Dell OptiPlex Micro
Ranked 13 of 18 mini PCs by recommenders
Tiny, low-power desktop PC that people use as a quiet home server and experimenting box, sold cheaply in bulk. The one caveat raised is the lack of GPIO pins.
Tiny, low-power desktop PC that people use as a quiet home server and experimenting box, sold cheaply in bulk. The one caveat raised is the lack of GPIO pins.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Low power and quiet operation
“much more stable, quite low power, and can also use it as a true node”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Cheap Self-Hosted Kubernetes on Hetzner Cloud” “Tiny unit, low power usable, never even heard the fan switch on.”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “Old Computer Challenge” Inexpensive, available in bulk
“I lucked out, a charity in the UK (Bernados) has an ebay account and they had a huge joblot of about 200 brand new DELL Optiplex 3050 Micros”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350” “shocked it's $100 USD now!”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: MiniPCs.zip (charting the pareto frontier of MiniPCs)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
No GPIO pins
“the thing I didn't expect to miss was GPIO”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Price Increases for 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5”
Other mini PCs people recommend
The four most recommended other mini PCs, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple Mac mini | 390 | 160 | 71% | 13 | 2 yrs42 owners | Approved |
| NVIDIA DGX Spark | 170 | 121 | 58% | 12 | 6 mo16 owners | — |
| AMD Strix Halo | 130 | 83 | 61% | 13 | 11 mo8 owners | — |
| Framework Desktop | 93 | 26 | 78% | 12 | 3 mo9 owners | Approved |
| Dell OptiPlex MicroThis page | 9 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
All 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the thing I didn't expect to miss was GPIO”
“I think you are doing much better with an optiplex 3050 micro and libreboot.”
“much more stable, quite low power, and can also use it as a true node”
“Tiny unit, low power usable, never even heard the fan switch on.”
“shocked it's $100 USD now!”
“I lucked out, a charity in the UK (Bernados) has an ebay account and they had a huge joblot of about 200 brand new DELL Optiplex 3050 Micros”
“Dell Optiplex Micro, practically the same thing”
“I love it for experimenting also.”
“it will be so much better”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.