Ahead of the game
MINI PC | £1,100 from Amazon www.snipca.com/49792
Some mini PCs take advantage of their size to squeeze in cheaper components and therefore offer better value for money than their desktop counterparts. That isn’t the approach taken by Minisforum with their Neptune HX100G model. Its case is slightly larger than average, offering plenty of space to keep its components cool. That’s just as well, because it has a fast processor and a standalone graphics card, making this one of the few mini PCs that you could consider for running games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator. However, at £1,000, it comes with a price to match its prowess.
Its processor is the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS, which is the same chip that appears in our current favourite mini PC, the Minisforum UM780XTX (£709 from www.snipca.com/48917, reviewed in Issue 676 – see page 32). However, whereas that model uses graphics hardware built into the processor, the HX100G outsources this work to its AMD Radeon RX 6600M card. There’s also 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD for good measure.
As you might expect, the addition of this card won’t have a huge impact on your general Windows work, so if you aren’t intending to play games or run specific graphically intensive software like a video editor, the more affordable UM780XTX remains a better bet.
If you want a mini PC that can do some heavy lifting, however, this is in a different league. In benchmark tests that measure its graphical capabilities, it ran at 275 per cent of the speed of the UM780XTX.
It’s still outperformed by the powerful Cyberpower Infinity X147 GRE Gaming PC (£1,985 from www.snipca.com/48558, reviewed in Issue 674), a much larger desktop model, but not by so much (20 per cent) that it justifies its £900 price difference.
On the back there are two HDMI sockets and two video-capable USB-C ports, so you could potentially hook this up to four monitors. They’re joined on the rear panel by three USB 3.0 ports and a 2.5Gb Ethernet port. On the front (pictured left) there’s another USB-C and USB 3.0 port, along with audio and mic jacks. Wireless connections are well catered for with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 built in.
SPECIFICATIONS
8-core AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor • 32GB RAM
• AMD Radeon RX 6600M graphics card • 1TB SSD • Wi-Fi 6 • Bluetooth 5.2 • 1x 2.5Gb Ethernet port • 3x USB-C ports • 4x USB 3.0 ports • 2x HDMI ports • Windows 11 Home • 205x69.3x203mm (HxWxD) • 1.21kg • One-
