Portable Light Gaming PC That Can Be Carried Places ― Recommendations?

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The idea: I bring the hardware :computer:. Someone lend me a TV :tv:, bust out the six packs/kegs :beers: and we’re game :video_game:.

Some loose base requirements:

One of:

Mini-PC (e.g., NUC or 4x4)
  • At least one M.2 2280 slot or longer
    (The shorter ones tend to limit choices and are more expensive.)
    • At least two M.2 slots
      (Size doesn’t matter for the second one, but preferably it’s at least 2280 or longer.)
  • A decent iGPU on par with or better than the ones in the Ryzen handhelds and/or a mobile dGPU
    (The ASUS ROG Ally with the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme and its likes have shown how capable SFF systems can be.)
  • An NPU
    (This is for future-proofing. No doubt games of all proportions will start making use of it given that all the major CPU makers plan to make it ubiquitous.)
  • USB4/Thunderbolt 4 or better (yea I know USB4 2.0 and Thunderbolt 5 aren’t really a thing yet, but surprise me)
    (It’d be even better if it was capable of PD input so I could dispense with having to carry a proprietary DC power brick. So many more options are available with the USB-C port including power from a Thunderbolt dock or monitor. And of course, this is also for future-proofing.)
Mini ITX/microATX
  • The case must have a single handle for carrying. Space for mounting U.2 SSDs or an enclosure for them is desirable. Modern front panel I/O is mildly preferable. The unit overall should be comfortable enough for carrying onto a crowded bus or train while standing up for about an hour and without allowing the unit to touch the ground or a seat.
  • Either a soldered-on CPU from the Ryzen 7000, Ryzen 8000, Core Ultra 100, or Raptor Lake [Refresh] series or sockets AM5 or LGA 1700
    (Raptor Lake/LGA 1700 is much less preferable given the compounding performance regressions accrued from security vulnerability mitigations, and the fact that LGA 1700’s already known to be a dead-end in terms of upgradability.)
  • USB4/Thunderbolt 4 or better
    (As Mini ITX has only one PCIe slot and never have Thunderbolt headers anyway, a Thunderbolt add-in card isn’t an option. It has to be part of the motherboard from the get-go.)
  • The primary PCIe slot revision must be no less than PCIe 4.0 as I have PCIe 4.0 hardware which will need a new home once their PCIe 5.0 successors have been obtained
    • If the iGPU is weak, the NVIDIA RTX 4000 ADA will go into the PCIe slot.
    • If the iGPU can muster the strength for some light gaming, either a PCIe-to-cable adapter or the Broadcom P411W-32P can go into it. It’ll depend on the bifurcation capabilities.

Bluetooth 4.1+ and Wi-Fi 6E+ will be added to any build that doesn’t have it built-in.

Other (low-priority) factors affecting choice of hardware:

What I’ve found so far from a bit of legwork and blanks that need to be filled in:

Mini PCs:
  • ASUS NUC14SRKU9B (:paperclip: user manual): NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, exposes most of the I/O that the Meteor Lake chip has to offer, SD card slot (supporting PCIe 4.0)
  • ASUS NUC14RVSU9 (:paperclip: user manual): compact enough to fit in large pocket or backpack, capable iGPU, 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports open up a lot of connectivity options
  • Minisforum UM780 XTX: dual USB4, PD input to lose the DC barrel and its power adapter brick, PCIe 4.0 OCuLink
Portable desktops components:
  1. Mini ITX build
  2. microATX build
    • Silverstone SG12 (:paperclip: user manual): 5.25″ external drive bay, up to 12 internal 2.5″ drives, microATX
    • Silverstone ST80F-TI
    • Noctua NH-L12Sx77: just a few millimeters below the CPU cooler limit for the case and the best of the Noctua fans that fit
    • ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE (:paperclip: user manual): thus far the only microATX AM5 motherboard with PCIe 5.0 and dual USB4, and also the only microATX X670E
    • AMD Ryzen Pro 7745 or alternatively the 7700X with ECO mode to curb power consumption and heat output
    • Broadcom P411W-32P (already in possession)
      • Requires three fans mounted on a PCI bracket to keep temperatures under control (also already in possession)
    • ICY DOCK MB699VP-B V2
Products ruled out:
  • ASRock Industrial NUCS BOX-155H (:paperclip: user manual): all mid specs, nothing particularly stand-out, and for a price not much lower than the best of the ASUS’s NUC 14 lineup
  • Minisforum MS-01: great connectivity and expansion options on paper, but the constraints are so onerous, one would have a hard time making good of them. The U.2 drive can only be up to 7 mm tall. The PCIe slot can barely accommodate a single-slot low-profile card. Ventilation/thermal paste is poor. And there are extensive reports of shipping delays and hardware bugs from those who pre-ordered.

