Best mini gaming PC 2026: top small form factor PCs tested

The Geekom AX8 Pro packs a lot of power into a very small package, with some of the best specs you’ll see in a mini gaming PC. Small but mighty, the AX8 Pro is formidable enough to be your primary PC, especially if you’re more of a casual gamer, and it manages to look great, too, with its sleek metallic blue design.

The Geekom AX8 Pro really is one of the smallest mini PCs that you can buy, measuring just 4.6 x 4.37 x 1.51 inches. That’s nearly small enough to fit in your pocket, and at 1.21lbs, it’s light enough, too. Inside, however, are some serious components, with two powerful AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS or AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS gaming CPUs available to choose.

This is a powerhouse machine for the 9-to-5, but gaming performance isn’t quite as accomplished, though still capable. Its AMD Radeon 780M GPU can handle 1080p gaming surprisingly well, as long as your expectations are in the right place. During our own tests games, such as F1 2024, proved more than playable, managing 73fps on average. More intensive games, such as Cyberpunk 2077, though, struggled, hitting only 43fps.

The beauty of the Geekom AX8 Pro is its design, though. This is a handsome, portable, well-built mini PC with great specs that casual gamers will love, as long as they can deal with some noisy airflow during heavy loads. If you can afford it, the Geekom AX8 Pro will make for a great PC for daily use, although serious gamers will need to look for a machine with a more powerful GPU.

Read our full Geekom AX8 Pro review.

The Blackview MP200 is the ideal mini PC for those who want to spend as little as possible. Its competitive pricing makes it our top cheap option, but that price does mean limitations with performance.

Inside the MP200, the Intel Ultra-HD Graphics hinder gameplay considerably. It’s not impossible to play the best PC games on it, but you’ll have to run them at very low resolutions, and modern AAA titles likely won’t run well if at all.

There are enough ports to add three displays with USB 3.2 connectivity, and the storage and RAM can both be doubled if you want to add second modules and upgrade the machine further down the line. We’d recommend the Blackview MP200 if you want one of the cheapest Windows 11 PCs on the market, but if gaming is your priority, then the lack of a graphics card and cooling will let you down.

Read our Blackview MP200 review.

The sub-$400 Minisforum UM773 houses an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS that has integrated graphics of a power level between that of Valve’s Steam Deck and the Asus ROG Ally. So, it’s not the most powerful PC ever, but it can still deliver playable gaming performance from a tiny package.

The 680M is allowed to perform at its best because of the inclusion of very fast DDR5 RAM, which AMD’s CPUs and iGPUs particularly benefit from – this machine packs in 32GB of it, no less. The GPU here isn’t as capable as the 780M, but it has a lower power draw that helps to keep this compact system from running too hot.

What’s more, esports titles such as CS2 and Fortnite will run well at 1080p, and emulation will be no problem at all. Older titles, too, will run well. The latest triple-A games will require turning in-game settings down to low and running at 1080p, but most will still be playable.

While the Minisforum Venus UM773 doesn’t offer the same portability as the Deck or Ally, it makes up for it in connectivity with a plethora of ports, making this a very practical little machine.

It is also surprisingly upgradable with two SODIMM slots, a PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot, and room on the bottom for a 2.5-inch hard drive. You could also connect an eGPU via the USB4 port if you wanted some extra GPU down the line as the CPU will age more gracefully than the iGPU.

The Minisforum AI X1 Pro is an ultra powerful mini PC that’s ideal for those seeking a really small PC that can play some games and also turn its hand to high-level workstation-like duties such as local AI model use.

It includes a powerful 12-core AMD CPU that also houses a capable AMD Radeon 890M GPU. What’s more, you can pack it full of up 128GB of memory making it useful for local AI models and other workstation uses, such as running many virtual machines. Though at current RAM prices, that much RAM is probably out of reach for most.

