Correction: The Beelink GTR7 models *do* come with HDMI 2.1, but it's not mentioned in their marketing materials. Thanks to everyone who pointed that out, I'm excited to see this become a standard in future mini PCs.
Switched to performance mode from bios and cranked memory ram to 5600 Hz (came with ram at 3200HZ for some unknown reason) upscale the GPU memory to 6 GB I managed to get 74 FPS on cyberpunk at low settings.....it's getting a little noisier but nothing to worry about..... kudos to minis forum they have done a great job with this mini pc...
Thanks for the tip! I saw ETA Prime set his TDP to 80W+ and got great performance, pretty impressive. This is definitely a fun little project to mess around with!
The performance level is insane for an APU. Mind boggling really. Especially as you are testing "standard" resolutions. Outside of poor implementations of FSR (like Death Stranding) I actually think the image quality is overall better with a bit of FSR and some higher settings. These mini PCs are bangers. And yes, you can get a cheaper PC that performs better. You can grab something like a 5700XT or a 2070S a 5600 ryzen CPU and the finest quality 16GB of DDR4 you can find. But it is going to be big and bulky and not as cool. Would love a comparison to 6800H models and overclocking especially putting faster ram on the 6800 systems. Also bear in mind that there will be a performance uplift once these APUs get better driver support. Especially on Linux.
I need a tiny PC to put on my daughters desk for school. I know I could get something cheaper, but I am looking at this, because I like that it has more power. I think it would be fun to take her machine that she uses for school, and bring it to another room to plug into a monitor or TV duirng family game time :) The size makes moving it to another room possible. Thanks for this review and for your spreadsheet. That was EXTREMELY helpful to me. There are so many optoins here so I was totally overloaded. It is hard to konw what capabilities each of them are going to have.
@@rylaaaaaaa probably to reddit, eventually, one of the retrogaming subs or r/gamecube. But it's going to be a while before I can afford the components
Love these mini-PCs. They save so much space, affordable, and have a good amount of performance Power too. Also, it allows for customized monitors and keyboards.
@@RandomPlaceHolderNamei'm using chuwi hi10 go window tablet for about 1.5 year. Now i regret my choice, the heat and battery stuff is quiet paint in the ass. I should buy a mini pc and a portable monitor back then.
I've been wanting to have a pc again so insanely bad but havent gotten one due to lack of space. I'm glad I found this video. I decided to go with the upgraded 64gb ram and 1tb ssd. I'm sure that'll be great for my intro back into pc gaming.
Worth noting for the CPU temps that Zen 4 CPUs boost to max temp (95C normally) as normal behavior, it doesn't make me any less comfortable with it (I have a Zen 4 CPU in my main PC and it's always disconcerting seeing it running at 95C) but it is how they're meant to run according to AMD. I'm probably going to grab one of these, it feels like this is the marker for the Steam Deck companion box. £160 in the UK for 512gb storage+RAM though is pretty steep considering how cheap NVMe storage has gotten so I'll probably end up getting barebone with current DDR5 prices.
That's actually what I did. Bought mine barebones and have the ddr5 and M.2 waiting for it to arrive. Going to use it as my travel gaming setup whenever my friends and I get together for a game night.
I love little PCs dearly, the smaller the better. While Triple-A-games are super nice to showcase the performance of these boxes, personally I don't mind running those at lower resolutions, though. Like 900p or using FSR to get a XBox-One-like experience. Story driven SP are, what, around 20-30h at best? Maybe 50-60h if they are open world? What I'm missing in the PC testing section were games like Diablo 4 or zooming/panning around large cities in Cities Skylines. This would help to determine whether such a PC was viable to fire up instead of using the more powerhungry main gaming rig or eg. purchase for family if games like these were the kind being predominantely played by them.
I have the GTR7 Pro and it DOES come with HDMI 2.1, also the machine is sold barebones as well as specc'd out depending on who you buy it from such as MinixPC. May want to correct your statements.
I bought one of these and it lasted about 4 months before things started to go wrong with it - the case fan is very dodgy, mine started to make horrendous noise and eventually stopped working. In addition, the machine will randomly shut down and restart itself every few minutes. I have, of course, been trying to contact minisforum for support in the hope of getting a new fan, but their customer service is absolutely dire. In order to open the case to fit a new fan, you would need to remove the rubber feet which have been glued over the screw holes. great design, right there. I am advised by a relative who knows stuff that the shut down problem might be a bios issue so we might be able to work on that, but honestly I did not expect to have these problems with a computer less than 6 months old. very disappointed with the computer and also with the company and good luck to anyone who has issues with one of their computers because you will find yourself dealing with a brick wall. I would definitely not recommend.
I got interested in one of these after your last Beelink video. I have limited desk space (well, technically I’m choosing to limit my desk space by using a 48” OLED as my primary monitor, but that’s besides the point). I have a Razer Core eGPU mounted on the underside of my standing desk, and thought one these or the Beelink would be a good addition. I saw this one on sale for Prime Day, and even though I was leaning towards the Beelink, I just grabbed the Minisforum since I would get it faster than direct from Beelink. I only briefly used it yesterday before going out of town but I was impressed with what I saw so far.
