Good to hear your short and curlies are feeling warm and fuzzy. Must surely be reaching the pinnacle of what the 79 series CPU's can produce, looking for forward to the 80 series next
I've researched this more and Reatan is using the exact same motherboard for the Alloy 9 that the MINISFORUM Venus UM790 Pro uses. It's basically a repackaged Venus UM790 Pro!
FYI : I received my unit yesterday and dismantled it today. The unit DID include a Gen 4 Kingston SSD and Kingston Memory as well. I kept the memory, but dropped in a 4TB SSD and installed HoloISO without issue.
Not bad. Only thing it is missing is an Oculink port. I wouldn't want the Win 11 Pro and would scrub it and replace it with Win 10 Pro with a 200 gb. partition.
One thing would love to see you and other reviewers add is testing wifi and bluetooth range. I have the SER7 but range is bad; bluetooth only is stable over a few feet. I had to buy a USB bluetooth dongle. The Reatan Alloy 9 looks great but would be killer to know wifi/bluetooth range is also good.
@@Robtech Hi Rob! I use a bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth headphones (Sony XM3). I don't console game that much but bluetooth controllers are pretty popular. With the Ser7, from the other side of the room about 10ft away, the logitech bluetooth keyboard would not pick up all keys I typed, the trackpad would stutter, and the headphone audio would be garbled half the time or just go silent. When I was within a few feet the problems would go away. I checked forums and this seems a common issue. I bought a USB WIFI device that solved the problem, but now I got this antenna poking out the front and using up a USB port. With all the mini pc's out there I might have opted for the one with better bluetooth range, but none of the reviewers out there cover this.
Going to be very interesting to see what the next generation of mini pc's are capable of with AMD and Intel's mobile chips. While personally for the price I'd built a mATX system I can see a powerful, small, quiet and low power system hitting all the check marks for a lot of people.
What a nice Christmas surprise; I wasn't expecting a new review today, and a nice RAM/nvme fan is great. It's an appealing system with the metal case, and two nvme 4 slots. I do wish they'd have put the USB4 ports on the back and moved a couple of the USB-A's to the front.
Great video. Love the fact that it's fan noise is so quiet. Hope you keep us updated with it. Going to buy one myself! I've been awaiting a mini pc to run age of empires IV at 1440p im hoping this one can do it.
I wonder if we'll ever see a market for cases for mini PCs and a standard form factor so you can buy the guts, and stick it in your own case? Thus being able to get proper, full sized fans and/or storage space. Or being able to stack bricks of stuff atop each other - e.g. a PC brick, with a NAS brick containing 4 NVME slots or something. Perhaps that sort of thing will happen down the line, or maybe the form factor will remain the same and they'll just get obscenely powerful as the storage on a single NVME drive increases?
Hey Robtech thanks for the video. I'm so glad mini PCs are improving so much. I have a question though, do you have a passion for fitness and getting toned? You look like you've been in the gym.
Purchased this through Amazon, and like the machine. However, their customer support seems seriously lacking. I sent them two tech support questions via their online website link and have never received a reply to either one placed 3 weeks ago. Their website isn't updated beyond sales for the Alloy 9, no user manual/drivers etc... This is concerning, and has caused me to decide to return the unit.
@@Skobeloff...Maybe I should have been more to my point , I am old school and like seeing and feeling things I buy before I buy them , Yeah you can order some Mini PC online from Australian sites but even then they usually are shipped from overseas anyway , But at least in my area with maybe 8 Computer stores in range none have any Mini PC apart from low end models. But thanks for letting me know this is a Australian TH-camr .
Good video! I’m not too tech savvy but would you say it could handle complex cad software ? I like the form factor and portability of mini pc I’m just not sure it will be able to cope with these types of programs ?
It having a dedicated graphics option is disappointing but expected at that price point. Still, it would have been better to have a less powerful cpu with a dedicated gpu.
I just posted my impressions on this thread a few minutes ago . . . I did all the benchmarking that Rob did, plus a few more tests. In answer to your question, it destroyed the UM790 and the Geekom A7 as well. Same thing for the Beelink GTR7 Pro.
