For what it's worth, RAM can be upgraded to 96 GB, not just 64 GB. One of the problems I have noticed in addition to poor wifi performance has exceptionally poor bluetooth range. It can get choppy with low bandwidth devices such as bluetooth headphones even at a range of 50 cm or less. For whatever reason, this is considerably improved if I disable one of the two onboard ethernet ports (GLAN2 in my case) in the BIOS. This might be related to a problem with the multiple PCIe 2.1 devices (the two realtek ethernet devices) talking to the SoCs PCIe 4.0 bus.
Bought my first Minisforum EM680 Mini PC AMD Ryzen 7 6800U last week and wow! It's even much smaller than this one (approx. Raspberry Pi size) with USB4, 32Gb Ram and 1Tb SSD. Very happy. Also the power supply (included) goes through one USB4 port. I only hope the fan will survive, because I can't see how to replace it if needed. I wouldn't mind Minisforum to put a standard ventilator instead, even if it's a tiny bit larger, so I can always replace it by a Noctua fan.
Thanks Hans4me2 for mentioning that the EM680 can be powered through the USB4. I have been hoping to buy one with that function. I originally thought this UM780 XTX would be a good choice for me since the Minisforum website says both USB4 ports include Power Delivery. I was surprised and disappointed to see it mentioned that it does not work on this model. I saw that the EM780 was just released with a slightly more powerful CPU. I don't game and am just interested in a fast, cool, quiet machine that is reliable and that I can use with one cable hooked up to my monitor. I also need to make sure it works with Linux. I am wondering if that would be a better choice for me than the EM680. I read about some BIOS, power supply issues with the EM680, so that's a bit of a concern With this UM780 XTX, II was also sad to see the slow wifi here. I've had that issue with a couple Beelink mini PCs I tried. How is the EM680 wifi speed? Any other issues with it? I know what you mean about the fan. That worries me a bit too.
It does actually support being powered off the USB4 port! I have mine running off it right now. It seems to be finicky about which adapters it supports, as it only accepted my UGREEN Nexode 300W adapter’s top 140W port, but it also works with an Apple 87W power supply.
So I just returned this because of hardware issues. Was going to replace it with the same machine, but I think I will wait. That Tiger logo display thing is cool, but I suspect THIS will be the ONLY model that HAS it, since MINISFORUM has announced a newer model that will replace that logo display with a mini touch screen.
Maybe the subpar wifi and usb4 performance was a windows driver issue. Did you try the same tests while running Linux (preferably with a recent kernel)?
Just to add my two cents. I am not a gamer so there is that. I actually went through 3 of these minis looking for the right one at the right price. They all did the job at from $200 to $350. That included light video editing and streaming video while recording it using PlayOn plus all the normal stuff. One thing I found was the new (at the time) Intel 100 and 200 processors are 1 Ghz while the 11 gen Neosway AC8 with a N5105 processor is 2.9 Ghz which at the time was $200. This was the best at the cost and ran at 100% at 2.9 while recording. So it did all my tasks but one at a time. Nomal/business computing multitasking or the Editing or the Recording of a Stream one at a time. That is still impressive for the cost. As I said I tried the Pentium 200 and the 1 ghz held it back. But I finally went for a $350 11 gen i-7 11390H @3.4 Ghz with 16 GB of Ram (I could have used just 8 but that is what it came with) and 1 Tb SSD (M2 GMKtec) 4 x4 mini. So depending on you actual needs, you don't have to spend a lot to get a good system.
I own a couple MinisForum boxes - including the previous gen Venus series. Not the best for DIYers. They ship replacement feet because you will need them. Overall, not a bad little system once you get things setup.
I'm in the market for a new PC. If this is as far as technology has progressed I may take a look at something like this. 32GB of ram is more than enough ram for my needs but I'm glad it's upgradable.
Lon, Excellent review. Comparing your previous review on the Beelink SER7 against this Minisforum...the specs seem very similar. If you were buying either to keep, which would you recomment? Did one have better build quality or other feature to edge out the other? Thanks
Lon, the affiliate link in the description does not seem to be working. Maybe it's just not working me but I don't want you to miss out on any referrals. Keep up the great work.
