Thank you, would love to hear more reviews on best mini servers in regards to virtualization, self hosting, machine learning, local ai inference, and etc.
Was super into the idea of building a sff server with a Zen 5 apu, but the limited PCI lanes is a bit of a bummer. Probably make a great little compute node though!
Nice to see reviews of mini-pcs, particularly one based on chip with such a memorable name as the "Something AI Whatever". I would certainly consider a mini-pc with good specs.
I’ve got a belink ser9. It’s basically the same spec. Either i missed it or it wasn’t mentioned in video, but on the ser9 in the BIOS you can adjust between low, medium, or high performance (high being a 65w tdp). You can also “overclock” the 890 in BIOs by a couple hundred mhz, and the RAM as well. I set the tdp to 85w (in windows not bios) and it’s handling the heat just fine. No thermal throttling in games, just in stuff like prime95. I think this video understates the gaming performance. Surely this identically spec’d MinisForum system performs as well as the Ser9, which can run most games at 1080p and not always on low settings. I would think of it like: “Any game a ROG Ally X can play, this will play better.”
What were you cin24 results on the highest power setting? If I buy one of these, it will be the beelink because it seems to have a bit more flexibility. Right now, I'm still on my mac mini kick.
@Raintiger88 You may very well be able to do all the same on the MinisForum. Maybe even more. He didn’t do a deep dive on that in this video. For example, the bios surely has a few different performance/tdp settings. And even if it doesn’t you can still use tools in windows (ryzen master won’t work, but RyzenAdj console works) to adjust TDP etc in windows. The MinisForum certainly looks like it’s got a good cooling set up. As far as benchmarks, I didn’t run cinebench. I mostly did gaming benchmarks. Having said that, if you search 3D mark results, and filter CPU = HX 370, and GPU = 890M, you’ll see my results (DocBrody) for almost all the benchmarks. If you check notes on my run, i usually put the TDP down. If it says something like “65 bios perf” that means TDP of 65, set by selecting performance in bios”. Anything else were tweaks in ryzenadj. And one final note… bee-link support is basically a folder with some files in it. I had to dig around to find an updated bios.
@@docbrody There is reviews comparing minisforum and beelink directly and it seems that ser9 has better cooling resulting in significantly lower temperatures. I`ve got ser9 myself and happy with it.
One of these would be super cool loaded up with steam os as a gamin console like those "steam machines" companies were working on back in the mid 2000s
I would love to see these AMD based mini PC's being benchmarked on both LM Studio (for language models) and Amuse (for image models). These two software are partnered with AMD and have great support for Ryzen and Radeon.
The 780M from Minisforum had CEC so it could power on a soundbar and TV. I use mine in the livingroom for that purpose with Dolby Vision/Dobly Atmos extensions installed in Windows 11. Works great. Can even do 12BPC 4:4:4 Chroma at 4K over HDMI 2.1. Have to make sure to install those extensions from the store and use the AMD software to enable the proper display configuration as well as have HDR enabled in Windows settings. It even can sense HDR content type in fullscreen so if Dolby Vision isn't available, it falls back to HDR10 but if DV is available it enables that color space.
I think the EliteMini AI370 is a solid device, but the price is a bit too high. $1,100 is the same price I paid for my Vivobook S16 with the same processor, RAM amount, and SSD, but that also comes with a nice 120Hz 3200x2000 OLED display, keyboard, trackpad, camera, mic, and speakers. A mini PC with the same specs but none of the other parts that make it a laptop should cost quite a bit less.
@@AnirudhTammireddy I mean, even compared to other Minisorum mini PCs it's not a good deal. The Minisforum UM890 Pro has a Ryzen 8945HS with 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD for just $650. (Actually just $610 with a discount that's valid right now) The Ryzen HX 370 is definitely better than the 8945HS, but I don't think it's so much better that spending almost double for the PC makes sense.
