Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Can This Mini PC Play AAA Games? Checking Out The Minisforum Neptune HX100G”.
The Entire Computer ships in this box, 32 GB of memory, a terabyte of storage and a discrete GPU – you can game at over 100 FPS at 1080p on this, and it can run four displays. It’S got USB 4, it’s expandable minis form the hx1 100g. This is an update to the model that we reviewed previously. Let’S take a closer look in the box. You get a giant power, brick, the mini Forum unit itself and a handsome stand. You can use it in a desktop configuration like this. It actually doesn’t breathe from the bottom, it only breathes from the top and sides and it comes with a cool carbon fiber. Looking stand, it all mounts together and that’ll hold it in the vertical orientation and it comes with the screws to be able to do that. As well, this has a 6650m with 8 GB of gddr6, and this particular one is a 7840 HS. So this is the highest end. Laptop configuration all told this can consume north of 200 watts of power, but for 1080P and 1440p gaming, even 1440p 60 FPS.
In most titles is attainable. This is uh pretty impressive. 8 gigs of vram I mean 8 gigs of vram – is probably the biggest argument against it, but in terms of the value proposition aside from the lack of expandability, this might actually make more sense than a desktop PC. If you treat your machines kind of as disposable. It’S like I’m going to do major upgrades every couple of years.
This is retailing for around $ 7 $ 800. Us it depends on the configuration you can bring your own RAM and storage. You can get a different CPU, but a 6650m is pretty good. It’S pretty good as far as gpus go you’re going to be able to play balers gate at 100, FPS you’re going to be able to play Starfield at 100 FPS. It depends on if you want something higher end than that, it depends on.
If you want to play a game that requires more vram higher end games might require medium textures, especially in the future, as we move into the post 8 GB of gddr6 vram world – maybe maybe not. This might be good enough from now until the end of time. For casual gaming or anything like that, because it is eight cores and 16 threads with that 7840 HS processor, I was really impressed with the predecessor from Mini’s forum, and this is basically the same configuration same updates and some lessons learned. Let’S take a look at the io, we have 3 and 12 mm analog audio out on the front, that is a headset and a microphone connector, okay, reasonable.
We have a type c port and we have a type, a port. Those are just regular USB at the rear. We’Ve got two HDMI build Drive. 4K.
60. You also have two USBC. Those are USB 4. You can run Thunderbolt peripherals with this yeah.
Technically those are not Thunderbolt ports, but they are pcie tunneling, and so that works pretty well this platform, I took a look at that before and uh things have improved somewhat. It is 2024. Should this be an 8000 series, mobile processor uh, not necessarily AMD.
Has this sort of Blended approach that they’re doing where people are still shipping? A lot of 7,000 series based mobile processors? Min Forum has 7 and 8,000 series based processors, but this one is the high power High TDP version and they’ basically put it in a desktop replacement configuration in desktop replacement at 200 WS. This CPU doesn’t make sense for a laptop well only the most bulbous and unwieldy laptops. Perhaps this is from minis Forum, the Neptune series – and this has been one of the variations on a theme that minis Forum has done with mini PCS, that people have been most happy with the expandability internally. Not really a lot has changed. It’S a dual fan, design, a dual m.2, so you can add a second m.2 for additional storage whatever without formatting or erasing your oper system Drive the noise profile on this hasn’t changed much since the previous model, meaning that when you’re gaming, you can hear the fan, But it does uh, but I would say it’s not a loud and whiny fan you’re going to be spending a lot more for not a lot more performance on a desktop I mean yeah. This is going to be a little slower than a 7,000 Series, Desktop CPU with a 7,000 Series Desktop class processor from AMD this, and this package is as quiet and Powerful as it is, is very, very impressive that this is where we are with the mobile Parts. Really the thing that’s holding us back on mobile is power. Cuz 200 watts in a laptop doesn’t make sense. That’S really down to uh heat dissipation in battery life, I suppose but yeah. This is incredibly impressive at at the power envelope that we’re talking about here.
To get this level of performance, I mean I would not know that this is made out of mobile Parts if we were just doing a a blind playthrough in Boulders gate at 1080p. These lend themselves really well to modding projects as well. So what happened to my old one? It’S in here, you can play Super Nintendo games on it, but it was.
It was pretty uh pretty receptive to being able to reroute the connections. Dual HDMI plus USB 4, including the tunneling plus 2 and half gig ethernet, got our power cable going into our standard issue. Mini power, brick, which, as far as I can tell is unchanged, seems identical a gve power, brick 262 Watts good stuff, and this thing other than running a little warm because of the uh. The Nintendo shell is a little unforgiving in terms of heat dissipation in here. Breathing from the bottom exhausting a little bit out the sides and the back, and it really is not any larger than a Super Nintendo all right as we do. Let’S take a look at game performance, game performance. Here we start with Shadow the Tomb Raider move on to Borderlands 3, throw in some Boulders gate just for for fun also want to call out Starfield specifically check out this gaml.