If you have a steam deck and a series X and PS5 then this iGPU will fill in the gap above steam deck and below your 4k consoles for your PC gaming needs without having redundance in hardware performance. THIS IS CHEF'S KISS I CAN'T EVEN.
With Intel ending the NUC it's great that options like this are available, and the AMD APU is surely better than Intel HD Graphics. I'd love to see a quick attempt of AAA games with ChimeraOS (Steam Deck OS for PC).
I appreciate how far computers have come because back when I bought my Dell XPS 8300 the price new was 1,000 dollars, I bought it refurbished for 800. This computer was considered a high-performance PC at the time, close to the performance of a gaming PC at the time with plenty of USB ports and an HDMI port. It came with Windows 7; I used it basically for streaming and browsing the internet. It finally died after 12 years, it's not the hard drive because the screen stays black with both cloned hard drives. I decided not to fix it, it's time for an upgrade so I ordered the UM790 with 1 TB SSD and 64 GB ram. I built a computer from scratch a long time ago and now I rather not mess with this work. I paid 730 for the UM790 so considering inflation 800 dollars back in 2011 is almost 1200 dollars in 2023. So I think the money spent for the UM790 is a bargain when you consider inflation and the performance of these computers, the Dell XPS 8300 doesn't have 1/3 of the performance of the UM790.
You are so right about the front/back USB4 complaint. A lot of miniPC manufacturers seem to do this and put their USB4 ports all on the front with none on the back and for displays, power, ega or very fast network adapter surely in all those cases people would far rather have the cabling tucked away at the back?
You can hook an adapter into the NVME adapter and hook up an external card OR you can literally use the USB 4 40Gbps connection for an external connection.... INSANE!
one differentiator between UM790 and GTR7 is the strange magnetic power supply of the GTR7. I can imagine the challenges in getting a replacement outside of beelink if it fails
Maybe I’m a very niche use case but I only buy mini PCs for my main desktop now because I have 2 homes with each home having an identical monitor/mouse/keyboard/webcam setup so that when I move between them I only have to pack the miniPC. That also means that I have a PSU at each home which is easy to do for miniPCs that just use a standard 19V laptop supply but for the GTR7 I would need to find a way to buy a spare magnetic PSU. OK, I believe it can be powered from USB-C but I’d prefer not to have to go that route and be able to reuse my current PSUs since it’s the Minisforum UM790 for me. I have read quite a few reports of it freezing but I get the impression that v1.09 of the BIOS has fixed that and since it’s available via Amazon there’s a pretty simple return policy if it’s immediately apparent that I made a mistake. It’s also nice to see that, judging by the numbering scheme, Minisforum have done 9 BIOS updates since the initial presumably 1.0 release; quite a few of these smaller miniPC manufacturers aren’t great at pushing out BIOS updates.
Thanks for the video. What do you think is the best way to play the emulated gamecube in my living room right now? I'm talking about performance, price and comfort.
I would think the Beelink GTR7 is better due to lower temp meaning lesser fan noise with option to increase TDP when needed plus 3x USB4 ports (1 front & 2 back) and most of all an Orange coloured casing option.
They're both great choices! I personally don't like the brighter colors, and all of the GTR7 branding on the PC -- I like a more subtle design. Small clarification: the front port on the GTR7 is only USB-C 3.2 not a full USB4 port. Still very handy!
Love your content Russ. You're one of my go to channels for handheld and mini PC reviews! Just bought the UM790 Pro as I wanted to update my 2019 Razer laptop and didn't want to break the bank. I have the same setup as your review with the eGPU (RTX 3060ti FE) but I'm having issues connecting it to the UM790 Pro, how did you make it work??? The PC doesn't even recognize the 3060 and it doesn't want to accept the drivers either?? You're help would be greatly appreciated. Thx
Thanks for addressing the Razer Core X Chroma, Russ. I bought one three years ago in a sale, and had hardly used it. Got it out of storage last week to run a 3080 Ti with my shiny new GTR7 Pro aaaaaaaand… the enclosure’s broken. Won’t power on. Presumably the PSU’s died. Sad face.
I'm asking weeks later, but are you using premiere to edit videos? How does that work for you? Are you using 4k footage? Most reviews are only talking about gaming performance, not video editing. I'd appreciate the help!!
It's nice the TotK runs upscaled nicely. It's a slightly painful experience at normal resolution on the steam deck so I was hoping it'd run better here. Mine is currently shipping from Honk ong so I'm excited.
Thanks for the video! Made me feel alot better about ordering it earlier this week haha. I've never ordered barebones before this one though, will it still come with the cooling pre installed for the m2? Or will I need my own? Also, you talk about batocera alot, but I couldn't get it to work. I tried something called retro bat that worked immediately. Is there a big difference between the two? Thanks again for the awesome video!
You are from Geekom, it is normal for you to say that the product you are reviewing. That said, I've seen a lot of videos of the Minisforum UM690 PRO and it seems to be a good device, very competitive
How does PS3 and 360 perform in Batocera (without the added gpu)? I picked up a UM690 after watching your review and was hoping running natively in Batocera would perform better than in Windows figuring it would require less resources, but both perform so poorly they are basically unplayable (tested Gears of War 1+2 and Uncharted 1+2).
