MinisForum BD770i: It's a Motherboard?? 

Having a natively "de-lidded" and soldered CPU is a nice benefit for a SFF build. You get better cooling with a small cooler, and better efficiency.

RF nutcase here (ham radio and WiFi wardriver). As long as they're 1/4 wavelength or further, you're fine. 2.4ghz is ~13cm. 1/4 of 13cm is 3.5cm, so by bananascale, your most excellent WiFi antennas are A-OK 👌 as they are. Loved the review and now considering the board for low power homelab!

I do want to throw my hat in the ring for this one, I bought a bd770i, it was DOA, the fans would spin up as soon as 24 pin power was inserted, the return process was a bit long but eventually I got there and got my refund from minisforum (and didn't need to ship it back to HK, they had a local warehouse.) 10/10 support

This looks like it would make a really good 1U homelab server. The no bifurcation is not ideal if you want to add M.2 expansion card, but would be just great for 10G+ NICs. Seems like it would be a GREAT virtualization platform. I am super interested.

That looks great for using in a rack mount enclosure as well.

ever since i saw this motherboard i thought it was one of the coolest itx boards out, really considering buying it for a custom itx build with the gigabyte low profile 4060

I'd be very interested in the $200 or $250 version of this with a bit more down market CPU. maybe more like the 7545U. It looks like a great way to build a decent starter gaming machine. for pairing with a GPU like a 7600.

I so want this with the 780m APU and am4 cooler mounting. That would make a great passive cooled PC.

It's great to see we finally get laptop SoCs on itx boards

Two questions: 1) Any plans to test the 7945hx variant? I’m very curious to see if that bottle necks the GPU less. 2) Any testing done with a higher pressure fan? Again the curiosity being a better cooled CPU might be throttling less if at all giving more headroom. Other than that, great to see! I’ve been really excited for this platform for a while.

Better idea for a homelab to replace an old and power hungry processor

Excellent review as usual. And great product chosen. Would like to see very low end, lower power, low cost solutions like this for home server or enterprise type of displays and production systems. We don't game on production floors as you know perhaps.

Two things that made me chuckle - First, I picked up a WiFi antenna like that earlier this year when taking my MiniITX PC on a trip to a convention. worked great, way better than the ones that came with the motherboard. Second thing was Wendell's use of a drill to work on the PC. I did that once in the late 80s and had to take it into a computer store because of a virus (1st and last time I ever needed to do that) as I didn't have access to another machine to create a clean disk to remove the virus. Store techs did a check on the machine and immediately noticed that I'd gone full power on one screw and had to replace it with a larger machine screw. That drill did not have a clutch setting or keyless chuck. I picked up a power screwdriver shortly thereafter. 😅

FYI, the XX45 mobile processors are desktop processors in a laptop BGA package, except for the 8000 series which seems to have re-branded some of the 7X40 to 8X45 Leave it to AMD to break their naming scheme in a single generation This being a desktop processor is actually pretty nice if you plan on adding a GPU Yes you lack an AI engine, and your iGPU is piddly 2CUs of RDNA2 insteaad of 12CUs of RDNA3 found in the 7740 On the up side you get 2x the cache per core on the 7745 over the 7740(monolithic AMD APUs normally have 1/2 the cache per core of their desktop equivalent chiplet based solutions)

I got this bd770i for $427 after tax and shipping. A b650 board plus an r7 7700 comes in a little over $600 after taxes. Considering theyre essentially the same cpu there is savings to be had if youre willing to forego upgrade ability and and a sata express controller.

Artic is indeed underrated. Have an Arctic Freezer 64 that ran from 2008 till 2020 without a hitch. Still works, just upgraded to a liquid freezer...

Just bought this board, cant wait till it arrives. Updating my topton intel N5105 itx board with this one for my Unraid server. To bad minisforum didn't slap on some sata ports, 4 at least or better 6 sata ports would be perfect. I'll use my nvme to 5x sata adapter since I only use one native nvme for cache, 4x 18tb sata hdd and a 4tb sata ssd for semi cache so this board should suit these needs.

I'd like something like this but with dual 2.5gbe ports and 2-4 sata connectors for a nas. I've been looking around and the stuff I seen that kind of meet those specs are by companies I've never heard of.

Laptop CPUs are underrated. Those Chinesium Intel laptop chips slapped onto a lga 1151 adapter are pretty sick. 8 cores on Z170? Yes please.

