Five budget mini PCs worth buying in October 2026

Cheap mini PCs cost more than they did a year ago, and the cause is memory. Prices below were checked on 31 October 2026, and several of them will move before Black Friday.

This guide covers five boxes that make sense at different budgets, from a $269 browsing machine to a refurbished office PC and an 8-core Ryzen. It also covers a rumoured Intel chip that could replace today’s N-series processors, and whether that should change what you buy.

Why mini PC prices keep creeping up

Memory and flash storage are the expensive part of a small PC now. Minisforum announced price adjustments in November 2025 for configurations that include pre-installed memory and SSDs, while barebone models without RAM and storage were left alone.

The pressure hasn’t eased. Computing for Geeks cites a TrendForce report from 20 October that expects DRAM contract prices to rise about 20% quarter on quarter in Q4. TechRadar makes the same point about today’s deals: rising memory prices have lifted mini PC costs this year, so a $269 Geekom is a reasonable price rather than a steal.

Upgrading later is no longer a cheap fix either. Budget Homelab puts an 8GB to 16GB RAM upgrade at roughly $60 to $120 in October 2026, and a 16GB DDR4 SO-DIMM at about $90 to $120. That makes the RAM already inside the box a bigger part of the decision than it used to be.

The specs that matter at this price

Chip and cores. Intel’s N95 and N150 are four-core processors built for low power. The N150 runs up to 3.6GHz with a 6W base TDP, according to ITPro’s review of the Beelink Mini S13; Geekom lists the N95 in the Air12 Lite at 15W. Both are fine for tabs, documents and video, and both will feel slow once you open a dozen heavy apps.

An 8-core Ryzen is a different class of machine. It costs roughly $130 to $160 more in the examples below, and it is the sensible step if you edit photos, run virtual machines or keep a lot of browser windows open.

RAM. 8GB is the floor for Windows 11, and it’s where the cheapest boxes stop. 16GB is comfortable. Check whether the memory is a replaceable SO-DIMM or soldered LPDDR5, because that decides whether you can fix a bad configuration later.

Storage and networking. A second M.2 slot lets you add a drive for the price of the drive. A 2.5GbE port matters if you move big files to a NAS or plan to run the box as a small server. Wi-Fi generation matters too: one Best Buy reviewer of the Geekom Air12 Lite complained that its Wi-Fi 5 topped out at 50 to 100 Mbps in their home.

The five at a glance

Prices are as of 31 October 2026 unless a cell gives another date. Rows run from cheapest new box to dearest.

Model	Chip	RAM / SSD	Price (USD)
Refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q	Varies by listing	Included, varies	about 150 to 250 (Oct 2026)
Geekom Air12 Lite	Intel N95, 4 cores	8GB DDR4 / 256GB	269
Beelink Mini S13	Intel N150, 4 cores	12GB LPDDR5 / 500GB	339 (24 Oct 2026)
Beelink SER5 Pro	Ryzen 7 5825U, 8 cores	16GB DDR4 / 500GB	398
Trigkey Key R8	Ryzen 7 8745HS, 8 cores	32GB DDR5 / 1TB	429 (22 May 2026)

The Key R8 price is five months old, and with memory rising since then you should expect it to be higher today. Treat it as a floor.

Street price of the four new boxes. Price (USD): Geekom Air12 Lite 269, Beelink Mini S13 339, Beelink SER5 Pro 398, Trigkey Key R8 429 (USD) — Street price of the four new boxes
Source: TechRadar and Best Buy (Air12 Lite, 31 Oct 2026); Computing for Geeks (S13, 24 Oct 2026); US reseller listing (SER5 Pro, 31 Oct 2026); The Gadgeteer (Key R8, 22 May 2026)

Geekom Air12 Lite: the $269 browsing box

TechRadar reports the Air12 Lite at $269 at Best Buy, down from a $599 list price, with an Intel N95, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and Windows 11 Pro. Geekom’s own store showed $319 with a code that brings it to $269. The Best Buy product page’s metadata showed other figures ($349 and $279), so confirm the price at checkout.

On Geekom’s product page, the box measures 135.5 x 115.5 x 34.5 mm and has 6 USB ports, a 9-pin serial port, dual 4K output and a 3-year warranty. The RAM is DDR4 that Geekom says is expandable to 16GB, which is the sensible upgrade given the price of an 8GB starting point.

TechRadar’s own verdict is to skip it if you multitask heavily or want to game. That matches the hardware: this is an email, documents and streaming machine.

Beelink Mini S13: the N150 with room to grow

The S13 uses the newer N150. Current listings sold by Beelink carry 12GB of LPDDR5 and a 500GB SSD, and Computing for Geeks recorded $339 on 10 and 24 October 2026. A European retailer, PhoneDroid, lists the EU version at €349.90 including tax, with Windows 11 Pro.

