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used mini pcs

CPU generation

Intel N-series (Alder Lake-N / Twin Lake) mini PCs

Alder Lake-N chips are built only from efficiency cores, which keeps power low and makes them common in budget fanless and dual-NIC mini PCs. The iGPU uses Intel's Gen 12 media engine, with AV1 decode plus H.264, HEVC and VP9 encode, so these boxes handle Plex or Jellyfin transcoding well for their size. The limits: one memory channel, Intel's official 16 GB maximum on most models (32 GB on the N97), and 9 PCIe 3.0 lanes, which constrains NVMe and NIC layouts. Twin Lake (N150, N355), launched in early 2025, raises CPU and GPU clocks at the same power ratings.

Released
2023
In mini PCs
Efficiency cores only: 4 cores (N95, N97, N100, N150, N200) or 8 cores (Core i3-N300/N305, Core 3 N355), no Hyper-Threading, 6 to 15 W, one memory channel.
Windows 11
On Microsoft's supported list. Microsoft's Windows 11 24H2 list includes the N100, N200 and N90 series and the Core N300 series; Twin Lake chips such as the N150 and N355 belong to the same Intel product series those entries link to.
Media engine
Quick Sync: HEVC 10-bit, VP9, AV1 decode
Frigate OpenVINO
Supported on the Intel iGPU
Memory
DDR4, DDR5, LPDDR5

6 models with Intel N-series (Alder Lake-N / Twin Lake)

Deciding between generations? See Windows 11 eligibility by CPU generation and Quick Sync transcoding by generation.

Other CPU generations