Introduction and unboxing
If you’re looking for a powerful Windows mini PC, the Minisforum AI X1 is definitely worth consideration. Coming in at just 0.6 kg and configurable up to a 4nm AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 CPU with 64 GB or even 96 GB of DDR5 RAM, and priced below $900/€1,000 it sounds impressive on paper.
Minisforum is a PC maker with a good track record and a diverse product lineup. You can find its products on Amazon in the the US
, the UK
, and Germany, which is very good. The AI X1 is in its flagship class of mini PCs. It ships with an HDMI cable, a power supply, a mounting bracket (if you want to attach it to your desk or monitor), and an optional OCuLink port.
Here’s a closer look at the mounting bracket, complete with Phillips screws.
And here’s the OCuLink adapter. It plugs into the second PCIe 4.0 slot and leverages its 40Gbps of bandwidth for use with an external GPU. So you can either expand this mini-PC’s graphics capabilities, or add a second M.2 SSD.
Supplied OCuLink connector
Design and ports
The Minisforum A1 X1 is light and compact. At 12.8cm wide, 12.6cm long, 5.2cm tall, and 0.6kg in weight, it’s nearly identical to the Mac Mini M4 (12.7cm x 12.7cm x 5.1cm, 0.7kg). The A1 X1 is mostly made of metal with ventilation grilles on the left and right sides, and a plastic rear where the heat sink and most of the ports reside.
Upfront, you have a pair of stickers, the power button, a pair of USB-A 3.2 Gen2 (10Gbps) ports, a USB4 type-C (40Gbps) port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and even a pair of microphones.
On the back, you get the power supply port, an RJ45 2.5G Ethernet port, a DisplayPort 2.0 (4K up to 240Hz, 8K up to 60Hz), OCuLink port (with a rubber cover if unused), another USB4 port, an HDMI 2.1 (4K up to 120Hz, 8K up to 60Hz), and a USB-A 2.0 (480Mbps).
There’s a Kensington Security Slot on the right side.
The Minisforum A1 X1 is quite easy to open. Simply unscrew the four Phillips-head screws (which are quite long) at the bottom, and you’re in. Keep in mind you need to unscrew two ribbon cables before you can fully remove the bottom panel.
Here’s a look at the second PCIe port that can either accommodate a second M.2 SSD or the OCuLink port. You have easy access to the main SSD and the two DDR5 SO-DIMMx2 slots.
Second PCIe port for either an SSD or the OCuLink port
Performance and fan noise
The A1 X1 we have for review is the top spec’d unit. That means the most capable AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processor, 64 GB of 5600MT/s DDR5 RAM, and 1 TB of storage.
The AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 chip is part of the Strix Point family and was released in June 2024. It uses the Zen 5 architecture, built on TSMC’s 4nm process. The processor has 10 physical cores and 20 threads, a base clock speed of 2GHz, and a boost speed of 5GHz. There’s Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support.
The graphics are handled by the built-in Radeon 880M with 12 cores and a peak clock speed of 2.9GHz.
We ran a three-hour stress test on the Ryzen AI 9 365. The CPU was able to maintain an average clock speed of 3.4GHz (at around 53W). The fan was constantly working to keep the CPU at a little over 70°C, which made the mini PC slightly audible in an office environment but nothing too bothersome.
The exterior of the machine was warm to the touch (but who touches their mini PC, come on).
Naturally, we ran a slew of benchmarks on the Minisforum AI X1 to gauge its performance. The Ryzen processor is very powerful and yet efficient. Compared to the 10-core Apple M4, expect around a 15% worse single-core result but as much as 10% better multi-core performance.
The Ryzen AI 9 365 has a faster built-in GPU than the M4 and a more potent NPU with around 50 TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second), vs 38 on the M4.
| Benchmark | Test | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 6 CPU | Single Core | 2884 |
| Multi Core | 12949 | |
| Geekbench 6 GPU | OpenCL | 33559 |
| Geekbench AI (NPU) | Single Precision | 3515 |
| Half Precision | 1690 | |
| Quantized | 6989 | |
| Passmark | CPU | 34083.2 |
| 2D Graphics | 914.3 | |
| 3D Graphics | 7434.7 | |
| Memory | 3083.1 | |
| Disk Mark | 42552.8 | |
| Overall | 8166.7 | Cinebench 2024 | Single Core | 119 |
| Multi Core | 1032 |
Gaming
The built-in Radeon 880M GPU is surprisingly competent when it comes to gaming. We tested a few games on it, and it managed to sustain 60fps at 1440p without an issue. We tried Dirt 2.0, the penultimate title in the series, and a fairly demanding one at that. We got just under 60fps at maxed-out settings in 1080p. It was a similar story in Forza Horizon – around 56fps in 1080p with settings at medium and high.
Titles like Civilization VI and Age of Empires II Definitive Edition were not a problem for the 880M with locked-on 60fps performance. GTA V at 1080p and high hovered at just under 70fps.
You need to reduce quality settings at 1080p in more demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 if you want a smooth experience – we achieved around 45fps with most settings on high.
Overall, the Radeon 880M is superb as far as integrated GPUs go and gives the equivalent performance to the Nvidia RTX3050.
A little bit of gaming on the Radeon 880M
The 1TB Kingston SSD (PCIe 4.0) was very fast, managing over 6,000MB/s read and over 5,000MB/s write speed.
Conclusion
The Minisforum AI X1 is a great choice for a compact computing solution. Despite its diminutive size it offers exccellent performance and solid port selection. Three USBs on the front and two on the back are great (though we’d rather have one or two more type-Cs instead of the three type-As).
Another plus in our book is the easy disassembly of this mini PC. A PC should be accessible and upgradeable, and Minisforum has made the AI X1 just right in this regard. You can swap the RAM (if need be), expand the storage, and generally keep the device clean!
Then, there’s the configurability on Minisforum’s website. You have a choice of AMD’s latest power-efficient processors – Ryzen 7 260, Ryzen 7 255, Ryzen 9 365 – and either 32GB/1TB, or 64GB/1TB. And if you want to put your own SSD and RAM, you can get the barebones unit.
The price is right too, especially at the moment, with a promo letting you save between $100 and $200 depending of the configuration.
You can find your mini PC of choice on Amazon in the US, the UK, and Germany, as well as on Minisforum’s own website.
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