Man i am so excited for the Radeon VII video, saw the footage in the last videos and it made me happy to see that you pursued my idea. Congrats on the review sample btw!
These things are starting to get more tempting man. I'd grab one and put ChimeraOS on it for the living room. I'm holding out to see if they make another Steam machine later this year that'll be cheaper and/or faster.
It tempts me until I see the price. I just laugh a little bit and forget about it. at least until another youtuber reviews a very similar one and the process repeats.
To be honest, these mini pcs are quite a nice package. The main tradeoff they offer space vs raw performance, but if you don't need/want a monster tower of a pc or go to the chores for a Small form factor case due to the nightmare of compatibility, this is pretty good. For business or even schools this is a nice option. You can do any documentation and office kind of work with maybe some light to medium task of render/simulation software without much of a compromise and some gaming too. I really liked the review, specially the addition of the benchmarking software and the video editing. For this I would have also liked to see some emulation like in some of your previous videos, since the size makes it a nice emulation box/entertainment box for the living room. Great job as always, cheers mate!
These mini-pc’s are getting some impressive specs. Great video on the review! On the pc, l’m curious to see if driver improvements can help the apu out more in the future.
One thing I like about this channel is its focus on budget builds while also maintaining a level of 'skin in the game' about it, since you've mentioned often borrowing or purchasing used components (which are then quickly resold). This, I believe, makes for a better watch than watching big channels talk about low price options and buying used, but who run top-of-the-line components in their personal rigs (which they often get for free). I don't mind this kind of sponsored content - it rewards you for achieving some level of relevance, after all. However, by 16:40 you've mentioned "building one hell of a PC for that price". In keeping with the spirit of the channel (budget/used components), it'd be nice to see a performance comparison between that build and this tiny PC in the future. On a side note: AliExpress has some budget Frankenstein-esque stuff, like motherboards with soldered laptop CPUs (mostly Intel, IIRC), or desktop video cards made with laptop GPUs (I think 2060M and 6600M are the most prevalent). Would you consider doing videos with that kind of hardware (and comparing its performance to more 'normal' components)?
I've seen a lot of laptop CPUs solder on the circuit board for usage in desktop sockets, usually it's Broadwell. There's (was?) also a huge chunk of engineering samples of Intel CPUs, Chinese 1356/1366/2011 boards, and other kinds of fun stuff. But gotta give respect to the channel, since he's the only English-speaking youtuber who does Aliexpress Xeon testing. These CPUs are overlooked in the English segment of youtube, and with cheap Chinese board, cheap ECC memory they're the best thing on a budget.
Aliexpress also has the 7840hs chip in laptops with no dgpus. That to me should be cause for celebration. The APU is capable enough to be used on its own for productivity work and light gaming.. We could have some really great and affordable machines like that but over here in the states no one is going that route. Is such a shame too the potential is so there
Since it's shared memory between system & vram, setting vram limits doesn't do a lot. If you set the vram limit for example to 2gb and the game needs 8gb and the pc os has it to spare then the game will use 8gb.
I recently got a very similar unit from GMKtec, except this one has an r9 7940HS. Having bought if for work I had no idea it’s that good in gaming. And gaming while pretending to work is always great. Thanks, Iceberg.
Pretty insane for a mini PC. My PBO'd 5700X with a 117W PPT is 700 points down in Cinebench R23 and my heavily-tweaked, fan/BIOS-modded RX 570 8GB is only 1.7x faster in Fire Strike. Tho of course, I bet this mini PC is ridiculously expensive, as they tend to be like that in my country.
APU is probably the thing that kept AMD alive and have a fighting chance against Intel and Nvidia. I really hope AMD make a new desktop APU with RDNA 2/3 graphics though since it might be one of the best low end gaming processor.
Great selection of games mate. Those stutters you mentioned are present on mine i9-11900k and rtx 3080ti xc3. So it's poor engine primizarion, not lack of pc power I'd say. What do you think? RE4 stutters at sections and same Ratchet and Clank in those transitions.