All of which is to say that the AI X1 Pro’s actual gaming performance is somewhat secondary to its CPU power. The Radeon 890M can deliver reliable, if unexceptional, 1080p gaming performance, with it hovering around 45-80fps when running typical modern titles in our tests, but only when graphics settings are set to low.

With this compact aluminum machine also tending to spin up its fans quite readily when under even moderate load, it’s neither the ultra compact day-to-day desktop machine that other Mac mini-style machines can be (look to the AI X1 non-Pro for that) nor the larger, more powerful gaming machines that systems like the Corsair i500 can offer.

Still, if you need the processing power but still want a PC that’s hardly larger than a hardback book, it’s an option to consider.

Read our full Minisforum AI X1 Pro review for more details.

The Corsair One has become a PC design icon since the original debuted in 2017, and we’ve been fans ever since. The One i500 is a slightly larger version of the standard One, with a deeper chassis that enables it to house the most powerful components, but it’s still a comparatively small gaming PC and it arguably looks better than ever with its wood paneled finish.

Inside,you can get up to an Intel Core i9 14900K CPU and a choice of various Nvidia GPUs, up to and including the GeForce RTX 4090.

Despite its compact sizing, there’s no sacrifice in gaming performance. We tested the RTX 4080 Super version and it ran Cyberpunk 2077 at 2,560 x 1,440 with the Ultra ray tracing preset at 106fps, thanks to some help from the frame-generation tech in Nvidia DLSS 3. F1 23 at 4K with Ultra High settings averaged 94fps in our tests.

In terms of downsides, the 120mm AIO cooler on the CPU doesn’t have enough power to enable the Core i9 14900K to hit its peak boost speeds, and it can make quite a lot of fan noise when running games at full load. But that’s a fair compromise for a PC this small housing such powerful hardware. It’s also an expensive machine when fully specced up. Otherwise, this is the most beautiful mini gaming PC on our list; perfect if design is your priority no matter the cost.

Read our Corsair One i500 review.

Custom PC builder, Origin, has updated its Chronos line to use parent company Corsair’s svelte 2000D case which, like the One i500, uses a vertical design for a small but tall tower able to house powerful hardware. It isn’t the smallest mini gaming PC around but it packs a punch and looks great.

With systems including up to AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPUs and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPUs, you’re getting 4K-capable gaming performance from this small-footprint package.

The obvious downside here is a high price. The Chronos starts at $2,413.82 for an Intel Core i7-14700K / Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 TI configuration but rises to $3,226.30 for that 9800X3D / 5070 Ti option. That is just the price of high-end hardware, though, with the extra costs getting you far more performance than the integrated graphics of much more compact PCs.

Ok, so the Asus ROG Ally X isn’t really a mini gaming PC by any traditional measure. However, if you really want the most portable way to easily game on the move, the ROG Ally X is the current best option, outside of grabbing one of the best gaming laptop options.

We’ve specifically chosen the ROG Ally X over the Steam Deck OLED as the Ally X not only has a much faster CPU and GPU and larger, higher resolution screen, but the fact that it runs Windows makes it a far more accessible true PC for most gamers. The Steam Deck’s Linux-based SteamOS can do tasks other than play Steam games, but it won’t run other game launchers or familiar Windows apps.

Meanwhile, if you’re thinking one of the best gaming handhelds isn’t the ideal way to work or do desktop gaming, just remember that you can use a Steam Deck dock to mount the Ally X on your desk, then plug it into your monitor, keyboard, mouse, and more.

Switch the device to run at its highest power mode – a mode that would normally chew through the onboard battery – and you’re getting an 8-core CPU with a 720p-1080p-capable gaming GPU that’s plenty powerful enough for desktop tasks and gaming. You can even use one of the Ally X’s USB4 ports to connect an external GPU.

At $799, the Ally X isn’t a cheap device when compared to a handheld like the Nintendo Switch, but when you consider it can also be a proper mini PC as well, it seems like a lot better value.

Read our Asus ROG Ally X review for more information.