MinisForum has been making some attention-grabbing strikes in the previous couple of months with their computing platforms, starting from the DMAF5 based mostly on the Ryzen 3000H-series SoCs to the Ice Lake-based DeskMini X35G. In early August, they reached out to us to pitch their first mini-PC sporting a discrete GPU – the EliteMini H31G. Intrigued by their claims of having the ability to cram a 65W CPU and a 75W GPU in a chassis measuring roughly 15cm x 15cm x 6cm, we accepted their supply of a evaluate unit to place by way of our customary mini-PC benchmarking course of. The pattern arrived final week, however we have now a number of ideas to share.
The EliteMini H31G is a compact mini-PC smaller than different dGPU-equipped mini-PCs we have now reviewed earlier than just like the ASRock DeskMini Z370 GTX 1060 and the Ghost Canyon NUC. A have a look at the unit jogged my memory of the GIGABYTE BRIX Gaming BXi5G-760 we had reviewed again in 2014. Our evaluate pattern got here with a Core i5-9500F 65W CPU pre-installed, together with a GTX 1050 Ti MXM card with a TDP of 75W. As the naming of the package signifies, the board makes use of a H310 PCH.
The system makes use of a singular built-in dual-fan cooling system – the primary time we have now seen this kind of design in a mini-PC. The dual-fan configuration within the BRIX Gaming package was simply two followers crammed into one finish of the case, whereas the cooling package within the H31G seems to be significantly better thought out. Obviously, these are early days and I’m not passing any judgement on the effectiveness with out placing it by way of our thermal stress check. The BRIX Gaming package was cooling a 47W CPU and a 100W GPU, whereas the H31G is dealing with a 65W CPU and a 75W GPU. There was a motive for GIGABYTE to revamp their Gaming BRIX items from scratch for the newer iterations – so I’m actually trying ahead to seeing how the H31G handles thermal stress from each the CPU and GPU concurrently. Readers excited by a full breakdown of the cooling system ought to view the official launch video of the EliteMini H31G.
Our evaluate pattern shipped with a single 8GB DDR4 SODIMM, and a 256GB Kingston M.2 2280 NVMe drive. The system’s efficiency is certain to be higher with each SODIMM slots occupied, however we’re continuing with the evaluate of the equipped configuration as-is (it occurs to be one of many pre-built configurations obtainable for buy). The gallery under reveals a few of the internals of the system, and a dimension comparability towards different mini-PCs with dGPUs.
Based on our expertise with establishing the system and our first spherical of benchmarking, we discovered some minor annoyances and some attention-grabbing elements:
- All the USB ports are in a nook of the system rear panel. Usually, mini-PC producers unfold out the USB ports – some within the entrance panel and a few within the again.
- The microSD (TF card) slot, and the road in / mic in / headphones out port on the aspect panel are enabled by a ‘daughterboard’ contained in the system. The daughterboard additionally features a M.2 2242 SATA slot. Given the assist for a 2.5″ SATA drive, we’d have gladly given up the M.2 2242 SATA slot for a few extra USB 3.zero ports within the daughterboard.
- Another curious function is the assist for 2 units of audio outputs – one within the entrance panel with out the LINE IN (headphone jack), and one other with the TF daughterboard. Having by no means seen two units of built-in analog audio ports in any mini-PC earlier than, I wish to hear from readers if there are any particular eventualities or use-cases that MinisForum is likely to be concentrating on right here.
The barebones model (with no CPU, however with the MXM GTX 1050 Ti module) is priced at $399. Our evaluate configuration (Core i5-9500F, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) is priced at $629. The essential problem for MinisForum is that the system design, although distinctive, carries know-how that’s virtually Three years outdated at this level…