Still a good product months later after its release. Good port selection (2 Type C 4 ports and 1 HDMI 2.1), excellent CPU, and best iGPU currently available (early 2024). Only issues are the proprietary charging port, not good for AAA games, and power draw is kind of high for a mini-PC.
thanks for the review, thinking of getting one of this powerful mini pcs, did you have any problems with system stability like reboots? beelink gtr7 and minisforum um 790 pro having problems with that.
Worth noting that ram and cpu on Mac os go a lot farther than on windows. The real downsides to picking a Mac mini over a mini PC is the lack of upgradability & repairability
9:18 with my 6800H/7735H Davinci resolve struggled with 4K60 4:2:2 S-LOG and a slight color grade, i ended up needing to get 64GB of RAM, and it used darn near 48GB, the problem i have is that at 64GB it has to slow down the FCLK/MCLK so instead of a nice fast 5600, it drops down to 4800, and in actual practice it runs slower than when i turn the original RAM down to 3600
Hi ! That was a Gr8 Review....🎯 So, I have just purchased the Beelink SER7 and am getting no headphones audio from either of the two 3.5mm headset ports.....and was hoping to get some advice from you on this... :)
Beelink also reached out to me and have sent me a couple of review units for free - SER5 MAX and SER7. To be fair, they just asked for a reddit article. They don't set review parameters or ask to proofread before publishing. I also don't have affiliate links haha.
7:57 was the RAM running in 2:1? The reason i ask is because my 6800H(Zen3+) is faster than my 4700G and about on par with my 5700G when it comes to CPU, GPU is impressively faster for a single generation, until you remember the Vega2.5 cores in the 5700G originate from ~2016
How was the Bluetooth experience if any? Have you tried passing music and check for any interrupts according to the distance of the source? Also what about wifi range and bandwidth? (after all the unit's case is still aluminium like the um790 / pro which has terrible interferences) Does analogue audio creates to the speakers any electical noise due to the fact that all the parts in this motherboard are so close together without any isolation materials?
Hey, just received my SER7. Want to run two screens, one with HDMI and one with USB-C. HDMI works when testing both monitors, but not USB-C. Have tried both USB-C ports in the back, with two different USB-C cables (new). Do you guys know how to fix this? Only seems to be a problem with Windows 11, not on my mac.
12:16 Of note the GPU can use all of the system RAM, this feature is there as many games will try to use no more than the shown VRAM and wont even launch if they dont detect enough. The reason you want to set this as high as possible is that, even if the game launches most games have something callled hardware optimisation, and graceful failure thought dynamic level of detail(different games call this by different names). If the game detects that you say, marked 2GB of RAM as VRAM, it has no way of knowing that the system RAM is also VRAM, this means the game will try to keep the assets/shaders/frame buffer from using more than 2GB, it does this by reducing the overall LOD, and being more aggressive with LOD fade. yes most games will allow VRAM to splill over into system RAM this does not affect performance on an APU, but is pretty bad on a CPU+GPU system. The problem for APUs is that it only allows this spill-over after dynamically reducing quality settings, this dynamic quality is good to keep a CPU+GPU system running smoothly, because system RAM is often a small fraction the speed of VRAM, say 100GB/s vs 1000GB/s I have only come across a few indi-games that have an 'APU mode' that ignores the stated VRAM and uses system RAM in the same way as VRAM. I just wish this was brought to more games, as many of these APUs, especially from companies like Dell/Lenovo/HP dont allow you to set more than 1-2GB even if you have 128GB installed, a few dont even let you set anything and you're stuck at 512MB
Hello! Is it possible you can make the MSI Afterburner/Rivia Tuner overlay a tad bit bigger? I ask as, my internet is not fast, 0.5 Mbps download and upload. So I am watching at 360P, and it is very hard to read the overlay. If not, it's okay. I am sure not many people are in my situation. But that is just something you might want to try.
