I found the world's fastest mini PC with an Intel CPU that trounces the Mac Pro's M2 Ultra — and it’s being discounted by 30% for Black Friday

If you want a PC that doesn’t take a lot of space, doesn’t cost the Earth and packs one of the most powerful processors available, then check out the Lenovo ThinkCentre M90s Gen 6. It sports an Intel Core Ultra 9 285 processor, which is faster than the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ or the Apple M2 Ultra on the popular Passmark benchmark and costs as little as $1329 from Lenovo.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M90s Gen 6: was $1,899 now $1,329 at Lenovo USA

The Lenovo ThinkCentre M90s Gen6 is a staggeringly good deal if you want something that is very, very fast without being massive. It is ideal for multitasking and productivity tasks thanks to the Intel Core 9 Ultra 285, 32GB of RAM and 1TB SSD.

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Pack it to the brim with a 1TB SSD (Gen4) and a pair of 16GB DDR5 SODIMM, you get a pretty capable powerhouse that can achieve surprisingly good performance in most applications (except of course, games).

This is clearly a high-end, workstation-grade mini PC with a single LAN port (GbE) and Windows 11 Pro and even an integrated 13 TOPS NPU for AI tasks.

You can plug in up to four 4K monitors thanks to four ports (USB-C, HDMI, DisplayPort x2) and there's even a few expansion slots should you want to shove in a low-profile discrete GPU card.

I’m half-surprised by the presence of USB 2.0 ports (which are mostly used for input peripherals) although you can always fall back on the sextet of “blue” USB 3.2. Wireless connectivity is done through Intel’s own AX211 chipset which delivers Wi-Fi6e and Bluetooth 5.3.

You can plug in a second SSD (but Gen3 only) as well as a 2.5-inch hard disk drive (or SATA SSD if you have one around) for extra storage (by my calculations, up to around 18TB if you really want to push it).

It’s near impossible to fit anything more powerful than this 24-core 65W CPU in such a tiny space without experiencing thermal throttling. This mini PC is only 340 x 93 x 300mm. Not Mac Mini size but no Mac Pro either.

If you want something even more compact, check the Dell Pro micro Plus which weighs only 1.2Kg and is a mere 36 x 178 x 182mm in size. It is far more expensive though and has a worse specification.

Also consider

Dell Pro Micro Plus Desktop: $1,552.67 at Dell

This is an even smaller mini PC compared to the Lenovo one albeit with a much higher price tag and a worse configuration (16GB RAM, 512GB SSD). It does however have the same powerful Intel Core Ultra 9 285 CPU, Wi-Fi 7 and a bundled three-year warranty.

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HP Z2 Mini G1i: $1,669 at HP US

The Z2 Mini G1I is a true mini workstation PC with Windows Pro and a three-year warranty bundled. It integrates HP's Wolf Pro security and shares the same specifications as its Lenovo counterpart.

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