This has a similar price with the 2060 Intel NUC in China, the NUC costs like 20 USD more but I believe it has much better gaming performance with the dedicated graphics card.
I really want to get one of these mini pc's but the cost is just too much at the moment. I do have an alternative which is running coin ops as a non steam game through my steam link which does work really well as my new 'retro game console' in my living room.
For emulation, assuming PS3/Xbox isn’t your priority, nothing beats the price and performance of the UM450, so far. Any chance we will see a review of the UM560XT in the future?
I saw that literally the day after I got a um790 w/64gb ram. Kinda bummed bc I picked it up to experiment with LLMs and even though it's way faster than what I was using before, mixtral 8x7B is still topping out at 5.50 tokens per second and 30B models rarely get above 2 tokens per second. Pairing a 40 series gpu with the um780xtx is def the way to go
For the heat issues, can you control voltage from BIOS to help the heat at the expense of some performance? Esp in cases where you may be using the eGPU it probably makes sense to do that? I've been on the fence of getting this or the GTR7 or GTR7 Pro and my only take away is that the GTR 7 and 7 Pro are not available on Amazon while the UM790 Pro is.
I do think your work is incredibly helpful, thank you. Where I get confused is all I need is a mini PC that I can use to play VR games via a headset, such as Pico 4. There is an over-load of pecs and data that I lose track. It does not have to be Win11. Can you suggest any in your opinion that might do the job?
Since posting I have tried a few mini pc's (thank you Amazon for your return policy) and bought the Beelink AMD Ryzen7 5800H. It does what I want and is very quiet.
Nice review! I like this little machine, but I heard some people having trouble with video drivers. Looks like it won’t display correct aspect ratio on non last gen TV ( maybe non 2.1 HDMI?). Do you know anything about that?
The reason you’re not getting better performance in Horizon zero dawn is because of thunderbolt 3/USB 4. It has bandwidth limited. Try the same GPU with an occulink link set up like the Phax does :)
Has anyone incorporated these mini pc's into a stand alone sim pit? Would love to see a representation of that as well as gameplay testing for like elite dangerous or infinty battlscape.
The company site and every TH-camr reviewing these mini pcs state/restate the 2tb limits on SSD and nvme expansion. Nobody explains why that limit exists including the mfr. Perhaps you could explore this topic. I have a beelink ser 5 with a 4 tb SSD as the second drive. And it works perfectly. I haven’t explored a 4tb nvme as a main drive, but that’s on the todo list. Please look into this limit on expandability. Thanks.
Great video. I bought a UM790 Pro as a result. I can’t seem to get Botacera operating on my UM790 Pro - i use a USB option but always get the Secure Boot error here. I updated my Botacera version to 38 (Beta) on a different PC as I read that can help but it doesn’t seem to help. Is there some other system settings to change on the UM790 to make it work? Thanks!
This one or an HX80g for a dedicated emulation/gaming setup? The HX80G is the exact same price still has eight cores and 16 threads but also has a dedicated graphics card (RX 6600M) I haven't been able to find any good reviews for this model but it seems like it would be a great choice for my dedicated arcade cabinet. Looking for something that will handle everything up through PS3 at 1080p resolution.
@@acejon2162 Yes that is what I have been thinking as well. It would just be nice to be able to see someone put it through its paces before actually making a purchase.
Hi Retro! Nice video. Can I ask you to test and put in this comment the results from wifi speeds and bluetooth range, please? Are they fine or not at all comparing to your mac or other pcs?
I've got a Lenovo legion laptop from 2017, with an i5 and mobile 1050 ti card, mechanical disk drive...and it's showing his age, so that nowadays I mostly use consoles and GeForce Now on my phone hooked to the TV thru hdmi, can this mini pc be a good replacement for my laptop? It's more powerful?
Question for @RetroGameCorps , how good would this Mini PC be strictly for live streaming or recording console gaming? I have an Xbox Series X, and an AVerMedia HDMI 2.1 Game Capture Card. It allows 4k 120fps Passthrough, streaming at 4k 60fps. Would I be able to do that on this PC?
Also, Russ, re your summary slide: I have the GTR7 Pro, which runs the same 7940HS and has an HDMI 2.1 socket. I don’t own the 7840HS model, but I’d be *very* surprised if that too didn’t have HDMI 2.1…? Dealbreakers for me between the GTR7 Pro and the UM790 Pro were the rear Thunderbolt and DisplayPort sockets on the GTR7 - because both of my monitor’s HDMI sockets were occupied, but the DP socket was still available to me.
usb 4 is compatible with thunderbolt(and carries displayport 2.1), and two are available on the um790 pro(so for example one for charging and one to connect to a monitor via thunderbolt or a usb 4 to dp adaptor).