I have been looking at these mini computers for a while because I wanted to see if you could turn one into a streaming PC. I'm in the works of, hopefully, getting a secondary PC made from a friend but before then I tried looking up how these stand as a streaming pc with a 3D model since I use a VTuber model while streaming, problem is there's not really anyone out there showing it off. There are a few places that talk about using them but never to the extent that I would like to see since I have no clue if streaming and pushing a 3d model in the background would be to much for this sort of mini PC.
If you wanna be jank you could try using a m.2 -> pcie adapter in the second m.2 slot to put a gpu in it to compare how fast the iGPU is compared to a low end graphics card like a rx 6500 or similar.
Also, this mini PC is getting quite close in performance to an old flagship, like my GTX 980 Ti. That GPU gets 64 FPS on average, with a 1% low of 52 FPS, at 1080P, medium settings, with FSR 2.1 set to Quality. And that is on the same area you where in, the "downtown" city area, where that road in the shape of a D is. I do need to note, that was in full screen mode. In borderless windows mode it gets 50 FPS, with a 1% low of 14 FPS.. It's nearly unplayable with the constant stutters.. I am not sure what is causing that, I reinstalled the drivers and everything.
I was looking at this, opted to go with the GMKtec with an older 6800m and 680m graphics. Still working on my review, but I only paid 380 and it's a hell of a price for the performance. Also I tried 5600mhz ram, unfortunatly my model wouldn't go any higher than 4800. I also did the boost from 35 to 45 watts, and choose to go 32gb in mine so I can bump up the vram to 8gb. Also you forgot to mention that this cpu/apu supports ray tracing. I also did a review on beeslink older model with a 5800h and vega8, though the graphics chip just wasn't usable for any modern games.
you reckon i could carry an external power supply and have it running that way? i would love to replace my shitty school hp laptop for something like this
While those things have quite some power i think the balance is so far off as it gets. Like why the hell do you need one of the best cpu´s one can buy when the gpu is not even remotely on par. 780m isn´t bad but... coupled with a 7840hs? Heck a ryzen 3 would suffice with this. For me those mini pc´s are like when they sold those "amazing" deal pcs with the top of the line processor then coupled with a gt 710. The cpu is to powerful for office work alone, but the gpu is to slow for any serious 3d stuff like games. So you are stuck in an in between limbo. So you are better of building your own small form factor pc with a ryzen 3 or ryzen 5 (or intel equivalent) and then add a discrete gpu.
AMD took a bajillion years to catch up to our mITX intel builds, meanwhile our mITX intel builds are still smaller and more powerful. Im not impressed by this.
I hope my jaw isn't the only one on the floor right now. This is integrated graphics running today's games at 30fps. That is absolutely insane to me starting from a 8800GSO many moons ago
Me too, especially with TLOU, I ran it with a Ryzen 7 3700x and a 5700xt @1080p medium settings, I was getting 80-90 fps but with terrible 1% lows, so I locked it to 40fps cause that was the lowest the 1% lows dropped to, so seeing an igpu getting an average of 30fps @high settings is crazy. I did try fsr and it didn't help with the drops so I left it off.
it can actually run Starfield! But you'll need to install at least driver AMD 23.9.1 as that contains a hotfix for Starfield crashing on RDNA3. Runs at 900p internal res Medium preset and 30fps on my 7840HS/780M.
04:53 I have an entire folder full of low-poly cyberpunk NPCs that I've captured. I sometimes run the game off an external HDD and those loading times can lead to some seriously funny PS1 graphic moments!
Congrats on the review sample! Honestly I really like your unique benchmarks and your commentary, so even if I've seen the PC elsewhere (I haven't in this case) your videos are something I always look forward to.
2:43 There's much more to Bluetooth 5.2 then what was mentioned here. Bluetooth 5.2 introduces Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) to audio, which optimizes it's instructions to bring lower latency, higher bitrate, higher efficiency audio if both the device and the BT headset has Bluetooth 5.2. I personally have a headset with BT 5.2 which are the Sony WH-1000XM5 (Don't reccomend, great audio and microphone, but doesn't have a headset jack but only a 2 ring headphone jack so it cant transmit the microphone. Sony support called the microphone usage with bluetooth only a "bonus" despite the thing literally having 8 frickin microphones.) I tried this when windows 11 got updated to support Bluetooth 5.2 (Motherboard supported it, but Windoes didn't at the time). Tested before and after. Latency was still bad but it went from 180ms to 120ms, was a noticeable jump.
