Minisforum HX90G Mini Gaming PC Review: A Little All-AMD Titan

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Minisforum’s HX90G Small Form Factor Gaming Is Pint-sized But Powerful RDNA 3 And Zen 3 Power

Minisforum HX90G Mini PC – Starting MSRP not worth $799, as tested $909

Minisforum’s latest Mini PC is an all-AMD mobile processor affair. It’s a compact and portable unit that outperforms most gaming laptops using similar hardware, and at a compelling price.

Solid 1080p Gaming

Compact size

Easily expand / upgrade RAM and storage

Runs cool and quiet with an excellent thermal solution

Rock solid stable in testing

Competitively priced

A little too much plastic

No VESA mount

Heavy duty PSU

Wired audio connectors on front only

Would benefit from more USB ports

Hong Kong-based Minisforum has been busy carving out a niche for itself in the Mini PCs arena over the past few months, with various releases. One of its latest small PC launches is the Minisforum HX90G, a very compact small form factor PC that combines a powerful mix of modern AMD laptops and packs them into a well-cooled 8-inch square (and 2.5-inch thick) frame. . We were very interested to see what this NUC Extreme alternative based on all-AMD performance components would offer. So we put one through our test lab, and can now offer comparisons against a number of Intel gaming/creator-oriented NUC models, as well as a range of popular gaming laptops.

Features and Specifications of Minisforum HX90G Mini PC

Inside the Minisforum HX90G is a powerful processor in the form of the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX. Yes, this is a processor aimed at performance laptops rather than desktops, but its Zen 3 architecture, 8 cores and 16 threads, 3.3 / 4.6 GHz base / boost clocks, adjustable TDP of 35-54W (this one ran at 54W under load ), 16MB of L3 cache, and a TSMC N7 processor all point to an efficient but muscular performer.

AMD’s other performance component here is the RDNA 2 Radeon RX 6600M (GDDR6 8GB) graphics architecture. Compared to how NVIDIA makes significant cuts to its GeForce Laptop GPUs versus its desktop versions, the Radeon RX 6600M is a breath of fresh air for laptops (and SFF systems with the HX90G). The Navi 23 GPU here has the same number of stream processors as its desktop counterpart, as well as the same memory complement, speed and bus width. The only difference is that the mobile version has its base/boost clocks set lower, to sit within a 100W power envelope. AMD and partners allow Radeon RX 6600 desktop cards to scale up to 130W and more. For the rest of the system’s technical specifications, check out the chart below.

With the hardware specs out of the way, let’s consider the design. First of all, this is an attractive design due to the compact size. Earlier we mentioned, it is 8×8 inches square and 2.5 inches thick. It can rest on one side, on two rubber feet, and in this orientation the two approximately 100mm cooling fans will suck in air from above and push it out from the left and right sides. A V-shaped stand is provided in the box, and you can use this if you want to set up the HX90G vertically, bringing in air from the left, and exhausting it from the top and bottom. Some people probably would have liked the option to VESA mount this PC to the back of a monitor, but there are no proper screw holes or fittings here.

An aspect of the design we’re less keen on are the materials used for chassis construction. Minisforum highlights the “Carbon Fiber Armor” of the construction, which uses 70% carbon fiber and 30% resin. However, these are like some “elbows” fixed on corners and non-ventilated surfaces, to distract from what is essentially a perforated plastic box. It felt a bit creaky to handle, but we’re sure it’s sturdy enough for its intended use on a desk – it’s not designed for anything tougher than that, but neither are most desktops.

The port selection on the Minisforum HX90G could be a little better, although it is certainly small, like a Mini PC. Using a wired keyboard and mouse and a USB sound card (more on that later) used up all the rear USB ports. So yes, there are only three USB ports on the back. A USB-attached printer, which would normally be always connected, was just plugged into the front Type-A port to fire off a few pages in a hurry. On the front is the only USB Type-C port that supports USB3.2 Gen1 speeds. Of the several USB dongles we have in the office, the best ones attach via USB-C but it would be ugly to leave attached to the front forever.

Those looking to connect multiple displays are well catered for here, with the twin HDMI and twin DP ports. Minisforum says they can support up to four simultaneous 4K displays at 60Hz. For our testing, we were happy to use a single DP port connected to a FreeSync 1440p monitor (although games were run at 1080p settings for fair comparisons with previous benchmarks on previous machines).

We added an additional 1TB of storage because games and apps take up a large footprint these days.

Before turning the machine on for the first time, we felt the need to open it up for a quick look. Gaining access to the PCB area where you can upgrade the RAM and SSDs was very simple, but involved pulling out the rubber feet (make sure you don’t get fluff on the glue). We noted that the HX90G sample supplied had twin ADATA-branded 8GB DDR4 3200 SODIMM modules pre-installed. The supplied 512GB M.2 SSD (ESO mark reported by Windows, but a label obscured by a heatsink) wouldn’t be enough for Hot Hardware’s test library of games, without mixing things up, so we added a Kingston A2000 NVMe SSD in the spare M. .2 crack

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