@@DanielMuvdi Yes I just said it wasn't a differentiating factors between the two mini pcs(unlike the placement of the ports, with the um790 pro having both at the front, or the dual hdmi 2.1 at the back).But the full displayport on the gtr7 pro negates the use of an adaptor if you already have a displayport monitor and cable(and any usb 4/thunderbolt ports can't be used).
I had mine less than a week ago and sent it back to amazon on the same day it came in the mail. The wifi card was terrible. My acer Nitro 5 can download at over 500Mb/s. The Mini PC barely got 50 Mb/s. I even tried putting a TP Link Archer wireless adapter to boost speed. It conflicted with my wireless mouse no matter what USB port I used. Most likely because it isn't equipped with enough PCIE lanes to handle those 4 USB ports on the back. I even had a 220 dollar coupon and thought it was a ripoff. Over 1000 dollars Canadian is way too much for this. I mean if you're building something that can game you need enough pcie lanes. You need fast wifi to download big games. It's a great start, but these Mini PCs are clearly unfinished. I won't be buying one for quite a while yet.
Does the MinisForum not have a boot menu that you need to boot it by going through the Windows recovery options? I thought all modern computers have boot menus just to find out, that my mini PC (not a MinisForum) doesn't seem to have one, where I have to go through the BIOS to boot from my second SSD (the system from my dying laptop). At least it uses ESC as BIOS key and lets me boot from whatever device directly from inside the BIOS, without having to mess with the boot order settings.
I was looking forward to the comparison with the beelink but you chose the wrong model. I would like to see a comparison with the gtr 7 pro. I am looking to purchase one or the other and I'd like to know if there any performance differences since the have the same specs.
@rhythmandblues9302 I like it so far. Kids were hoping they can use ray tracing with mindcraft but the frame rates are very low...unplayable. plays diablo 4 like a champ though
Correction: The Beelink GTR7 models *do* come with HDMI 2.1, but it's not mentioned in their marketing materials. Thanks to everyone who pointed that out, I'm excited to see this become a standard in future mini PCs.
Did you change your mind now that you know this?
@@DanielMuvdi I still prefer the look and size of the MinisForum, although it definitely makes it a harder choice!
@@RetroGameCorps Thanks for your answer!
@@RetroGameCorps looks aside, the beelink has stronger performance also perhaps?
What do you think about the GTR7 Pro RGC??
Thank you for including eGpu in your reviews.
For me this is a major pulling point for these.
Switched to performance mode from bios and cranked memory ram to 5600 Hz (came with ram at 3200HZ for some unknown reason) upscale the GPU memory to 6 GB I managed to get 74 FPS on cyberpunk at low settings.....it's getting a little noisier but nothing to worry about..... kudos to minis forum they have done a great job with this mini pc...
Thanks for the tip! I saw ETA Prime set his TDP to 80W+ and got great performance, pretty impressive. This is definitely a fun little project to mess around with!
Hi how to upscale gpu memory ?
The performance level is insane for an APU. Mind boggling really. Especially as you are testing "standard" resolutions. Outside of poor implementations of FSR (like Death Stranding) I actually think the image quality is overall better with a bit of FSR and some higher settings. These mini PCs are bangers. And yes, you can get a cheaper PC that performs better. You can grab something like a 5700XT or a 2070S a 5600 ryzen CPU and the finest quality 16GB of DDR4 you can find. But it is going to be big and bulky and not as cool.
Would love a comparison to 6800H models and overclocking especially putting faster ram on the 6800 systems. Also bear in mind that there will be a performance uplift once these APUs get better driver support. Especially on Linux.
"Mysterious 2023 game you've probably never heard of" lol
What’s the game?
@@giacomofinotto totk
@@NFKTN i know i was ironic
@@giacomofinotto Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
I need a tiny PC to put on my daughters desk for school. I know I could get something cheaper, but I am looking at this, because I like that it has more power. I think it would be fun to take her machine that she uses for school, and bring it to another room to plug into a monitor or TV duirng family game time :) The size makes moving it to another room possible. Thanks for this review and for your spreadsheet. That was EXTREMELY helpful to me. There are so many optoins here so I was totally overloaded. It is hard to konw what capabilities each of them are going to have.
The Wireless Connectivity difference between two models:
Minisforum UM790 Pro is Wi-Fi 6E，BlueTooth 5.3
GMKtec NucBox K4 is Wi-Fi 6，BlueTooth 5.2
I think this is going to be the one for me. Saving up to fit this into a Gamecube Shell for a sleeper Gamecube PC.
dude, that'd be so cool. anywhere you plan on uploading pics?
@@rylaaaaaaa probably to reddit, eventually, one of the retrogaming subs or r/gamecube. But it's going to be a while before I can afford the components
Dude, i found your channel by looking up retro stuff. Now I got recommendations from youtube of your channel. And I enjoy watching all of them. ❤
Love these mini-PCs. They save so much space, affordable, and have a good amount of performance Power too. Also, it allows for customized monitors and keyboards.
Tiny, cute and powerful! Now pair that with a mini display and you have a portable pc setup ❤️🔥
The fuk am i gonna write and click with?
These aren't meant to be portable. They're meant to be inconspicuous. If you want portable, get a laptop.
