Many a PC user may be squinting enviously at the new and compact world of Apple Silicon. Especially the Studio Macs attract with their compact dimensions and - measured by the size - impressive performance. However, it is easy to forget that you still "only" get the GPU maximum performance with PC technology. But that is also bigger and more power-hungry.
However, many PC users also have an inherent tinkering instinct and those who have the corresponding tinkering experience can also configure their workstation quite compactly these days.
Two interesting "centerpieces" that might be well-suited for this have now been presented by a manufacturer of mini-PCs that is not yet so well known in this country: The two new ITX mini-mainboards BD770i and BD790i from Minisforum offer very interesting specifications for your own mini workstation.
Mini Minisforum BD770i - ITX mainboard incl. PCIe 5.0 and DDR5
First of all, the boards are very small (170 × 170 mm) thanks to the mini-ITX format and come with a permanently soldered AMD CPU, which actually comes from the laptop sector. The only difference between the boards is the processor type. Thus, the smaller BD770i model comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX ("Dragon Range"), which can clock 8 cores and 16 threads with 3.6 to 5.1 GHz and consumes a maximum of 75 watts. The BD790i, which will be released later, will then have an AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX with 16 cores and 32 threads.
However, the really interesting thing is that there is also a full PCIe 5.0 x16 port "on board" for the upcoming graphics cards. Of course, current top models with PCIe 4.0 can also be operated on this.
Current memory is also supported with the DDR5 standard. However, only via 2 SO-DIMMs with a maximum expansion of 64 GB. For SSDs, there are also 2 × PCIe 5.0 x4, as well as one LAN with 2.5 Gb/s and Wi-Fi 6E.
The price is also attractive because the small BD770i version with an AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX currently costs just 459 Euros (~525 US-Dollar). According to the website, it will be shipped with customs clearance from an EU warehouse starting in December.
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