Man your review is enjoyable with the sudden hilarious jokes. You got a lot of humour and nowadays reviewers are making their content more enjoying with all the jokes being thrown with the informative reviews. Great review! Thank you for making such a great video.
@@Robtechhello, the minisforum nucx i7 11800h rtx 3070 is it possible to watch videos in 4k With? what is the resolution of the image? I will buy it for gaming, office automation, watching videos in 4k
Good show of it. My guess is they have lots of unfinished laptop parts and are just sending them out with some custom shells. One thing I'm impressed with the NUC sizes I've been playing with is even considering how thin the heatsink and fan are they are thicker than what could be fit in modern laptops and I think that helps keep some of the fan/air speed sound down.
Gracias. Te refieres a RDNA2, ¿verdad? Larga espera por una APU RDNA3. El Minisforum UM690 será el primer APU RDNA2 que revise y está programado para este mes.
Nowadays Minisforum seems to be the most innovative company in the minipc space. My respect for that. However, as constructive critic I think they are doing a lot of variations around the "laptop without screen" concept without getting it right. To me the real thing would be like this: 1 - Start with a laptop, remove the screen but put a panel with mount guides in its place for attaching a portable monitor (there are a lot of them, let the user to decide and upgrade on its own!). 2 - keep the original screen, battery and keyboard as options , so that it can still be a laptop when needed. But all detachable. 3 - Now the tricky part. Put a PCIe slot for external eGPU docks. But it must be a real one, not thunderbolt bs. PCIe x8 gen4 or PCIe x16 gen3. Asus has demonstrated that it is perfectly possible, although they destroyed the whole upgradeability concept by using propietary crap and non standard connectors. In any case, thanks to Minisforum for their innovation and fresh ideas
This isn't meant to replace a laptop. It's a decent gaming option for people who don't want the price or power requirements of a normal gaming tower. It's more than just the removal of the screen... No keyboard, touch pad, or battery, means more room inside the case for airflow, so it's going to have better cooling than a normal laptop. You get decent gaming performance, with a smaller hit to your electric bill.
Not having given the matter the thought that I should have given it before placing my order, I went for the config. with a 512 SSD pre-installed. It was late in September when I placed my order. Fingers crossed they've put (I'm an optimistic man) this drive standard in the third gen slot. Every review of the NUCX has its unique piece of information you find nowhere else.
Wow amazing performance out of that. They're also on a mega sale right now. 32gb ram+1tb ssd version. Is 1,049 usd, its a literal steal at that price. I hope they make a comparable AMD one soon. The 6600 mobile radeon, is respectable. But isnt even as good as my gpu currently. They should definitely get with AMD and make a comparable performer to the NUC. They have the technology. Idk why im not seeing any online.
Love to hear your thought on HX90G. I think the performance of the NUCX is plenty for me but the slab for factor is really not ideal from a minimalist perspective. I'll wait for your review before placing my order for the HX90G.
Rob, I always enjoy your mini reviews, and I think the decision to compare this to the 12th gen Extreme was a great idea, as different as they are. While i don't like the Enthusiast any more than you do, I did think, when I saw that the NUCXi7 had a 3070 graphics chip, it seems almost unfair to compare it to an ARC system, unless, as you pointed out, you're encoding. I was surprised, given that MForum and Beelink usually make at least reasonable design decisions, at the utter lack of any attempt to cool the M2 drives (and who decided on running the ribbon cables/wifi antenna cables the way they did). I couldn't tell if reasonable-thickness thermal pads would have reached from the M2's to the metal chassis. But it looks (I may be wrong) as though there was enough room to put some thin 40mm fan that would at least have stirred the air around a bit! I want to watch this one again, because my personal storage system also lacks DRAM buffering, so I don't always catch everything the first time... Fun review.
Those 12th gen chips provided massive boosts in CPU performance. Really hard to have to use one with a 3070 here. There's quite a bit of space between the M.2 and side panel. Enough for an M.2 heatsink according to another comment. I'd like to look more into it, but have to move on to the next one for now.
Wow Thank you for warning us about build quality or lack there of. I was considering black Friday deal. Maybe they'll get better in the future but Def will stay away for now.
Been putting money by in order to get a pc mainly for starfield as well as fallout 4 with mods. Would you recommend, looking for full 4k and highest fps possible
This empty space inside is a slight engineering failure. For me, the unit could be much thicker, if it would affect better heat dissipation and quieter operation. And so we have something that pretends to be a laptop without a screen ;)
How can one go about installing heat sinks or even setting things up to control temperatures in a better way ?? (Even something as simple as pointing a desk fan on it?)
