Thinking about picking up a mini-pc for living room gaming for the family, to replace the old desktop computer that's been filling the role but has developed terminal hardware issues as of late.

Main usage is emulators, up through PS1 at least, but would also love to leverage a hefty but long-neglected steam library too, so probably going with a Bazzite setup on this one. Had Batocera on the other one, but it was pretty annoying to get anything outside of retroarch to run, and a few times updates caused major issues I had to ssh in to fix.

Have been interested in the GMKTEC systems, but their stock is decimated and what they have left has jumped in price a lot, so I'm considering going with some wild no-name brand to get a higher tier cpu for a similar price. AMD only, of course. Trying to stay under 200 with ram and sdd included - looks like 3500u is pretty common in that range, but with a no-name I'm finding even 5700hs in that range too.

Anyone else have experience going this route? Not too worried about the shopping aspect, just the experience of running a device like this.