What PC or Hardware Works Best for LinuxCNC?

Hey everyone! 

I'm pretty new to LinuxCNC and I'm trying to figure out what kind of computer or hardware setup works best for running it smoothly.

I've been reading some posts about latency issues and it got me kinda confused lol. Like, does it matter a lot what CPU or motherboard you use? And is a regular desktop PC always better than something like a mini PC or a single board computer (like Raspberry Pi)?

Here's kind of my situation:
- I don't have a huge budget, so I want something reliable but not super expensive
- I'll mostly be using a parallel port or maybe Ethernet-based motion controller
- Low latency is really important I think, but I don't fully understand how to test for it yet

I've been browsing some options online, maybe these can help others too:

www.amazon.com/s?k=mini+pc+intel+n100

www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=dell+optiplex+linuxcnc

etechdevices.com/collections/pc-servers-software

If anyone can share what PC or hardware setup they're using and whether it runs well, that would be super awesome! Even just a quick "this works great" or "avoid this" would help a lot. 

Thanks so much in advance, you guys seem really helpful here!

It seems LinuxCNC runs great on the majority of PCs. I've had a lot of network and USB problems with several min-pc's I bought new, cheap, for around $100 USD. With desktop, gaming, or workstation type PCs you will find occasional models that refuse to cooperate but most work.

I've test run LinuxCNC on my GMKTek mini-pc with a Ryzen 7 5825U cpu, with good results, but I recall someone recently complaining about a similar model.

If you use 1-10 year old hardware I'd expect a good chance of success. But that number range is no strict rule in any way. I'm typing this on a ~11 year old pc that tested fine on LinuxCNC, currently running straight Debian 13. With a ~9 year old graphics card and 16GB RAM it is still very usable.

Even brand new less than 1 year old often works great, you just run a greater chance of not-yet-fully supported hardware.

A couple days ago I installed LinuxCNC on A Dell Precision T5820 for a customer, an 8 year old server grade workstation with massive overkill computing power. Everything works so far except the new 8-port non-branded network card bought separate from Amazon was junk.