Additional suggestions and ideas are welcome.

I also haven’t really done any sort of risk assessment with a portable desktop build. Any input would be appreciated! :grin:

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Budget? Also, given the use case, “desktop replacement” (:yay:) gaming laptop comes to mind since you’re talking about parking up in a place where power ports exist rather than gaming on battery. Is that an option, or ruled out?

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I’d buy one from Framework. I’m very much sold on their vision of a laptop that evolves with its owner like a DIY desktop, and do fancy having a Framework 16 as my Ship of Theseus, but for more general purpose use and not with the current choice of CPUs and GPUs that they are offering for that size.

I bristle at the thought of losing an otherwise functional bundle of electronics because of one proprietary part. With a mini PC, at least the most I can lose is the motherboard and the CPU solder onto it. I get to keep my television, keyboard, and mouse. :slightly_smiling_face:

:moneybag: < $2,500 (USD)

That doesn’t include the kinds of parts I already have a stash of (SSDs, graphics cards, peripherals, etc.)

Well, the mini PC and SFF desktop market is feeling a bit stuffy. There’s always a price at which one relaxes all prior restraints, principles, ethics, and/or inhibitions. :wink:

Being difficult to make a plan and/or source parts for is a price. :slightly_smiling_face:

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That’s entirely fair, and mirrors a recent experience I had with RMAing a mini PC. Just threw the RAM and storage into a(n admittedly worse spec’d) laptop and was up and running again. On the other hand, the RMA took 2 months to process, so that was a thing.

Otherwise, the other big question is which games and at what sort of settings are you hoping to play?

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From my gaming time period in ye dark 2000s pre-dGPUs being common, if you go pre-fab stick to a maker that has a fast RMA and don’t buy a Mini PC that uses Liquid Metal as a thermal paste as it’ll leak like those ASUS Rog 14" models as structural stress/vibration from travel is going to break down the seals around the CPU/GPU. Back in my day playing Civ 3 had been doable on most laptops, WoW on the other hand had been too much and using a “scrappy” SFF+dGPU is surprisingly still a common thing.

The best option is buy a Framework if you care about modular DIY repairs as several have made their own “desktop case mods”. The other option is buy a BeeLink, replace the cooling with Noctua 40mm PWM and hope for the best–their heatsinks in my opinion spank ASUS but Zotec Minis/fanless minis are better. I don’t recommend PCIe dGPUs, even basic travel you’ll end up stressing the PCIe slot from the vibrations may it be car, bus or rail… you’ll need to store the dGPU in an external case. Having said that, plenty of nice portable monitors out there, you can run triple monitors on Intel Xe at minimal frameloss.

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Emulators, light stuff like League of Legends, and probably others I haven’t explored yet. I have recommendations from friends who are not gamers at all, so they are probably not demanding.

Plus some turn-off-your-brain kind of entertainment.

It gives the younger guests something to play/interact with and hopefully something more social than covering their faces with an iPad or smartphone.

