The MINIX N304-AI is a compact desktop computer with 16GB of LPDDR5x-6400 onboard memory, a 512GB PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD, support for up to three displays, and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports.MINIX hasn’t announced how much the new system will cost or when you’ll be able to buy one, but since it’s powered by an Intel Core 3 N304 processor based on Wildcat Lake architecture, it’s safe to say that this will be a reasonably affordable system. Wildcat lake chips are generally lower-cost alternatives to Intel Panther Lake processors, and the Core 3 N304 is the cheapest (and lowest-performance) of the bunch.The processor is a 5-core, 6-thread chip with a single Performance core and four Low-Power Efficiency cores and single-core Intel graphics. But while it’s not exactly a supercomputer chip, it’s a nice step up from the Intel Alder Lake-N or Twin Lake processors used in a lot of other recent low-cost mini PCs. Those systems featured up to eight 12th-gen Intel Efficiency cores, but no Performance cores at all.As for the dubious decision to throw “AI” in the name of this computer? That’s probably because Wildcat Lake chips all have NPUs for hardware-accelerated AI features. But the NPU in the Core 3 N304 only delivers up to 15 TOPS of AI performance. That rises up to 24 TOPS of overall performance when you combine the CPU, GPU, and NPU. But that still falls short of the 40+ TOPS required for a system to qualify for Microsoft Copilot+ features. So I’d take the AI claims in the MINIX press release with a grain of salt.As a general purpose computer though, the system looks reasonably versatile. In addition to the features listed above, it supports WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 and has two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports, HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 ports, plus a few USB Type-A ports. The mini PC ships with Windows 11 Pro and MINIX suggests it could be used in “home offices, education environments, retail applications, digital signage, edge computing, or everyday business operations.”