ASRockDeskMini 310 - Mini-PC - keine CPU - 0 GB, 90BXG3701-A10GA0W

Great little box only issue was closing the box after adding extra USB adaptor as the cable kept getting in the was preventing the back from going in.

Using this as a dev machine with a 8700 i7 CPU and 32GB of RAM, all for less than £700. Unbeatable price. and it's neatly tucked away on my desk.

Having had several older generation Intel Nuc's i was keen to upgrade to newer hardware and see what other alternatives there were in the small form factor market.The AsRock DeskMini 310 is great for anyone who wants more flexibility and performance than a NUC at the slight expense of additional size. The unit supports desktop 8th and 9th Gen Intel CPU's which you are free to purchase yourself. This in my opinion is much better than the Intel Nuc as the desktop CPU's often offer better performance in both CPU and core count than the parts used in the thermally constrained Intel Nuc's. Additionally, as the CPU is replaceable, it is also upgradeable which is a big plus for me over a NUC.As the unit is bigger than a NUC it has increased airflow and a much bigger fan (I used the fan that came with the CPU) meaning the device is quiter under load than the NUC.It would have been nice if the USB C supported thunderbold 3, however I do have two gripes with the unit.The first is the unit is supplied with a european power lead - luckily I had a standard UK figure of 8 that I was able to use. I was suprised at as the unit was dispatched and sold by Amazon and not a third party which may have been using grey market stock.Secondly, my first unit was DOA - it would only boot with a memory module inserted into slot 2. This took a while to figure out but Amazons returns process was great - they sent a new one out immediatly before i had sent the existing unit back. The new unit worked as expected (Although still came with the Eurpoeant power lead).Overall, I would recommend this unit to anyone looking for a small, powerful computer that is also considering a NUC. This unit will give you better upgradability, performance and acoustics than a NUC. It is great as a home server or lab hypervisor for all the IT pro's out there.

As the title says, this is a great little bare-bones system, but there are a couple of annoyances. Firstly, if you look at reviews on Youtube, you'll see that in some territories the Deskmini 310 comes with a wi-fi / bluetooth card as a part of the package. Not so with this one - I bought it separately & it cost about £20 extra. You could save a bit by buying a cheap USB wi-fi adapter, but as the Deskmini only has 4 USB ports (two of which are used by a keyboard & mouse), it would limit your USB options. The second annoyance is that my unit came with a European power plug (two pin), not a three-pin UK plug. Not the fault of Asrock, but annoying nonetheless. To Amazon's credit, they did sort me out a UK lead once I got onto their support chat - they let me order one from their stock, & then refunded me the cost straight away.As I said though, it's the basis of a great little PC, & very simple to put together considering its tiny size. I used a 6 core i5 9400, 32Gb of 2666 RAM, & 1TB of SSD storage, to build a powerful little server for PC games. If you shop around you can find the VESA monitor mount for around £15, which is a great way to keep the unit out of the way, if your monitor has VESA compatibility.

i had a couple problems with this machine when building my rig.the m.2 nvme screw is very tiny, requiring the smallest type of philips screwdriver you can get, and the standoff for mounting the drive seemed to have some sort of clear film over it preventing the screw going in until i pierced it with something.adding any extra usb ports causes cables to creep dangerously close to fan blades when closing the unit, or can stop the motherboard going back fully into the case.i lost an hour trying to wrangle cables to acceptable positions.the cpu wires can also move during closure if theres too much slack aswell. so tie them off as short as possible or something.i bought crucial ballistix sport ddr4 sodimms rated at 2666mhz, but the motherboard in the deskmini 310 doesnt seem to support xmp profiles. in all the menus (including oc tweaker, dram timings etc) theres nothing allowing setting of xmp.thus im stuck with 2400mhzoverall its a good little machine, but be prepared for some frustration fitting and using things.

Make sure you research this before commencing. Have exactly the correct processor, know something about how to add VERY small connections to a motherboard. Be very CAREFUL when you close the tray. It took me 2 months to open mine after making a mistake. Now it works well.