Damn interesting! I definitely had a suspicion that vibrations couldn’t be good for delicate equipment. Didn’t think that’d affect something as snug as a seal around some thermal interface material or PCIe slot.

Would a bulky heatsink be at risk too?

:thinking: Hmm… I did not think to check out those brands even though I already know about them.

👀…
Ruled out:
  • ZOTAC ZBOX-MI672:
    :slightly_smiling_face: capable iGPU
    :face_holding_back_tears: lacking in I/O bandwidth (e.g., Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 6)
  • ZOTAC ZBOX-ERP74070SC:
    :slightly_smiling_face: Built-in PSU, Thunderbolt 4
    :face_holding_back_tears: Wi-Fi 6. No handle. And for a box that doesn’t fit in a backpack and is big enough to fit a normal graphics card, I expected storage options to be better than the Minisforum MS-01, but doesn’t seem to be the case―less M.2 (2 slots, one of which is not 22110)
Ambivalent:
  • ZOTAC ZBOX-EN474070C:
    :slightly_smiling_face: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (mobile), dual M.2 22110 slots, Thunderbolt 4
    :face_holding_back_tears: Wi-Fi 6
  • ZOTAC ZBOX-H39R5000W:
    :slightly_smiling_face: NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation, dual M.2 22110 slots, Thunderbolt 4
    :face_holding_back_tears: Wi-Fi 6 again…
  • Beelink GTR7 PRO 7940HS:
    :slightly_smiling_face: capable iGPU, dual USB4 with PD power input, magnetic snap-on power cord
    :face_holding_back_tears: only Wi-Fi 6, which is a limitation that applies across their entire line-up of mini PCs
Looking decent:

Both the Beelink GTR7 PRO 7940HS and ZOTAC ZBOX-MA762 come closest to what I’d buy of Beelink’s and ZOTAC’s offerings. On technical specifications, they still trail behind both the ASUS Meteor Lake NUC series and the Minisforum UM870 XTX. I’m going to take your word on the liquid metal thing. The Minisforum one on my list also uses it. I don’t know about the ASUS NUC14RVSU9 thermal solution though, and that’s a front runner among mini PCs.

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Have a look at my build log a couple years back. I don’t know what you have in mind as far as system requirements, but your $2500 USD budget is going to give you a lot of options.

Do you want a descrete GPU? That makes it more challenging, but will reap major rewards.

It’s really tough to make a recommendation without any clear requirements other than portable.

Ohhhhh, ok. My recommendation then? You’ll want a good (not top of the line, but good) CPU. Certain emulators are surprisingly CPU intensive and require some pretty decent single-core clocks to maintain. Maybe this isn’t so much the case these days, but back in the day, Dolphin was pretty tough to run.

I’d grab a 7600 (or 7600x), 16-32gb of ram, or whatever you have on hand, throw in a couple of those 905p’s you have laying around and call it a day.

Or, find a mini PC with a 7600/x in there and enjoy that, for probably less money than you’d spend on a custom build.

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Based on the amount of “iBuyPower” bad shipping, its about the amount of foam bracing for shipping so once you reach ITX/mATX air cooling is more risky vs AIO liquid cooling.

Risky thing about Meteor Lake is the amount of issues some OEMs are having on higher end chips, you’re rolling the dice of an OEM capping the CPU harder to provide more dGPU thermal headroom. If the heatsink seems too “thin”, it’ll thermal hard like a similar spec laptop.
If you don’t mind “Corp” Mini PCs, Lenovo P3 Tiny and HP Z-series like the Z2 Mini G9 have dual M.2 SSD slots and models that support up to an optional RTX A1000(or A2000/RTX 4000 on the HP Z2). The upside is replacing the PSU brick is much easier vs other Mini PCs.

Personally the P3 Tiny is tempting even at the inflated price of being small.

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OMG.