About your external drive test. Check this PC World video USB4 Isn't Cut And Dry - And That's A Bummer and USB4 Finally Works Out Of The Box On Ryzen Laptops You should get real USB 4 external drive for testing this.
killer has issues with that you need to Completely Disable the QOS as well on the killer wifi card plus you really need good antanas or closer to the router Mini Pc's need a closer range unless you have a Santana port
I'm confused. You said at least twice that you can add hard drives to it. But I didn't see any SATA 3 connectors on the motherboard. Are we supposed to use M.2 to SATA adapters to install the hard drives? If so, I still didn't see any mounting points for the hard drives. Maybe if we get rid of the goofy light panel, there is room?
Warning!!! I bought a minis forum pc and it ran so hot that it died in less than 12 months, Now I have a paperweight that minis forum will not even answer if it will be covered by warranty. going on 3 weeks and no answers? In my case at least it appears the Minis Forum warranty is worthless... Replaced after waiting over 60 days. CS is horrible.
Poor wifi and limited disk speeds are a bit disappoiting. My much cheaper Morefine M600 (has previious year Ryzen but cost me 350 on Black Friday and even now is like 400 for 32GB RAM) has top speeds, supports 2.5in drives and has replaced my desktop. And I have never heard the fan... It only has 1 UBS 4 port however, this one has 2 and Oculink
I like what I see, I would buy it and have it with 64GB of RAM, if I could. Thanks for the video. Though I admit, I wouldn't say no to some other color options for the case. I am sick of black.
@@gammafilter You're confused by the USB standards which is understandable. USB 4.0 40gbps is the same as Thunderbolt 3 - devices are interoperable which is why I test that hard drive. It worked fine with the same cable on multiple other USB 4 computers. This one fell short.
7:23 I am not sure why you are pleased with these speeds as they are PCI-e Gen 3 speeds and the drive is a PCI-e Gen 4 drive. I would say the speed is underwhelming.
@@saturnotaku but I can run a full multitrack logic session at 96k at 32 samples on my m1 with a measly 8g of ram and it doesnt even get warm or hiccup. these things scream still edit: my older macbook pros couldnt even do the tasks this thing does, and what i wanted to say is that ram utilization is just a whole different animal with apples chips
@@magog6852 $1300 for the cheapest Mac Mini with atleast 16gb of ram and 512gb of storage. So that means atleast another $250 buying an external hub for your external hard drives. So that’s triple the price of this machine. Is that honestly worth the price difference? Because if it is I will decide to get a Mac Mini instead, because I make music on my iPad on Logic and Cubasis but use Studio One and Reaper on the Computer.
![Eminem - Somebody Save Me (feat. Jelly Roll) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Vwa0HenQMi4/mqdefault.jpg)
I've been running a minisforum mini pc (i5) for a few years now as my daily driver, still vry happy with it.
For what it's worth, RAM can be upgraded to 96 GB, not just 64 GB. One of the problems I have noticed in addition to poor wifi performance has exceptionally poor bluetooth range. It can get choppy with low bandwidth devices such as bluetooth headphones even at a range of 50 cm or less. For whatever reason, this is considerably improved if I disable one of the two onboard ethernet ports (GLAN2 in my case) in the BIOS. This might be related to a problem with the multiple PCIe 2.1 devices (the two realtek ethernet devices) talking to the SoCs PCIe 4.0 bus.
Great video, just ordered my own.
The 8700G is dropping next quarter. It will include the 780M iGPU, and it will blow all other APUs out of the water, especially with good memory.
Yup pair it with decent pair of 16gb d5 6000mhz
And it will fly in all games
Slap in fsr3/framegen mod
hows power consumption?
But I suppose you won't get so low power usage as this all in one board@@magog6852
if you gonna put custom mother board, some ATX PSU
Key factor would it do Av1? That is a game changer
I believe that is a full desktop apu, not one that will go in laptops/mini PCs.