Thanks for your reply. According to AMD, Z1 Basic reaches 2.8 TFLOPS and Z1eXtreme 8.6 TFLOPS. ETAPRIME has a video (MiniPC Z1 Basic) so we hope to see miniPCs with Z1eXtreme soon. Nvidia and Intel will release new APUS in a few months. The battle is just beginning, and it will get very good in 2024. @@Robtech
Did you try the eGPU with another game to see if the performance difference was different? Good review and yes it does look like a very good mini PC. I think if I had the money I would order a 64GB 4TB drive like yesterday,
@Robtech I have to say I am surprised by the relatively small fps increase. Also I noticed the ram is at 5600 MHz. I wonder what performance increase, if any, one could get going for higher speed ram. Both for igpu and egpu.
It's running 1080P high (RTX 3070) instead of 720P low (iGPU). 5600 is maxed out for DDR5 www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-9-7940hs. It would have to be soldered LPDDR5 to go higher.
@@Robtech One last question, did you try video editing with the egpu to see if there is any difference? I am not sure what the situation of video editors and egpu is.
How will this run as a dedicated streaming pc? I’m looking for a mini pc to run as a dedicated streaming pc, so I’ll really only use it for obs with a capture card and some light browsing. Is this a good option for that?
I'm looking for a mini PC. Purpose of it : mainly streaming of movies (4K incl) with Kodi. What should you recommend as the best and cheapest one ? Tnx.
I was able to pick Germany as the country on the official website during checkout reatan.com/product/reatan-mini-gaming-pc-amd-ryzen-9-7940hs-1tb-ssd-32gb-ddr5-5600-mhz-ramdesktop-mini-computers/
What am i doing wrong got good results on 3dmark ? All I know is that the alloy 9 does run gta5 at incredible frame rates on 1080p for exactly 4 mins, then adrenaline software crashes but not windows 11. update the gpu drivers they said Well that caused me to have to do the restore to windows it didn't like that now I'm back up and running with reatan cpu/igpu drivers and gta5 is not playable on this stock machine can it ?
Shouldn't be a problem. Try another game and see if you get the same result. Could be faulty memory. You can run something like memtest to check if the memory is okay. There should be no errors in the full test.
@@Robtechhello did the mem test all good ran cinebench got 989 for multi i ran 3dmarks,night raid got 29,284 weird how you can max it out in a bench test and and its all good try the game and adrenaline just shuts down but windows is fine I dont know what else to try Time to find a much better class of games anyway that game is really bad
@@stclaws9580 True, but I prefer SD card then useless for me USBs. If you remember, Apple provided only USB-C for their laptops, and many people were upset, so finally Apple started giving SD card slot. Manufactures should keep learning than wild guessing.
@@kamertonaudiophileplayer847Most people will not use a sd card, so there is no point wasting money and space including it, those who want it (as mentioned by stclaws) can just buy a reader, if they do not already have one.
Nope, something isn't adding up here. Perhaps I got a bad one from Amazon??? This dam thing WILL NOT RUN RIGHT CRASH CRASH CRASH REFRANCE MEMORY ERRORS GFX ERRORS WHAT THE HELL ITS GOING BACK
@Robtech I did no issues. Is it still the same either Win11 or radeon drivers/software ??? It had one job only one As far as I can tell, it can't that if nothing physically is wrong, I have never seen above 83c It seems to change fan speed sometimes? Runs 3d mark when it wants too some times really really well then Bam no graphics for you I wish I tried it before any of the windows updates or the amd 780m stuff because I didn't get the secret ryzen9 7940hs/780m drivers you got igpu embargo on
Hard to tell without looking at it and troubleshooting. You could try using DDU to completely remove the AMD drivers and then reinstall a clean driver. If that fails, I'd return it.
It cannot be the best you've tested, since it lacks a dedicated gpu and others that you've tested do have that. You may like this one the most, but it's not the best.
@@RafelJaggai Miniforum Hx99g, Intel Nuc 12 Enthousiast and the new Asus ROG NUC's come to mind. Just to name a few, plenty more with a good dedicated GPU combined with a very good CPU.
Great review, Rob! I'd be curious how this compares to the Geekom A7 and their forthcoming A8s. I had never heard of Reatan - do you know anything about the company? Geekom seems to have good quality in the notoriously "quality challenged" mini PC space.
![The Ryzen 9 Mini PC POWERHOUSE, With a Twist [REATAN Alloy 9 Review]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hrBy6X6zMuU/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you, Robtech, for providing us with a comprehensive review of the mini PC Reatan Alloy 9.
