Best Mini PCs for a Homelab in 2026

How we tested

Idle wattage measured at the wall with a Kill A Watt P3 P4400, after a fresh Proxmox 8.2 install with a single SSH session connected and no active workload. Drives idle, network connected, no peripherals attached. Load wattage measured during 10-minute stress-ng runs on all cores. Where we don't have direct measurement, numbers come from community testing and are flagged as such in the comparison table and our Idle Power Database.

The candidates at a glance

Mini PC	CPU	Idle	Load	RAM max	Network	Price
Minisforum MS-01 (i5)	i5-12600H	12W	65W	96GB	2× 10GbE + 2× 2.5GbE	$559
Minisforum MS-01 (i9)	i9-12900H	14W	90W	96GB	2× 10GbE + 2× 2.5GbE	$879
Beelink EQ14	Intel N150	6W	22W	16GB	2× 2.5GbE	$269
GMKtec NucBox G3	Intel N100	7W	21W	16GB	1× 2.5GbE	$199
Topton N100 4-port	Intel N100	7W	19W	32GB	4× 2.5GbE	$299
Beelink SER8	Ryzen 7 8845HS	11W	72W	96GB	1× 2.5GbE	$649

Minisforum MS-01 — The new homelab default

The MS-01 is the closest thing the homelab world has to a perfect product, and it's the answer to the question "what mini PC should I get?" for probably 60% of new homelabbers. Here's what makes it special.

The networking alone is unprecedented at this price: two SFP+ 10GbE ports plus two 2.5GbE ports built into a 1.5L case. You can build a 10GbE-backed Proxmox cluster with three of these and never need a real switch beyond a basic SFP+ unit. The expansion is equally unusual — three M.2 NVMe slots (one PCIe 4.0 x4, one PCIe 4.0 x2, one PCIe 3.0 x2) plus a U.2 slot via the included adapter, plus a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot exposed via a custom riser for half-height cards.

The i5-12600H idles at 12W in our testing with 32GB RAM and a single NVMe drive. The i9-12900H pulls 14W idle with similar config. Under sustained Prime95 stress, the i5 settles around 65W, the i9 around 90W. Those are the kinds of numbers that used to require a $2,000 workstation.

The catch. The fan is audible under load — not loud, but not silent either. We measured 38 dBA at 1m during heavy load. In a closet, garage, or office it's a non-issue. In a quiet bedroom, it's noticeable. If silence matters more than horsepower, look at the EQ14 instead.

Buy if: you want a serious virtualization platform, you care about 10GbE, you want a single box that can grow into anything, or you're building a cluster. Skip if: the noise will live in a bedroom, or your workload genuinely doesn't need more than an N100 (most don't).

Beelink EQ14 — The honest starter recommendation

Here's what almost no homelab content will tell you: most people don't need an MS-01. They need an EQ14. The EQ14 is a fanless or near-silent mini PC built around the Intel N150, a low-power 4-core x86 CPU that's roughly equivalent to a mid-tier Core i3 from 2017 — which sounds underwhelming until you remember that Plex, Sonarr, qBittorrent, Home Assistant, Vaultwarden, Immich, and 15 other services collectively use about 5% of one of those cores.

The N150 includes Intel's UHD graphics with QuickSync, which means it can hardware-transcode three or four 1080p Plex streams simultaneously without breaking a sweat. 6W idle. Around $269 with 16GB RAM and a 500GB SSD. At $0.17/kWh, this thing costs about $9 a year to run.

The limit you'll hit eventually is RAM. 16GB is fine for a starter homelab but you'll feel the pinch if you start running multiple memory-hungry services like Immich (with ML), Nextcloud, and a few VMs at once. If you think you'll need more than 16GB, get the MS-01 instead — the EQ14 doesn't have the slots to expand.

Buy if: you're new to homelab and want the lowest-friction starter, silence matters, or your use case is "Plex + a handful of self-hosted apps." Skip if: you need 32GB+ of RAM, you want VMs (LXCs are fine), or you want 10GbE.

GMKtec NucBox G3 — The cheapest capable option

The G3 is essentially the same idea as the EQ14 — N100 instead of N150 (a small step down in CPU performance, identical platform), 16GB RAM, fanless-quiet, around $199. If you're cost-constrained and don't need the slightly faster N150, this is the cheapest mini PC we'd actually recommend running a homelab on. Performance and power profile are within 1W and 5% of the EQ14 in every test. You're trading $70 for a slightly slower CPU and a one-year-older platform.

Buy if: price is the dominant factor and you're sure you don't need more than 16GB RAM. Skip if: you can stretch to the EQ14 — the N150 ages slightly better.

Topton N100 4-port — For routers and firewalls

This is a different category. The Topton N100 4-port is the homelab community's favorite OPNsense / pfSense / VyOS box: an Intel N100 with four Intel i226-V 2.5GbE ports, fanless, around $299. It can route at full line rate on all four ports while drawing 7W idle. If your homelab plan involves running your own router or firewall, this is the box.

You can also use it as a general-purpose mini PC homelab — the N100 has the same capabilities as in any other N100 box — but you'd be paying a premium for networking ports you might not need. Use it for what it's good at.

Buy if: you're running a software router or firewall as part of your homelab. Skip if: you only need a single network port — the EQ14 is cheaper and slightly faster.

Beelink SER8 — When you actually need CPU horsepower

The SER8 is the AMD answer to the MS-01: a Ryzen 7 8845HS in a small form factor with 96GB max RAM and a single 2.5GbE port. The Ryzen wins on raw CPU performance — about 30% faster than the i9-12900H in multithreaded workloads — and idles at a respectable 11W. It's the right answer when your bottleneck is genuinely CPU: heavy compilation, ML inference, transcoding, or running 20+ VMs.

The networking is the catch. One 2.5GbE port. No 10GbE. No second NIC. If you don't need fast networking — many homelab workloads don't — this is fine. If you do, the MS-01 is the better all-rounder despite the slightly slower CPU.

Buy if: CPU performance is your bottleneck and you don't need more than one network port. Skip if: you need multiple network interfaces or 10GbE.

The recommendation matrix

If your priority is…	Buy this
Lowest possible cost	GMKtec NucBox G3
Best starter for most people	Beelink EQ14
Best overall homelab box	Minisforum MS-01 (i5)
Maximum CPU headroom	Beelink SER8
Multi-port routing/firewall	Topton N100 4-port
10GbE networking on a budget	Minisforum MS-01 (i5)
Bedroom-quiet operation	Beelink EQ14
Three-node Proxmox cluster	3× Beelink SER5 Max

What we'd actually buy

If we were starting a new homelab today with no specific constraints, we'd buy a single Minisforum MS-01 with the i5-12600H, 32GB DDR5, and a 1TB NVMe boot drive — about $700 all-in. It would run Proxmox, host 30+ services, idle at 12W, and have room to grow into a NAS, a 10GbE backbone, and a second node when (if) we needed it.

If we were starting on a tight budget or in a small apartment, we'd buy a Beelink EQ14 and call it done. 6W idle, $269, totally silent, and capable of running everything most people actually want from a homelab.

If we were doing something specific — routing, clustering, max CPU — we'd pick the matching option above. The bigger lesson: the right mini PC depends on what you're actually doing, not on what looks impressive on a shelf.