@@RandomPlaceHolderNamei'm using chuwi hi10 go window tablet for about 1.5 year. Now i regret my choice, the heat and battery stuff is quiet paint in the ass. I should buy a mini pc and a portable monitor back then.
@@CrumpetsNBiscuits get a keyboard and mouse 🤣
@@hiepbenh88 Or a good laptop.
I've been wanting to have a pc again so insanely bad but havent gotten one due to lack of space. I'm glad I found this video. I decided to go with the upgraded 64gb ram and 1tb ssd. I'm sure that'll be great for my intro back into pc gaming.
Worth noting for the CPU temps that Zen 4 CPUs boost to max temp (95C normally) as normal behavior, it doesn't make me any less comfortable with it (I have a Zen 4 CPU in my main PC and it's always disconcerting seeing it running at 95C) but it is how they're meant to run according to AMD.
I'm probably going to grab one of these, it feels like this is the marker for the Steam Deck companion box. £160 in the UK for 512gb storage+RAM though is pretty steep considering how cheap NVMe storage has gotten so I'll probably end up getting barebone with current DDR5 prices.
Thanks for the clarification!
That's actually what I did. Bought mine barebones and have the ddr5 and M.2 waiting for it to arrive. Going to use it as my travel gaming setup whenever my friends and I get together for a game night.
I love little PCs dearly, the smaller the better.
While Triple-A-games are super nice to showcase the performance of these boxes, personally I don't mind running those at lower resolutions, though.
Like 900p or using FSR to get a XBox-One-like experience. Story driven SP are, what, around 20-30h at best? Maybe 50-60h if they are open world?
What I'm missing in the PC testing section were games like Diablo 4 or zooming/panning around large cities in Cities Skylines.
This would help to determine whether such a PC was viable to fire up instead of using the more powerhungry main gaming rig or
eg. purchase for family if games like these were the kind being predominantely played by them.
Thank your for your excellent reviews and for the great Mini PC spreadsheet! I ended up purchasing a UM790 Pro on sale and I love it so far!
Very nice that you also tested the most popular Emulators on this thing!!
I’m upgrading from a Xeon + r9 290x, I just ordered one! Can’t wait to get it.
Really fast
I hope this gets to $399 barebones asap for any 7840/7940HS
I have the GTR7 Pro and it DOES come with HDMI 2.1, also the machine is sold barebones as well as specc'd out depending on who you buy it from such as MinixPC. May want to correct your statements.
16:34 I laughed out loud seeing the gigantic external Graphics Card beside the mini PC he's reviewing
I bought one of these and it lasted about 4 months before things started to go wrong with it - the case fan is very dodgy, mine started to make horrendous noise and eventually stopped working. In addition, the machine will randomly shut down and restart itself every few minutes. I have, of course, been trying to contact minisforum for support in the hope of getting a new fan, but their customer service is absolutely dire. In order to open the case to fit a new fan, you would need to remove the rubber feet which have been glued over the screw holes. great design, right there. I am advised by a relative who knows stuff that the shut down problem might be a bios issue so we might be able to work on that, but honestly I did not expect to have these problems with a computer less than 6 months old. very disappointed with the computer and also with the company and good luck to anyone who has issues with one of their computers because you will find yourself dealing with a brick wall. I would definitely not recommend.
I got interested in one of these after your last Beelink video. I have limited desk space (well, technically I’m choosing to limit my desk space by using a 48” OLED as my primary monitor, but that’s besides the point). I have a Razer Core eGPU mounted on the underside of my standing desk, and thought one these or the Beelink would be a good addition. I saw this one on sale for Prime Day, and even though I was leaning towards the Beelink, I just grabbed the Minisforum since I would get it faster than direct from Beelink. I only briefly used it yesterday before going out of town but I was impressed with what I saw so far.
May I ask, how long did it take to arrive? I ordered yesterday and can’t wait to use it
If you have a steam deck and a series X and PS5 then this iGPU will fill in the gap above steam deck and below your 4k consoles for your PC gaming needs without having redundance in hardware performance. THIS IS CHEF'S KISS I CAN'T EVEN.
Thanks for a pretty honest review with the EGPU testing, your examples are a lot more real world than most. Not everyone has a 4K monitor lol
With Intel ending the NUC it's great that options like this are available, and the AMD APU is surely better than Intel HD Graphics. I'd love to see a quick attempt of AAA games with ChimeraOS (Steam Deck OS for PC).
The NUCs death has been greatly exaggerated. Revived/bought by Asus. I just don't know if it will keep the amazing customer service it once had.
I appreciate how far computers have come because back when I bought my Dell XPS 8300 the price new was 1,000 dollars, I bought it refurbished for 800. This computer was considered a high-performance PC at the time, close to the performance of a gaming PC at the time with plenty of USB ports and an HDMI port. It came with Windows 7; I used it basically for streaming and browsing the internet. It finally died after 12 years, it's not the hard drive because the screen stays black with both cloned hard drives. I decided not to fix it, it's time for an upgrade so I ordered the UM790 with 1 TB SSD and 64 GB ram. I built a computer from scratch a long time ago and now I rather not mess with this work. I paid 730 for the UM790 so considering inflation 800 dollars back in 2011 is almost 1200 dollars in 2023. So I think the money spent for the UM790 is a bargain when you consider inflation and the performance of these computers, the Dell XPS 8300 doesn't have 1/3 of the performance of the UM790.
