RF nutcase here (ham radio and WiFi wardriver). As long as they're 1/4 wavelength or further, you're fine. 2.4ghz is ~13cm. 1/4 of 13cm is 3.5cm, so by bananascale, your most excellent WiFi antennas are A-OK 👌 as they are. Loved the review and now considering the board for low power homelab!
Haha, same; want to use it with Proxmox and running some containers: Bitwarden Server, Paperless ngx, Gitlab Server + Runner + Jellyfin (with the files stored on a NAS, not the system itself). Did you go through with it? And if so, which RAM/SSDs do you recommend? Also which case + PSU did you use? I'm having trouble deciding. Was thinking about 19" and putting it into a small wall mounted rack together with a 2.5 Gbit switch.
@@sznikers When you get into higher power desktop chips, a soldered IHS is going to perform better than direct die cooling with paste. You'd need liquid metal to get better than stock performance, not really feasible for consumer DIY builds. The IHS also protects the die and makes installing a cooler basically foolproof. I can understand why they still use them, but I do think they could be improved.
@@taylorsharp5928 nope, thats still worldview back from solid block of copper cpu cooler times. Literally every respectable person on yt that removed that crap from their cpu and has managed to do correct mounting of cooler shows -10 to -20C better results without IHS. Which is completely in line with basic laws of physics as ihs doubles gaps which are terrible for heat transfer (cpu->ihs->cooler instead of cpu->cooler) and adds 5 millimetres of metal which is completely unnecessary thermal resistance. And you dont have to tell me how to mount a cooler, i did it all the time in athlon times, never cracked anything, that what cpu shim is for.
@@sznikers Unfortunately for you, you aren't the only person who builds PCs, and regardless of if it's happened to you a cracked die is a very real risk of direct die cooling, so the IHS isn't going anywhere
I do want to throw my hat in the ring for this one, I bought a bd770i, it was DOA, the fans would spin up as soon as 24 pin power was inserted, the return process was a bit long but eventually I got there and got my refund from minisforum (and didn't need to ship it back to HK, they had a local warehouse.) 10/10 support
This looks like it would make a really good 1U homelab server. The no bifurcation is not ideal if you want to add M.2 expansion card, but would be just great for 10G+ NICs. Seems like it would be a GREAT virtualization platform. I am super interested.
You can totally ditch the M2 cooler, and slap in a M-Key SATA controller on the far M.2 port, you get 5 drives on top of a regular M.2 drive. I'm really thinking hard about trying it with a Jonesbo N2, maybe throw a P4 in with the cracked driver for graphics virtualization. 🤤 Edit: If you're feeling extra exotic, there's ones with dual JMicron controllers on the same M.2 card, getting up to 8 drives. 2 boards, 4 adapters, 32 drives, a pair of T4s, and you've got enough VM grunt and storage for a full office in 1u. Scary from a security perspective, but amazing from an efficiency perspective.
Excellent review as usual. And great product chosen. Would like to see very low end, lower power, low cost solutions like this for home server or enterprise type of displays and production systems. We don't game on production floors as you know perhaps.
The review is not excellent since they published results that are way below the expected performance. They should have contacted Minisforum and ruled out the error first.
I'd be very interested in the $200 or $250 version of this with a bit more down market CPU. maybe more like the 7545U. It looks like a great way to build a decent starter gaming machine. for pairing with a GPU like a 7600.
Just bought this board, cant wait till it arrives. Updating my topton intel N5105 itx board with this one for my Unraid server. To bad minisforum didn't slap on some sata ports, 4 at least or better 6 sata ports would be perfect. I'll use my nvme to 5x sata adapter since I only use one native nvme for cache, 4x 18tb sata hdd and a 4tb sata ssd for semi cache so this board should suit these needs.
I got this bd770i for $427 after tax and shipping. A b650 board plus an r7 7700 comes in a little over $600 after taxes. Considering theyre essentially the same cpu there is savings to be had if youre willing to forego upgrade ability and and a sata express controller.
