Minisforum X1 Pro: Reviewing this BEAST of a Mini PC
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Date: 2025-03-08
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Comments and reviews: 20
dominic. h. 3363
Looked very interesting at first, then I saw the price. At that point I'd rather just keep my Phanteks P200A case, and buy a Ryzen 9 9900X, 64 GB of 6000 MHz CL30 G. Skill RAM (instead of 5600 MHz CL36) and an MSI MPG B650I Edge mini ITX board and still have some of that 1. 2k left over.
More bang for buck, and I get to keep my 14 terabytes of internal SATA storage. no connection drops through USB, or any superfluous bits of electronics in form of a NAS you don't actually need for the singular purpose you are after, there is no additional power draw, noise, attack vectors, ransomware risks, firmware vulnerabilities, power delivery and longevity risks that all come with the constant uptime of a NAS.
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Looked very interesting at first, then I saw the price. At that point I'd rather just keep my Phanteks P200A case, and buy a Ryzen 9 9900X, 64 GB of 6000 MHz CL30 G. Skill RAM (instead of 5600 MHz CL36) and an MSI MPG B650I Edge mini ITX board and still have some of that 1. 2k left over.
More bang for buck, and I get to keep my 14 terabytes of internal SATA storage. no connection drops through USB, or any superfluous bits of electronics in form of a NAS you don't actually need for the singular purpose you are after, there is no additional power draw, noise, attack vectors, ransomware risks, firmware vulnerabilities, power delivery and longevity risks that all come with the constant uptime of a NAS.
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leakyabstraction
Those upside down USB ports Minisforum obsessively uses are the bane of my existence. Most USB sticks, USB dongles, etc. are designed to have the other side up. I haven't heard any reviews complaining about them, but I find it super annoying in daily use. I plug in my Poly dongle, and the LED is downwards. I plug in my Corsair keyboard dongle, and I have to look at a QR code sticker and serial number instead of the nice logo.
I think at this price range they really should get rid of Chinese budget feelings stuff like this. I haven't seen upside down USB ports from any proper vendor.
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Those upside down USB ports Minisforum obsessively uses are the bane of my existence. Most USB sticks, USB dongles, etc. are designed to have the other side up. I haven't heard any reviews complaining about them, but I find it super annoying in daily use. I plug in my Poly dongle, and the LED is downwards. I plug in my Corsair keyboard dongle, and I have to look at a QR code sticker and serial number instead of the nice logo.
I think at this price range they really should get rid of Chinese budget feelings stuff like this. I haven't seen upside down USB ports from any proper vendor.
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BReal-10EC
Such performance is amazing for an iGPU. the VRam is just regular system ram and is way slower than typical GDDR VRam next to the GPU on the same board. The only negative on such powerful iGPUs is that AMD might try to sell them as a dGPU for too much money and with limited features/pci lanes (like previously. But stick it on a PCI-e slot power only dGPU with 8gb Vram (even GDDR5) for 120 bucks and Im OK With It. We haven't had a new real budget retail dGPU card in forever. Having a weak card with modern features and support is still better than nothing is cheap enough.
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Such performance is amazing for an iGPU. the VRam is just regular system ram and is way slower than typical GDDR VRam next to the GPU on the same board. The only negative on such powerful iGPUs is that AMD might try to sell them as a dGPU for too much money and with limited features/pci lanes (like previously. But stick it on a PCI-e slot power only dGPU with 8gb Vram (even GDDR5) for 120 bucks and Im OK With It. We haven't had a new real budget retail dGPU card in forever. Having a weak card with modern features and support is still better than nothing is cheap enough.
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spambot7110
i wanna know more about these NPUs, like can we use them as generic accelerators for vector math. if so then they might still have a use post-ai-bubble, for all the classic multimedia / scientific stuff, as well as whatever more sensible machine learning stuff survives the crash. if these things do have reasonable, open, general-purpose APIs, i have some hobby learning projects that would benefit from matrix math acceleration.
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i wanna know more about these NPUs, like can we use them as generic accelerators for vector math. if so then they might still have a use post-ai-bubble, for all the classic multimedia / scientific stuff, as well as whatever more sensible machine learning stuff survives the crash. if these things do have reasonable, open, general-purpose APIs, i have some hobby learning projects that would benefit from matrix math acceleration.
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noth606
So the nonexistent NPU is not doing nonexistent things. Yess, exactly what everyone needed! Eymeyzing! It's like the rebirth of that smart cache thing from back in the Vista days, hype galore and none of it ever did anything - even in lab tests, let alone the real world. Or, did anything - I mean improved anything - heh plenty of people got stuff to crash with it.