Bought my first Minisforum EM680 Mini PC AMD Ryzen 7 6800U last week and wow! It's even much smaller than this one (approx. Raspberry Pi size) with USB4, 32Gb Ram and 1Tb SSD. Very happy. Also the power supply (included) goes through one USB4 port.
I only hope the fan will survive, because I can't see how to replace it if needed. I wouldn't mind Minisforum to put a standard ventilator instead, even if it's a tiny bit larger, so I can always replace it by a Noctua fan.
Yes you will need a screwdriver.
Thanks Hans4me2 for mentioning that the EM680 can be powered through the USB4. I have been hoping to buy one with that function. I originally thought this UM780 XTX would be a good choice for me since the Minisforum website says both USB4 ports include Power Delivery. I was surprised and disappointed to see it mentioned that it does not work on this model.
I saw that the EM780 was just released with a slightly more powerful CPU. I don't game and am just interested in a fast, cool, quiet machine that is reliable and that I can use with one cable hooked up to my monitor. I also need to make sure it works with Linux. I am wondering if that would be a better choice for me than the EM680. I read about some BIOS, power supply issues with the EM680, so that's a bit of a concern
With this UM780 XTX, II was also sad to see the slow wifi here. I've had that issue with a couple Beelink mini PCs I tried.
How is the EM680 wifi speed? Any other issues with it? I know what you mean about the fan. That worries me a bit too.
Please tell me how much memory can be allocated for a video core in the BIOS?
@@ymg777 up to 16gb
Nice compact machine. I suspect ces will have a slew of new versions for us, but for now this looks nice
Very helpful review and about the only one I've found that talks about running linux on this machine, thanks.
Lon , Thank you for posting, and Merry Christmas.
It does actually support being powered off the USB4 port! I have mine running off it right now. It seems to be finicky about which adapters it supports, as it only accepted my UGREEN Nexode 300W adapter’s top 140W port, but it also works with an Apple 87W power supply.
So I just returned this because of hardware issues. Was going to replace it with the same machine, but I think I will wait. That Tiger logo display thing is cool, but I suspect THIS will be the ONLY model that HAS it, since MINISFORUM has announced a newer model that will replace that logo display with a mini touch screen.
Maybe the subpar wifi and usb4 performance was a windows driver issue. Did you try the same tests while running Linux (preferably with a recent kernel)?
Just to add my two cents. I am not a gamer so there is that. I actually went through 3 of these minis looking for the right one at the right price. They all did the job at from $200 to $350. That included light video editing and streaming video while recording it using PlayOn plus all the normal stuff.
One thing I found was the new (at the time) Intel 100 and 200 processors are 1 Ghz while the 11 gen Neosway AC8 with a N5105 processor is 2.9 Ghz which at the time was $200. This was the best at the cost and ran at 100% at 2.9 while recording. So it did all my tasks but one at a time. Nomal/business computing multitasking or the Editing or the Recording of a Stream one at a time. That is still impressive for the cost. As I said I tried the Pentium 200 and the 1 ghz held it back.
But I finally went for a $350 11 gen i-7 11390H @3.4 Ghz with 16 GB of Ram (I could have used just 8 but that is what it came with) and 1 Tb SSD (M2 GMKtec) 4 x4 mini. So depending on you actual needs, you don't have to spend a lot to get a good system.
Keep up the great work
I own a couple MinisForum boxes - including the previous gen Venus series. Not the best for DIYers. They ship replacement feet because you will need them. Overall, not a bad little system once you get things setup.
I'm in the market for a new PC. If this is as far as technology has progressed I may take a look at something like this. 32GB of ram is more than enough ram for my needs but I'm glad it's upgradable.
Lon, Excellent review. Comparing your previous review on the Beelink SER7 against this Minisforum...the specs seem very similar. If you were buying either to keep, which would you recomment? Did one have better build quality or other feature to edge out the other? Thanks
I'd say the Beelink right now - primarily because the USB 4 ports appear to be functioning properly and the build quality is better.
Nice pc and super video sir :)
Thanks for this. Does the ram heatsink cover both sticks?
Hi, thanks.
Lon, the affiliate link in the description does not seem to be working. Maybe it's just not working me but I don't want you to miss out on any referrals. Keep up the great work.