@Level1Techs 12:26 That annoying boiler snake could be avoided if you tilt the radiator block a little more toward the radiator shutoff valve side for the condensate water to return more easily to the pipe and prevent those thermal shock which makes the pipes crunching sound.

been wondering where the boiler snake has been

for future nerding out, I would also love to hear your thoughts on the best JBOD configuration in addition to a best video accelerated configuration. JBOD+low power is a sweet spot I'm still searching for

Informative, and it looks like a decent product. If they add more functionality to their bios I wouldn't mind seeing them do something simular with Strix Halo. 👍👍👍👍

I really want coreboot support. BIOS support and lack of updates have become far too often. I really want good updates when security issues come up.

In Win Chopin would probably work well with this. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be (widely) available nowadays.

FYI bifurcation was added in BIOS 1.05

1. Lack of proper front panel header (no usb-c etc). 2. As far as I am aware, despite having 3 rear panel audio jack connectors, this thing does not support 5.1 audio (one jack is for mike only) - this is at least what manual says. Those 2 things are "deal breaker" for me. Otherwise - this seems like a very good option to save cash and to make the whole process of building a pc easier as you don't have to mount CPU & Cooler yourself. If cash is not your limiting factor and you still want power efficient, but powerful PC - then using Ryzen 9 7900 seems like a better option.

This could be a mini fax server. Put a mainpine modem in it and a windows server license you would be good to go.

Id like to use this for a small ITX 5 liter build. Would be interesting to see overclocking performance with Ryzen Master since that's an HX variant.

For my fellow 🇬🇧 folks minisforum has a flash sale (£30 off) the BD770i till 10am Saturday 20th it's £359 delivered

Most of the ITX Mobo with built-in mobile CPU (Blue / Red Team) has a full size 16x PCIE slot for ext GPU but only 8x slot pins soldered on the mobo. Hence, your ext GPU has lower FPS. Yet, it is still better to connect ext GPU via a laptop M2 Nvme Slot which is 4x only.

I just built a ITX 7800X3D build, this would have been perfect for it. Bravo, Minisforum!

I'd really love to have this same mobo but with something like 7745HX3D and USB-C header. Excellent idea from MinisForum.

I have the same wifi antenna sitting on my desktop now. It came with 2 meter cables. There was so much loss I couldn't connect to the router 15 feet down the hall. Line of sight. Get your soldering iron out and trim the cables. The antennas close together like that makes it directional. The direction is perpendicular to the antennas

This seems to be a REALLY great board for a small homelab server running Proxmox and a few containers. Thinking about using it as a Bitwarden Server, Paperless ngx, my local GitLab Server + Runners and Jellyfin (with the video files stored on a NAS).

Sorry, if it was mentioned and I misheard. Have you measured idle power consumption from the AC line ?

I read this doesn't support Pci-e bifurcation. Is this true? Do you think there will be a bios update to enable it? Looking to run 4+ nvme NAS with a drop in expansion card. Would the AR900i be a better choice for that?

Need more innovation like this! Thank you for finding gems like this!

This is almost exactly what I wanted. A mobile processor in a desktop motherboard. Now, add a bunch of SATA ports, m.2 ports, bifurcation, and.. yeah, we're there. I want a bunch of x1 to x4 m.2 devices for storage - depending on what is cheaper, SATA or m.2, at any given time. Some SATA controllers, what not. Would make a perfect server - for me.

Looks like it would fit in a 2 U chassis for a home lab build. Probably a couple of them.

I wish I knew about this before snagging a used AM4 PC on eBay to be an in-home Steam-game-streaming PC, this would have been PERFECT.

Artic cooling is underestimated, so true been using their stuff for more than 2 decades and some of them are really good, like even outperform noctua sometimes.

Wonder why they didn't go with ECC RAM... Also really wish board designers would pursue DTX more. You could make such a good NAS solution if you moved all of the front-panel I/O above the PCIe slot (or right-angled it if you run out of room) and kitted out all the available edge real-estate with SATA ports. You'd only have to design the board once, effectively, just changing the chipset and socket pinout with each generation.

I keep coming back to this video. Performing better than a 9900K, and it's got E-sports GPU performance out of the box. RandomGaminginHD has a video showing what it looks like in a few titles

looks like a great drop in replacement to the old system i3 i built my dad almost 10 years ago

My 5800X with mITX mobo, NH-C14 and PBO gets 2230/10773 in Geekbench 6. I'm running it @ 130W. So I guess it's quite close, close enough for me. 18% slower single core can take some FPS with it. But for homelab use this will be sick. I also wondering if this mobo would fit in my relatives old MSI SFF prebuilt. Would be a huge upgrade from i5-6400.

