Minisforum UM773 Lite Mini PC Packing Ryzen And Radeon Firepower Debuts At A Discount
Minisforum has launched, released and updated several AMD-powered Mini PCs. During its Spring 2023 event earlier today the compact PC specialist revealed the headlining Minisforum Venus UM773 Lite Mini PC, as well as put the Mars MC560 up for sale, reminded us of the charms of the Neptune HX80G/HX99G, and provided the first details of the Neptune MBG6.
The new Minisforum UM773 Lite Mini PC is a price cut version of the UM773, which was announced back at the start of 2023. The UM773 was claimed to be the first mini-PC featuring the AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS laptop processor. However, the new Minisforum UM773 Lite features this same processor, and identical specs, except for the rear USB port configuration—all for a significantly discounted price.
Where the original UM773 featured four USB 3.2 type A ports on the rear, the Lite model switches two of them for ordinary USB 2.0 ports. This is a design choice which will have no practical impact on your PC use if you are going to use two ports for mouse and keyboard, so seems to be a good compromise. What the price reduction on the Lite model is, we are not exactly sure, as the earlier non-Lite model isn’t listed in the Minisforum online store for US customers.
The Minisforum UM773 Lite Mini PC is currently listed from $409 (barebones) which seems pretty competitive, given that the processor is so new. According to this listing, we are looking at an introductory price, $100 off, with shipments beginning from the end of March.
Full specs of the UM773 Lite can be found below, alongside the specs of the other fully new machine announced today, the Neptune MBG6.
Minisforum’s Neptune MBG6 was the only other new reveal today. In a departure from the norm for the company, the new machine is designed with a desktop processor at its heart. The AMD Ryzen 7 5700X CPU is here paired with the Radeon RX 6600 M, just like the other Neptune family PCs like the HX90G that we reviewed. However, Minisforum asserts that this 65W desktop processor with large cache can “provide more stable gaming performance.” One of the prices for this performance is the necessity for a beefier cooling solution, with this model ramped up to quad-fans from dual-fans.
For us, it seems like it would have been a good time to upgrade the discrete GPU instead of the various CPU changes we have seen in the Neptune family, but there are probably some important economic factors at play impacting the affordability of these capable mini-PCs.