Appreciate the extra effort of testing a eGPU.
You are so right about the front/back USB4 complaint. A lot of miniPC manufacturers seem to do this and put their USB4 ports all on the front with none on the back and for displays, power, ega or very fast network adapter surely in all those cases people would far rather have the cabling tucked away at the back?
You can hook an adapter into the NVME adapter and hook up an external card OR you can literally use the USB 4 40Gbps connection for an external connection.... INSANE!
one differentiator between UM790 and GTR7 is the strange magnetic power supply of the GTR7. I can imagine the challenges in getting a replacement outside of beelink if it fails
Also the fingerprint reader in the Beelink GTR7. The only mini-PC to have this feature outside of other Beelink options.
Maybe I’m a very niche use case but I only buy mini PCs for my main desktop now because I have 2 homes with each home having an identical monitor/mouse/keyboard/webcam setup so that when I move between them I only have to pack the miniPC. That also means that I have a PSU at each home which is easy to do for miniPCs that just use a standard 19V laptop supply but for the GTR7 I would need to find a way to buy a spare magnetic PSU. OK, I believe it can be powered from USB-C but I’d prefer not to have to go that route and be able to reuse my current PSUs since it’s the Minisforum UM790 for me.
I have read quite a few reports of it freezing but I get the impression that v1.09 of the BIOS has fixed that and since it’s available via Amazon there’s a pretty simple return policy if it’s immediately apparent that I made a mistake. It’s also nice to see that, judging by the numbering scheme, Minisforum have done 9 BIOS updates since the initial presumably 1.0 release; quite a few of these smaller miniPC manufacturers aren’t great at pushing out BIOS updates.
Great review. I'm currently holding off for the EM780 which should drop soonish. To see how that stacks up in this. Then we'll see.
Thanks for the video. What do you think is the best way to play the emulated gamecube in my living room right now? I'm talking about performance, price and comfort.
The HDMI 2.1 port is what I wanted for using this as a media center
I would think the Beelink GTR7 is better due to lower temp meaning lesser fan noise with option to increase TDP when needed plus 3x USB4 ports (1 front & 2 back) and most of all an Orange coloured casing option.
They're both great choices! I personally don't like the brighter colors, and all of the GTR7 branding on the PC -- I like a more subtle design. Small clarification: the front port on the GTR7 is only USB-C 3.2 not a full USB4 port. Still very handy!
@@RetroGameCorps um, doesnt this one (minisforum) use higher memory freq?
Love your content Russ. You're one of my go to channels for handheld and mini PC reviews! Just bought the UM790 Pro as I wanted to update my 2019 Razer laptop and didn't want to break the bank. I have the same setup as your review with the eGPU (RTX 3060ti FE) but I'm having issues connecting it to the UM790 Pro, how did you make it work??? The PC doesn't even recognize the 3060 and it doesn't want to accept the drivers either?? You're help would be greatly appreciated. Thx
Thanks for addressing the Razer Core X Chroma, Russ. I bought one three years ago in a sale, and had hardly used it. Got it out of storage last week to run a 3080 Ti with my shiny new GTR7 Pro aaaaaaaand… the enclosure’s broken. Won’t power on. Presumably the PSU’s died.
Sad face.
See you soon. Excelent video!
It's a balanced set and a good product.
Great, nice to see a metal case and a fan
loving mine! great for photo and video editing
I'm asking weeks later, but are you using premiere to edit videos? How does that work for you? Are you using 4k footage? Most reviews are only talking about gaming performance, not video editing. I'd appreciate the help!!
It's nice the TotK runs upscaled nicely. It's a slightly painful experience at normal resolution on the steam deck so I was hoping it'd run better here. Mine is currently shipping from Honk ong so I'm excited.
Thanks for the video! Made me feel alot better about ordering it earlier this week haha. I've never ordered barebones before this one though, will it still come with the cooling pre installed for the m2? Or will I need my own? Also, you talk about batocera alot, but I couldn't get it to work. I tried something called retro bat that worked immediately. Is there a big difference between the two? Thanks again for the awesome video!
Your Excell sheet rocks by the way :)
As always, great video!! What kind of screwdriver was that you used?
You are from Geekom, it is normal for you to say that the product you are reviewing. That said, I've seen a lot of videos of the Minisforum UM690 PRO and it seems to be a good device, very competitive
Gtr overheats much more than um790,not the CPU but the ram and ssd due to not having a dedicated fan
Damn, that chip for that price is nuts, very intrigued :D
Great video, keep up the good work man
Is it possible to improve cooling by adding an external fan to the bottom of the miniPC? to increase air circulation inside the box?
How does PS3 and 360 perform in Batocera (without the added gpu)? I picked up a UM690 after watching your review and was hoping running natively in Batocera would perform better than in Windows figuring it would require less resources, but both perform so poorly they are basically unplayable (tested Gears of War 1+2 and Uncharted 1+2).
