MINISFORUM HX90 MiNi PC Review

More and more AMD Ryzen 5000H 'Cezanne' powered Mini PCs are entering the market segment, with the latest from MINISFORUM unveiling their Ryzen 9 5900HX powered EliteMini HX90 Mini PC. With the HX90, there is a high-end APU from AMD in a compact housing. More precisely, a Ryzen 9 5900HX is installed and thus an eight-core with 45 watt TDP is served, which ranks behind the Ryzen 9 5980HS and Ryzen 9 5980HX in terms of performance in the current portfolio of AMD's mobile Ryzen lineup.

Design

The MINISFORUM HX90 is packaged in a carbon fiber composite material that offers a rich texture with very high strength and good thermal conductivity. The housing of the EliteMini HX90 is also corrosion-resistant thanks to the use of high-quality building materials. Inside the case is a Mini-STX motherboard with the embedded AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU, two DDR4 SODIMM slots, a single M.2 2280 NVMe SSD slot, a single 2.5 ″ HDD (SATA III) slot and one M.2 WiFi / BT port (NGFF) with WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 AIC.

The CPU is equipped with a large active heat sink and has liquid metal thermal paste to increase cooling performance. The cooler should work at around 30 dB under full load and only start up when the system reaches a certain temperature threshold. The chassis has ventilation slots on three sides (1 x top & 2 x sides) for heat dissipation. The entire chassis measures 195 x 190 x 60 mm and weighs 1220 grams. The maximum output is 119.7 W and is supplemented by a DC 19 V power supply unit.

Hardware

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX offers 8 cores and 16 threads. The chip has 16 MB L3 cache and 4 MB L2 cache. The base clock of the chip is 3.30 GHz and the boost clock is 4.70 GHz. Other features of the chip include an improved Vega GPU with 8 compute units or 512 cores clocked at 2100 MHz, as well as overclocking support, which is a first for AMD in the notebook segment. It will be interesting to see how much overclocking can be achieved with the mini PC. Overclocker reaches 2.5 GHz FLCK DDR4-5000 with AMD Ryzen 3 5300G APU & MSI MEG B550 Unify-X Mainboard.

The performances that can be reached by the Minisforum EliteMini HX90 mini PC are truly remarkable.

Also on the gaming front the performance in terms of FPS of the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX is good.

4K Display

As a reminder, the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX (Cezanne) combines a graphics processor based on the Vega architecture and a central processor based on the latest Zen 3 architecture with a 7 nm production process. It offers eight cores, 16 threads and 16 MB of L3 cache, while its base clock is 3.3 GHz, under the right conditions it will go up to 4.6 GHz, and even more if someone decides to overclock . In turn, the iGPU on board comes down to eight Vega cores clocked at 2100 MHz.

Maybe iGPU will not allow you to play the latest games at high settings, but there is nothing to complain about, because it is the most efficient integrated graphics on the market at the moment. No wonder Minisforum has breathed a combination of aggressive and elegant character into the EliteMini HX90 housing made of carbon fiber. This one can enjoy the eye in any position, on a stand increasing the height by 25.7 mm, or even on a wall on the yet unknown VESA standard.

Going into detail, the EliteMini HX90 supports a configuration of up to 64 GB DDR4 memory clocked at 3200 MHz in the form of two slots. On the mass memory side, you can bet on a total of three drives, one for the M.2 2280 connector and two 2.5-inch media for SATA III. A simple 19V DC power supply operating at 6.3 amps is responsible for the power supply, because the maximum power consumption here is 119.7 watts.

A single fan takes care of the temperature in it, but between the heat sink and the CPU's IHS there is no thermal paste, but liquid metal, which ensures even better heat transfer. Hence, the noise level is only about 30 dB under full load, which is not a bad result for a 2.65-kg structure enclosed in a 195 x 190 x 60 mm housing.

Connectivity

On the flexible side, the EliteMini HX90 supports up to four 4K monitors via two HDMI ports and DisplayPort to support 4K displays with refresh rates up to 60Hz. Going further into the ports, this miniPC offers five USB 3.0 Gen 1, one USB-C, four audi 3.5mm, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, and its wireless capabilities are limited to Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0. This PC will come with Windows 10 pro pre-installed but also compatible to update to Windows 11.

Our Vedict

Small, powerful, upgradeable: The EliteMini HX90 is a Ryzen -based mini PC with high speed and lots of features. You can probably use it to play some games – after all, if portable gaming systems like the AYA Neo and GPD Win Max 2021 can be content with AMD's Radeon Vega integrated graphics, the HX90 should perform even better thanks to a much faster processor and more powerful GPU.

Prices and Availability

In terms of price, the basic configuration, which includes the barebone kit with the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X CPU, costs 729 US dollars, but has been reduced to 629 US dollars for the time being. The 16GB DDR4 and 256 GB SSD variants cost $ 799. Switch to 512GB SSD and pay $ 829, while the high-end configuration with 32GB DDR4 memory and 512GB SSD will cost you $ 909.

• Barebone: $729
• 16+256: $799
• 16+512: $829
• 32+512: $909