Why Compact Gaming PC’s Deserve a Spot in Your Home

Custom Gaming PC’s are one of the many types of systems we build that have a wide range of customization options, especially when it comes to size. When you're researching online for one, odds are that one of the first images you’ll see is a PC Tower that has a glass side panel, a large GPU that takes up three PCIe slots on the motherboard, and numerous fans that probably light up and look nice. In short, it makes you think that bigger is better, but that isn’t always the case, a mini gaming PC that boots directly into Steam with Bazzite can also be an option. It’s not the size of the system that matters, but what hardware is packed inside it, which determines how well a PC performs.

Making Room

The first PC my family had was a tower PC that we had in our downstairs living room, crammed in the corner since by that time computers had become a must-have device to be owned in your home for both work and school. We were not allowed to have any games on it because my parents wanted us to focus on our work before anything else, but even then, when I was playing online flash games, I was crammed in the corner downstairs behind a couch, which is not the most comfortable place for a game setup.

It wasn’t until later in college that I got my own laptop, which, while useful for taking notes and doing school assignments, didn’t have the power to be used for gaming. The portability of it made me realize what I had been missing out on as I took it everywhere with me, happy to do whatever work I needed to do on it until the battery started to go.

Eventually, I got a better Laptop that I could use for gaming, but at the cost of it being a beefy machine that caused back pain from carrying it around, I eventually just set it up at my desk in my room and continued to use my older laptop with the bad battery until I couldn’t anymore. While my new laptop worked just fine for workloads and some games, the interface of a laptop really didn’t work for games designed for a separate mouse and keyboard when I just had the integrated keyboard and touchpad. Thankfully, that changed when I finally got an actual PC soon after joining AVADirect.

Desktop vs Laptop

When I was getting my computer set up at my place, I had to be sure about a couple of things while setting it up. My desk was between the door to my bathroom and my closet, so I had to make sure that my monitor wouldn’t be knocked over when I pulled either door open. Now, thankfully, when I moved, I had much more freedom with my options for either a gaming PC or a gaming laptop.

However, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to get: another heavy-duty laptop or a desktop? I liked the portability that the laptop provided, but a desktop had much more power for gaming than the laptops I had owned at the time. So, to me, the answer was obviously a full gaming PC. Due to this, I also needed to make sure my PC could fit underneath my desk and not be damaged by wayward doors. As such, my feet were crammed underneath a desk right beside my computer, not the most comfortable position to be in.

It wasn’t the most comfortable setup, I won’t lie, but it allowed me to play modern games without any issues and allowing me to use a mouse and keyboard that wasn’t attached to my laptop. However, the tradeoff was that the space it took up made it a hurdle to move around or just to find a place for it. With mini PC’s like the one shown below, it could have fit on the desk itself and left me with my feet free to move around.

Size Matters Not

I was making things much harder for myself than they needed to be. There are a huge number of customization options we have at AVADirect; however, I thought that a smaller case would minimize those options, so I went with the standard size. As it turned out, that wasn’t true at all. Small form factor cases can house just as powerful GPUs, motherboards, RAM, and CPUs as a normal-sized gaming PC can. I had always assumed the phrase, ‘the bigger the better,’ when it came to custom gaming pc’s because my opinion had been just that. Every PC I got was bigger than the last one, which I could game on with more and more options before running into performance issues, so a smaller system was a downgrade in my mind.

In reality, it’s just the parts that you have in your system that determine its performance, not the size of the case that they’re housed inside. You can have a 3050 GPU put inside the largest case you own, but a high-powered Radon GPU inside a mini pc will outperform it regardless. Same thing if you put 8GB sticks of RAM in a larger case compared to 16GB in a mini.

Recently at AVADirect, we released a brand new configuration that embodies this idea, a mini-form-factor gaming PC. As we’ve shown with the recent release of HAZE, you don’t need a full-sized gaming pc to have an enjoyable gaming experience. In fact, we went as far as to use Bazzite to boot this configuration directly into Steam so it would be more like a console than a PC. This is just one of the specialized options that we have, which is already highly configurable. That’s nothing compared to the countless options we have for mini gaming PC’s.

Challenges

 One hurdle that can sometimes limit a Mini PC is the cooling system. Due to their size, PC’s that are smaller form factors can have some limitations on what we can fit inside them to maintain thermals. Most systems integrators use air cooling because it is the easiest to fit inside these smaller form factors, and they are traditionally easier to install. We, on the other hand, put our customers’ needs first and install AIO water cooling systems inside the cases. This can be a pain to do, don’t get me wrong, but it is sometimes the only way to provide sufficient cooling to the system and maintain performance.

This is, in part, because the largest challenge of a mini pc is clearance and space management. While there is specialized hardware that is meant for a mini pc, it can still be challenging to assemble just due to the limitations that come with PC’s this small. You can make a power supply as small as you want, but you still need to route the cables to the board and GPU. However, these challenges aren’t insurmountable, and getting past them leads to having a powerful gaming PC that you can have within the comfort of your living room.

Stepping into the world of custom gaming PCs is a fun, but challenging experience. With the massive rise in popularity of mini gaming PCs options are truly limitless. If you are looking to configure your own mini gaming PC, you can reach out to our sales team or mess around with our configurator. If you are looking for something pre-configured, HAZE is a great option. So, are you ready to take the step into the world of custom PCs? We are waiting for you when you are!