Minisforum Tiger-Themed Mini PC Roars With AMD's Fastest Phoenix CPU, dGPU Support
Earlier today, Minisforum held a product launch event in Xiamen, China. Probably the star of the show was the headlining Tiger-themed and factory-tuned version of the top-selling Minisforum UM790 Pro, dubbed the UM790 XTX. Alongside the obvious flashy tiger LEDs, something more significant has occurred under the hood—the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor has a new higher power limit, raised from 54W to 70W. The new XTX model also includes an improved cooling system and a high-speed Oculink external GPU port.
AMD's 'Phoenix' line of mobile processors are already well regarded for their compelling mix of modern architectures. Also known as the Ryzen 7040 series, they mix the charms of the Zen 4 CPU architecture with the newest RDNA 3 GPU architecture—with the first AMD AI hardware acceleration on SoC for consumers.
The AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS Processor is the leader of the Phoenix pack, with an 8-core/16-thread config, 16MB of cache, and CPU clocks up to 5.2GHz. On the GPU side of things, the Radeon 780M looks after 3D acceleration and is widely considered to be the best iGPU around, due to its 12 RDNA 3 CUs.
Refocusing back on that power limit boost delivered with the UM790 XTX, it appears that the original Minisforum UM790 Pro came with its Phoenix chip set to 54W TDP. Enthusiasts could tweak it up to 65W. Now, thanks to Minisforum engineer tuning, the new XTX model opens the throttle to 70W. Upping this power limit should enable even better performance from the processor's CPU and GPU cores in this capably cooled 'Cold Wave 2.1' liquid metal TIM unit. Remember, this is a mobile chip, but given substantially stronger cooling in a mini desktop.
One of the other improvements delivered by the Minisforum UM790 XTX over its Pro predecessor is said to be an Oculink connector for adding external GPUs with better performance than Thunderbolt 3 or 4 solutions can muster. Minisforum is working on Oculink attached GPU product(s), but we will have to wait for news about these at a later date.
Other ports present on this mini-PC include: front and rear USB 4 ports, four USB 3.2 ports, HDMI and DP, dual 2.5G network ports, and support for 65-100W power delivery.
Our headline mentioned the LED Tiger you can see on the top cover of this device. Actually, that is just one of four 'personality panels' which can be chosen to give your mini-PC a custom fierce look. Minisforum also showed panels with a stylized wolf, an eagle, and an owl.
