Starts from €569 (Barebones) s.minisforum.com/TechTablets_UM780XTX Minisforum RGB keyboard: s.minisforum.com/TechTablets_MKBi83 00:00 - Intro 01:20 - Unboxing 03:09 - Design and features 04:51 - How to open it and install the Oculink M.2 adapter 06:39 - The bios, TDP plus allocating more RAM to the Radeon 780M 07:59 - Windows, benchmarks, devices and performance 09:55 - Thermals and fan noise sample 10:31 - 4k video editing plus 780M Vs RTX 4090 11:44 - My Oculink eGPU setup with RTX 4090 12:58 - 3Dmark Timespy Oculink score 13:29 - iGPU Vs Oculink eGPU gaming tests 17:16 - UM780XTX Linux support 17:35 - Final words with Pros and Cons
Hello please I don't understand why you only have 60-70 fps on the game The Witcher 3 in 4k Ultra with the 4090 on this mini pc with oculink while when I watch video tests of the game with a pc equipped with a 4090 the game gets 160fps? Can you clarify for me I need to understand before investing
No one had heard of this unit yet when you first uploaded it. But the word is out now and it's officially gone on sale at their web shop, so the video should do a lot better. Excellent review as always. I just trust reviews more when you do them, I know we're getting your honest opinion no matter what.
Yes part of the reason I pulled the first video, nobody knew about it. Hope it does better, RU-vid loves killing videos lol. Thanks for the support, this is the Mini PC i've been waiting for, the best yet but the eGPU support makes it nice and tidy having the plug on the rear instead of my cutting a gap for the cable like before.
Well in terms of nobody knowing about it in the Mainstream I can agree but I have been waiting for this for most of the year and I am glad that it finally made its release and that it actually performs the way they said it would good video for sure thanks
I think this really is the best Mini PC yet, really no cons I cannot fault it and the performance for such a tiny unit is amazing. Running 70W performance mode it's even better and if I dedicate 8GB to the 780M games have slightly better average FPS. Playing some AAA titles with playable FPS on an iGPU is amazing. I can't wait to see the next Gen Intel iGPU in action.
@Techtablets Please, I'd like to know, how important is it that minisforum provide BIOS updates? I've read that that is an issue for some people, but I don't even fully understand whether that's an important factor in whether I purchase this or not. Please, answer if you have any insight on this matter, you seem to know alot about the topic. Thanks.
To be fair, minisforum said from the beginning that the release date was set to the end of October, though it never happend. I am glad Chris got it fast, so he could review it for us.
It's perfect then with the Oculink port on the back it makes it a lot cleaner before I had the cable sticking out of a mini pc with a hole cut fir the cable this is of course much better now. Easier to plug in and out.
That is a great mini computer, and I have one. I bought it last week from Amazon and also had a coupon for 180 dollars off, and I paid 719. I only bought the computer to play games, like doom eternal, halo, fear and half life. I did do research and comparing to other mini computers and this is one of the best
I had the opportunity to try out the new Steam Link app that just launched on the Meta store last night - Half Life: Alyx is now playable at what I consider an acceptable/playable framerate using the UM780 XTX, WITHOUT an external GPU! I haven't checked exact frame rates yet, but here is the test setup I used (note that I haven't had much time to do additional testing yet): UM780 XTX 64GB RAM BIOS Performance Mode (70 Watts) BIOS UMA Frame Buffer Size 16GB Wired USB-C connection Win11 Pro Meta Quest 3 72Hz Refresh Rate Low Graphics settings
Good review, but I would rather see more game benchmarks with the eGPU rather than seeing any at all with an external GPU. Is the Oculink something that is new and that is why it is also being tested?
Thanks for the review. It looks like you might be able to replace the Thunderbolt board in that eGPU enclosure with the OCULink one if the screw holes line up.
I really appreciated your video and it helped me purchase this little guy. It's amazing and everything I was hoping for. Thank you. Out of curiosity, did you get the Nvidia error 43 issue when you hooked up your GPU? Or is that something that doesn't happen to newer gen gpus?
"I got really excited about the Oculink support until I saw that you have to sacrifice one M.2 slot for it. Almost a viable upgrade from the Elitemini B550, where I assumed it only sacrifices the 2.5" SSD."