I would like to see ChimeraOS run on this. i want to see how it performs and how well it works (I choose this because i like Linux, the Steam Deck and i want an experience that can be used all with a controller)
Which Minisforum PC would you recommend for a Stock Trading setup with 4 Monitors (32 inch LG)? Can run with as many as 25 Google Chrome Windows with live stock data.
Good video, I know it's an older one but you did bring up the Intel Serpent Canyon NUC which I currently own and use. The performance overall is great but certain game compatibility especially VR with the Intel ARC has been a nightmare of frustration so I ordered this Intel NUC instead. I really need a good gaming mini pc that is VR compatible because laptops are suited to VR and the major downside is the fan noise is horrendous for something as taxing as VR. I owned another mini PC just to play VR and I'm tired of owning multiple computers that a single PC can take care of without needing a battery and monitor that I will never ever use. I hope companies continue making mini gaming pcs.
Rob, thanks for the great video. Im buying parts for my barebone NUCXi7. Can you let us know: Does it support XMP profile, custom CAS timing, ram voltage up to 1.35v? Didn't see that in BIOS. I'm considering TEAMGROUP T-Force Zeus DDR4 SODIMM 2x16GB 3200MHz CL16 but it needs 1.35v.
Unfortunately not. Very few minis support XMP or any memory tweaking options. Cheapest 3200MHz kit will do the job for this as it's JEDEC profiles only.
I'm in the market for a new PC right now, so I can't afford to wait around for a few months for the 12th gen to release. The nucix7 and hx90g really are the only offerings in this space, so I think I'll have to settle on this. I can't see you getting this power efficiency/form factor for this price, outside of a laptop (which I dont need). Shame about the build quality and ugliness but it'll be out of sight with my setup so at least theres that. As I'm not playing fps games all I really need is 4k 60fps which this should handle fine
I don't have an NVME heatsink to test with, but there's plenty of room and someone commented they have a Samsung 980 pro with heatsink in their NUCXi7 so it's a yes.
That's not bad. There isn't much competition in this field at the moment, so if it's what you need, worth considering. Maybe will go down further on Black Friday, but that's still a while away.
@@Robtech Ok, i found a nice deal or offer for 64GB 3200MHz DDR4, i won't miss that hopefully. Now about SSD, well, i also saw Samsung 980, just that plain, not EVO not QVO not Pro, and it is NVMe, mentioned it is MLC one, so i am not sure if this one will be any good for use as OS mainly, and then i have to look at another SSD for storage only, and again a third SSD for like second and third OS if i want to use more than 1 OS, something like Win10 Win11 and Linux, so you know. I don't know why you specifically mentioned Crucial P3 Plus?!!! 😁😜
@@Robtech Yes i know, so i want to use all those slots, 2 M.2 i assume both are dual type NVMe/SATA and 2.5" SATA, i don't know if i should go as 1TB/1TB/2TB, or 1TB/512GB/2TB, or 1TB/1TB/1TB or last option as 1TB/512GB/1TB, that Samsung 980 is definitely 1TB and will be my main OS [Win 11 i believe], while for other OSs and storage i am not sure if 1TB is enough for storage and better have 2TB just in case i fill drive by the time, and for two extra OSs, do you prefer to have 1TB partitioned or just 512GB partitioned and both are sufficient with something around 250GB each? And i asked you because i buy one Samsung 980 which is nice, but what about other SSD drives, if i bought something like Crucial or SP or Patriot or even one of those Aliexpress cheap ones with high reviews are they good enough and reliable for secondary OS and storage?
512GB should be fine. I use 256GB drives for Windows and another drive for storage. I don't use the Chinese drives as they have poor 4KB performance and questionable warranties. I'd rather a buy a used well known brand.
obviusly intel's NUC is behind in gaming, cuz all games depend a lot on drivers, but A770 is pretty new and it will take time to write good drivers or it will never happen like with AMD
Don't make the mistake and buy a PC from Minisforum! I made this mistake and I regret it. Forget their two year warranty. When you have a problem, you can deal with Chinese support. You write them: My power supply is broken and they answer: "Please send us a video of your monitor not connecting
there is a term to define acute idiocy, buying a notebook without a screen and trying to make people believe that this thing for the price sold is really worth the price charged
Does it have heating problems ? If the games start to slow down as soon as it gets hot like every single laptop ever then is a waste of money despite the form factor and nice enough specs.