Appreciate the transparency regarding what the sponsor does/doesn't tell you to say, quite a change of pace from other content which usually skirts around the topic entirely
@@jeevejavari8461But why not a laptop ? I am actually one of those people who live in a place with shoddy electric, my place doesn't blackout much but it constantly drop electric power that is just enough to freeze my pc or shut down entirely. A mini PC might able to survive those electric power drops but you know what will survive even more ? A battery powered PC. Better to just get a laptop or a UPS for your existing PC. I see mini PC as alternative for a second computer to place where a full tower desktop look ugly to your mom/wife like a living room. Or 24 hours powered mini server for a NAS or something else where electric savings do matter.
@@TechDweeb Lol...me too! I just paid $579 during Prime Days (Oct 10-11) which seemed reasonable given faster VRAM speed (5600) and RDNA3, relative to the SER6 Max 7735HS with slower RAM/VRAM and RDNA2 at $479. The extra $100 finally achieves 30fps in modern AAA games at 1080p (with appropriate settings). Not to mention 60fps in PS3 retro emulation for us dweebs! I know it's cheaper to build a gaming PC with past-gen GPU but I'll be running this all day for work as well, so the cost of ownership would likely converge based on the power-draw differences.
i'm considering to buy one, but not only for high end gaming. I just want an improvement on games like minecraft, valorant, league , and mainly video editing. How good is the wireless wifi? I cant connect ethernet cables because my room + wifi route are in separate rooms.
It's been a bit more than a year now I've been watching your content, the first video I watched of yours was 32 vs 16 GB ram one. The budget killers, reviving old gpus, 2nd hand ones , love these contents man 👌 Also you have a good selection of music , I even asked the music name a few videos back 😂
Hardware Lab just recreated my voice in AI, if you wanted to compare: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-b4p7tgNG9mA.htmlsi=euPXi9JlGqkWBvRe (the audio clip is at 1:24 if you're interested)
Makes you wonder what sort of computers we could've had if we got like a Ryzen 3 or lower-end Ryzen 5 desktop CPU paired with a higher-end notebook GPU. Kinda wish console-sized PCs would make a comeback tbh.
Very curious to see what the Legion Go will do. It comes with 7500MHz LPDDR5 ram. That is about 40% increase in memory speed compared to these mini PCs.
Why do people try to use these APUs beyond 720p? I just don't understand it. They aren't built for it and it makes zero sense to do. 1280x720 / 1280x800 and use a 13.3"-15.6" laptop screen and you will be golden.
Bought a Asus Mini PC for $130 that needed Ram and a SSD, I had all that, Has an AMD R5 4500u I had 32GB of sodimm for it and a 500GB gen 3 m.2, I was impressed by it, gave it to my grandmother to get her off her old Q6600 system, plays her facebook games and RU-vid perfectly lol.
I got mine ordered. Probably just gonna keep mine set at balanced mode rather than performance mode though since there isn't a consistent gain in gaming, and the power supply is only good for 100W. I'd rather not risk burning out my power supply.
Btw, the vram allocation is dynamic. It means the system will reserve a minimum of X GB of Ram as VRAM. If it needs 8 it will get 8. Increasing this limit really just makes CPU bittleneck situations worse as it decreases available RAM.
If I want a Windows OS on which to run non stop a small app and during day maybe a browser? Or should I opt for a laptop, or try finding something from AWS?
well they're interchangeable. it's not exactly correct to say thunderbolt over usb-c but it's correct to say you can use a usb-c device over thunderbolt.
Yup: "Thunderbolt 4 uses the oval-shaped USB-C connector type, features a lightning symbol, and is compatible with USB4." Thunderbolt 3 also uses USB-C.
