Minisforum has launched a brand new high-performance Mini-ITX motherboard that is based mostly on Intel’s thirteenth Era Core HX cellular components. The upsized, extremely built-in AR900i platform guarantees to carry collectively the facility effectivity advantages of a cellular platform with desktop-class efficiency and options – and all at a somewhat reasonable value.
Minisforum itself calls its AR900i platform an final mobile-on-desktop (MoDT) platform and certainly it’s fairly succesful because of its 14-core Core i7-13650HX (as much as 4.90 GHz, 24 MB LLC) or 24-core Core i9-13900HX (as much as 5.40 GHz, 36 MB LLC) processors, that are designed for high-end laptops. These CPUs are configured to dissipate as much as 100W of thermal vitality (decrease than 157W set by Intel), so they’re outfitted with a somewhat superior cooling system with 4 warmth pipes and a 12-cm fan. The CPUs may be mated with two DDR5 reminiscence modules in an SO-DIMM form-factor.
Being aimed primarily and players looking for for each efficiency and portability, the Minisforum AR900i comes with a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for graphics playing cards in addition to 4 M.2-2280 slots for PCIe 4.0 SSDs (two on prime of the motherboard and two on the decrease aspect). To make sure constant efficiency of high-end drives below excessive masses, there may be an energetic cooling system for them. In the meantime, it’s unclear how loud this SSD fan is. Talking of followers, the motherboard has a connector for a system fan, which will definitely come helpful for high-end builds.
With regards to expandability, the Minisforum AR900i platform doesn’t disappoint and resembles different high-end Mini-ITX motherboards with an M.2-2230 slot for a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth adapter, a built-in 2.5 GbE, three show outputs (DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0, USB4 Sort-C), loads of USB ports (USB4, two USB 3.2 Sort-A, two USB 2.0 Sort-A), and 5.1-channel audio connectors.
Getting a high-end CPU and a high-end motherboard fairly an funding these days, so one would anticipate Minisforum’s AR900i to be fairly costly. Certainly, it’s priced at $689, however because the producer sells nearly all of its merchandise with a reduction, it may be obtained for $559.