You itemized the whole damn thing. 👏😂

(Also, coming from a person who descends long stacktraces to track down obscure bugs in software, the problems you’ve run into during the build process would really try my patience. :melting_face:)

No preference. iGPU, soldered mobile GPU, GPU AIC are all fine. Although there’s the issue of:

I’m more leaning towards more integrated mini PCs since I handle electronics with dainty fingers rather than slinging or tossing them. Easier to pack and GTFO after a long afternoon and evening without worrying about how I’m holding the thing wrong. But if the case comes with a strap or handle, I’ll bite.

There is one more requirement: in less than a month. I don’t want to be waiting forever for separate parts to gather up. That makes a more integrated mini PC also more attractive.

I’ll probably build another entertainment system for my parents, and that can be on a longer time frame and be more flexible so I can cut the budget down to something more reasonable.

And opinion on whether Intel consumer CPUs get ruled out because of neutered AVX-512 post-Alder Lake? I’ve seen some mentions of it, but even among emulators, it doesn’t seem to be a drum their developers bang on often.

How hard is it for the completely uninitiated to make a first attempt, BTW? I’ve only done heat sink + fan builds.

Thanks! I’ll have a look at those too.

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A more recent MiniForums compact? May not get BIOS updates, but if you want “gaming on the go” without it being a “gaming laptop,” that’s STILL questionable, though. It kind of sounds like you have money to spend, so not a big deal, just be sure to downcycle, please.

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Beyond emulation, some games/apps chug as the “E” cores are relying upon an OEM’s cooling/thermal management. I found my fanless laptop is barely better than a Celeron N5095, yet an actively cooled Mini PC ran smoother as it could run at a more sustained clock. An i3-N300 is still going to be clock limited vs a normal desktop 13/14th gen CPU.

ITX cases that are XBox sized you’ll be stuck using AIO liquid cooling that use a similar mounting kit, the upside is you can use foam inserts to protect GPU vibrations but typically these builds it’ll be an external 250W PSU. Travel side it’ll be equally on par of those that converted Mac Mini(Intel era) paired to an eGPU case as a game/analytics box in terms of weight.

I’d suggest looking for Lenovo/HP coupons, you can typically get $800 off a $2000-2200 model if you compare prefab vs CTO models. Don’t be afraid to buy a lesser sized SSD model, just upgrade them later vs CTO prices. On the Intel side just remember the value of i7 vs i9 shrinks, 14th gen you get extra E-cores vs 13th gen but core management on W11 is still a mess as a consumer OS had been stuck on a mindset of 8-12 cores is the most anyone uses.

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Reasons I’d lean AMD… I really don’t think the E cores were a good design decision on Intel’s part.

Ahhh, Let me look around and see what I can find.

Thank you, I did that with the intent to post a total cost, but then when I finally posted the total build cost, I decided to leave that out because I didn’t even realize how bad it’d got. Custom loops are expensive but they’re wild. This thing will push some serious frames and runs dead silent. Loudest thing is the DDC pump or coil whine if the GPU is doing strange things.

This build was my first attempt at a properly custom/unique setup. Took me multiple weeks to get the system built, then I had to wait a good 6 months for a GPU, so it was a very slow burn, but it’s still really good. I wound up swapping out the 3900x for a 5700g so I could do passthrough, only because I couldn’t actually manage to get a second dGPU in there, but at the end of the day, I’m still loving it. One of these days, I’ll upgrade the GPU, motherboard and CPU, but I’ll probably keep the old GPU in there, so I can keep a strong GPU for Linux.

I’m absolutely in love with this thing, but it came to a total of near $2800.

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Not bad actually. I’m vicariously happy for your happiness. :grinning: Quality build spread over the years probably comes out cheaper in the long run.

The HP Z2 Mini G9 specs are interesting. Some of them even have ECC RAM, which I think is a unique selling point for HP as I have not seen ECC with Intel’s consumer CPU line-up in any other offerings lately―including Minisforum’s MS-01 which uses the same CPUs.