This is shockingly good, but if I were benchmarking this, I would report a benchmark figure of about 35 FPS, which is below where I would want to play a game like Starfield, but with amd’s new adrenaline driver and Hyper RX and FSR 3 features we’re able to Achieve over 60 FPS, solid and playing that on a pixio OLED monitor at over 60 FPS is a much more enjoyable experience and it melts my brain a little bit. This small form factor is able to deliver on that. Here’S a full system report from a to 64 and what we’ve got out of the box with our cash and memory Benchmark latency. Now the ddr5 is upgradeable here you can just swap in some some new memory. If you want, I think Min forum is shipping.
It pretty conservatively, but Min for also doesn’t have a have a uh, an elaborate history of BIOS Updates. This is one of the the complaints that has come up in our forum. Is people are looking for a little bit more longevity and a little bit more support, especially when a issues a Giza updates – or there are other updates like that to the platform. Maybe a security update that sort of thing. If you decide to pick up one of these, the first thing you should always do update Windows and do a scan just to make sure nothing is on there.
That’S not been a problem with Min Forum that I know of, but you know something to check. If you’re really paranoid, you can do a Windows reset even before you do anything which, in 85 % of cases will be good it at least it’ll get you back to. You know Windows Baseline 85 % of cases.
You can also do a USB installation. Stick like you can literally take a Windows USB installer and reinstall. That is also an option, but really the important thing is getting your drivers and this didn’t come with the latest version of AMD adrenaline. So I went to the AMD website and downloaded adrenaline.
Let’S talk sensor data and performance information using Hardware info 64 to log everything playing games was pretty good. Actually, a thing I like to test is, if you’re doing rendering like a blender render or Center bench run and let it run forever. Ideally, the system gets hotter and has worse temperatures running that than it does, while you’re playing games, and so I ran this for quite a while playing games and yeah.
It performs like that. I mean in the gaming performance. The Thermals are a little better than the worst case scenario performance, which tells me that the thermal solution is sized for the worst case scenario, not just gaming, our ddr5, it’s 5600. It’S Micron chips from crucial, so this is pretty bog standard jetex speeds, the timings. Nothing looks unto here this actually looks pretty good in terms of performance being mobile CPUs.
Another thing I was curious about: is it possible to trigger amds, stop them stap PM the the surface temperature aware power management? Basically, is your laptop starting to get hot? Maybe don’t run it so hard if your laptop is starting to get hot. This is not a laptop. This is side effects from using mobile parts and things that are not mobile and stop. Him is still showing here in hardw info 64, so there may be some Edge case that triggers it, but in the out of the- boox configuration it did not trigger after 20 minutes of burning testing.
I’M not super confident, there’s not still a way to trigger that which would mean that you’re just leaving performance on the table, because the cooling solution in here can definitely deal with a lot of wattage. Unlike you know, a laptop that’s just going to get warm uncomfortably warm now in terms of the BIOS Min form’s done a good job, not really locking down the BIOS, and there are stop him options in the bios for controlling that. It’S on auto by default, which doesn’t seem to trigger in my experimentation, but it may be worthy of more experimentation.
I like that. You can also set the system to auto power on if it loses power that could be awesome if you’re using this as a machine. In an off label scenario – and you just want it to be on all the time out of the box – it does disable virtualization. So you want to turn that on. If you intend to run the windows subsystem for Linux or use Virtual machines, there’s also some LED control.
If you want some RGB LED control for your machine, not exactly the most amazing userdefined option, but hey at least you get the bias option. I’M not sure where the LED actually is. It is very nice that you have full access to the AMD. Cbs menu and nothing’s locked out.
You’Ve also got the EFI driver for the I 226v. It reports is disconnected in the Bios, even when it is not actually disconnected. I actually have link lights back here, so there’s some minor issue there, but you can also net boot with the EFI module. So that’s welcome.
You get creative, you can net Boot and ice scuzzy and all that kind of stuff, not EFI support for icei, but just fancy Network stuff, and that and the USB for you might be able to build a fancy. Little cluster out of these and the bundled nvme reveals itself as a Kingston om8 pgp 41024 Q. So one tab, Kingston OEM model, but yeah many PCs are fun. I’M with this level, one I’m signing out.
You can find me in the level one forums. .