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So the nonexistent NPU is not doing nonexistent things. Yess, exactly what everyone needed! Eymeyzing! It's like the rebirth of that smart cache thing from back in the Vista days, hype galore and none of it ever did anything - even in lab tests, let alone the real world. Or, did anything - I mean improved anything - heh plenty of people got stuff to crash with it.
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solodante5905
A 10Gbps port on any PC at this point(2025) will still be not utilized by the majority of users, since 10Gbps lines are predominately in the business realm. Hell I have AT&T fiber and the max offered is 5Gbps. I mean sure within a home network intranet 10Gbps is doable but if you are looking for those internet speeds that will take time to be widespread.
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A 10Gbps port on any PC at this point(2025) will still be not utilized by the majority of users, since 10Gbps lines are predominately in the business realm. Hell I have AT&T fiber and the max offered is 5Gbps. I mean sure within a home network intranet 10Gbps is doable but if you are looking for those internet speeds that will take time to be widespread.
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notkalebvaughn
I’m super interested in getting one of these! Another great LGR video
I’m looking to get a new PC for editing content, streaming, and gaming.
If Clint sees this - have you tried out The Sims 4 and potentially MineCraft yet I play those games the most. I’m assuming this machine would run them very well even in the lowest spec version.
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I’m super interested in getting one of these! Another great LGR video
I’m looking to get a new PC for editing content, streaming, and gaming.
If Clint sees this - have you tried out The Sims 4 and potentially MineCraft yet I play those games the most. I’m assuming this machine would run them very well even in the lowest spec version.
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icez0lation
Just keep in mind that ETA Prime videos are only good for an enthusiastic look at new modern devices. When everything is 'awesome' nothing is, so always make sure to get a 2nd opinion somehwere else, as he won't tell you about important flaws of devices (or, even worse, just does a sponsored review.
Loved your review of this lil machine, Clint!
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Just keep in mind that ETA Prime videos are only good for an enthusiastic look at new modern devices. When everything is 'awesome' nothing is, so always make sure to get a 2nd opinion somehwere else, as he won't tell you about important flaws of devices (or, even worse, just does a sponsored review.
Loved your review of this lil machine, Clint!
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Gigakoops
Man, really wish people making these sorts of machines didn't lean in so much on AI stuff. It seems like a really good mini PC for gaming and other tasks, but the fact that a lot of the marketing focuses on Copilot and generative AI stuff makes one less enthusiastic to look into what is otherwise a pretty good-looking mini gaming solution.
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Man, really wish people making these sorts of machines didn't lean in so much on AI stuff. It seems like a really good mini PC for gaming and other tasks, but the fact that a lot of the marketing focuses on Copilot and generative AI stuff makes one less enthusiastic to look into what is otherwise a pretty good-looking mini gaming solution.
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pumm1
Mini PCs have gotten quite nice. I got ASUS ExpertCenter PN53 last year and it has some similar kinds of performance (though I haven't tested it properly with many games as I've used it as a media PC, but some quick tests have been promising. Finally we can have easy-to-setup media PCs that can also run some games and don't take up much space
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Mini PCs have gotten quite nice. I got ASUS ExpertCenter PN53 last year and it has some similar kinds of performance (though I haven't tested it properly with many games as I've used it as a media PC, but some quick tests have been promising. Finally we can have easy-to-setup media PCs that can also run some games and don't take up much space
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AnijatsuGentlemen
I'm not sure if your footage of all the games having FSR/resolution scaling turned off actually shows the resolution scaling off. There's lots of very similar artifacting and pixellation occurring as if you still had everything on, save for frame generation. Maybe you have an override in the AMD graphics driver's settings
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I'm not sure if your footage of all the games having FSR/resolution scaling turned off actually shows the resolution scaling off. There's lots of very similar artifacting and pixellation occurring as if you still had everything on, save for frame generation. Maybe you have an override in the AMD graphics driver's settings
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GrumpyWolfTech
Minisforum makes some amazing stuff, I recently bought one of their amd cpu/mobo mobile combos. 360 bucks for a 16 core AMD 7940hx cpu with the mobo. As far as comparison goes, I have a standard desktop 7950x and there is not a huge difference in performance but the combo is nearly half the price of the desktop cpu alone.
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Minisforum makes some amazing stuff, I recently bought one of their amd cpu/mobo mobile combos. 360 bucks for a 16 core AMD 7940hx cpu with the mobo. As far as comparison goes, I have a standard desktop 7950x and there is not a huge difference in performance but the combo is nearly half the price of the desktop cpu alone.
