[SOLVED] Replace Dell Latitude with Mini PC?

[komobu]

I have a Dell Latitude E6520 that I bought off lease 5 years ago. It still works great except that the battery is bad. The battery being bad doesnt affect me at all because I always have it plugged into its power supply. It has an intel core i5 processor. I have it in a docking station (Replicator) hooked up to three monitors (The third monitor is hooked up to a usb video adapter), wireless keyboard and mouse. It never leaves the replicator, it is pretty much used as a desktop pc. My primary uses are excel, word, you tube videos and the internet. I do no gaming whatsoever.

I am thinking about replacing it with a acepc ak1 mini pc. The latitude has a Samsung 1tb 860 EVO ssd drive that I would remove and put it in the minipc. The main reason I am thinking of doing it is to take up less space on my computer desk. I would mount the minipc behind one of my monitors. I want to keep using the three monitors. I would also gain two usb3 ports and my latitude doesnt have any. I do rip dvds occasionally and the usb3 ports will greatly increase the speed of transferring the files.

Any idea if the mini pc would be an improvement over my latitude, or a headache? The latitude still fits my uses perfectly and I do not want to lose out on anything switching to a mini pc. The Latitude doesnt have a USB 3 port and I would gain two of them with the mini PC

If I should switch to a minipc, I want to keep the price under 400 and connect it to three monitors. If there is a better option on the mini pc with windows 10 pro, I would be open to suggestions.

Thanks for any advice recommendations.

 

[Alabalcho]

$400 will get you pretty low-power Mini PC, and most (all?) of them have just two HDMI/DP ports only, so your third monitor still will be using USB connection.

I've looked in the past for "Conference room PC", and cheapest Intel NUC which would do the job (8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, current gen i5 CPU) was close to $600.