[plug] miniPC recommendations?

[PMB]

Hi Bruce

I have purchased a few second hand good quality Lenovo office PCs  on eBay and have been very happy with my purchases.
They run Linux Mint very well and have not had any problems with them.

Lenovo Thinkcentre M700, I5-6400t 2.20GHz,8GB , 1TB SSD
paid $219.99 in  Jan 2024 inc postage

Lenovo ThinkStation P310 SFF Intel i7 6700 3.40GHz 16GB 512GB SSD Quadro K620 video card
paid $238 in Nov 2024 inc postage
The Quadro K620 video card is supported by the proprietary Linux Nvidia driver


Sadly second hand PCs  have gone up in price and the SSDs are smaller but they are still good value compared to buying a new PC and still within your budget.
The Thinkcentre looked like new and still had all the anti-scratch stickers on it.  

Also purchased this...
HP T620 Thin Client Quad Core GX-415GA 1.5GHz | 8GB RAM | 32GB SSD
paid  $43.00 in Nov 2024 inc postage
makes a nice little server and runs well with Dietpi https://dietpi.com/
 
Cheers Ivan

On Mon, 14 Sep 2026, at 9:26 AM, Bruce Axtens via plug wrote:
> Hello Pluglings (for want of a better term)
> 
> I'm still lurking here in the shadows. Have been for years, my son Daniel having been the impetus. He's now Principal Engineer for Fastly: https://www.fastly.com/blog/author/daniel-axtens
> 
> But I didn't come here to do that. My question is more mundane: after years of having various second-hand laptops as my home setup for Linux I'm now seriously considering laying out real money for a miniPC. Does the group have any suggestions re manufacturer and vendor? I'm thinking something in the $300-$450 range.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Bruce Axtens
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
> https://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.org.au
> PLUG Membership: http://www.plug.org.au/membership
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.plug.org.au/pipermail/plug/attachments/20260914/99a8985f/attachment.htm>