ASUS ExpertCenter PN42 (N100)

What owners say

The PN42 with the Intel N100 is fanless, and that shapes everything reviewers and owners report. It is completely silent — though one owner's unit whines constantly, a reminder that fanless is not always noiseless — and frugal: 4.2 W at idle and about 13 W under load in the c't lab, 7 to 10 W for one owner. To stay cool ASUS holds the chip to 6 W, so out of the box it performed worse than an older Pentium NUC for one owner; the limit cannot be changed in the BIOS, and raising it to 15 W with ThrottleStop pushed temperatures toward 100 °C over long sessions. One reviewer measured only 59 °C in a short stress test, but owners report a hot case, and one tamed it with a low-speed USB fan. The complete 4 GB system is a test of patience and its preinstalled McAfee eats resources: buy the barebone and fit one module of up to 16 GB in its single slot. There is no 2.5-inch bay and no USB-C except as a configurable-port option, and the USB ports differ in speed. Windows' Modern Standby draws about 6 W; switching to S3 sleep brings it to 1 W. The RGB power button flags boot and memory errors by colour. An owner runs Proxmox and Home Assistant on it happily, and the wired port nears 2.5GbE line rate.

For whom

A silent file server, Home Assistant box or thin client, where no fan noise matters more than speed.

Not for

Anything processor-heavy, video on two 4K displays, and anyone who wants to raise its power limit without extra cooling.

Our own summary of 8 published sources, reviewed Sep 23, 2026. We have not tested this Mini PC ourselves; the sources are listed under About this data.