Get a 4TB SSD, clone the 1TB SSD over to it using the secondary m.2 slot, switch the SSDs around afterward to use the 4TB as primary, then the secondary m.2 slot can be used for OcuLink with plenty of storage space available. Afterward use the original 1TB SSD for storage expansion on a PS5 or other computer, or extra storage for the UM780 XTX using one of the external USB-C ports it has attached to a dock/adapter that has an m.2 slot.
Thanks for your review. The only thing I was missing is a WiFi and bluetooth test since the UM790 Pro had some serious issues with this. In your disassembly you can see the new orientation of the antennas, but how is the performance? Did it fix the issues?
So far it seems fine for me but my router is very powerful and not far from my studio and filming location. What I am having issues is Wifi 6E is not showing but I didn't mention this as I not sure if it's my router which is funny with some Wifi 6E cards.
I have this mini PC for over a week now and despite it is a great mini PC I ended up return it because poor and unreliable wifi. Basically it has the same problems like um790pro, the wifi car is good intel ax210 but problem is with the antennas and metal housing. The whole unit makes efect like faraday cage so signal is just poor and unreliable thus not being able to pick wifi 6E network. Other than that is a great mini PC
Hi, is this much better compared to 790 pro? Anybody able to help on this? I placed order for 790 pro, but it's out of stock and they're offering me 780xtx in exchange. Either i accept the offer or request for a refund. Need help from any expert please, thank you.
Slightly different layout of the ports the 790 Pro has both USB 4.0 at the front and only 1 2.5G LAN port this has two. This mode has Oculink adapter included for eGPU's if you're into that. Thermals I found this unit to be better and the power limit is higher. Overall this having tested both I think is the better of the two despite on paper the 7940HS being slightly faster VS 7840HS.
I'm a bit conflicted. The Minisforum UM790 was fine for non-AAA games. Adding an OcuLink just makes it an incomplete and sloppy gaming desktop. It doesn't lower the cost of Nvidia RTX 4090 (Currently $2,000+ USD) either. At the same time, it is a nice to have in case you want to game/video edit/ML if your interest changes. A person can change without paying for an entire new desktop, especially for the lower costing Nvidia external GPUs. Lower costing Nvidia RTX external GPUs: 3070, 3080, 3090, 4060, or 4070.
I have seen many minus forum reviews lately so I went to Amazon to check out reviews. Lots of complaints about there minis and especially their support. Yet, all these reviews on RU-vid who claim no bias never bring that up.
I have brought that up in previous reviews the random reboots and powering off. Plus support being poor. This has had no issues for me yet and I can't speak of support as I have not used it getting a review unit directly from them. But valid point about the customer reviews!
I wish you could have spend more time describing your egpu dock with spec, was it a PCIE 4.0 X4 or PCIE 3.0, How much performance is lost compare to a desktop Test? All these questions are left with no answers and it s a shame. What are the best egpu options to get the most out of high ends GPU?
With TB3 which I don't use now I got 27k in Timespy and this close to 36k my best run. Shadow of the Tomb raider 4k highest setting with 189fps average TB3 101 FPS so a huge difference a good 80 fps+ average with Oculink Vs TB3 in Tomb Raider.
Dunno, maybe for a laptop, oculink makes sense, but for mini PC it is better to have everything in one case with minitx motherboard, one power supply...
I'm debating getting this but I'm curious if the RAM will be Crucial like yours is or they cheap out with some unknown brand, I might be better getting it barebones.
Hello sir, I have bought this UM780XTX and also have a 4070 graphics card, but I don’t know how to choose the Oculink dock. I wonder if there are compatibility issues such as interfaces. Can you recommend one to me?
i am poor and can not afford the pc entirely so i would be more then grateful just for bare bone version and would work very hard to try and purchase separate components . thank you even if not consider i still love your channel and the the content you always put out .
Hello, I ordered a 0:02 barebone UM780 XTX. I plan buying this RAM: Kingston Fury Impact PnP 32GB (2x16GB) 5600MT/S DDR5 CL40 SODIMM. Do you think it is a good option in regards to thermals for this Minipc? For storage I plan buying a 2 Teras single SSD unit. Still have not decided the model. Specs of the UM780 XTX indicate: SSD M.2 2280 PCIe4.0 Would a two-sided SSD unit fit in this Minipc model? Any recommendation about SSD considering the thermal constrinctions of a Minipc? Better one-side or two-sided (if the latter would fit)? Should not get a top-speed SSD to avoid overheating? I want 2 Teras in a single SSD unit because plan using the ocu-link port... Thank you!
