Mini PC gaming recommendations? SER9 is underwhelming.
I've been playing video games on an M1 Mac mini.
I recently bought a Beelink SER9 (Windows 11) hoping for parity with the Mac mini and to expand my options to include Windows-only games. I was really underwhelmed.
- Minecraft- Using the same set of mods and render distances, the SER9 was playable but noticeably worse than the Mac mini.
- No Man's Sky- Without any mods, the SER9 had abysmally long load times, hanging UI screens, unenjoyable graphics, nearly unplayable FPS-- all on the lowest settings. Trying to improve the quality (even slightly) made the game unplayable (or worse, crash). It's a beautiful game on the Mac mini.
Is wanting to play Minecraft and No Man's Sky asking too much of the SER9? That doesn't bode well for playing other PC games.
I've seen a lot of posts here from folks who use Mini PCs for gaming. Coming from the Apple ecosystem (where things just work) to Windows (where everything is custom) I'm hoping there's some undocumented setup or configuration I'm missing that makes playing more enjoyable... is that the case?
Not having any other tangible data points, I picked the SER9 because it was a little more expensive than my M1 Mac mini, and a few years more modern. Should I have aimed higher for parity in the PC world?
Any recommendations and advice would be appreciated.
UPDATE: Beelink SER9 with Ryzen 7 H 255, 32GB LPDDR5X, Radeon 780M