Very helpful. Appreciate it 👍
Just a thought, but are mini PCs the future - not just for gaming, but for every day normal usage?
MiniPCs definitely can be used for everyday normal usage. Plus mounting it behind tbe monitor means can be totally out of sight.
This has a similar price with the 2060 Intel NUC in China, the NUC costs like 20 USD more but I believe it has much better gaming performance with the dedicated graphics card.
I'm currently playing Baldurs Gate 3 on one of these. It's nuts.
I really want to get one of these mini pc's but the cost is just too much at the moment. I do have an alternative which is running coin ops as a non steam game through my steam link which does work really well as my new 'retro game console' in my living room.
hey there, thanks for all this reveiws ! do you think this is a suitable machine for 3D work , CAD and MAYA for example ? thanks !
Please update the description or something on the RG353v black seraph android build to alert screen v2 users of the incompatibility.
For emulation, assuming PS3/Xbox isn’t your priority, nothing beats the price and performance of the UM450, so far. Any chance we will see a review of the UM560XT in the future?
Have you looked at their elite UM 780 xtx. Besides USB C 4 it has oculink
I saw that literally the day after I got a um790 w/64gb ram. Kinda bummed bc I picked it up to experiment with LLMs and even though it's way faster than what I was using before, mixtral 8x7B is still topping out at 5.50 tokens per second and 30B models rarely get above 2 tokens per second. Pairing a 40 series gpu with the um780xtx is def the way to go
Any plans to review the Retro Shooter Pandora’s box?
just wondering how good these are to replace the Intel NUC to be used for Homelab servers and virtualization..
Is there a noticeable diffrence in performance compared with the R7 7840HS variant?
Hi @RetroGameCorps, did you try starting the UM790 using power over USB-C from the eGPU?
For the heat issues, can you control voltage from BIOS to help the heat at the expense of some performance? Esp in cases where you may be using the eGPU it probably makes sense to do that? I've been on the fence of getting this or the GTR7 or GTR7 Pro and my only take away is that the GTR 7 and 7 Pro are not available on Amazon while the UM790 Pro is.
I do think your work is incredibly helpful, thank you. Where I get confused is all I need is a mini PC that I can use to play VR games via a headset, such as Pico 4. There is an over-load of pecs and data that I lose track. It does not have to be Win11. Can you suggest any in your opinion that might do the job?
Since posting I have tried a few mini pc's (thank you Amazon for your return policy) and bought the Beelink AMD Ryzen7 5800H. It does what I want and is very quiet.
Nice review! I like this little machine, but I heard some people having trouble with video drivers. Looks like it won’t display correct aspect ratio on non last gen TV ( maybe non 2.1 HDMI?). Do you know anything about that?
The reason you’re not getting better performance in Horizon zero dawn is because of thunderbolt 3/USB 4. It has bandwidth limited. Try the same GPU with an occulink link set up like the Phax does :)
Has anyone incorporated these mini pc's into a stand alone sim pit? Would love to see a representation of that as well as gameplay testing for like elite dangerous or infinty battlscape.
The company site and every TH-camr reviewing these mini pcs state/restate the 2tb limits on SSD and nvme expansion. Nobody explains why that limit exists including the mfr. Perhaps you could explore this topic. I have a beelink ser 5 with a 4 tb SSD as the second drive. And it works perfectly. I haven’t explored a 4tb nvme as a main drive, but that’s on the todo list. Please look into this limit on expandability. Thanks.
Great video. I bought a UM790 Pro as a result. I can’t seem to get Botacera operating on my UM790 Pro - i use a USB option but always get the Secure Boot error here. I updated my Botacera version to 38 (Beta) on a different PC as I read that can help but it doesn’t seem to help. Is there some other system settings to change on the UM790 to make it work? Thanks!
Could you please compare something like this to a 7840u or Z1 Extreme handheld? I'm curious about the difference between 30-ish W and 54 W.
With the price of ddr5 vs ddr4 I wonder if the Neptune barebones is a better buy with the 6600m and cheaper ram.
900p medium/high would be the way to go, in my humble opinion.
Is the external Graphic Card Nvidia RTX 4060 really connectable with the Minisforum UM790 via Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 through eGPU docking station?
This one or an HX80g for a dedicated emulation/gaming setup? The HX80G is the exact same price still has eight cores and 16 threads but also has a dedicated graphics card (RX 6600M) I haven't been able to find any good reviews for this model but it seems like it would be a great choice for my dedicated arcade cabinet. Looking for something that will handle everything up through PS3 at 1080p resolution.
If it is the same price go with the HX80G with dedicated graphics given you don't really need this small formfactor size.
@@acejon2162 Yes that is what I have been thinking as well. It would just be nice to be able to see someone put it through its paces before actually making a purchase.
Hi Retro! Nice video. Can I ask you to test and put in this comment the results from wifi speeds and bluetooth range, please? Are they fine or not at all comparing to your mac or other pcs?
Going to review any Intel N100 boxes soon?
