Make a SUPER Mini PC Better with an OCulink eGPU

How many audio channels? I don't see that listed anywhere, and nothing in the user manual. I already have an iNTEL NUC that does not support surround, and I'd like one that does.

Can the p1000 and p2000 qoudro work fine with lenovo thinkcentre with pcie old family as p620 ???

Kingston makes just awful unreliable SSDs, I would highly stay away from them fyi to all who don't know and actually care for their files 😉😉👍 .. also they are highly unreliable in performance even if you do get any performance it's always upside down left and right reverse whichever way it wants to not as smooth drive never I had a few of them failed before 5 months and the ones that actually work over 12 months in those 12 months up and down speeds sometimes phenomenal sometimes average or just playing bad not even good you never know what you expect that is again if it made it past the 5 6 months mark..i would get Samsung or Western digital ssd

Personally Rx 7945 and Gen5 NVME lanes in this platform is what I want. The P7 GT is what I am looking at but it needs an Oculink port. While i like the verticality of the P7, the lack of Occulink has me thinking of doing a custom 3D printed case to include an Occulink port and swapping the NVME to the Gen4 slot. If this had the new 880M CPU with the NPU, id consider it more. Minisforum can slow dpwn on there new models coming out and focus on upgrade ability. The could push put more units without too much of a factory tooling upgrade.

Great review, I've used this mini pc for a few weeks now, only thing I wish it had was an extra m.2 socket, scores well in 3dmark with my 4080 paired to it, just waiting for someone to pair a 4090 with it to beat my top score lol. Also this um890 pro has two bios options balanced and performance,

I really wonder what is the point in these so called reviews. If this system takes its build from previous systems, then it will become a brick within 2 years when the root EUFI certificates expire. Secondly, that fan, if you look at previous generations, it only lasts for a month of continuous use before the bearings go. Why bother trying to save a few bucks when in a couple of years you are going to have to buy another system. STH should be really checking these issues.

One test I would like to see on these is Linux support. Can Linux Mint be installed and the APU work fine without having to jump through hoops?
Windows 11 is dead to a lot of us.

I have a Minisforum with a defective Intel cpu. After months of back and forth Minisforum still won't replace it. I won't buy another Minisforum unless they replace my defective cpu. I anyway won't be buying Intel any time soon given how badly they have handled their f-up. I am not convinced they have come clean on the issues.

If only a proper* fanless GPU's existed then this would enable gaming on my fanless mini pc.

*The GeForce RTX 3050 KalmX 6GB is not passive. It just relies on the airflow of the case fans instead of coming with its own dedicated fans.

i'vr from a month the ms-a1 with the deg1 and a thunderbolt dock, it's a great combination. I came from 30 year of pc, making on my own, but now i want somthing different and for me this combination work great, i use my xtx 6900xt and gaming is not a problem on 1440p, every day task work flawly. The only thing is becoming very slow is video editing but this 8700g is no made for this kind of task, Overall i'm very happy with this setup

I have a lot of time for Minisforum. They are company that continually build on what they have learnt from previous products, their products are competitively priced and after sales service is also good. I purchased their UM780 XTX mini-PC which is the first time they introduced this new chassis design you described with Oculink support but a Ryzen 7 7840HS processor with high performance (high TDP) setting option. The fan tray also included an optionally enabled RGB illuminated Tiger graphic (hence the extra space you mentioned). My preference was to install a second NVME SSD over the Oculink adapter as most the games I enjoy along with Retro Game emulation play well on the 780M iGPU. I have since purchased two further Minisforum Mini-PCs as Linux machines, one running Nobara 40 and the other Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and their new V3 Tablet PC with a Ryzen 7 8840U APU, Windows 11 Pro, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, keyboard, and stylus, and it's like having a Microsoft Surface Pro 10, but on steroids and at half the price for a similarly spec'd and accessorized Pro 10! The latest AMD NPU drivers (need to download direct from AMD, Google AMD Ryzen AI software) add a NPU performance process graph to Windows Task manager for AMD APUs with a NPU, and the V3 Tablet also gets Windows Studio effects as per Microsoft Surface Pros & laptops with Qualcomm processors. In total, I spent less on my Minisforum purchases than a MacBook Pro and they are a lot more fun to use!

Hilarious that that metal sheet with screwed on PSU and tacked on GPU, with cables flying all over the place is referred to as an "enclosure" 🤣🤣 We really need some Chinese manufacturer to create a proper oculink case, like the old Thunderbird ones.

Ok.. don't you need to switch the monitor plug to the GPU itself from minipc? Or the oCulink will do that part internally? How's that?

these minipc are small but power adaptor are bulky mess now.
I would like to see minipc with builtin powersupply for any new minipc purchase.

I feel Beelink's solution they're coming out with is a much better implementation. An extra $50 and you get a built in 600W power supply in the dock and a slot for either an m.2 wifi or SSD and it connects directly via PCIe x8. I hope they expand on it.

Just the better cooling is a real selling point for me. The ability to add an external GPU is a real bonus.

I'd love to replace my BlackView N95 Mini PC with a Ryzen 9 Strix Halo one day.

My hope that OCulink goes away, once TB5 is finally out.

TB4 is 40/40 Gbps,
OCulink is 80/80 Gbps, but
TB5 should allow 120/40 Gbps, which should be great.

Patrick is cool

Still want an amd solution with 10gb networking. Guessing oculink is not that.

W H Y ?, what's the value in this for $600?

The airflow in the top there and that plastic separator seems off. And the ssd heatsink is glued to the plastic part with the fan? Then weird fan wire hanging out. They can’t be happy with that solution. Seems like there is a better way to for those parts together.

Realtek networking, Boo

The oculink adapter on this should work with a HBA card and hard drives for a NAS right?

I’d love to see them use the Mac mini form factor – bigger but with internal psu and room for ports and sdcard.