Lenovo debuts a Snapdragon desktop PC that’s compact and affordable

When Qualcomm cancelled its Snapdragon Dev Kit, it seemingly dashed the hopes of a small-form-factor desktop powered by a Snapdragon X Elite CPU. But don’t worry! Lenovo has stepped in with its IdeaCentre Mini x — a tiny, cool, Snapdragon X-equipped desktop.

At CES 2025, Lenovo showed off the SFF desktop, priced at $659.99 and expected to ship in April. Incidentally, that’s a substantial discount from Qualcomm’s $900 Dev Kit that was discontinued in October 2024.

While Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X platform captured about two dozen laptops, some have been wondering whether desktop PCs would also benefit from the chip’s low-power capabilities. Qualcomm executives did tease Snapdragon desktops, and Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said that the company was targeting “mini-desktops” — that’s exactly what Lenovo’s new IdeaCentre is. It turns out that it’s very much like a Chromebox except with a Snapdragon chip inside.

Lenovo

The IdeaCentre Mini x itself measures 7.68 x 7.52 x 1.68 inches, which makes for a tidy little desktop device. Inside the new IdeaCentre Mini x is either a Snapdragon X Plus or Snapdragon X chip; unfortunately, Lenovo isn’t saying which, or how fast it will run. Lenovo will offer the option of up to 32GB of LPDDR5x (8488MHz) RAM and up to 1TB of PCIe Gen 4 SSD storage, which all makes for a compact little powerhouse of a PC, with just a 150W power supply inside.

Otherwise, the IdeaCentre Mini x offers both HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a ports to connect to an external display, Wi-Fi 7, and three USB-A ports (of which two are the faster 10Gbps variety).

Lenovo

Think of the IdeaCentre Mini x as a compact, desk-bound version of something like a Surface Laptop. While it won’t offer gaming capabilities, it should serve as a very nice and tidy office machine for everyday work.