What Is The Best Pc Under $300 In October 2026? This 16-core Xeon Mini Pc With 16gb Ram From Newegg Gets My Vote

RAM-mageddon has caused prices of components to shot up in 2026 but there's one product that actually rather shockingly got better without a price increase. And that's the Rmatamini P99S, still on sale, 9 months after I wrote about it, for $229 at Newegg.

When I looked at it in February, it had 8GB of RAM and it has since been upgraded to 16GB at no extra cost. Getting something extra for no premium is rare enough to be highlighted. There's a catch though as it swapped DDR4 for DDR3. Oh and they replaced Windows 10 Pro with the latest 11 Pro operating system. Nice!

You get the same 16-core, 32-thread Intel Xeon server CPU which absolutely obliterates anything in this price range. Yes it is hot and noisy under load but surely that's a small price to pay for such an obscene amount of power. 18,847 on Passmark puts it ahead of the AMD Ryzen Z1, a staple found in many portable gaming platforms.

RAM aside, this is pretty much the same mini PC we saw last time. So you will get an old GPU (Nvidia GTS 450) with 2GB of RAM onboard (total system memory is therefore 18GB), a 256GB SSD and a staggering 13 ports and connectors (excluding the two antennae).

The engineers at Rmatamini also managed to cram in a 450W PSU in an enclosure that's just 21 x 21 x 14.2cm (about 10 pints).

My opinion of this PC has barely changed though. It still has no rivals in this price range and while many will criticize its outrageous power consumption, that's something I can live with. The real question is whether you, as a user, can say the same.

Here's a video that provides a glimpse of what to expect

Also consider

If you think of a 3-circle Venn diagram, the P99S sits at the intersection of all three. It is powerful, has loads of RAM and costs just $230.

The mini PC that comes nearest to the P99S is the Bosgame E5 Plus, currently $219 from Amazon down 27% (you will need to be a Prime member to get this price). I am surprised to see an AMD Ryzen 3 5400U CPU on that one.

Compared to the Xeon in the Rmatamini mini PC, it has a faster single thread performance but a lower multi thread one. It is an altogether more modern and compact platform with two 2.5Gb LAN ports, support for three 4K monitors and a far superior AMD Graphics GPU. On the other hand it has only 8GB memory, shared with its video subsystem.

You have to stretch your budget to $294.49 to get something that can match the P99s. The Chuwi LarkBox X is modern, more elegant alternative that is fed by an Intel Core i3-1220p CPU that almost doubles the single thread score of the E5-2698 (but still lags behind on multi thread). It still has half the memory but offers far more rounded experience. Smaller, less power hungry and plenty of up-to-date connectivity options.