I was having issues with WiFi 5GHz on MSI x570 Tomahawk WiFi Max board that has tiny little antennae sticks. I bought those exact looking antenna set from aliexpress for about $10 and attached it to the side of the case magnetically. Solved the WiFi issues.

Been wanting to see their i9-13900HX version (AR900i), this will do for now.

I would like to see how a board like this performs as a network router with a few 10GbE or 25GbE ports doing full routing with a IDS/IPS/Snort set of rules running.

I would get that if it gets released for the 8000 series APUs that will come out next month.

Was looking at this to upgrade an older computer (3rd gen intel CPU), not usually an early adopter of any new tech, so thanks for a look at the MOBO & BIOs, and will wait till it becomes more mature and bugs are flushed out, planned on using the old case & PSU.

I builded a Dan A4-SFX System yesterday with this Baby. 32gigs Corsair Vengeance 5600 (they run at 5200 CL46), 2* MP700 (1Tb & 2Tb) and an Inno3D RTX 4070 ti 3X OC. Runs nice so far but gets [as expected] hot and loud. But awesome performance in this tiny package ❤❤❤ Btw the Board costs 477€ over here in Germany. 🙄

The Ryzen 7 7745HX is just a binned Ryzen 7 7700 being packaged for laptops. And now Minisforum is bringing it back into the desktop form factor but soldered onto a board. What a weird product.

Because it has PCIe 5.0 16x, there should be a card with four PCIe 3.0 16x controllers to connect raid controllers to. Edit: Ouch! No PCIe bifurcation.

Unfortunately I asked to them for the Intel model and it not support resize bar for the pci x16... Have you checked this features on the amd variant you have that is newer than the intel one ?

PCIe 5 x16 + x4 and no USB4 as well as the wattage aren't all that surprising. That CPU is basically an R7-7700(X) - only in a BGA package, not socketed.

I would like a HX90G(or whatever from that series) in motherboard form, it's basically mitx already if you open it up. Would be awesome for computers shoehorned into old consoles and the like.

I hope mobile on desktop really takes off. Modern mobile processors are +8 cores, powerful, and power efficient. I could see it being a solid option for unraid. Convert 1 m.2 to a 10gb adapter, and keep my HBA in the pcie slot.

I think having two Ethernet ports by default would be nice, as then it opens up the possibility of using it as a router/ firewall. Paired with any multi port switch, two Ethernet ports is all a device needs to route the traffic through the switch to many other devices. I think it’s the perfect use case for these miniature devices. Considering that hobbiest computer enthusiasts usually have a full size flagship PC and would really appreciate the miniature size for something like their own router.

I saw that one a few days ago - I just love it!

This but with the 7945HX would be an amazing little coding box

Not sure why this was being compared to the 7800x3d when that CPU alone costs exactly the same as the BD770i. Would've been a bit more fair to pair it up against a 7600X and a $100-150 motherboard because that sits it along side the BD770i in terms of cost. I know that the 7800x3d is the best gaming CPU you can upgrade to, so maybe you could've compared them both to show how much of a performance difference there is between the equivalent priced CPU as well as the best CPU for the platform (so far).

I think the I/O shield is a bit of an oversight on MinisForum behalf. I hope they'll make it integrated in the future.

I would love to see you review the MINISFORUM AR900i as well. I'd really like to know if it would be usable as a small form factor Proxmox host. Thanks for your good work!

Best thing to use this for imo? A compact gaming console-like PC

Love the case and that there are more doing these soc motherboards, but damn it, using a drill to assemble a pc just feels so barbaric to me for some reason lol

I love the Boiler Snake animation!

Testing a few more fan option would be interesting. For slim fans would suggest Silverstone air slimmer 120mm & alphacool sl-15 fans. For larger cases Super Flower megacool 120mm would interesting. Cheers

This would have been much more interesting if this had used a platform appropriate GPU, like a rx6600XT or some such. The whole concept of budget goes right out the window with that GPU

I'm one of the guys who preordered and received the first batch of this, the original thermal paste on it is shit, had to remove it but it worked well until few weeks ago when it stopped working with GPU riser cables, very frustrated with BD770i, not recommending it to anyone until they can fix all these dame issues.

With 2 m.2 sata controllers this is gonna be my new NAS

Hearing how low the power consumption actually is, I am quite astounded that Minisforum did tell me that the BD770i is not considered compatible with a XT-150 / XT-160 Pico-PSU... (Yes, I did ask their support exactly that question, as I happen to have exactly that laying around from an old project.)

I was looking into this for my home server upgrade which I am still running on my old Z77/2600k. It was looking interesting until - No PCIe Bifurcation. I am planning all NVMe SSD server and need that x16 slot in x4x4x4x4 config for it to work with the add-on M.2 card.

