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Prime: BOSGAME E5 Mini PC: Ryzen 3 5300U, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, Win 11 Pro
$189
$359
47% off
+ Free S&Hat Amazon
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BOSGAME Direct via Amazon has for Prime Members: BOSGAME E5 Mini PC for $209.99 - 10% automatically at checkout = $188.99. Shipping is free.
Thanks to community member phoinix for sharing this deal.
Specs:
Thanks to community member phoinix for sharing this deal.
Specs:
- AMD Ryzen 3 5300U Processor (4 Cores, 8 Threads, up to 3.8GHz boost, 6MB total cache)
- 8GB DDR4 Memory
- 256GB M.2 2280 SSD
- AMD Radeon Graphics (6 Graphics Cores, 1500 MHz frequency)
- Empty Internal M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe 3.0 Slot
- Windows 11 Pro
- Ports:
- 1x HDMI 2.0
- 1x DisplayPort
- 1x Full-Function Type-C
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen2
- 2x USB 2.0
- 2x 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet
Editor's Notes
Written by citan359 | Staff- About this Deal:
- This offer is $9.01 less than the previous Frontpage Deal.
- About this Store:
- Don't have Amazon Prime? Students can get a free 6-Month Amazon Prime trial with free 2-day shipping, unlimited video streaming & more.
- If you're not a student, there's also a free 1-Month Amazon Prime trial available.
- You can view Amazon's Return Policy here.
- Additional Notes:
- Please see the original post for additional details & give the WIKI and additional forum comments a read for helpful discussion.
Community Notes
About the Poster
Deal Details
Community Notes
About the Poster
BOSGAME Direct via Amazon has for Prime Members: BOSGAME E5 Mini PC for $209.99 - 10% automatically at checkout = $188.99. Shipping is free.
Thanks to community member phoinix for sharing this deal.
Specs:
Thanks to community member phoinix for sharing this deal.
Specs:
- AMD Ryzen 3 5300U Processor (4 Cores, 8 Threads, up to 3.8GHz boost, 6MB total cache)
- 8GB DDR4 Memory
- 256GB M.2 2280 SSD
- AMD Radeon Graphics (6 Graphics Cores, 1500 MHz frequency)
- Empty Internal M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe 3.0 Slot
- Windows 11 Pro
- Ports:
- 1x HDMI 2.0
- 1x DisplayPort
- 1x Full-Function Type-C
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen2
- 2x USB 2.0
- 2x 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet
Editor's Notes
Written by citan359 | Staff- About this Deal:
- This offer is $9.01 less than the previous Frontpage Deal.
- About this Store:
- Don't have Amazon Prime? Students can get a free 6-Month Amazon Prime trial with free 2-day shipping, unlimited video streaming & more.
- If you're not a student, there's also a free 1-Month Amazon Prime trial available.
- You can view Amazon's Return Policy here.
- Additional Notes:
- Please see the original post for additional details & give the WIKI and additional forum comments a read for helpful discussion.
Community Voting
Deal
Score
+38
Good Deal
Bad Deal
Community Reviews
This BOSGAME E5 is a low-cost mini PC that stands out most as a compact router, home server, or light desktop box. It handles OpenWrt, OPNsense, Proxmox, Plex, and Home Assistant well, and the dual 2.5GbE ports make it especially useful for networking projects. The Ryzen chip and low idle power are solid, and Windows 11 can run fine after a clean install or a RAM upgrade. The main drawbacks are the slow stock SATA SSD, the single slow 8GB memory stick, and Realtek networking quirks on FreeBSD-based firewalls. It is best suited to buyers who plan to upgrade storage or use Linux-based software.
Common Questions (5)
Yes, it works well as a low-power router box, but the dual 2.5GbE ports use Realtek NICs, so FreeBSD-based OPNsense/pfSense may need manual driver installation or a plugin. Linux-based OpenWrt works out of the box, and some users run OPNsense inside Proxmox to avoid driver issues.
The stock 256GB SATA SSD is slow and may be the first part worth replacing, especially if you want a snappier Windows experience. It can still be usable as-is, and Linux or router-focused installs are less affected.
It has two SO-DIMM slots, but the stock configuration is a single 8GB DDR4 stick in one slot, so it runs single-channel. That makes upgrading easy: adding another matching 8GB stick brings it to 16GB dual-channel.
The Ryzen 5 5400U version is generally the better buy at the same or only slightly higher price because it offers a stronger Zen 3 CPU. The 5300U model still makes sense if you want the cheapest new unit or plan to upgrade storage and memory later.
It can run Windows 11 fine after a RAM upgrade, but the stock single-channel memory and slow SSD make it feel less responsive than a better-equipped mini PC. For a desktop replacement, a stronger model or upgraded storage and RAM is the safer choice.
AI-generated summary based on comments from the community. Updated ago
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31 Comments
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GDZPLPP8
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQF1NG5M
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I will wait to see if any even better deals pop up closer to Black Friday.
The Amazon listing is vague or wrong in a few places, so here's what I found on my unit:
- CPU: The listing says Ryzen 3 5300U in a few places, but mine has a Ryzen 3 5400U (newer Zen 3 core, 4 cores/8 threads, 4.0 GHz boost).
