If you browse Amazon, eBay, and other retailers, you’ll find a bunch of thin clients and palm-sized systems in the $200 price range. Once you filter used systems out of the search results, you’ll find many of them rely on the Intel N100 processor. On paper, it’s a three-year-old embedded CPU with decent specifications. But considering the general pricing trends in the RAM armageddon, it’s easily the king of budget mini-PCs. After all, it’s as useful for self-hosting and server projects as it is for everyday Windows tasks – all without draining your wallet or siphoning a lot of energy.

The N100 is an x86 processor in the same price range as typical ARM CPUs

You can run most distros, packages, and tools on this processor

Back when the Raspberry Pi family was affordable, you could find single-board computers for your tinkering needs without spending over $40. These days, however, the mainline Raspberry Pi boards like the RPi 5 have become way too overpriced, especially since they ship with ARM processors that already became outdated by the time the SBC hit the market. With the RAM apocalypse inflating SBC prices past the red zone, you’ll have to shell out more than $150 to grab a decent Raspberry Pi (or other ARM-based SBC equivalents) alongside a handful of essential accessories.

Couple all that with the fact that you can grab a 4-core, 4-thread x86 processor with decent memory, a case, and a built-in SSD for under $200, and you’ll see why N100 mini-PCs still remain at the apex of the budget-friendly market. Thanks to the x86 architecture, N100 mini-PCs provide a more stable experience with most home lab platforms, server tools, and obscure packages than their ARM-based counterparts, even though their price tags are pretty comparable.

It’s powerful enough for typical home lab projects

Or, you can turn it into an everyday Windows machine

Aside from the superior software compatibility of the Intel N100, its performance is nothing to scoff at. Considering that its predecessors often shipped with 1 or 2 CPU cores, the N100’s 4-core and 4-thread count is pretty decent, especially when you arm it with typical home lab platforms. I’ve built (and dismantled) my fair share of Proxmox nodes with cheap devices and outdated systems, and the N100 is an absolute beast for simple LXC-based self-hosting workstations. For example, my 8GB N100 hybrid mini-PC/NAS was able to run note-takers and bookkeeping tools to file converters, nested containerization platforms, and networking services without breaking a sweat – all while powering a GUI-laden Debian virtual machine.

Heck, I was even able to overprovision my server’s CPU and memory resources to run three VMs side by side, and it was the latter that caused my Proxmox node to feel sluggish, not the 4-core N100 CPU. If you’re looking for a standalone server device that can run essential containers while you experiment with your primary workstation, an N100 mini-PC can deliver solid results without drawing a lot of power. Even in a high-availability cluster environment, an N100 device can pull its own weight if (or rather when) the main workstation goes offline. Yes, I speak from experience.

If you want an even crazier anecdote, I’ve run Windows 11 (bare-metal, I mean) in all its unoptimized glory on two separate N100 systems – one being the node from earlier, and the other being a mere SBC. In both instances, Microsoft’s bloated mess of an OS worked surprisingly well, and I was pleasantly surprised when the N100-powered Radxa X4 managed to hold its ground against my 4K and 2K screens.

Sure, the N150 is technically faster than the N100, but the performance gains aren’t very significant – especially when you look at the price tags on mini-PCs powered by the former.

Intel QuickSync lets you use it with media server tasks

Going back to the server side of things, the N100 is surprisingly great for hardware-accelerated media transcoding workloads, and it’s all thanks to the iGPU that ships with the processor. Since it supports Intel QuickSync, an N100 mini-PC can simultaneously transcode multiple 4K streams. If your N100 system is more of a NAS like my LincStation N2, you can use it to house your media files and transcode them on the fly.

But that’s not the only way you can put its modest GPU to good use. I’ve tested my N100-powered SBC with different emulators, and it was able to handle most retro titles at high resolutions. In fact, it can even tackle most JRPGs, hack-and-slash titles, and platformers on PS2 emulators, which is pretty impressive for an entry-level processor.

The CPU options become more varied once you step past the $300 threshold

In the sub-$200 range, N100 mini-PCs can offer solid bang for your buck. But if you can stretch your budget past $300, you’ll find much better embedded CPUs. I’m particularly fond of the i3-N305, as it has enough CPU cores and memory capacity to handle hardcore home lab tasks, on top of bringing enough PCIe lanes for SSD-based NAS pools. Likewise, if you manage to find used i5 mini-PCs (ones that are at least as “modern” as 12th gen Intel CPUs) for the same price as their N100 counterparts, it might be a good idea to use the former for your home lab experiments. Otherwise, the N100 lies at the top of the entry-level mini-PC hierarchy.