40gbps is a bit of a misnomer that everyone repeats, thunderbolt3/4/usb4 is only capable of 32gbps theoretical when pcie tunneling x4 pci3.0 unless using a specific usb4 board that can do pcie 4.0 thats documented on the egpu io forum, and even above that most of the time docks reserve 10gbps for their io and if sending display data back this gets even worse, but the big killer here is you have multiple controllers with latency causing dropouts on even the best setups
it will still be better than tb5 because of latency of the controllers and way more reliable, hyped for the oculink x8 someone is devving for the framework 16 expansion bay @@Techtablets
The performance is fine when combining with the 4090 but the PCIE 4x4 or the APU is definitely bottlenecking the 4090, not even surpass 70% gpu usage in Witcher 3, and 0% GPU bottlenecking in SoTR.
The thing is that TB5 will probably show up relatively quickly on high-end Intel-based machines but it may take several more years before it arrives on AMD machines.
Why does no manfufacturer give mini boxes some kind of raw x16 connector? $600 is too cheap for having an x16? The x4 M.2 leaves too much power wasted. It seems too stupid even with 4060. The oculink should be used in high latency tolerant tasks like NAS or Proxmox, not AAA gaming.
Well it's so if people wanted to add a second SSD which I think more people would be doing Vs using Oculink? And s I show you it's lift the lid off, 4 screws and one to screw it into place not hard and about 5 minutes work.
@@Techtablets But you inserted it in DC 19V jack? Can I use USB-C port for powering this mini PC? And which one of two USB-C ports should I use or they both support power delivery in?
No I removed the DC jack when testing it and just my Type-C to 120W Ugreen Power supply into the rear USB 4.0 port. Both of the USB 4.0 ports support power delivery.
@@Techtablets- are you sure? That looked a lot like a 16x to 4x adapter. The male/female port for 8x is way wider. It’s as wide as two 4x ports - which is much wider than an HDMI/display port.
So basically all laptops made by Apple, Microsoft, Lenovo, Razer, MSI, are budget low end trash if they don't include this port. Why aren't we seeing this in gaming laptops? Ridiculous. Hopefully the Framework 16 can get an adaptor to do this... Tired of everything being low end these days.
Well it's because Thunderbolt 5 is coming which will have 120gbps and render this obsolete. It should be out next year, I can't wait to get a TB 5 laptop or mini pc and enclosure for my 4090.
@@Techtablets Thanks for the info. Hope it works well, I remember TB3 being used for external GPUs and then Thunderbolt 4 allegedly being great for it but it never worked well. Time for a motherboard upgrade on day one for the Framework 16 :(. Hopefully we get a ThinkPad next year with TB5 and they bring back the ethernet port. At the moment I'm convinced there are no great cutting edge laptops with a good reliability record and build quality.
You don't buy a mini pc to add egpu mehh but buying to be small to accommodate on your desk and for your needs. Buy mini PC with 6600m for little more demanding games and any good Mini pc with 780M for less demanding games. Minis forum make small PC ( not mini) with 8 core Intel/AMD but need to but AMD 7600M GPU 8GB and min 32GB RAM you can do it minisforum.
I understand what you are saying and the reason I want this is because I am a truck driver and I want to have a pc gaming experience with a small footprint whether it be the power draw and space management and being able to use an egpu like the GPD G1 will definitely keep it small and I will have enough to be able to game like I do at home with a Full setup.