I like the AI 9 370 machines. There are only 2 that I know of so far in NUC form factor. Both really expensive. I would like to see any form of Linux running. I would wipe Windows 11 if I got one.
I'm looking forward to getting APUs with quad channel memory. Imagine being able to dedicate two DDR5 lanes to the graphics cores while still having two for the CPU cores. Or two or three lanes to the NPU.
I got one of this already. turn it into the most power efficient mode, it is anazing for my family to do some browsing and word processing. plus i can test my codes on it occasionally
i bought a $200 amd minisforum unit about 4 years ago. it's just a daily driver,no editing/gaming/rendering nothing like that at all. you really forget it's even there, though the next time i buy i will be looking for something like asrocks deskmeet. pretty small, but gives more choice for I/O.
This was a good review! Please make a video on the minisforum AI X1 Pro and MS-A2. The later I think would make a banger Truenas box for a small business! Linux support in the SFP+ Ports??
With a GPU in there, one could even (possibly) do a fair bit of processing, upscaling and dynamic HDR with the free madVR filters in a HTPC scenario, I wager. Of course, for a grand, you can set up something with a dedicated GPU, in a somewhat larger and less pretty box I guess.
Larger RAM options would be attractive so we can run bigger LLM(s). AMD is going after the Apple M-series silicon here (and succeeding). The NPU is quite impressive as is the GPU. I'd love to see how GPT4ALL and LM Studio perform on this. The price is quite reasonable, as is the form factor (Apple Mac Mini).
Can you review some of the consumer-friend (not costing thousands) PCI-E to Sata cards for us NAS enthusiasts? I bought like 6 different cards but they all break when using with ZFS. Ironically, the M.2 to 6x SATA card was the most reliable, albeit it looked like the most cheaply made.
Hey Wendell, are APU’s more efficient because of the shared RAM between the CPU and GPU? I know that there isn’t the translation of PCI-E in between, but how does the operating system treat that unified RAM?
With the M4 Mac being so good for AI models, wouldn't a machine like this with 96gb of ram be great because the integrated GPU could use the ram. Then cluster maybe 2 - 3 of these (with something like exo). Would love to see someone try it.
I've been running CachyOS on my ancient laptop (ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY) with a AMD Ryzen 5 3550H, and it feels faster than it was under Manjaro did. Why did I switch? I like trying new distros. When you have been doing Linux since '93, one takes your entertainment where you can. 🙂
I would love to see proxmox on this machine but then create a vm/container for frigate and use the not for object detection. Heck turn this into single cctv/security machine
This would really interest me for running a Jellyfin server, but Jellyfin does not recommend AMD for encoding, would this MinisForum AI370 and the RDNA tech inside it be able to work well with Jellyfin? Will it be able to handle streaming 4k movies?
I want an AMD Ryzen HX 370 in my Framework 16. For the increase in cores more so than any of the NPU stuff. EDIT: Actually if I could get a 16core for my framework I'd be happy. Even if it was only c cores. Probably beat out my 3950x.
Because you're never going to see 10g even within your internal network. Your consumer hardware, such as hdd/ssd, will never get up to that speed. Even the best nvme right now only goes up to 6gb read and write. Edit: forgot about bit vs byte, don't mind me lol
@@UnfiIteredYou do realise there is a difference between Gbps and GB/s right? 10Gbps is 1.25GB/s. A gen 3 nvme can handle that easy enough never mind a Gen 4 or 5.
I nearly choked on my food when I saw it had 12 cores 24 threads. I use a gigabyte amd a8 mini pc in my workshop for looking at manuals and emulating gba games. I have to run youtube at 480 or 720 so it doesn't overheat.
AI is transformative for the stock value, the rest… I think it will have applications but the limits of transformer models, even with things like RAG makes me skeptical
Valve has said that they're not going to release an updated Steam Deck with a new APU any time soon, which is unfortunate. The 790M is so much more powerful than the RDNA2-powered graphics in the Steam Deck.
