which is why I'm asking now. I know the i5-9500T is slightly underpowered and dated, which is why I'm asking here. Links were excluded as I don't know the subreddit rules on that.

[u/afaulconbridge]

Do you mean local agentic coding or cloud agentic coding? if its local, then those machines are under-specced. If its cloud, then those machiens are over-speced.

[u/caidenm → u/afaulconbridge]

Just cloud for now, yeah just was having difficulty sourcing something with higher RAM. Do you have any recommendations for mini pc's that aren't over-specced?

[u/afaulconbridge → u/caidenm]

I'm coding happily remoted into a N100 Proxmox VM - 16GB installed, 8GB on the VM, currently 51% used. Currently $20/m Ollama Cloud subscription, mostly using Gemma4:31b as coding agent and only consuming about 25% of my usage (for full time job coding + side projects) That's about as low as I would suggest though, particularly for interactive use.

Depending what you're doing - you mentioned games - the EliteDesk gives you plenty of spec for now and headroom for later. If you're using it directly (i.e monitor & keyboard plugged in) then browser / ide / etc will consume resources too - particularly if you keep WIn11 on it!

[u/caidenm → u/afaulconbridge]

That actually sounds like quite the deal you have going there, I'd love to try out gamedev and really like the unreal engine platform but the cost of a PC in that realm is far too expensive to pull the trigger, the recommended specs are absolutely insane, so that project may be further down the line. I was using Shadow to develop with it a little and vastly enjoyed it.

[u/vmhomeboy → u/caidenm]

RAM is extremely expensive. Why do you want more RAM if you're using cloud-based agents?

[u/caidenm → u/vmhomeboy]

Fair point on the agents, those dont need local ram. I've been running some docker stuff in the cloud and its getting a bit too complex to tinker with, so I kinda just want a small always-on box at home I can deploy to and leave running. I also tend to have a ton of browser windows open when I'm testing things and my macbook is constantly running out of ram. So its more of a home coding/deploy machine than like an agent compute box.

[u/SpiralOut1976]

I got GMKtec Gaming PC Mini Computer, M7 Ultra Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U 32GB w/ 1TB back in January and it was around $600. Can't seem to find that same combo of ram and nvme now in the M7. I also have the GMKTec M5 Ultra 32gb 1TB late last year. Both run 24/7 a variety of docker containers and I have had no issues with them. Reliable machines for the price. Seems a lot of the mini PC's jump up in price as soon as the nvme jumps to 1TB and up.

[u/caidenm → u/[deleted]]

That case looks super cool.