Man your review is enjoyable with the sudden hilarious jokes. You got a lot of humour and nowadays reviewers are making their content more enjoying with all the jokes being thrown with the informative reviews. Great review! Thank you for making such a great video.
I appreciate that!
Nice product by Minisforum. I hope their next product includes a mobile 4060/70 or 7000 series GPU and a few more ports.
Please also change the name to SlabX
@@Robtechhello, the minisforum nucx i7 11800h rtx 3070 is it possible to watch videos in 4k With? what is the resolution of the image? I will buy it for gaming, office automation, watching videos in 4k
@@flandry9284 This is a powerful gaming-pc, not a office pc. Of course, he can play 4K videos…🙄
A mobile 4070 with frame gen would be amazing for a living room couch pc. I'd put my tv on 1440p 120hz and play like that, would be amazing.
Really thorough review. Outstanding video!
Glad you liked it!
Good show of it. My guess is they have lots of unfinished laptop parts and are just sending them out with some custom shells. One thing I'm impressed with the NUC sizes I've been playing with is even considering how thin the heatsink and fan are they are thicker than what could be fit in modern laptops and I think that helps keep some of the fan/air speed sound down.
My guess is Intel NUC 11th gen laptop kits were available at a discounted rate and snagged up for this purpose.
@@Robtechhello the windows key is delivered here I buy the pc without the ram and the SSD or is it up to me to buy windows? THANKS
Minisforum NUC'ed it out of the park :)
oh no you did'nt, and no they did'nt :P
Rob como siempre un súper vídeo
Me encantan.
Haber si salen por fin las nuevas Apu con rdna3
Gracias. Te refieres a RDNA2, ¿verdad? Larga espera por una APU RDNA3. El Minisforum UM690 será el primer APU RDNA2 que revise y está programado para este mes.
Good hands on review. The intel NUC could have made the case smaller, or added more cooling. Look forward to the AMD based HX90G review 👍
Nowadays Minisforum seems to be the most innovative company in the minipc space. My respect for that. However, as constructive critic I think they are doing a lot of variations around the "laptop without screen" concept without getting it right. To me the real thing would be like this:
1 - Start with a laptop, remove the screen but put a panel with mount guides in its place for attaching a portable monitor (there are a lot of them, let the user to decide and upgrade on its own!).
2 - keep the original screen, battery and keyboard as options , so that it can still be a laptop when needed. But all detachable.
3 - Now the tricky part. Put a PCIe slot for external eGPU docks. But it must be a real one, not thunderbolt bs. PCIe x8 gen4 or PCIe x16 gen3. Asus has demonstrated that it is perfectly possible, although they destroyed the whole upgradeability concept by using propietary crap and non standard connectors.
In any case, thanks to Minisforum for their innovation and fresh ideas
This isn't meant to replace a laptop. It's a decent gaming option for people who don't want the price or power requirements of a normal gaming tower. It's more than just the removal of the screen... No keyboard, touch pad, or battery, means more room inside the case for airflow, so it's going to have better cooling than a normal laptop.
You get decent gaming performance, with a smaller hit to your electric bill.
Not having given the matter the thought that I should have given it before placing my order, I went for the config. with a 512 SSD pre-installed. It was late in September when I placed my order. Fingers crossed they've put (I'm an optimistic man) this drive standard in the third gen slot. Every review of the NUCX has its unique piece of information you find nowhere else.
So wait for the nucx i8!
Wow amazing performance out of that. They're also on a mega sale right now. 32gb ram+1tb ssd version. Is 1,049 usd, its a literal steal at that price. I hope they make a comparable AMD one soon. The 6600 mobile radeon, is respectable. But isnt even as good as my gpu currently. They should definitely get with AMD and make a comparable performer to the NUC. They have the technology. Idk why im not seeing any online.
Rob is really leaning into the slab jabs. The HX90G review is what I have been most anticipating.
My order has already shipped, but I've got a pile of stuff for review at the moment 😅
Love to hear your thought on HX90G. I think the performance of the NUCX is plenty for me but the slab for factor is really not ideal from a minimalist perspective. I'll wait for your review before placing my order for the HX90G.