Got it, that GPD G1 looks good and nice little package. My set up with the mini PC is desktop big RTX 4090 for 4k gaming and video editing and when I go home to New Zealand for a month set it up as a desktop. I know laptop is the normal, but I had how make noise they make and I already have a keyboard and screen there to use so it's carry and plug in. PD type-c supply also works fine.
honestly ITS THE BIG ISSUE PROFET IN FACT RDNA 4 AND 5 IS HERE ISSUES SOLVED THE IMMEATE CONCERN FOR THEM IS COMPLETE THEY MUST AS FOR THEM IT IS THEY FOUND ITS A COMPLETELY REVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT NEW TOOLING LINES ITS TOTALLY NEW AND WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THE 8000S THAT ARE COMING OUT ALL THE SEEMINGLY OLD TIME CONCEPTS OUT THERE THAT RNDA 4 CANNOT BE REALIZED WITHOUT JOINING IT TO RNDA 5 YES RNDA 5 IS READY N O W A PLAN DELAYING ALL THIS MAY COST MILLIONS YES HARD TO FOLLOW RNDA 5
Why should s/one choose 780xtx instead of HX80g for gaming (without adding Oculink) ? (other than the size). Prices in amazon Germany are almost identical.
Really like the fact that you tested this with Premiere Pro 2024 for us non-gamers that need GPU power for Video Editing and CAD. We seem to be the forgotten GPU users! Excellent review, I have one on order for Christmas!
I've been using this as my desktop PC, just the 780M can handle my own video editing just fine. Quite a surprise and only add some 8k footage has caused it to lag.
@@Techtablets That's great to hear! I'm replacing a 4 year old Lenovo Laptop with this as my desktop. Premiere Pro said my UHD 620 graphics were not compatible with PP 2024 and Lenovo doesn't have any driver updates. I also use Solidworks and Fusion 360 so having the ability to add a GPU with Oculink is great. In fact, I bought my son a new GPU card for his gaming PC for Christmas so I can use his current AMD GPU Card as an eGPU for my new MinisForum 780!
Great review...would be interesting to see how it handles a Plex hardware transcode with and without the eGPU. Also, how does this compare to the UM790 Pro? Deciding between the 2 at the moment and only as a Plex server
If you're only after a Plex box this is WAY overkill. You can get something for a quarter of the price to do that job, plus last I looked an Intel chip is better for the built-in HW transcoding.
@@hokayson6518very true but it will also be use as my work PC - I ended up getting the NUC 13 Pro i7 - very happy with its performance both for Plex and the other stuff I use it for
Given that one of the m.2 drives is reserved for the oculink i would have hoped they would at least add a 3rd m.2 slot or provide a sata slot for 2.5inch sata ssds.
NIce video. ONly trouble : it looks like a geek's configuration with all those cables and electric power.. I must an old schmuck : I like clean PC. But it's really impressive. One day, one day.. Mini PCs will rule the world !!
I can place the PSU in a rack under my desk now which hides it completely so it's just the tiny PC, huge RTX 4090 on my desk but looks a lot cleaner. It was messy for this video to show it all and what is required. But yes Mini PC's will rule soon enough I've always thought they would get there they have. I'm just waiting for a 13980HX Mini PC with Oculink whic hI'm sure is coming next year. Then and I'm ditching my watercooled tower PC, or jsut run with this UM780 XTX I'm so impressive with it. I love I can unplug the GPU and move this PC about or travel with it with ease.
Seems like a strange choice to not put in the 7940HS that's in their other high end one. Although I'd rather have the glowing Eye of the Tiger logo. I mean, errr... the Oculink connection. Yes, that. But seriously, it's promising that they're doing it for the future, and I hope some future variant of Oculink is faster and/or Asus make their XG Mobile a standard available for others (which I *think* is really just Oculink with a USB connection on top). Regardless, a future where I could realistically get a desktop graphics card, in it's own case, with little or no performance hit and whatever cooling solution I wanted, and the ability to plug it in to different devices as per my requirements.... would be amazing. I'm really hoping to get a Flow Z13 at some point to give me a work PC, tablet, and the option to have the eGPU should I need it. But err... if wishes were horses and their products are limited to mobile chips atm which is great for portability, massive downside for performance.
I think they they went with the 7840HS is two reasons, mostly because of supply issues with AMD and two so they can later release a slightly more expensive UM790 XTX model :) Not too much of a fan of the Tiger logo I unplugged the LED cable. Yes same as myself I really like the idea of a smaller lower powered PC and when needed I plug in my RTX 4090 if I need the GPU power. I Love how quite this little unit is under normal loads.
