It seems as though mini PCs have never been more popular, with brands like Minisforum and Geekom releasing new models at an almost alarming rate. A new video by ETA Prime on YouTube, however, has shown off something different: an unbranded, mystery mini PC that only goes by the Piston V and dual-boots Bazzite and Windows right out of the box. Given that it runs Bazzite, it can boot right into a SteamOS-like view, revealing its intentions as a HTPC or living-room gaming PC.
The Piston V features a 10-core, 20-thread AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 CPU with an AMD Radeon 880M iGPU (not the claimed 890M), 32 GB of DDR5-5600 memory, and a 1 TB M.2 SSD. While solid, the internals are the least interesting part of the new mini PC—in keeping with its apparent living-room gaming PC vibe, the Piston V also packs a circular built-in display on the front, which can be used to display static images, system stats, media UIs, and basically anything else you may need immediate access to while you’re gaming or using your PC. On Linux, the mini PC already has a built-in performance monitor, which is a nice level of polish for what appears to be a niche mini PC maker.
The diminutive desktop performs admirably in gaming benchmarks, likely owing to the reasonably powerful CPU and iGPU combo and a hearty 54 W TDP—it will basically let you run most modern games at 1080p and reasonable frame rates when using low graphics settings and tech like FSR.
While it isn’t class-leading, the ports situation seems to be manageable, too, with dual USB Type-A ports and a 3.5 mm audio jack on one side and dual RJ45 ports, an HDMI port, a USB Type-C port of some kind, and a DC power in port on the rear I/O.
Given that the actual manufacturer of the device is unknown, and that ETA Prime declined to take the mini PC apart to find out, pricing and availability are still a mystery. It’s also interesting to note that the Piston V has dedicated toolless covers on the back cover to access RAM and storage for upgrades.
The full video is available below.