I Finally Found A Windows Mini Pc Powerful Enough To Replace My Desktop (and It's On Sale)

ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• The Minisforum AI370 EliteMini pinch nan Ryzen AI 9 and 64GB of RAM usually retails for $1,249, but is presently connected waste for less.
• It's a powerful mini PC pinch plentifulness of ports, support for an 8K display, and runs cool and quiet.
• You'll still request to proviso your ain peripherals, and it's champion to acquisition them while connected sale.

Amazon is offering coupons for multiple Minisforum AI370 EliteMini configurations. The guidelines exemplary tin beryllium purchased astatine a $230 discount.

I retrieve erstwhile PCs were massive, hulking beige boxes that weighed a ton and dominated your desk. Today, however, we person PCs that are exponentially much powerful yet mini capable to fresh successful nan thenar of your hand. 

Also: The champion mini PCs you tin buy

The champion portion is that you don't person to sacrifice powerfulness for size. The Minisforum AI370 EliteMini is impervious of that -- it's 1 of nan most powerful mini-PCs connected nan marketplace and weighs hardly complete a pound. 

The AI370 EliteMini is simply a sleek, metallic matte instrumentality measuring 5.12 x 5 x 1.85 inches, designed to fresh into moreover nan smallest workstations. Its size contrasts pinch its power, however, arsenic it features an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor pinch 4 full-size Zen 5 capacity cores tin of speeds up to 5.1 GHz and 8 Zen 5c "compact" 3.3 GHz cores. 

The Zen 5c cores are designed to return up 25% little abstraction connected nan processor die compared to modular Zen 5 cores, making them cleanable for handling little demanding tasks. This creation not only improves powerfulness ratio but besides allows for much computing powerfulness to beryllium packed into nan chip.

Also: This mini Windows PC I tested competes pinch gaming laptops doubly nan price

This AMD processor is optimized for AI workloads, delivering up to 80 TOPS wide and 50 NPU TOPS, capable to let nan PC to tally Microsoft Copilot+ AI devices successful Windows 11, and beryllium capable to telephone itself an "AI PC" by Microsoft standards. 

For nan GPU, it houses an AMD Radeon 890M pinch 16 graphics cores, tin of supporting up to 4 displays and resolutions arsenic precocious arsenic 8K (7680 x 4320) astatine a 60Hz refresh rate. As a instrumentality that is designed to beryllium connected a table (but not return up excessively overmuch space), nan AI370 has nary problem projecting onto aggregate displays. 

Storage, RAM, and upgradability

Backing up nan processor is 32GB of LPDDR5 7500MHz RAM and 1TB of M.2 SSD storage. If you request much storage, nan strategy is amazingly easy to upgrade. Just region 4 screws, assistance nan lid, and plaything nan instrumentality assembly retired of nan measurement to entree a 2nd M.2 slot for description . However, retention is nan only user-upgradable component.

Opening nan Minisforum AI370 EliteMini.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET

Connectivity

The AI370 EliteMini has aggregate connectivity options connected some nan beforehand and backmost of nan device:

• Front: One USB-C port, 2 USB-A 3.2 Gen2 ports, and a 3.5mm headphone/microphone jack.
• Back: Two USB-A 3.2 Gen2 ports, 1 DisplayPort 2.0 port, 1 HDMI 2.1 port, and 2 2.5G RJ45 LAN ports.

It besides supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3.

Nice action of ports connected nan rear of nan Minisforum AI370 EliteMini. 

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET

The strategy successful action

Regarding performance, nan AI370 EliteMini is simply a tin strategy that punches supra its weight. 

During my Benchmarking of nan system, I sewage respectable scores successful Cinebench R23: conscionable nether 24,000 for multi-core capacity and complete 2,000 for single-core performance. Since gaming relies heavy connected single-core performance, this strategy is connected par pinch a desktop strategy moving an Intel Core i9 13900F.

Also: I recovered a mini PC that performs for illustration a velocity demon (and comes successful bold colors)

I pushed nan strategy difficult during testing and had nary problems pinch instabilities aliases crashes. Additionally, overheating doesn't look to beryllium an issue, pinch nan cooling strategy capable to support nan processor consistently wrong a patient somesthesia range, thing I was concerned about, fixed nan device's diminutive size. 

Also, Minisforum seems to person improved its instrumentality hardware, arsenic nan instrumentality connected nan AI370 lives up to its claims of being quiet; truthful overmuch truthful that I couldn't show erstwhile it was moving astir of nan time. 

ZDNET's buying advice

Let's get down to brass tacks: price. At $1,249, nan Minisforum AI370 EliteMini isn't precisely cheap, but it's acold from overpriced. For that investment, you're getting a highly tin PC that tin grip high-end software, gaming, and moreover AI workloads pinch ease. It is simply a mini instrumentality that delivers large results. And nan instrumentality is made moreover amended by its existent discount. At its caller price, nan AI370 EliteMini offers unthinkable worth for its capacity and features.

Looking for nan adjacent champion product? Get master reviews and editor favorites with ZDNET Recommends.