Good to hear your short and curlies are feeling warm and fuzzy. Must surely be reaching the pinnacle of what the 79 series CPU's can produce, looking for forward to the 80 series next
I've researched this more and Reatan is using the exact same motherboard for the Alloy 9 that the MINISFORUM Venus UM790 Pro uses. It's basically a repackaged Venus UM790 Pro!
thats awesome cuz thats the machine im looking at
Thanks for the review, seems a clone of the UM790 Pro from MinisForum
FYI : I received my unit yesterday and dismantled it today. The unit DID include a Gen 4 Kingston SSD and Kingston Memory as well. I kept the memory, but dropped in a 4TB SSD and installed HoloISO without issue.
Thank you for your honest and unbiased reviews. Your videos have guided me in buying the right PCs for my clinic.
Glad to hear it. Thanks for letting me know!
Not bad. Only thing it is missing is an Oculink port. I wouldn't want the Win 11 Pro and would scrub it and replace it with Win 10 Pro with a 200 gb. partition.
One thing would love to see you and other reviewers add is testing wifi and bluetooth range. I have the SER7 but range is bad; bluetooth only is stable over a few feet. I had to buy a USB bluetooth dongle. The Reatan Alloy 9 looks great but would be killer to know wifi/bluetooth range is also good.
I test WiFi at 10 meters and nearly all minis have passed so far. I don't test/use Bluetooth. Maybe in the future. Any suggestion for device type?
@@Robtech Hi Rob! I use a bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth headphones (Sony XM3). I don't console game that much but bluetooth controllers are pretty popular. With the Ser7, from the other side of the room about 10ft away, the logitech bluetooth keyboard would not pick up all keys I typed, the trackpad would stutter, and the headphone audio would be garbled half the time or just go silent. When I was within a few feet the problems would go away. I checked forums and this seems a common issue. I bought a USB WIFI device that solved the problem, but now I got this antenna poking out the front and using up a USB port. With all the mini pc's out there I might have opted for the one with better bluetooth range, but none of the reviewers out there cover this.
Okay, think I'll buy a cheap Bluetooth speaker just to test connection distance.
Going to be very interesting to see what the next generation of mini pc's are capable of with AMD and Intel's mobile chips. While personally for the price I'd built a mATX system I can see a powerful, small, quiet and low power system hitting all the check marks for a lot of people.
What a nice Christmas surprise; I wasn't expecting a new review today, and a nice RAM/nvme fan is great. It's an appealing system with the metal case, and two nvme 4 slots. I do wish they'd have put the USB4 ports on the back and moved a couple of the USB-A's to the front.
I mounted mine at the back of the monitor. Clean setup.
Great video. Love the fact that it's fan noise is so quiet. Hope you keep us updated with it. Going to buy one myself! I've been awaiting a mini pc to run age of empires IV at 1440p im hoping this one can do it.
I wonder if we'll ever see a market for cases for mini PCs and a standard form factor so you can buy the guts, and stick it in your own case? Thus being able to get proper, full sized fans and/or storage space. Or being able to stack bricks of stuff atop each other - e.g. a PC brick, with a NAS brick containing 4 NVME slots or something. Perhaps that sort of thing will happen down the line, or maybe the form factor will remain the same and they'll just get obscenely powerful as the storage on a single NVME drive increases?
I think that market is in Shenzhen, China.
The closest is something like an ASRock Deskmini X300.
Mine coming in this week and i ordered samsung CRG9 lol
Please start testing quad display support on these videos. Got the um780xtx and could never get 4 displays running.
I've added quad display support to my testing routine. Next review is the first to feature it.
Would appreciate a barebones option, no point buying a good mini if it comes with crappy ram and/or m.2
The fact that this can okay triple A games and is this fucking small is wild
Would this work for office use, running crm's, office 365 and copilot?
Hey Robtech thanks for the video. I'm so glad mini PCs are improving so much. I have a question though, do you have a passion for fitness and getting toned? You look like you've been in the gym.
Nice review! What about XBOX and 360 emulation as compared with the other two mini PCs that you were showing?
For me the best Mini PC atm would be an Intel i9-13950HX with Nvidia RTX 4060m. The power per watt would be insane! I'm lookin' at you Beelink!
Everything was sounding great until you said the ssd was a gen 3. Why would they do that? 😢
Purchased this through Amazon, and like the machine. However, their customer support seems seriously lacking. I sent them two tech support questions via their online website link and have never received a reply to either one placed 3 weeks ago. Their website isn't updated beyond sales for the Alloy 9, no user manual/drivers etc... This is concerning, and has caused me to decide to return the unit.
