Computers don’t have to be large anymore. Apple has the MacMini and the MacPro is also very compact. You can get a long way with a Raspberry Pi nowadays. And I particularly like Intel NUCs.
How about gaming? Occationally I play Windows games (using Steam) that require a gaming computer. I needed to replace my old gaming computer (an Intel i5 2450 @ 3.1GHz I think, with a Radeon 9000 graphics card) and decided to give the gaming NUC a try, the Hades Canyon, or NUC8i7HVK.
Its a barebone machine the size of a broadband router so I needed to get an M.2 SSD (500GB) and RAM (2x8GB) and I installed Windows 10 on it (the natural choice for gaming, and I have heard this NUC is not working well with Linux).
Well, after a week with this machine I like it. Installation was smooth. It looks quite good and it is very small. Most of the time it is completely silent. Sometimes during gaming the fans spin up, but it does not sound worse than my old desktop (quite the opposite, I would say). It is obviously not the most powerful gaming machine but it replaced my old machine with no trouble.
Well, for benchmarks and details, read a “real” review.
I am satisfied with the Hades Canyon as a gaming computer. It will be interesting to see if I am happy with it in a few years, or if it turns out to have a short service life.
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