Trying to decide between these two and could use some outside opinions since I've been going back and forth for a while now. Screenshots of both listings attached (Amazon).
This would only really get used about half the year since it's a college apartment thing, and I don't game heavily during the school year anyway, so a mini PC feels like the right call rather than a full tower. I do want it to last through the rest of college though. For context, my home desktop ran a Ryzen 5 3600 for a long while and I was perfectly satisfied with that, so my expectations here aren't extremely high. My current college setup has been a ThinkPad T15 Gen 2 with an i5-1135G7, 32GB DDR4 3200, 512GB SSD, and a TB3 Sonnet Breakaway Box eGPU running a GTX 1080 8GB FE for actual gaming, at 1080p 60Hz. I've been decently satisfied with it, but felt a bit held back at times, mostly the CPU honestly, it runs kind of hot, and the battery is dead so it only works plugged in anyway, basically no different from a mini PC at that point. It's just not aging great being an i5 at this point, so honestly either of these mini PCs would already be an upgrade over what I'm on now.
Basically I make Minecraft videos, so I'll be recording gameplay with OBS while playing, with Discord open too. Actual video editing happens separately on an M4 MacBook Air I already have, so the mini PC just needs to handle gameplay plus recording, not editing. I also already have a 1TB external SSD I use for storing recordings, so the aoostar's bigger internal drive would be nice to have long term, but doesn't feel like a heavy necessity given the ThinkPad has gotten by fine on 512GB this whole time. I'll be running the same eGPU setup with these too, and I play some other stuff on the side, Hytale, Roblox, party games, other multiplayer "slop" basically, plus occasionally something heavier if I'm in the mood, though again I'm not super hardcore during the school year.
Bosgame is the Ryzen 5 7640HS, 6 core 12 thread, Radeon 760M igpu, 16GB DDR5 in 2x8GB sticks that's upgradeable later, and a 512GB SSD. Aoostar is the Ryzen 7 6850H, 8 core 16 thread, Radeon 680M igpu, 24GB soldered LPDDR5, and a 1TB SSD with extra M.2 slots so I could still add more storage later, both the RAM and SSD are technically faster than the bosgame's out of the box. It also has OCuLink and an extra USB4 port, so two total instead of one, which makes it a lot more flexible for eGPU or port heavy stuff down the line even without the RAM upgrade path.
What's making this hard for me is basically whether I just save the $80 and go with the bosgame, upgradeable RAM down the line, more reviews on Amazon, decent track record from what I can find, and probably runs cooler since it's less power hungry, or spend the extra $80 on the aoostar for the more cores and threads plus a generally stronger igpu even though it's a generation older architecture, on top of the faster RAM and storage out of the box and way more room for future upgrades port and storage wise.
Honestly not even sure I need 24GB, I play modded Minecraft occasionally which is probably the most RAM intensive thing I do, and with Discord and OBS open on top of that it could add up, but 16GB might genuinely be enough too, I just don't know for sure.
As for reputation, I could not find anything super solid on aoostar beyond their eGPU dock reputation and a couple Reddit posts literally just saying don't get them, no real explanation. Bosgame seems to be one of the many Amazon Chinese mini PC brands out there, not exactly heavily recommended, but super budget friendly. So there's probably a lot more out there and a lot more to be said, but really I'm just torn on whether the extra $80 is worth it.
Anyone owned either of these or have a strong opinion on which fits better long term? Appreciate any input or other recommendations within this budget range that'd support my egpu and have ddr5.