I was going to buy this but honestly x86 has a pricing problem. For what most people who would buy this for they can just buy a apple mini and get a far more powerful cpu for about $400 less. I hate Apple but they are tempting me more.
Bazzite definitely since my box is primarily for gaming although I also watch Wendell videos, hope I didn't misspell, and a someday Windows 10 replacement would be great. As usual great content, thanks.
Sooo... if somebody wanted a "portable" gaming / general PC that's wearable, one could take this, a portable battery bank, AR glasses, controller and mini keyboard / trackpad remote and slap it all together with duct tape? Cause that's what I'm hearing...
They should just scratch out "AI" and call it a different name. This HX370 processor is oddly overly efficient. Why is this tiny thing meeting the gpu ratings of a GTX1060 3GB? That's fantastic for a mobile chip.
@@Level1Techs Strange that I purchased a Mac mini m4 with 24gb 1tb for $1200 last month. Maybe you’re thinking of the Mac mini pro? Regular mini with the specs you mentioned is $1000. Not that I’m defending Apple’s ridiculous price bumps for upgrades mind
I love the mini pc videos. I never even considered using mini pcs until these videos started coming out.
I love these. I've been eye balling and waiting till they get bad ass. I will swap out my desktop and load one of these.
You and me both, friend!
Either Strix Halo with tons of cooling capability or Zen5 something with a 7800M or 7900M dedicated GPU!
Thank you, would love to hear more reviews on best mini servers in regards to virtualization, self hosting, machine learning, local ai inference, and etc.
Yes to Bazzite! I’d love to see a round-up/comparison of this, Nobara, PopOS, and Steam OS along side some gaming benchmarks.
Was super into the idea of building a sff server with a Zen 5 apu, but the limited PCI lanes is a bit of a bummer. Probably make a great little compute node though!
Might just be me but I love mini PC overviews.
Nice to see reviews of mini-pcs, particularly one based on chip with such a memorable name as the "Something AI Whatever". I would certainly consider a mini-pc with good specs.
I’ve got a belink ser9. It’s basically the same spec. Either i missed it or it wasn’t mentioned in video, but on the ser9 in the BIOS you can adjust between low, medium, or high performance (high being a 65w tdp). You can also “overclock” the 890 in BIOs by a couple hundred mhz, and the RAM as well. I set the tdp to 85w (in windows not bios) and it’s handling the heat just fine. No thermal throttling in games, just in stuff like prime95. I think this video understates the gaming performance. Surely this identically spec’d MinisForum system performs as well as the Ser9, which can run most games at 1080p and not always on low settings. I would think of it like: “Any game a ROG Ally X can play, this will play better.”
What were you cin24 results on the highest power setting? If I buy one of these, it will be the beelink because it seems to have a bit more flexibility. Right now, I'm still on my mac mini kick.
@Raintiger88 You may very well be able to do all the same on the MinisForum. Maybe even more. He didn’t do a deep dive on that in this video. For example, the bios surely has a few different performance/tdp settings. And even if it doesn’t you can still use tools in windows (ryzen master won’t work, but RyzenAdj console works) to adjust TDP etc in windows. The MinisForum certainly looks like it’s got a good cooling set up. As far as benchmarks, I didn’t run cinebench. I mostly did gaming benchmarks. Having said that, if you search 3D mark results, and filter CPU = HX 370, and GPU = 890M, you’ll see my results (DocBrody) for almost all the benchmarks. If you check notes on my run, i usually put the TDP down. If it says something like “65 bios perf” that means TDP of 65, set by selecting performance in bios”. Anything else were tweaks in ryzenadj. And one final note… bee-link support is basically a folder with some files in it. I had to dig around to find an updated bios.
@@docbrody There is reviews comparing minisforum and beelink directly and it seems that ser9 has better cooling resulting in significantly lower temperatures. I`ve got ser9 myself and happy with it.