So so many Mini PC I see on youtube and think I want one but 99% are not available in Australia :(
This is an Australian youtube channel
@@Skobeloff...Maybe I should have been more to my point , I am old school and like seeing and feeling things I buy before I buy them , Yeah you can order some Mini PC online from Australian sites but even then they usually are shipped from overseas anyway , But at least in my area with maybe 8 Computer stores in range none have any Mini PC apart from low end models. But thanks for letting me know this is a Australian TH-camr .
I love that everyone wants to go paperless, but we're still expected to live in an office with a paperclip supply to reset tech gear. :D
😂😂 wow never thought about it this way before. Good point lol
Good video! I’m not too tech savvy but would you say it could handle complex cad software ? I like the form factor and portability of mini pc I’m just not sure it will be able to cope with these types of programs ?
It having a dedicated graphics option is disappointing but expected at that price point. Still, it would have been better to have a less powerful cpu with a dedicated gpu.
Reatan support is POOR. After > 16 of office hrs i still got no reply on my email to them.
Great review. The benchmarks are extremely helpful. I am wondering how this stacks up against the MinisForum UM790 Pro?
I just posted my impressions on this thread a few minutes ago . . . I did all the benchmarking that Rob did, plus a few more tests. In answer to your question, it destroyed the UM790 and the Geekom A7 as well. Same thing for the Beelink GTR7 Pro.
Robot Friend 😀 Whats is better? Ryzen 9 7940HS VS AMD Z1 EXTREME (2024 minis PC coming) ? 😎
Z1 Extreme was made for handhelds with lower power limits. 7940HS will outperform it.
Thanks for your reply. According to AMD, Z1 Basic reaches 2.8 TFLOPS and Z1eXtreme 8.6 TFLOPS. ETAPRIME has a video (MiniPC Z1 Basic) so we hope to see miniPCs with Z1eXtreme soon. Nvidia and Intel will release new APUS in a few months. The battle is just beginning, and it will get very good in 2024. @@Robtech
Did you try the eGPU with another game to see if the performance difference was different?
Good review and yes it does look like a very good mini PC. I think if I had the money I would order a 64GB 4TB drive like yesterday,
Yeah, my usual is Forza Horzion 5, but after testing it I decided to just to try Alan Wake 2 instead.
@Robtech I have to say I am surprised by the relatively small fps increase. Also I noticed the ram is at 5600 MHz. I wonder what performance increase, if any, one could get going for higher speed ram. Both for igpu and egpu.
It's running 1080P high (RTX 3070) instead of 720P low (iGPU). 5600 is maxed out for DDR5 www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-9-7940hs. It would have to be soldered LPDDR5 to go higher.
@@Robtech Why I was under the impression there is 7000 RAM too? Weird. Thank you for the extra info!
@@Robtech One last question, did you try video editing with the egpu to see if there is any difference? I am not sure what the situation of video editors and egpu is.
How will this run as a dedicated streaming pc? I’m looking for a mini pc to run as a dedicated streaming pc, so I’ll really only use it for obs with a capture card and some light browsing. Is this a good option for that?
One USB-A on the front and One USB-C on the rear would be better...
Nice pity you cannot by the Reatan Alloy 9 in the UK!
Not from Amazon, but you can change the country to UK on the official website during checkout and get it that way.
Would you recommend this for games like cod or tarkov with smooth gameplay?
Tarkov requirements are low, so should be fine. Depends which COD, resolution, detail etc.
I'm looking for a mini PC. Purpose of it : mainly streaming of movies (4K incl) with Kodi. What should you recommend as the best and cheapest one ? Tnx.
N100 mini has no problem with 4K from the files I tried. th-cam.com/video/gJyBvZgkw2o/w-d-xo.html
WTF! No bare-bones option is just dumb. I bought a Minisforum UM780 XTX instead.
Don’t you cuss on this here radio! 😂
Did you have to go into the BIOS for it to recognize the additional memory? When I booted it up, it did not recognize it.
I'm not sure what you mean. Did you add more RAM or a second NVME drive?
@@Robtech It was the NVME linked in the description. I fixed it in Windows. Now just have to deal with flickering on and off....
Why isn't it available in germany/europe?
I was able to pick Germany as the country on the official website during checkout reatan.com/product/reatan-mini-gaming-pc-amd-ryzen-9-7940hs-1tb-ssd-32gb-ddr5-5600-mhz-ramdesktop-mini-computers/
@@Robtech Thank you. I wasn't sure, so I haven't tried it out sadly.
