Hi,

The GPU on my gaming rig died recently, I wasn't using it much though so I'm thinking of just shelving it for now and getting something small, mostly for browsing and maybe playing some old games (Alpha Centauri, plus the huge backlog of classic CRPGs I have).

I've been looking at mini-pcs and there's some impressive stuff out there but I like the look of this little one https://www.pccasegear.com/products/36378/breezelite-sn3-x5-z8300-windows-10-mini-pc

I'd be buying from Australia so with that one I know the power plug will fit etc. That one is at $229AUD with 2GB of DDR3 ram, and they have a similar model for $300 with 4GB ram. I didn't really want to spend that much but I'm not sure how much of a difference the extra 2GB of ram would make for me. I'll mostly be browsing and playing old 2D games.

Any advice regarding the ram, or anybody have experience with little PCs?

I was going to suggest taking a look at the NUC series, but I see that the PC you linked is actually a NUC chassis. I paid a similar price for an Intel-brand NUC, Celeron CPU but without an OS. Haven't done game stuff with it since it's for a work project, but so far it feels like using a regular PC.

i was going to suggest a zontac with a geforce
but then i saw your requirements
it would be overkill

anyway always spring for more ram if you can afford it
a lot of the software these days are bloated and have huge ram footprints
even a browser can be a ram sponge
4 gig is a very comfortable middle of the road amount

5-10 minutes of using Chrome will help you make up your mind. :)

If you are only playing old 2D games, then 2Gb should be more than enough. That model looks like you can easily add 2Gb later if you need.

If you're mostly going to browse the web and little else, might consider the Raspberry Pi...

Old games won't take much processor or memory. It's web browsing part you should be cautious for. Web these days is heavy, too heavy for 1st generation netbook with 1gb ram. If you can you, don't settle with 2gb. The more the better

yeaah no
2 gig is threadbare these days
4 gig is the absolute minimum the web is too clogged with shit to have anything other then 4 gig

i got 12 gig and i couldnt do with less

Thanks for the responses.

I did look at the Rasberry Pi but I'm not too confident installing Windows 10 on it, it's probably easy but I Iike the idea of it coming already installed.

I'm tempted for the extra RAM, but is an extra $70 AUD for 2GB of ram right?

its a bit pricey you can get 2 exctra gig for a lot less
it mostly depends on how easy that thing is to open and how confident you are installing ram

Personally I wouldn't get an Atom machine even for that price, especially 2GB ram and 32GB storage is pretty poor. You might be able to get older generation Intel NUC with Core i3 at or less than $300 at times, maybe it's harder in Australia, but do you guys have Black Friday there?

The problem with going with Intel NUC is you have to provide some of your own parts and even Windows license (unless you use linux). It's better to find a prebuilt PC.

this one comes with windows 10

Exactly, which I think will run like crap on that spec.

well yeah for us maybe
other people have different kind of tolerance and his requirements are low

the better spec'd nuc's are kits and if you dont have windows soem ram and a hd or ssd lying around
it can be quite expensive

About the Raspberry Pi or similar: don't. They use ARM CPUs, so does everything running Android, thus unless the "old 2D games" you want to play are emulated console games (and sometimes even then; ZSNES' non-x86 ports are terrible), you really, really want an x86-compatible CPU.

About the computer you linked to: it looks great for the price, your concern about ensuring the plug works in your country is a good thing to keep in mind, as well as warranty issues. At work we buy similar PCs in bulk from China for a product we make, they can be much cheaper and are getting better (and cheaper!) almost every month, but we do have to worry about the plug, and sometimes QA is a tad iffy; you might still want to take a look there, but unless you're buying 30, 40 at a time like us, I'd say the savings aren't worth the hassle.

And about RAM: the more the better for web browsing, *specially* on Windows land. 2 GBs is liveable on Linux, I'm doing so right now, but even my big, beastly Windows 10 desktop felt noticeably better after upgrading the RAM from 4 to 12 GBs.