One of these would be super cool loaded up with steam os as a gamin console like those "steam machines" companies were working on back in the mid 2000s
I love these mini PC reviews!
I would love to see these AMD based mini PC's being benchmarked on both LM Studio (for language models) and Amuse (for image models). These two software are partnered with AMD and have great support for Ryzen and Radeon.
The 780M from Minisforum had CEC so it could power on a soundbar and TV. I use mine in the livingroom for that purpose with Dolby Vision/Dobly Atmos extensions installed in Windows 11. Works great. Can even do 12BPC 4:4:4 Chroma at 4K over HDMI 2.1. Have to make sure to install those extensions from the store and use the AMD software to enable the proper display configuration as well as have HDR enabled in Windows settings. It even can sense HDR content type in fullscreen so if Dolby Vision isn't available, it falls back to HDR10 but if DV is available it enables that color space.
Bazzite mentioned.
Hope to see some wild strix point stuff from them like that other mini motherboard thing with cooler already on
Yes! Would love to see the Bazzite! Wendell, please keep wendeling!
the kraken sounds interesting too, in a legion go or onexplayer x or a mini pc like chuwi minix, basically a workstation in a body of a netbook :-D
I think the EliteMini AI370 is a solid device, but the price is a bit too high. $1,100 is the same price I paid for my Vivobook S16 with the same processor, RAM amount, and SSD, but that also comes with a nice 120Hz 3200x2000 OLED display, keyboard, trackpad, camera, mic, and speakers. A mini PC with the same specs but none of the other parts that make it a laptop should cost quite a bit less.
Economies of scale.
They missed the memo.
@@AnirudhTammireddy I mean, even compared to other Minisorum mini PCs it's not a good deal. The Minisforum UM890 Pro has a Ryzen 8945HS with 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD for just $650. (Actually just $610 with a discount that's valid right now)
The Ryzen HX 370 is definitely better than the 8945HS, but I don't think it's so much better that spending almost double for the PC makes sense.
Form factor
I love mini pc stuff. Please more videos mini pc
Cool stuff
I like the AI 9 370 machines. There are only 2 that I know of so far in NUC form factor. Both really expensive. I would like to see any form of Linux running. I would wipe Windows 11 if I got one.
Been building PCs for a long time but some of these minis are hard to resist. I did buy an Asus mini about a year ago. 2 nvme, one ssd. Ryzen 7 5700U
Based on other performance showcases in the YT, this soc performs remarkably well on 1080p medium settings in demanding contemporary AAA pc titles.
Can you do a mini-PC review with a focus on 10gbps routing throughput? THANKS!
I'm looking forward to getting APUs with quad channel memory. Imagine being able to dedicate two DDR5 lanes to the graphics cores while still having two for the CPU cores. Or two or three lanes to the NPU.
I got one of this already. turn it into the most power efficient mode, it is anazing for my family to do some browsing and word processing.
plus i can test my codes on it occasionally
later when have time i might try it with Pop OS COSMIC Alpha
Keep doing mini reviews i use and sell the beelink units like crazy they're great.
👍👍👍👍
I'm gonna build my first pfsense router/home server soon, it's this a good option?
i bought a $200 amd minisforum unit about 4 years ago. it's just a daily driver,no editing/gaming/rendering nothing like that at all. you really forget it's even there, though the next time i buy i will be looking for something like asrocks deskmeet. pretty small, but gives more choice for I/O.
This was a good review! Please make a video on the minisforum AI X1 Pro and MS-A2. The later I think would make a banger Truenas box for a small business! Linux support in the SFP+
Ports??
With a GPU in there, one could even (possibly) do a fair bit of processing, upscaling and dynamic HDR with the free madVR filters in a HTPC scenario, I wager. Of course, for a grand, you can set up something with a dedicated GPU, in a somewhat larger and less pretty box I guess.
cant wait for strix point 🙏🙏🙏 hope they don't mess it up and we get a soc with high memory bandwidth and gpu horsepower at 65 watts
I'd love to see it run Nobara to mix production work and games.