Seems like the RAM would really gimp performance. Fastest compatible kit on Newegg was 5200 CL 38? That seems like a major performance compromise.

Yeahh you may get some reflection if on 2.4. Totally a possibility. Would need to measure it with a meter and see.

The build was too low a TDP, that's why you had the boiler snake appear. Get one of the fire breathing setups going and it keeps the boiler snakes away.

@Level1Techs Tiny typo: "congifs" instead of "configs" all over the benchmarks! I thought someone should point it out hehehe 🤣

I would love to build system like this for simple game server use and maybe as small storage space for person data and movies.

Well now there's the BD790i version with the 7945HX so that should be even better.

Bought an Intel NUC 12 Extreme Kit - NUC12DCMi7 new for 599,- (Intel Core i7-12700) Thunderbolt4, 10Gbe networking, 3xNVME, WiFi6e, A Case :P, PCI-E x16 5.0, 650w sfx PSU

Looking at these numbers it would appear for 1440 or 4K gaming this might be a VERY viable option even with a high end GPU

Seasonal migrations of the boiler snakes 🐍

It's pretty umfair to compare the AMD 7745hx CPU to the 7800X3D and say it's slower when the 7745hx specs are pretty much the same as a AMD 7700. The 7800X3D has a 120W TDP and 104MB total cache while the 7745hx has a 55W TDP and 40MB cache which is very close to the 7700.

Motherboards like these feel like they were common so long ago. I always liked the Celeron and Pentium ones, but they were never updated with a new processor. TBH, when Intel Atom disappeared, Celeron and Pentium options became less compelling as well.

these types of boards would be so much better if they either shipped with proper cooling system or allowed use of regular aftermarket sets

Erying just came out with 13900H . I'm waiting on 13900HK but they only managed to utilise only 8X pie labels fir the GPU .. Minisforums also has AR900I with 13000HK

Dual lan and 2 more sodimm slots and this would make the perfect low power server

Got 2x P12 slim as intake in the bottom of my SFF build and when they go over 70% RPM, it sounds as the blades are hitting the fan frame and it gets super loud, I would recommend Silverstone Air Slimmer 120 or FN124 or something from Noctua over the P12 slim tbh.

I had an annoying "boiler snake" that kept waking me up in the middle of the night. What I did was unscrew the air valve on the radiator, air it out completely, and use a syringe to inject 12 egg yolks. After that it's been cmpletely quiet.

I love mine! Slapped a noctua fan on it with a 3060. Only thing I didn't like was the fan mounting hardware. Felt really flimsy.

I think I'm in love... but I need that X3D cache. it doubled my fps (I know, very edge case...)

It annoys me they don't publish (online) what the cooler mounting form factor is. Is it AM4/5 mounting holes + height? Would be great if the existing heatsink could be swapped for a Noctua downdraft cooler.

Want to see more of this/these setups.

I am missing a set of sata headers, could be a great home server.

Miniforums has a intel 13900h version of this but it only supports up to PCIe 4.0 x8 speed. Would be nice to see a 13980hx version of this with a 4.0 x16 or a 5.0 x8 or x16 slot.

It should perform very similarly to an R7 7700X since it's basically the same chip. The big performance difference might be due to the slow JDEC SODIMM memory. Does the minisforum support memory overclocking or XMP/EXPO?

my zen 2 gets the same cpu z bench score, like you said the platform wount last long. sad that you didnt bench the intel version

I don't blame minisforum for the lacking BIOS for zen4, even the framework implementation for the 7640/7840 is severely lacking in terms of features. Now, using a tool called UMAF-smokeless i was able to "unhide" all the standard features however they're hidden at the moment due to instability with some settings although getting a 7640U to run at 45w or even 54w tdp was easy. I have a ryzen 7 4800h based minisforum box and it's rock solid with a feature full BIOS as its a much more mature platform.

Honestly I think this is cool, I've always done my own pc's, but I only upgrade every 3-4 year, by then mb socket is always updated anyways, so a new gen cpu doesn't fit and I have to change both mb and cpu. I remember for example going 6700 to 8700k, well z170 chipset on 1151 socket did not support 8700k so I needed a new mb with z370 chipset. and that's how it always is, so I might as well just buy the whole package now, which we kinda already do with GPUs.

Kind of hard to beleef that this system is only getting 1836/9691 in Geekbench 6... My 7840HS does 2608 / 12518 (ST/MT)... Checking Geekbench, you find plenty of "7745HX Micro Computer (HK) Tech Limited" hitting 2745 / 13346... Aka, this review unit has issues. Heat?