Rob, I always enjoy your mini reviews, and I think the decision to compare this to the 12th gen Extreme was a great idea, as different as they are. While i don't like the Enthusiast any more than you do, I did think, when I saw that the NUCXi7 had a 3070 graphics chip, it seems almost unfair to compare it to an ARC system, unless, as you pointed out, you're encoding. I was surprised, given that MForum and Beelink usually make at least reasonable design decisions, at the utter lack of any attempt to cool the M2 drives (and who decided on running the ribbon cables/wifi antenna cables the way they did). I couldn't tell if reasonable-thickness thermal pads would have reached from the M2's to the metal chassis. But it looks (I may be wrong) as though there was enough room to put some thin 40mm fan that would at least have stirred the air around a bit! I want to watch this one again, because my personal storage system also lacks DRAM buffering, so I don't always catch everything the first time... Fun review.
Those 12th gen chips provided massive boosts in CPU performance. Really hard to have to use one with a 3070 here. There's quite a bit of space between the M.2 and side panel. Enough for an M.2 heatsink according to another comment. I'd like to look more into it, but have to move on to the next one for now.
Is there room for a heatsink on the nvme drive? Might help get temps down (even if it won't change performance). As usual, great review
i have a nucxi7 with a samsung 980 pro with heatsink it fits and stays pretty cool
Yep and for thick thermal pads as well.
Wow Thank you for warning us about build quality or lack there of. I was considering black Friday deal. Maybe they'll get better in the future but Def will stay away for now.
No problem!
Nice video, you always deliver, with jokes and information. If you would be a law firm, I'd call you boutique
Where the jokes come free, but we bill you by the nanosecond
Definitely in love❤
I think minisforum has really hit an untapped market with these. These are some of the first mini PCs like this, but they won't be the last
@user-kr6wx6et6u broke boy
Thanks for the video. Really curious about your opinion on the HX90g compared to this one
HX90G coming up next 👍
Very good review.
Been putting money by in order to get a pc mainly for starfield as well as fallout 4 with mods. Would you recommend, looking for full 4k and highest fps possible
Wouldn't recommend any mini for 4K AAA gaming like that. Starfield is very demanding.
This empty space inside is a slight engineering failure. For me, the unit could be much thicker, if it would affect better heat dissipation and quieter operation. And so we have something that pretends to be a laptop without a screen ;)
How can one go about installing heat sinks or even setting things up to control temperatures in a better way ?? (Even something as simple as pointing a desk fan on it?)
I would like to see ChimeraOS run on this. i want to see how it performs and how well it works (I choose this because i like Linux, the Steam Deck and i want an experience that can be used all with a controller)
Which Minisforum PC would you recommend for a Stock Trading setup with 4 Monitors (32 inch LG)?
Can run with as many as 25 Google Chrome Windows with live stock data.
Would be even better if they hadn't tried so hard to mimic NUC by placing the skull logo there.
So bizzarre they didn't put it in a 13 inch chassis.. I might have been tempted...
Interesting review.
Good video, I know it's an older one but you did bring up the Intel Serpent Canyon NUC which I currently own and use. The performance overall is great but certain game compatibility especially VR with the Intel ARC has been a nightmare of frustration so I ordered this Intel NUC instead. I really need a good gaming mini pc that is VR compatible because laptops are suited to VR and the major downside is the fan noise is horrendous for something as taxing as VR. I owned another mini PC just to play VR and I'm tired of owning multiple computers that a single PC can take care of without needing a battery and monitor that I will never ever use. I hope companies continue making mini gaming pcs.
Rob, thanks for the great video. Im buying parts for my barebone NUCXi7. Can you let us know: Does it support XMP profile, custom CAS timing, ram voltage up to 1.35v? Didn't see that in BIOS. I'm considering TEAMGROUP T-Force Zeus DDR4 SODIMM 2x16GB 3200MHz CL16 but it needs 1.35v.
Unfortunately not. Very few minis support XMP or any memory tweaking options. Cheapest 3200MHz kit will do the job for this as it's JEDEC profiles only.
I'm in the market for a new PC right now, so I can't afford to wait around for a few months for the 12th gen to release. The nucix7 and hx90g really are the only offerings in this space, so I think I'll have to settle on this. I can't see you getting this power efficiency/form factor for this price, outside of a laptop (which I dont need). Shame about the build quality and ugliness but it'll be out of sight with my setup so at least theres that. As I'm not playing fps games all I really need is 4k 60fps which this should handle fine
HX90G review soon
Hi,
Thanks for the review :)
Is there enough space to add a heatsink on the ssd?