Larger RAM options would be attractive so we can run bigger LLM(s). AMD is going after the Apple M-series silicon here (and succeeding). The NPU is quite impressive as is the GPU. I'd love to see how GPT4ALL and LM Studio perform on this. The price is quite reasonable, as is the form factor (Apple Mac Mini).
Can you review some of the consumer-friend (not costing thousands) PCI-E to Sata cards for us NAS enthusiasts?
I bought like 6 different cards but they all break when using with ZFS. Ironically, the M.2 to 6x SATA card was the most reliable, albeit it looked like the most cheaply made.
I'm interested in one of these being set up for linux gaming!
4:53 now they just need to properly figure out DDD/CI for their products.
I’d like to see llm benchmarks if that’s possible. How good is this with a 13b parameter model and so on.
Hey Wendell, are APU’s more efficient because of the shared RAM between the CPU and GPU? I know that there isn’t the translation of PCI-E in between, but how does the operating system treat that unified RAM?
The processor seems impressive, however, the absence of an oculink port is disappointing.
With the M4 Mac being so good for AI models, wouldn't a machine like this with 96gb of ram be great because the integrated GPU could use the ram. Then cluster maybe 2 - 3 of these (with something like exo). Would love to see someone try it.
I've been running CachyOS on my ancient laptop (ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY) with a AMD Ryzen 5 3550H, and it feels faster than it was under Manjaro did. Why did I switch? I like trying new distros. When you have been doing Linux since '93, one takes your entertainment where you can. 🙂
I use CachyOS on my main system and it's by far my favorite Linux distro. I will be putting it on my laptop once Windows 10 goes EoL.
In contrast to AMD's Zen5C cores, how does intel deal with E and P cores? Are they totally different tech?
I would love to see proxmox on this machine but then create a vm/container for frigate and use the not for object detection. Heck turn this into single cctv/security machine
HDMI-CEC on any pc is incredibly rare, great for HTPC indeed
is it wrong that I'm thinking bad thoughts everytime he says "forbidden router"
Why LLM‘s not running on NPU‘s ?
This would really interest me for running a Jellyfin server, but Jellyfin does not recommend AMD for encoding, would this MinisForum AI370 and the RDNA tech inside it be able to work well with Jellyfin? Will it be able to handle streaming 4k movies?
I would love to know how it performs as just a local AI server and thats all it does
I want an AMD Ryzen HX 370 in my Framework 16. For the increase in cores more so than any of the NPU stuff.
EDIT: Actually if I could get a 16core for my framework I'd be happy. Even if it was only c cores. Probably beat out my 3950x.
That AI CPU/GPU can it run LLM:s like ollama or is it like that software/drivers are not there yet? What can you do with it?
AI is new quantum
Do Arch with Gamescope manually and compare it to Bazzite
With the 2 lan and that type of performance? I bet you could have 50 players on a Minecraft server.
Much prefer a slightly bigger footprint but with built-in power supply!!!
yes, please test Linux with ollama/llamacpp !
Still waiting for that official SteamOS iso or img release I'm not picky
Does this compare to the m4 Mac mini? Better worse? Trying to find a system for power in Photoshop (5gb files)
Ugh, why do AMD mini PCs never have 10G networking like Intels?
Because you're never going to see 10g even within your internal network. Your consumer hardware, such as hdd/ssd, will never get up to that speed. Even the best nvme right now only goes up to 6gb read and write.
Edit: forgot about bit vs byte, don't mind me lol
@@UnfiIteredYou do realise there is a difference between Gbps and GB/s right? 10Gbps is 1.25GB/s. A gen 3 nvme can handle that easy enough never mind a Gen 4 or 5.
@NawWeeMan lol I take what i said back.. forgot about bit vs byte
I nearly choked on my food when I saw it had 12 cores 24 threads. I use a gigabyte amd a8 mini pc in my workshop for looking at manuals and emulating gba games. I have to run youtube at 480 or 720 so it doesn't overheat.
