As I was thinking this Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470 would be a good candidate for a living room TV connected media box and 'Steam Machine,' I tested Cyberpunk 2077 using the ‘Steam Deck’ preset at 1080p. The system did pretty well after it was upgraded to dual-channel RAM.
Overall, the gaming frame rates of 50-60fps on the dual-channel RAM-equipped X1 Pro 470 point to it being a pretty decent entertainment box for the living room scenario that I was thinking about. With all these tests done at medium settings (except CP2077), there are still plenty of settings that can be adjusted to achieve an average 60fps at 1080p, if you insist on that.
During even the most demanding tests, the Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470 stayed pleasingly quiet and cool. Running through the benchmarks and stress tests, I didn’t see any processor temperatures rising above the low 70s (Celsius). Moreover, the weighty dual-fan cooling seems to do its job pretty quietly inside the slick metal alloy shell. These are definite advantages over my Zephyrus with Ryzen Ai 9 HX 370.
An unobtrusive fan profile is important to me for long-term use of any PC as a daily driver. I think this system could make the grade, with its idle noise level of 28dBA and highest reading of 32dBA from approximately arms-length away (positioned beside my monitor on the desk).
I’ve enjoyed testing the Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470. It looks good, feels well built, offers flexible mounting and positioning options, and runs cool and quiet. Being able to check it out in dual-channel memory mode also raised my opinion of the device. A decent USB4 dock attached to the rear provides the ports I need, while keeping it tidy, too.
Given the small changes delivered by AMD’s latest mobile chips, bargain hunters might be more interested in the AI X1 Pro 370 from last year , which is still available at $735 barebones, or $1,184 for the 32GB/1TB config. Also, if the AI X1 Pro 470 with 32GB/1TB config we received ($1,379.00 on Amazon) isn’t your little dream machine, the barebones model with HX 470 is just $779 . To that, you'd need to add a dual-channel DDR5 SO-DIMM kit, an M.2 SSD, and Windows (or Linux).
Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-19/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
usertests Uninteresting for AI. At least it's in the name. AMD's refusal to officially port FSR4 to RDNA2/3/3.5 is drawing a lot of attention. It's starting to look like Zen 6 Medusa APUs will have "RDNA4m", bringing full speed FSR4 performance while remaining area efficient. Buying Strix Point Refresh isn't a great idea if you can hold out. There's no guarantee that DRAM/NAND pricing will improve in 2027, but Gorgon will be a yawn compared to Medusa ("Halo Mini"?). I was going to say something about Borderlands 3 but I was confusing it with Borderlands 4. Reply
Notton Having used several mini-PCs in the past, No, you do not want a 3.5mm jack on the back. It's on the front for when you absolutely need to use it. The line noise, primarily from USB devices, is asinine and you will want a separate USB or HDMI DAC if you want clear and crisp sound coming from your speakers or headset. IDK if this particular mini-PC has good noise isolation on the audio chip, but I wouldn't count on it. Reply
abufrejoval That single channel RAM will cripple iGPU performance, shouldn't exactly come as a surprise any more. In fact by now it should be quite obvious that RAM bandwidth is the one and only limiting factor for iGPU performance, last level caches have already worked quite a few wonders. You can go with much faster RAM clocks, but that means soldered or even stacked on-die-carrier and/or you can go wider like Strix Halo, the Fruity Cult, or the biggest Snapdragon Elite X2. AI: Judging from my experiments with a Hawk Point predecessor, it will actually run AI and with at least half of its installed physical memory. My Hawk Point Mini-ITX is pretty similar if a little older and has 64GB of DDR5-5600, of which 32GB are accessible to both the iGPU and the NPU for AI processing. So you can run relatively large models in that unified memory, but bandwidth and compute capabilities are still limited, resulting in output rates, that may not be to your liking. So yes, I could load bigger diffusion models than even on my RTX 4090 with only 24GB of VRAM, but image generation rates were perhaps one frame per hour: who has the time or patience? The Amuse demo application AMD sponsored for a few months (no longer maintained), tried to push the point by running early generation Stability AI diffusion models for image generation (on the GPU) and combining that with an image scaling model (running on the NPU) to show the 'additive benefit'…. Yeah, the promotional artwork on the website and the AMD ads were not achieveable with that software… Somewhat pathetic for most, perhaps a life-saver for someone. Or perhaps a life-taker, e.g. inside a drone for target identification where false positives aren't as critical as affordability: you don't need real-time 4k AI vision to distinguish a human from a tree, distinguishing an civilian from a soldier might require more, but most Shahed operators don't care. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/mini-pcs/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/mini-pcs/minisforum-ai-x1-pro-470-review#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.