Thanks
I don't have an NVME heatsink to test with, but there's plenty of room and someone commented they have a Samsung 980 pro with heatsink in their NUCXi7 so it's a yes.
Can I use my own power external button instead or it's solided into the motherboard ?
i didn't wanna get smacked by that thing so I figured why not just drop a like
this is exact motherboard from XMG Fusion 15
So we can’t use/update intel’s integrated gpu? Did I got that right?
Yep
Right now the nucxi7 barebone is 849 dls do you recommend to buy it now or it'll get cheaper?
That's not bad. There isn't much competition in this field at the moment, so if it's what you need, worth considering. Maybe will go down further on Black Friday, but that's still a while away.
Would it run at 4k and always above 60fps
Which SSD and RAM to use for those Mini PCs?
I'd go with the cheapest kit of 3200MHz DDR4 SODIMM you can find. Any NVME will do the job, but have you considered a Crucial P3 Plus? 😉 😉
@@Robtech Ok, i found a nice deal or offer for 64GB 3200MHz DDR4, i won't miss that hopefully.
Now about SSD, well, i also saw Samsung 980, just that plain, not EVO not QVO not Pro, and it is NVMe, mentioned it is MLC one, so i am not sure if this one will be any good for use as OS mainly, and then i have to look at another SSD for storage only, and again a third SSD for like second and third OS if i want to use more than 1 OS, something like Win10 Win11 and Linux, so you know.
I don't know why you specifically mentioned Crucial P3 Plus?!!! 😁😜
Don't forget you've only got 2 M.2 slots on this and no 2.5" SATA. 980 is is a great drive for OS or storage
@@Robtech Yes i know, so i want to use all those slots, 2 M.2 i assume both are dual type NVMe/SATA and 2.5" SATA, i don't know if i should go as 1TB/1TB/2TB, or 1TB/512GB/2TB, or 1TB/1TB/1TB or last option as 1TB/512GB/1TB, that Samsung 980 is definitely 1TB and will be my main OS [Win 11 i believe], while for other OSs and storage i am not sure if 1TB is enough for storage and better have 2TB just in case i fill drive by the time, and for two extra OSs, do you prefer to have 1TB partitioned or just 512GB partitioned and both are sufficient with something around 250GB each?
And i asked you because i buy one Samsung 980 which is nice, but what about other SSD drives, if i bought something like Crucial or SP or Patriot or even one of those Aliexpress cheap ones with high reviews are they good enough and reliable for secondary OS and storage?
512GB should be fine. I use 256GB drives for Windows and another drive for storage. I don't use the Chinese drives as they have poor 4KB performance and questionable warranties. I'd rather a buy a used well known brand.
3070 laptop?
Anyone know how to unlock the ram speed for it? The system seems to lock all ram to 1600mghz even though it supports higher speeds. Can anyone help?
3200MHz max with both SODIMM slots populated.
@@Robtech Thank you
Cheers
obviusly intel's NUC is behind in gaming, cuz all games depend a lot on drivers, but A770 is pretty new and it will take time to write good drivers or it will never happen like with AMD
Review was done comparing with the launch NUC 12 Enthusiast drivers. Things should have improved quite a bit since then.
@@Robtech I am not sure if you still have these. Can you do an updated comparison in 2023? I am pretty sure a770m improved a lot now.
Does it do 120hz out?
Sure does. Running it at 1440P 144Hz on my display.
@@Robtech what about 4k 120hz?
@@Robtech4k 120hz?
Don't make the mistake and buy a PC from Minisforum! I made this mistake and I regret it. Forget their two year warranty. When you have a problem, you can deal with Chinese support. You write them: My power supply is broken and they answer: "Please send us a video of your monitor not connecting
i like laptop without screen..
Great concept, poorly executed. Some guys have printed cases for the framework laptop.
intel lost the plot, minisforum found it and lost it again.
I found it! No, my mistake... lost it again
ps5 fail. its ugly
PS5 is no oil painting either.
there is a term to define acute idiocy, buying a notebook without a screen and trying to make people believe that this thing for the price sold is really worth the price charged
Does it have heating problems ? If the games start to slow down as soon as it gets hot like every single laptop ever then is a waste of money despite the form factor and nice enough specs.
Nope
@@Robtech Great then, only the giant logo will have to go now 😄