Let's check out Bazzite for HTPC Steam machine! (& dual-boot so my wife can still use as an HTPC in the living room??)
Now I know what bazzite is.
Intel or realtek nics?
AI is transformative for the stock value, the rest… I think it will have applications but the limits of transformer models, even with things like RAG makes me skeptical
Valve has said that they're not going to release an updated Steam Deck with a new APU any time soon, which is unfortunate. The 790M is so much more powerful than the RDNA2-powered graphics in the Steam Deck.
They are waiting for something efficient, a lot more powerful than a Steam Deck around 10-15W.
How about Linux Mint?
Does this thing do shared memory with the GPU, and if so can you get it to run LLMs? Specifically I'd be interested in running Llama 3.2 3B and 11B.
ROCm doesn't support iGPUs.
@@Sunlight91 Ah, thank you for the info.
Still don’t know what AI does for the consumer besides profiling my browsing history
How noisy is this thing under load?
What's that song?
I bought a Dell laptop for €599 with a 8840U. At least I can upgrade memory to 64GB for compiling.
I was going to buy this but honestly x86 has a pricing problem. For what most people who would buy this for they can just buy a apple mini and get a far more powerful cpu for about $400 less. I hate Apple but they are tempting me more.
Nice beast to install Steam OS and get a gaming station
Bazzite definitely since my box is primarily for gaming although I also watch Wendell videos, hope I didn't misspell, and a someday Windows 10 replacement would be great. As usual great content, thanks.
AI minipc review with no TPS numbers :(
Sooo... if somebody wanted a "portable" gaming / general PC that's wearable, one could take this, a portable battery bank, AR glasses, controller and mini keyboard / trackpad remote and slap it all together with duct tape? Cause that's what I'm hearing...
It doesn’t look like it, that is a plastic case. Not metal. The Beelink equivalent is aluminum.
The Beelink also has terrible wifi and bluetooth reception.
to be honest, at this point i think most AMD laptop cpus goes to mini pcs... while we are wishing we get some good ones on laptop
None of us are tierd of mini pc reviews.
What happens when AI wakes up ???😰😰😰😱
Hot kit
can it run runescape
Again, the newest AI series get 1x usb4. Last gen 88xx had options with two usb4 ports. Won't buy this one..next
Mac mini doesn't have AI in name and it actually runs 70b LLMs... wonder if AMD gets to compete at all?
yeas vrei nice ao;i intreteing ..gpuz cpuz
One USB-C… x86 is so behind…
gimme 32 zen 5c cores on the desktop already
or 8 zen 5 x3d + 16 zen 5c 🤤
They should just scratch out "AI" and call it a different name. This HX370 processor is oddly overly efficient. Why is this tiny thing meeting the gpu ratings of a GTX1060 3GB? That's fantastic for a mobile chip.
Still far far away from a $500 Mac Mini M4.
This video is not going to help them stay in stock. :|
Linux please!
I am sooo sick of mini PCs that don't support ECC memory.
Finally no more shitty Intel small PCs.
Now please Microsoft, bring out a Surface Pro with AMD Hardware, instead of shitty Snapdragon or Intel.
I hate how AMD is coping Intel with this awful Performance core & efficiency core CPU design, just give us 12 Full power Zen 5 cores.
USD1400 for a mini PC when the Apple Mini 4 is available for just USD500? This is stupidly hilarious. What is minisforum and AMD smoking?
hmmm 24gb ram on the Mac mini and 512gb storage costs $1400 though. that seems like a lot less than this pc in terms of ram and storage
@@Level1Techs Strange that I purchased a Mac mini m4 with 24gb 1tb for $1200 last month. Maybe you’re thinking of the Mac mini pro? Regular mini with the specs you mentioned is $1000. Not that I’m defending Apple’s ridiculous price bumps for upgrades mind