Smallest Desktop Size

What Is the "Smallest Desktop Size"?

The smallest desktop computers today are palm-sized mini PCs, thin clients and fanless industrial PCs that occupy roughly 0.3 to 1.5 litres of volume — often smaller than a paperback book and light enough to mount behind a monitor. Instead of the traditional tower under a desk, these systems shrink the motherboard to a compact board format (typically 3.5-inch, Pico-ITX or a custom carrier), use a low-power processor soldered directly to the board, and rely on passive cooling rather than a fan. The result is a desktop that takes up almost no desk space, runs silently, and can be hidden entirely with a VESA mount.

How Small Can a Desktop Get?

Size is driven mostly by form factor and cooling method. A fanless chassis with an external 12 V adapter can be far smaller than a unit with an internal power supply, and a thin client — designed only to run a remote session — can be smaller still because it needs less storage and fewer ports. The table below shows typical industry size bands so you can compare categories rather than a single model number.