Tiny PCs: Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny, Dell OptiPlex Micro, and HP Mini

Why these little PCs are so good

Lenovo, Dell, and HP all make a business desktop about the size of a hardcover book, meant to bolt to the back of a monitor in an office. Companies buy them by the thousand and replace them every few years, so the used market is full of them.

They have laptop-style parts inside (low-power "T" processors, laptop memory, an external power brick) but desktop-style ports and cooling. That combination makes them great for anything that runs around the clock. The tech site ServeTheHome nicknamed the category TinyMiniMicro, after the three brand names, and the homelab world has been buying them up ever since.

I'll admit my Lenovo bias here, but I've used all three brands and any of them is a good buy. The differences are smaller than the forum arguments suggest.

The models, by generation

The processor generation matters most. 8th-gen Intel and newer runs Windows 11 officially and has 6-core options. Older ones are fine for Linux and light server work.

Within a model, the processor ranges from a Celeron or Pentium up to a Core i7. Skip the Celeron and Pentium versions. A Core i5 is the best value, and a Core i7 mostly adds heat.

What fits inside

• Memory: two laptop-size (SODIMM) slots. 8th and 9th-gen models are officially rated for 32 GB, and plenty of owners run 64 GB.
• Storage: most have one M.2 NVMe slot plus a bay for a 2.5-inch SATA drive, so you can run a fast boot drive and a bigger storage drive side by side.
• PCIe slot: this is the Lenovo M720q and M920q's party trick. With the right riser card and bracket, they take a low-profile card, most often a 2- or 4-port network card for a router build. The riser is a separate part and often missing from used units.
• Extra ports on HP: many EliteDesk and ProDesk Minis have a "Flex IO" spot where you can add a module like an extra video output or a serial port.

Lenovo publishes a hardware maintenance manual for each Tiny, and Dell and HP publish service manuals for theirs. Search the model plus "maintenance manual" before you buy parts.

What they cost to run

This is the big reason they took over the homelab world. ServeTheHome measured about 11 to 14 watts at idle on an M720q and 12 to 15 watts on a quad-core M920q.

If you're weighing an old enterprise server against a couple of these, I wrote about that too: is an old server worth running at home? I scrap a lot of those servers, and for most people the answer is no.

What I use them for

Mine run my homelab and network services. Some jobs these little boxes handle well:

• Proxmox for running several virtual machines and containers on one box. A 6-core i5 with 32 GB goes a long way, and a few of them make a nice Proxmox cluster.
• Docker for self-hosted apps: file sync, photo backup, dashboards, and so on.
• Pi-hole or AdGuard Home for network-wide ad blocking, and a VPN like WireGuard to reach home from anywhere.
• Home Assistant for smart-home control.
• A router or firewall with OPNsense or pfSense, using an M720q or M920q with a multi-port network card in the PCIe slot.
• A media server like Plex or Jellyfin. The Intel graphics built into these processors can convert video on the fly with very little power.

New to this? Start with my guide to turning an old PC into a home server. One box can do several of these at once. When you outgrow it, add a second one instead of buying something bigger. Two or three Tinys still use less power than one old server.

Buying one used

• Check for the power brick. A lot of listings don't include one. Lenovo Tinys use a laptop-style adapter, and the wattage matters: ServeTheHome saw an M920q throttle on a 65-watt adapter instead of its 90-watt one.
• Check the exact processor. "Core i5" can mean anything from 6th to 10th gen. The model number after the dash tells you: i5-8500T is 8th gen.
• Check for a drive. Many off-lease units ship without one. That's fine if the price reflects it.
• Want the PCIe slot? On a Lenovo, make sure the riser card and rear bracket are included, or budget for them.
• Look for a BIOS password or "managed by your organization" messages, just like any used business PC.

I track used mini PC prices on my personal site: small Proxmox-ready PC price tracker. For one specific model and processor, eBay's sold listings show what it actually sells for. Local recyclers and Facebook Marketplace can be cheaper, and you can see it boot before you pay.

As an everyday desktop

They're not just for tinkerers. An 8th-gen or newer mini PC with an SSD and 16 GB of memory is a great home or office computer: silent, tucked behind the monitor, and able to run Windows 11. For most households it's the refurbished desktop I'd recommend first.