Will the stock gen 3 drive have worse performance on emulation like rpcs3?
No, won't make a difference
@@Robtech Cool thanks man
What am i doing wrong got good results on 3dmark ? All I know is that the alloy 9 does run gta5 at incredible frame rates on 1080p for exactly 4 mins, then adrenaline software crashes but not windows 11.
update the gpu drivers they said
Well that caused me to have to do the restore to windows it didn't like that now I'm back up and running with reatan cpu/igpu drivers and gta5 is not playable on this stock machine can it ?
Shouldn't be a problem. Try another game and see if you get the same result. Could be faulty memory. You can run something like memtest to check if the memory is okay. There should be no errors in the full test.
@@Robtechhello did the mem test all good
ran cinebench got 989
for multi i ran 3dmarks,night raid got 29,284 weird how you can max it out in a bench test and and its all good try the game and adrenaline just shuts down but windows is fine
I dont know what else to try
Time to find a much better class of games anyway that game is really bad
Try another game and see if the problem shows up again. Otherwise, it might be a driver issue. You could try using DDU and getting an older driver.
Also, did you select DX11 in GTA5 in the graphics settings?
@@Robtech I read somewhere that 10 or 10.1 was perfered I'll try that too
Can you raid 0 the nvme drives?
No option for it in the BIOS.
Literally same bios as minisforum
Indeed, no SD card slot? It's the Apple!
USB SD card readers are still a thing, you know...
and SD card slot is not a thing EVERY user will use
@@stclaws9580 True, but I prefer SD card then useless for me USBs. If you remember, Apple provided only USB-C for their laptops, and many people were upset, so finally Apple started giving SD card slot. Manufactures should keep learning than wild guessing.
@@kamertonaudiophileplayer847Most people will not use a sd card, so there is no point wasting money and space including it, those who want it (as mentioned by stclaws) can just buy a reader, if they do not already have one.
First there's a lots of advertisements and you advertise even more ! Second why do you need to take a new pc apart ????
rebrand of mechrove mini pc
Nope, something isn't adding up here. Perhaps I got a bad one from Amazon???
This dam thing WILL NOT RUN RIGHT CRASH CRASH CRASH REFRANCE MEMORY ERRORS GFX ERRORS WHAT THE HELL ITS GOING BACK
Sounds like it. You can try Memtest to see if there are any errors. If there's even one, its faulty memory.
@Robtech I did no issues. Is it still the same either Win11 or radeon drivers/software ??? It had one job only one
As far as I can tell, it can't
that if nothing physically is wrong, I have never seen above 83c
It seems to change fan speed sometimes? Runs 3d mark when it wants too some times really really well then Bam no graphics for you I wish I tried it before any of the windows updates or the amd 780m stuff because I didn't get the secret ryzen9 7940hs/780m drivers you got igpu embargo on
Hard to tell without looking at it and troubleshooting. You could try using DDU to completely remove the AMD drivers and then reinstall a clean driver. If that fails, I'd return it.
@Robtech did that too and I shouldn't have to its g dam 3 week old for me Wtf
I don't care I'm done with it and reatan
How can u connect anything faster then 60Hz to it? (or any of the millions of mini's)...
Using the USB4 ports or the HDMI if under 4K resolution
@@Robtech But HDMI 2.0 will max out at 4K60Hz, not 120.. Will USB go above?
Yes if under 4K, with HDMI, 1440P will be 120Hz. 1080P 240Hz. USB4 supports 4K120Hz.
It cannot be the best you've tested, since it lacks a dedicated gpu and others that you've tested do have that. You may like this one the most, but it's not the best.
Which one is?
@@RafelJaggai Miniforum Hx99g, Intel Nuc 12 Enthousiast and the new Asus ROG NUC's come to mind. Just to name a few, plenty more with a good dedicated GPU combined with a very good CPU.
@benjamina6915 I will have a look thanks ⚡️
Calm down
@@fxphenomXfr it ain’t that deep 😭😭
first!
No power consumption info. ? 🥲
th-cam.com/video/1euOYbZ42vk/w-d-xo.htmlsi=6gsrolPSv1Nmbhb_&t=627
Great review, Rob! I'd be curious how this compares to the Geekom A7 and their forthcoming A8s. I had never heard of Reatan - do you know anything about the company? Geekom seems to have good quality in the notoriously "quality challenged" mini PC space.
You're in luck. The GEEKOM A7 is on its way for review 😄