Are you outside the USA?
Must be it im using a vpn to canada at the time. thanks @@LonSeidman
🔥
Good point thing only get better from here
About your external drive test. Check this PC World video USB4 Isn't Cut And Dry - And That's A Bummer and USB4 Finally Works Out Of The Box On Ryzen Laptops
You should get real USB 4 external drive for testing this.
killer has issues with that you need to Completely Disable the QOS as well on the killer wifi card plus you really need good antanas or closer to the router Mini Pc's need a closer range unless you have a Santana port
Measuring the fan noise would render a sub.
Hi LON, do you have the WHEA 17 errors in the event viewer. For Wifi, I can get around 500Mb/s
I'm confused. You said at least twice that you can add hard drives to it. But I didn't see any SATA 3 connectors on the motherboard. Are we supposed to use M.2 to SATA adapters to install the hard drives? If so, I still didn't see any mounting points for the hard drives. Maybe if we get rid of the goofy light panel, there is room?
You can add a second nvme
Warning!!! I bought a minis forum pc and it ran so hot that it died in less than 12 months, Now I have a paperweight that minis forum will not even answer if it will be covered by warranty. going on 3 weeks and no answers? In my case at least it appears the Minis Forum warranty is worthless... Replaced after waiting over 60 days. CS is horrible.
Can you confirm if the unit HDMI 2.1 is TDMS or FRL? Can it do 4K @ 120Hz over HDMI?
Do you know of any mini pC with HDMI -in? Preferably dual HDMI-in with one out.
Poor wifi and limited disk speeds are a bit disappoiting. My much cheaper Morefine M600 (has previious year Ryzen but cost me 350 on Black Friday and even now is like 400 for 32GB RAM) has top speeds, supports 2.5in drives and has replaced my desktop. And I have never heard the fan... It only has 1 UBS 4 port however, this one has 2 and Oculink
What is the um780 xtx's 780m igpu maximum TGP??
A perfect computer for ants.
What is the idle power usage on Linux?
Do these come from minisforum with Windows installed? If so, what version? Thanks.
Windows 11 Home but I nuked mine for Proxmox 😎
I like what I see, I would buy it and have it with 64GB of RAM, if I could. Thanks for the video.
Though I admit, I wouldn't say no to some other color options for the case. I am sick of black.
I think you're usb c cablewant rated for 40Gbps. You only had a tb 3 cable.
Tb3 is a 40 gigabit cable - same as usb 4/40
tb3 is 40gbps
That us "upto" 40. Also the cable matters. Th3 and usb3.2 gen2 are different standards. You need specific cables rated for 40gbps on usb 3.2 gen 2
@@gammafilter You're confused by the USB standards which is understandable. USB 4.0 40gbps is the same as Thunderbolt 3 - devices are interoperable which is why I test that hard drive. It worked fine with the same cable on multiple other USB 4 computers. This one fell short.
@@LonSeidman thanks 😊
7:23 I am not sure why you are pleased with these speeds as they are PCI-e Gen 3 speeds and the drive is a PCI-e Gen 4 drive. I would say the speed is underwhelming.
MINISFORUM think they are Apple, so no SD card slot.
LONBALL Once I heard price I turned off. It should be half that at most. Get a Mac mini at once.
A Mac Mini with 24 GB of RAM (the most you can get) and a terabyte of storage costs more than double what this does.
@@saturnotaku but I can run a full multitrack logic session at 96k at 32 samples on my m1 with a measly 8g of ram and it doesnt even get warm or hiccup. these things scream still
edit: my older macbook pros couldnt even do the tasks this thing does, and what i wanted to say is that ram utilization is just a whole different animal with apples chips
@@magog6852 $1300 for the cheapest Mac Mini with atleast 16gb of ram and 512gb of storage. So that means atleast another $250 buying an external hub for your external hard drives. So that’s triple the price of this machine. Is that honestly worth the price difference? Because if it is I will decide to get a Mac Mini instead, because I make music on my iPad on Logic and Cubasis but use Studio One and Reaper on the Computer.