Processor
The Minisforum AI X1 Pro has the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor. This is a 12 core 24 thread CPU which runs at a base frequency of 2.0 GHz and a maximum frequency of 5.1 GHz for the 4 primary processors. The 8 secondary processors have a maximum clock frequency of 3.3 GHz. The processor is built on AMD’s Zen 5 architecture, which delivers excellent performance per watt.
The HX 370 is specifically designed with AI capabilities in mind, featuring a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) that contributes to its impressive 80 TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second) rating, with the NPU alone responsible for 50 TOPS.
At the time of taking the above screenshot, the machine was idle with all cores running at their lowest clock speed of 605 MHz.
Graphics
The machine is capable of driving 4 screens with 4K output (the HDMI and DP can output at 8K). In the image below, I’ve got one monitor attached via HDMI, one via DisplayPort, and the other two are connected to the USB 4 ports with the mini PC powering those displays.
The machine has the Radeon 890M iGPU which uses the DDR5 SODIMM system memory. It has 16 cores and a maximum clock speed of 2.9 GHz. The BIOS lets me allocate up to 48 GB of RAM for the iGPU.
For an iGPU it’s very impressive and able to play modern games with good framerates at 1080p. I’ll be looking at gaming on the machine in detail in later articles in the series.
Disk
The machine came with a Kingston 1TB NVMe installed. That’s an PCIe Gen 4 NVMe with a maximum read speed of 6,100 MB/s and a maximum write speed of 5,300 MB/s. It’s a fast QLC drive from a very reliable brand.
One of the highlights of the Minisforum mini PC is its storage capabilities. It can take 3 internal M.2 2280 NVMes offering a maximum of 12TB storage (3 x 4TB). Two of the three slots operate at PCIe 4.0 x 4, while the third operates at PCIe 4.0 x 1.
The machine also has 2 USB 4 ports (maximum 4,000 MB/s read and write speeds) and 2 USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (maximum 1,000 MB/s read and write speeds). Given the machine also has a SD card slot, this is a mini PC with tons of expansion options.
Memory
The AI X1 Pro has two DDR5 SODIMM slots taking a maximum of 128GB of memory. My machine came with 64GB of A-DATA DDR5 RAM running at 5600 MT/s, so it’ll be useful for memory intensive apps such as virtual machines. It’s also handy to have the option of upgrading the memory.
By default, the machine allocates 2GB of RAM to the iGPU (but this can be changed to 1GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB or 48GB in the BIOS).
Audio
The machine has built-in dual speakers and microphone. There’s also a headphone socket or you can output audio over HDMI. Better still, pair the machine with Bluetooth speakers.
Bluetooth
I did need to change the kernel to get Bluetooth working. It’s Bluetooth 5.4.
Network
The Minisforum machine has impressive wireless and wired connectivity. There’s a pair of 2.5Gb Ethernet ports and a Mediatek Wi-Fi 7 module which supports the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands. Networking works out of the box with Kubuntu and Manjaro with no additional drivers needed.
Temperature
The CPU temperature sensor is k10temp-pci-00c3. If you only want to see the CPU temperature, use inxi -s.
The machine was under fairly light load at the time of taking the above images on a warm summer’s day (room temperature 24.3°C) with the default BIOS settings. The BIOS has different FAN modes available.
Even under full load, the cooling system is very effective at keeping the machine cool. The fan system is one of the highlights of the machine and so important, if like me, you want an extremely quiet system that runs very cool.
In the next article in the series, I’ll be testing the machine against a few other mini PC and desktop machines.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Design
Page 2 – First Impressions running Linux
Page 3 – Interrogation of the System
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Minisforum AI X1 Pro | |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction to the series and interrogation of the Minisforum AI X1 Pro |