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JohnSmith-qn3ob
I had a problem with the audio in Need For Speed 2 (it did the same crackling. The way you fix it is by forcing the game to run on 1 core instead of multiple cores.
You should try that with POD. You can make a shortcut in windows and in the Target field put: C: \Windows\System32\cmd. exe /c start /affinity 0x1 /high
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I had a problem with the audio in Need For Speed 2 (it did the same crackling. The way you fix it is by forcing the game to run on 1 core instead of multiple cores.
You should try that with POD. You can make a shortcut in windows and in the Target field put: C: \Windows\System32\cmd. exe /c start /affinity 0x1 /high
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MrJohnS.
I’ve seen people say that it’s not uncommon to play flight sim at 20fps because it’s such a slow paced game, I’ve never played it, but it looks great on that system. The performance of the new Ryzen Ai processors do look amazing as far as gaming goes, one of them is supposedly almost as good as a desktop rtx4060.
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I’ve seen people say that it’s not uncommon to play flight sim at 20fps because it’s such a slow paced game, I’ve never played it, but it looks great on that system. The performance of the new Ryzen Ai processors do look amazing as far as gaming goes, one of them is supposedly almost as good as a desktop rtx4060.
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KS-xo3oh
What was your FPS like on BeamNG
That’s my Go To game.
Ryzen 7 and a 4070 Super I get varying FPS depending on if traffic is on or I’m in the big City map
Usually 60 on 1440 Ultra settings with the dynamic reflections and mirrors halfway up and ai traffic settings on Auto
Much higher with minimal AI
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What was your FPS like on BeamNG
That’s my Go To game.
Ryzen 7 and a 4070 Super I get varying FPS depending on if traffic is on or I’m in the big City map
Usually 60 on 1440 Ultra settings with the dynamic reflections and mirrors halfway up and ai traffic settings on Auto
Much higher with minimal AI
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JerziTBoss
For the price it is not bad and I love the fact you can remap the copilot key to something else. You can set it to lock button or to open app or combination of apps you use daily.
I still prefer custom built PC because I like the idea of fine tuning PC to whatever need the person I'm building for has.
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For the price it is not bad and I love the fact you can remap the copilot key to something else. You can set it to lock button or to open app or combination of apps you use daily.
I still prefer custom built PC because I like the idea of fine tuning PC to whatever need the person I'm building for has.
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slipknotboy555
6: 44 Haha, same. At the beginning, when it showed that AI is apparently even in the model name, I was like - Oh, yes, I'm sure that's totally why people might buy this, and (most) people will totally care about that. Haha
Though that said, this thing is indeed pretty cool for what it is, ofc.
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6: 44 Haha, same. At the beginning, when it showed that AI is apparently even in the model name, I was like - Oh, yes, I'm sure that's totally why people might buy this, and (most) people will totally care about that. Haha
Though that said, this thing is indeed pretty cool for what it is, ofc.
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motbus3
It does look this hardware can pack a punch. Pro 64GB1T SSD is about 1000 usd. I would get that if I needed one right now, but as you said, there aren't many applications really using the specialised hardware so it seems it is worth waiting for the price to drop and support to increase a bit more.
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It does look this hardware can pack a punch. Pro 64GB1T SSD is about 1000 usd. I would get that if I needed one right now, but as you said, there aren't many applications really using the specialised hardware so it seems it is worth waiting for the price to drop and support to increase a bit more.
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smolmuffin
This might be perfect for my sister! Much rather build her something but this seems capable enough to run light to moderate gaming any art or editing programs.
Plus its portable, so she could bring it to our father's on the weekend and just have a 2nd keyboard, montior and mouse there.
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This might be perfect for my sister! Much rather build her something but this seems capable enough to run light to moderate gaming any art or editing programs.
Plus its portable, so she could bring it to our father's on the weekend and just have a 2nd keyboard, montior and mouse there.
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toyfreaks
Ok, off topic. but when you showed the screen grabs of the SIMS running on this thing, I couldn't get over the fact that the guy grilling hot dogs is flipping them with. a SPATULA! [cue Spatula City ad from Weird Al's UHF movie]. This had to be a joke, right An animator easter egg of sorts
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Ok, off topic. but when you showed the screen grabs of the SIMS running on this thing, I couldn't get over the fact that the guy grilling hot dogs is flipping them with. a SPATULA! [cue Spatula City ad from Weird Al's UHF movie]. This had to be a joke, right An animator easter egg of sorts
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