Yeah. I see what you mean now. Merely adding the NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada added $1,700 to the price. Probably more than a 25% markup over the actual price HP paid to get it (definitely $300 more than what I paid to get it).

But the pre-fabricated ones are also pricey enough that they’d end up going over budget and/or are a bad value in my opinion. I quite like what they could have potentially offered, but not for the premium that they charge for the flexibility and the work I’d have to do to dispose of the parts I never wanted from them.

I just finished reading up on Intel’s AVX-512 saga after seeing P-core-only Intel CPUs in the HP Z2 Mini G9 list if CPU choices. Apparently, even the P-core-only SKUs have the AVX-512 functionality disabled.

I don’t know if it’s for consistency of plain market segmentation, but my inner cynic leans towards the latter.

Always cognizant of reducing e-waste here. :slightly_smiling_face:

In fact, I’m going to change plans now. I’ll the system for my parents and use it as a temporary portable gaming solution, which will be turned over to them as soon as the long-term build materializes.

Alrighty then. A 185H would be a foolish investment if it’s both costly and potentially throttled to the point of never delivering on its potential. I’ll probably settle on a Meteor Lake 135H NUC from ASUS as a stop-gap. It’s the lowest SKU in the Meteor Lake 100H stack that has all 8 of the Xe cores enabled, so it’ll be fine with light gaming and serve my parents’ needs once I turn it over to them.

We’re on the cusp of getting much better choices of hardware from the Red, Green, and Blue teams in a few months, so I can revisit for the long-term build.

How portable are they typically? I’ve only found the ADLINK Pocket AI. Just about everything else is big enough to be desktops in their own right.

Perhaps disaggregation and composition might be an equally viable path to portability versus integration. 🤔
  1. A main unit consisting of a motherboard, CPU, RAM, and SSD, power via USB-PD
  2. USB-C PD power supply
  3. Game controllers
  4. Portable eGPU
  5. External Thunderbolt 4 SSDs with data and/or bootable partitions
  6. Portable monitor, keyboard, and mouse set

I.O.W.: a Framework neither a backbone nor exoskeleton :joy:

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If you’re looking at very portable, probably also dial back the processing power
As in, tempering the component ceiling – Intel i5/i5K // Ryzen 5/5X/7/7X3D?
They’ll still perform well, without barreling to disproportionate thermals/wattage req
Some SFF cases can support a larger CPU heatsink [that’ll WELL outperform typ. stock]

Textbook/Shoebox (or<) iTX cases:
ASUS AP201
Lian Li A4-H2O
SSUPD Meshroom
Phanteks Evolv Shift
Silverstone ALTA G1M
Coolermaster NR200 series
Silverstone Fortress FTZ01 Series
Cooler Master NCORE 100 MAX [*Comes with 120mm AIO + 850W SFX]

iTX Cases w/ a Handle:
Deep Cool CH160
Hyte Revolt Series

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Some users had been using Sonnet enclosures for full length GPUs, 4x PCIe via TB3/TB4 turns most eGPUs into 48-bit at best.

Shift to Big.Little has been a mess on Intel & ARM as OSes in general dump load upon 2-4 cores so load balancing rarely touches E-Cores. Have to find it interesting 14th gen shifted to E-Cores as an energy saver mode as a slight “fix”.
AMD has jumped into Big.Little so Ryzen 9000 is going to share the same core management as they’ve already tested Ryzen “Zen 4c” on the entry tier Ryzen 8000G(8300G/8500G). I’m thinking the issues some end users had is the energy management factor, moving out of the default “balanced” to performance is likely crashing Windows.

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If I get a socketted CPU, I’ll be aiming 65 W or lower (probably aiming closer to the 28~35 W range).

Holy crap. I love this one! :hushed:

Hyte Revolt 3
Hyte Revolt 3391×638 81.5 KB

That post from a different thread led me to another possible Mini ITX chassis…