There are compute intensive elements within an Urbackup system, and there are I/O elements.
In my experience, you definitely will benefit with more RAM (for UrBackup and for caching of transferred file data), and if you have good I/O on the backup server. I would rank the priority in the following way for the workload you are proposing:
- RAM (8GB min, 16GB preferred)
- Disk I/O (SSD if you have them, but mechanical disks with a caching RAID controller will work also)
- CPU (4-core min, 8-core preferred)
- Network (1Gbps wired min; if possible to aggregate links, then that is better)
That MiniPC stick is constrained in a lot of ways, including RAM and CPU. And x64 Windows is better from a performance standpoint.
I would go with more RAM and slower CPU if absolutely forced, vs the opposite.
How much data does each laptop have, on average?
-ASB