EVO-T1 is King
I’ve been using the EVO-T1 for my homelab and AI workloads, and honestly it exceeded my expectations for a mini PC in this size and price range. The Core Ultra 9 285H is surprisingly powerful for virtualization and local AI inference. I’m running with multiple LXCs and VMs including Home Assistant, Nextcloud, DNS servers, monitoring stacks, and local LLM workloads without the system feeling sluggish. The Intel Arc iGPU and NPU support are a huge bonus for OpenVINO-based AI acceleration. What impressed me most: - Very strong performance-per-watt - Quiet under normal load - Excellent for homelab virtualization - Great compatibility with Linux and Proxmox - Handles local AI inference much better than I expected - OCuLink support gives future GPU expansion flexibility - 64 GB RAM configuration makes it practical for serious workloads I was able to run OpenVINO models, llama.cpp, Docker stacks, and multiple services simultaneously while still keeping the system responsive. For anyone interested in homelabs, self-hosting, AI experimentation, or lightweight server workloads, this machine is a fantastic balance between size, power, and efficiency.