@@Techtablets Right, yes, that makes a lot of sense. If they can easily get the lower end chip, I suppose the most important bit for gamers is really that they can add a graphics card. The specific chip is probably not the bigger problem for them. I said elsewhere I'd feel forced to change the Windows startup sound to the opening bars of Eye of the Tiger. I think it'd get old quickly but is presumably designed to appear to kids. :D Clever that they can do it and you can potentially swap out your own design though. The future is bright :)
another reason could be that it's power/efience is better for 7840 that it would be for 7940. And for gamers 7840 would be enough xD. But yeah it won't be strange to see 7940 xtx version
Very interesting thank you . A few things: - I'm using a 3-monitor setup, gaming on the main one and playing a video on #2 and browsing on #3. The outputs are there, with integrated graphics can I assume there won't be any catastrophic performance degradation w/ that setup ? I'm only gaming on #1, at 1080p. - it would have been nice to have a comparision w/ TB4 or USB, to ascertain Oculink does make a difference ? Especially with a more realistic vidcard, nobody is using a 4090 that way, more plausibly a 4060 ? - Would an HX CPU be much better, or is HS 90% of the way there anyway ? - is there an easy way to undervolt + downclock when I'm not gaming ? I was hoping for a "quiet" setting besides "Balanced" and "Performance".
Hi, so a 3 monitor set up will be fine, but the Ouclink port is so close to the HDMI port I had to slice a bit off my HMDI cable to make both fit at once. As for TB3/4 eGPU its not so noticeable at 4k but more at lower res the difference. The video was getting a bit long so TB3 eGPU Vs Oculink might have to come in anotehr video but I want to see how this video does. Right now RU-vid is killing my Mini PCs really bad since I cover a lot of other topics. As for undervolting and downclock well maybe with Universal X86 Tuning Utility? AMD I've never been able to undervolt these APUs another reason I like Intel is undervolt and RAM tweaks work wonders. Also never been able to tweak the RAM with the AMD APUs. I'm seriously concidering giving up my loud dust magnet water cooled 13900K tower PC for one of these Mini PCs and eGPU. So I Might tweak this more. Also waiting on a 13900H Mini PC with DDR5 support and PCIe 4.0 x 2, this I belive will be the best eGPU Oculink set up for performance.
RU-vid killed off the last video. It got 2k views in 12 hours, no interest really and then only 60 views an hour it was dead completely so I pulled it. It's now reworked, exported in 60fps the screen captures plus a little added some stuff and a new thumb. Hopefully, it will do better now.
Geekbench 6 values of single core is very bad, compared to Apple M3 or M4. Very disappointing. I really like, that all ports are correctly positioned and not upside down! I do hate any fan noise, using silent PCs. Waiting for ANC inside of fan cooled PCs or electronic cooling. Especially Intel‘s NUC girls are having a terrible fan noise… Right now trying to accept the Minisforum Ryzen 9 7940HS (identical to Ryzen 8945HS). What I am always are missing at many PCs: One or two Displayports! HDMI is totally uninteresting for me, as I never will connect my PC to a TVset. DP is much more advanced.
How well does VR work with this rig? Would like to see some benchmarks with a Quest 2 or 3 attached and playing Half Life: Alyx, or even Microsoft Flight Simulator to really push the boundaries of what's possible.
Wouldn't RTX 4090 just bottleneck on this kind of system? With PCIe4.0 slot you can't get more than 8GB/s bandwidth anyway, so RTX 4060 seems like a more reasonable fit (which is still an overkill with plenty of idle potential)
Sure but I tested what card I have which is that RTX 4090, I wasn't going to buy a 4060 or 4070 just for a video. Here in this Timespy test www.3dmark.com/3dm/102664055? you can see I got almost 35k GPU score that same RTX 4090 in my 13900K desktop I pulled it from gets 37k, so only 2k off. That's only a aprox 5% loss in performance!
I like some of these small PCs but if the built in graphics aren't good enough to play games without oculink it's not worth it to me. I was thinking about getting the MinisForum HN2673 but I really can't wait for Ryzen to drop their new G series CPUs next year.
Thank you for this review. I’m a big fan from Kenya. I’m in the market for a MiniPC and would love to hear your thoughts on how this compares with Beelink’s GTR 7 PRO or Minisforum’s UM790 PRO. I’m completely conflicted. Would be using this for work, and light gaming. I’m keen on future proofing my tech as well.