- RAM: Despite "dual-channel" in the listing, it came with a single 8 GB DDR4-2133 stick in one of two SO-DIMM slots, so it runs single-channel. This is slightly disappointing for someone who plans to run it with its stock RAM, but good news for someone (like myself) who intends to upgrade it, as it means you can purchase a single 8GB SODIMM to upgrade it to 16GB of RAM in dual-channel mode (rather than having to buy TWO 8GB sticks and then having two removed/leftover 4GB sticks). By default the BIOS reserves about 3 GB for the integrated graphics, so Linux only saw 4.7 GB until that setting is changed.
- Storage: A 256 GB KingFast M.2 SATA SSD (not NVMe). The factory Windows image read at only ~65 MB/s, which probably explains reports of sluggishness. After wiping it, freshly written data tested normal for SATA (~450 MB/s write, ~490 MB/s read). It's strange that the stock SSD that people (understandably) complain about performs so much better once wiped. The second unpopulated M.2 slot is NVMe only.
- Network: Two Realtek RTL8125B 2.5GbE ports that worked out of the box on Linux. Great for a router running Linux-based OpenWrt. FreeBSD-based OPNsense/pfSense need an add-on Realtek driver, and results there are mixed. I plan to run OPNsense, but as a Proxmox VE virtual machine (as this small form factor PC can easily act as a router and have plenty of compute resources left over for other VMs or Linux containers). Because Proxmox VE is Linux-based, it handles the Realtek interfaces fine, and passes through generic NICs to the OPNsense VM, so no Realtek add-on drivers needed in OPNsense.
- Also: Realtek Wi-Fi 5, a headphone jack, and a Windows 11 Pro key embedded in the firmware (a clean reinstall activates automatically).
Testing/Benchmark Results:
- Geekbench 6: 1640 single-core / 4381 multi-core. 7-Zip: ~40 GIPS.
- Power (measured with a Kill-A-Watt): About 4.6 W idle and about 41 W at full all-core load.
- A 10-minute all-core stress test held ~4.0 GHz with no throttling at 84-89 °C. The fan is audible (though definitely not loud or annoying) under full load but quiet at idle.
- The BIOS supports automatic power-on after a power outage, Wake-on-LAN, and virtualization (SVM/IOMMU).
- BrowserBench.org (Firefox, Lubuntu 26.04 live USB); Speedometer: 15.8; JetStream 3: 122.2; MotionMark: 1021.
I plan on running my two small form factor (SFF) PCs as Proxmox VE hosts. I removed the 8GB stick from one of mine and installed it in the other, bringing that PC's RAM to 16GB. I couldn't do the same with the 256GB SATA SSD, as the second M.2 slot is NVMe only. But I did purchase a 256GB NVMe M.2 SSD (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C48P4RRJ) that I installed in the PC with 16GB RAM, and set up a software RAID 1 mirror across the stock 256GB SATA SSD and the added 256GB NVMe SSD. I didn't test it, but this should mean that writes to the mirror will be at the speed of the slowest drive (almost certainly the stock SATA), but reads will be at least as fast as the fastest member drive (the NVMe), perhaps even faster if reads are shared across both mirrored drives.
I installed two new sticks of 16GB each on the other SFF PC (32GB total) (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08T17RQ87) and two 512GB NVMe SSDs (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C48MS1D5), which all worked great.
Opening the case is easy. There is a heatsink and small fan on the base plate, primarily for cooling the M.2 SSDs. The stock thermal pad is only large enough to contact the stock SSD. Because I added two side-by-side M.2 SSDs in both of my PCs, I replaced the stock pad with a larger one, cut from the kit at the following URL (match the thickness of the stock pad - I think it was 2.5mm): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZ89DK4C
In general, I've been impressed with the performance of these SFF PCs, and they seem like a good value for the price. I've only owned them for a short while and haven't finished setting them up fully, but I did run a lot of testing and liked what I saw! Wiping the stock SATA SSD is my biggest recommendation, as it's horribly slow for some reason until wiped.
Edit: Also posted this same info to the Amazon listing as a review, and included some photos of the PC with its bottom panel removed. I tried to post the photos here as well, but it didn't seem to work. Maybe they're too high resolution (too large file size). I'm new to posting on SlickDeals, so I'm kinda clueless
[IMG]https://static.slickdealscdn.com/images/smilies/wink.gif[/IMG]. You can see the photos in the Amazon review I just posted, if curious - though the review doesn't seem to be live yet (maybe Amazon needs to review it - I'm also new to posting reviews on Amazon).
Yup, that's the better deal. Bosgame seems to have multiple listings/stores on Amazon, so you have to poke around to find the best deals. For instance, this same PC from here is $340!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQF1NG5M
Thanks for bringing this up!
Very tempting!
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I would say that the out of the box experience was not great for me as the Windows installation came corrupted and was taking ages to try and fix itself. I eventually did a clean install of Windows 11 Pro.
For use as a desktop replacement I would suggest spending a little more on something with more performance. The memory that comes with this is basically the slowest 2133 mhz DDR4 sodimm you can find despite the CPU supporting up to 3200 mhz.
What this is perfect for would be an OPNsense/PFSense or OpenWRT router though for me it took a little work to figure out how to load the Realtek drivers manually as OPNSense did not detect or automatically download it.
For that purpose of just one of the cheapest and low powered computer I can currently find with a dual 2.5 nics so far I can't complain.
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