I've got a Lenovo legion laptop from 2017, with an i5 and mobile 1050 ti card, mechanical disk drive...and it's showing his age, so that nowadays I mostly use consoles and GeForce Now on my phone hooked to the TV thru hdmi, can this mini pc be a good replacement for my laptop? It's more powerful?
The Geekom A7 is out, it seems to be more performing. Do you share?
Imagine buying a mini PC to try to keep things minimalistic and then buying a giant egpu enclosure for it that is the size of a desktop PC. 🤣
I intend to make it a reality…
So you reviewed the pre-release version?
Question for @RetroGameCorps , how good would this Mini PC be strictly for live streaming or recording console gaming? I have an Xbox Series X, and an AVerMedia HDMI 2.1 Game Capture Card. It allows 4k 120fps Passthrough, streaming at 4k 60fps. Would I be able to do that on this PC?
Thanks for calling out that they give you replacement rubber feet in the video.
Also, Russ, re your summary slide: I have the GTR7 Pro, which runs the same 7940HS and has an HDMI 2.1 socket. I don’t own the 7840HS model, but I’d be *very* surprised if that too didn’t have HDMI 2.1…?
Dealbreakers for me between the GTR7 Pro and the UM790 Pro were the rear Thunderbolt and DisplayPort sockets on the GTR7 - because both of my monitor’s HDMI sockets were occupied, but the DP socket was still available to me.
usb 4 is compatible with thunderbolt(and carries displayport 2.1), and two are available on the um790 pro(so for example one for charging and one to connect to a monitor via thunderbolt or a usb 4 to dp adaptor).
@@chris67italiano60 Good to know. Thank you.
@@chris67italiano60 GTR 7 pro has 2 usb 4 40gb ports on the back aswell...
@@DanielMuvdi Yes I just said it wasn't a differentiating factors between the two mini pcs(unlike the placement of the ports, with the um790 pro having both at the front, or the dual hdmi 2.1 at the back).But the full displayport on the gtr7 pro negates the use of an adaptor if you already have a displayport monitor and cable(and any usb 4/thunderbolt ports can't be used).
I had mine less than a week ago and sent it back to amazon on the same day it came in the mail. The wifi card was terrible. My acer Nitro 5 can download at over 500Mb/s. The Mini PC barely got 50 Mb/s. I even tried putting a TP Link Archer wireless adapter to boost speed. It conflicted with my wireless mouse no matter what USB port I used. Most likely because it isn't equipped with enough PCIE lanes to handle those 4 USB ports on the back. I even had a 220 dollar coupon and thought it was a ripoff. Over 1000 dollars Canadian is way too much for this. I mean if you're building something that can game you need enough pcie lanes. You need fast wifi to download big games. It's a great start, but these Mini PCs are clearly unfinished. I won't be buying one for quite a while yet.
For emulation, I feel like nothing has really beat the price of the UM450, assuming PS3 and Xbox isn’t your focus.
Does the MinisForum not have a boot menu that you need to boot it by going through the Windows recovery options?
I thought all modern computers have boot menus just to find out, that my mini PC (not a MinisForum) doesn't seem to have one, where I have to go through the BIOS to boot from my second SSD (the system from my dying laptop). At least it uses ESC as BIOS key and lets me boot from whatever device directly from inside the BIOS, without having to mess with the boot order settings.
Better cooling on GTR? wat? So that's why they started "Free Replacement Bottom Case" campaign
It would be better if they would put at least one usb4 on the back instead of both of them being on the front. Thanks for the video.
I was looking forward to the comparison with the beelink but you chose the wrong model. I would like to see a comparison with the gtr 7 pro. I am looking to purchase one or the other and I'd like to know if there any performance differences since the have the same specs.
GTR7 Pro should be better with the front & back USB4 ports. Plus slightly bigger size means better cooling with lower temp & lower fan noise.
@@acejon2162 Thanks, That's just what I have been thinking.
If you mount the mini pc at the back of a monitor, then it doesn't matter if the USB4 ports are at the front!
Did you try to place a disk with a preinstalled heatsink on? Did it fit?
So I decided to install Pop Os Linux on this box. Do I need to install any specific AMD drivers for the GPU to work?
How come you don't include any trigkey models on your sheet?
I bought the GTR 7 Pro, now i am watching this video to see if i screwed up
So did I. And you didn’t. Very little to choose between them.
@rhythmandblues9302 I like it so far. Kids were hoping they can use ray tracing with mindcraft but the frame rates are very low...unplayable. plays diablo 4 like a champ though
GTR7 Pro better due to better cooling (i.e. lower fan noise) and front & back USB4 ports.
@@acejon2162 I prefer the look of the other, but in terms of functionality I remain happy with the GTR7 Pro.
Love this channel
Suppports Baseus Wireless headphone?
Yup! All headphones are supported!
Do these mini pc's allow fast ssd's? Like the sn850x and 990pro's ??
so 7940hs cannot all games keep 60fps in 080p?how about RSR 720p>1080p/1440p? or can it oc ram 5600mhz>7500mhz and oc the 780m?
This mini PC suppports XBox Game Pass?
Yes!😊