Holy Carp! Wee Beastie's 4.75L Mini Fishtank Gaming PC Packs An RTX 4070 GPU
A new and unique crowdfunded mini PC project is making waves thanks to its desktop-class components and fishtank-style design—meet the Wee Beastie Super Mini Gaming PC. Its "Super Mini" fishtank design comes in at a footprint of just 4.75 liters, or total dimensions of 200 x 110 x 217 millimeters. That's pretty compact (though not as small as a NUC-style Mini PC designs) and despite the size it purportedly has not made any major compromises on processing power, airflow, or even aesthetics, thanks to an array of 13 built-in fans flaunting addressable RGB lighting.
Internally, the PC packs a punch with a custom NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 12GB GPU, paired with either an Intel Core i7-13700H or an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H, depending on what model you choose to back on Kickstarter. Storage and RAM are available as add-ons, utilizing a Crucial P130 NVMe Gen 4 SSD up to 2TB and a Crucial DDR5-5600 SODIMM RAM kit, up to 128GB. You can also bring your own SO-DIMM RAM or NVMe Gen 4 SSDs, with two slots available for each. The custom RTX 4070 is visibly using a desktop GPU chip and VRAM allocation, but shown mounted on a custom MXM board. MXM is an old standard once used for slot-replaceable laptop GPUs, though it seems unlikely that GPU replacements will actually be feasible (or desirable) here.
Overall, then, the Wee Beastie Super Mini Gaming PC is looking like a pretty beefy mini PC, though its sized closer to a shrunk-down SFF PC case than typical NUC-inspired designs. The custom RTX 4070 is of particular note, since it seems to be the full desktop card but with a wholly-custom cooling solution that utilizes two heatsinks and a triple-fan design to keep it extra chilly under heavy loads.
Wee Beastie touts that the PC should be capable as not only a gaming PC, but also a fairly powerful AI PC solution, with an output of roughly 466 AI TOPS thanks to the RTX 4070's healthy allocation of CUDA cores. Footage of the unit running 3DMark Time Spy is also available, and performance sings at a consistent 100+ FPS with GPU temperature never exceeding 76 degrees Celsius.
So, what's the catch?
Well, it is of course a crowdfunding project, so we do need to include the disclaimer here that no matter how promising a crowdfunding project seems to be, you're ultimately paying to make it happen, not guaranteeing you will be receiving the product in question. If you do, it may not always be in a timely manner.
Thankfully, the project is fully-funded and there are still plenty of crowdfunded units of the Wee Beastie Super Mini Gaming PC still available. The Core i7-13700H model starts at roughly $698 without storage or RAM, and the high-end Core Ultra 7 255H model starts at about $898 without storage or RAM. Considering the specs and form factor, though, this is still shockingly reasonable pricing for a mini PC project, since these unique form factors usually cost quite the pretty penny. That said, this mini PC also compromises on size compared to something like the Geekom A9 Max, but the performance and price trade-offs seem quite compelling.
Image Credit: Wee Beastie Team (via Kickstarter)