Vivid Repairs lists four 10Gbps USB ports, 2.5G LAN, Wi-Fi 6 and dual 4K HDMI outputs. Computing for Geeks puts its buy-below target for the S13 at $300, so $339 is fair rather than good.

The price history is the awkward part. At launch the S13 had 16GB of DDR4 and an MSRP of $219. Today you pay $339 for less RAM.

Beelink SER5 Pro: the older Ryzen that still pays off

The SER5 Pro pairs a Ryzen 7 5825U (8 cores, 16 threads, up to 4.5GHz) with 16GB of DDR4-3200 and a 500GB NVMe SSD, per a Walmart listing of the Beelink spec. Memory goes up to 64GB, and there’s room for a 2.5-inch SATA drive.

It’s an older design, so you’re buying last-generation silicon. A US reseller listed it at $398 on 31 October 2026, and an eBay listing earlier this year was $419. Some resellers also sell a 32GB version for $499 at Newegg, which only makes sense if you know you need the memory.

Trigkey Key R8: Ryzen 7 8745HS for a bit more

The Gadgeteer picked the Key R8 as a simple workhorse. Trigkey lists the base build with a Ryzen 7 8745HS that boosts to 4.9GHz, 32GB of DDR5-5600 SO-DIMM and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD for $429 (the 22 May 2026 figure above).

The Gadgeteer says it handles 1080p Steam games on the Radeon 780M graphics. At that memory configuration, it’s the only box in this guide where the RAM alone would cost serious money if you bought it separately, so a price near $429 would be good value.

Refurbished ThinkCentre M720q: the used alternative

Budget Homelab lists a refurbished ThinkCentre M720q (or an EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini) at about $150 to $250 in October 2026, with RAM and SSD already included. It also notes that a new 16GB box costs $300 to $450, roughly double.

These are enterprise machines with proven hardware, but you get no new-generation chip and no manufacturer warranty comparable to the 3 years Geekom lists. Condition and seller matter more than the model name.

Price per core, and what it shows

The cheapest box is not the cheapest per unit of processing. Our calculation divides each new box’s price by its CPU core count: $269 / 4 = $67.25 for the Air12 Lite, $339 / 4 = $84.75 for the S13, $398 / 8 = $49.75 for the SER5 Pro, and $429 / 8 = $53.63 for the Key R8.

Cores aren’t equal across chip families, and the Key R8 price is from May. The direction is still clear: for roughly $130 to $160 more than the Air12 Lite, you double the cores.

Our calculation: price per CPU core. USD per core: Geekom Air12 Lite 67.25, Beelink Mini S13 84.75, Beelink SER5 Pro 49.75, Trigkey Key R8 53.63 (USD per core) — Our calculation: price per CPU core
Source: Our calculation from the prices and core counts above (4, 4, 8 and 8 cores); cores differ in speed between chip families

Best for… picks by budget and use

Under $300, basic use: the Geekom Air12 Lite at $269, if you only browse, write and stream. Budget for a RAM upgrade if you keep many tabs open.
Under $250, no new box needed: a refurbished ThinkCentre M720q at about $150 to $250. Check the RAM and SSD in the listing.
Home server or quiet desk machine: the Beelink Mini S13 at $339, for 2.5G LAN and a second M.2 slot, but wait for it to approach Computing for Geeks’ $300 target.
Most work and light photo editing: the Beelink SER5 Pro at about $398, with the best cost per core of the four in our sum.
Best specs per dollar if you can find it near $429: the Trigkey Key R8, for 32GB of DDR5 and 1TB of storage.

Buy now or wait: the Moon Lake rumour

This section is a rumour. Tom’s Hardware reports that the leaker Jaykihn has revealed base specs for an Intel chip called Moon Lake: four low-power efficiency cores, no performance cores, and a 6W TDP. The site reads it as the likely successor to N-series chips, aimed at laptops and mini PCs in the $300 to $500 range.

Club386 adds a configurable power range of 6W up to 15W. Notebookcheck says it would use the same BGA1516 package as today’s Wildcat Lake chips, which have up to two Cougar Cove performance cores and four LP-E cores.

The timing is the key detail. TweakTown says the leak points to a 2028 arrival and notes it doesn’t establish how performance compares with current chips. If that holds, waiting means more than a year with an old PC, while memory prices stay high. Wait only if you can live without a new machine until then.

What this means for you

If your current PC is dying, buy now and put the money into RAM. The Air12 Lite at $269 and the S13 at $339 both have enough chip for office work, but the 16GB boxes age better. If you can stretch to roughly $400, the SER5 Pro is the one to pick.

If you can wait a month, Black Friday may help. Computing for Geeks expects discounts mostly to bring prices back to where they sat before the spike, so set a target: about $300 for the S13, and watch for the Key R8 below its May price of $429.

Whatever you choose, read the listing for the RAM size and type, the SSD size, and the Windows edition before you pay. And if you want a used box, ask the seller what exactly is inside before the model name convinces you.

Sources

Header image: illustration, AI-generated.