Informative, and it looks like a decent product. If they add more functionality to their bios I wouldn't mind seeing them do something simular with Strix Halo. 👍👍👍👍
Two things that made me chuckle - First, I picked up a WiFi antenna like that earlier this year when taking my MiniITX PC on a trip to a convention. worked great, way better than the ones that came with the motherboard. Second thing was Wendell's use of a drill to work on the PC. I did that once in the late 80s and had to take it into a computer store because of a virus (1st and last time I ever needed to do that) as I didn't have access to another machine to create a clean disk to remove the virus. Store techs did a check on the machine and immediately noticed that I'd gone full power on one screw and had to replace it with a larger machine screw. That drill did not have a clutch setting or keyless chuck. I picked up a power screwdriver shortly thereafter. 😅
Two questions: 1) Any plans to test the 7945hx variant? I’m very curious to see if that bottle necks the GPU less. 2) Any testing done with a higher pressure fan? Again the curiosity being a better cooled CPU might be throttling less if at all giving more headroom. Other than that, great to see! I’ve been really excited for this platform for a while.
@Level1Techs 12:26 That annoying boiler snake could be avoided if you tilt the radiator block a little more toward the radiator shutoff valve side for the condensate water to return more easily to the pipe and prevent those thermal shock which makes the pipes crunching sound.
for future nerding out, I would also love to hear your thoughts on the best JBOD configuration in addition to a best video accelerated configuration. JBOD+low power is a sweet spot I'm still searching for
ever since i saw this motherboard i thought it was one of the coolest itx boards out, really considering buying it for a custom itx build with the gigabyte low profile 4060
FYI, the XX45 mobile processors are desktop processors in a laptop BGA package, except for the 8000 series which seems to have re-branded some of the 7X40 to 8X45 Leave it to AMD to break their naming scheme in a single generation This being a desktop processor is actually pretty nice if you plan on adding a GPU Yes you lack an AI engine, and your iGPU is piddly 2CUs of RDNA2 insteaad of 12CUs of RDNA3 found in the 7740 On the up side you get 2x the cache per core on the 7745 over the 7740(monolithic AMD APUs normally have 1/2 the cache per core of their desktop equivalent chiplet based solutions)
Also of note, you give up a significant amount of efficiency, not only is the 7740 monolithic, but its also 4nm, where as dragon range 7745 is 5nm+6nm, requires higher power to reach the same clock speeds, memory controller is on 6nm so it is probably less capable, and the increased picojoule per bit needed to send data back and forth between cores and IO is..... not as much as i'd expect, but still alarming.
I'd like something like this but with dual 2.5gbe ports and 2-4 sata connectors for a nas. I've been looking around and the stuff I seen that kind of meet those specs are by companies I've never heard of.
You're not alone in the regard. I've been on the hunt for a low power, Ryzen embedded solution for a couple years now. Unfortunately, most solutions have been way pricier than standard desktop hardware, and the energy savings simply weren't worth the extra money.
Was looking at this to upgrade an older computer (3rd gen intel CPU), not usually an early adopter of any new tech, so thanks for a look at the MOBO & BIOs, and will wait till it becomes more mature and bugs are flushed out, planned on using the old case & PSU.
This seems to be a REALLY great board for a small homelab server running Proxmox and a few containers. Thinking about using it as a Bitwarden Server, Paperless ngx, my local GitLab Server + Runners and Jellyfin (with the video files stored on a NAS).
Artic cooling is underestimated, so true been using their stuff for more than 2 decades and some of them are really good, like even outperform noctua sometimes.
I keep coming back to this video. Performing better than a 9900K, and it's got E-sports GPU performance out of the box. RandomGaminginHD has a video showing what it looks like in a few titles
I have the same wifi antenna sitting on my desktop now. It came with 2 meter cables. There was so much loss I couldn't connect to the router 15 feet down the hall. Line of sight. Get your soldering iron out and trim the cables. The antennas close together like that makes it directional. The direction is perpendicular to the antennas
I was having issues with WiFi 5GHz on MSI x570 Tomahawk WiFi Max board that has tiny little antennae sticks. I bought those exact looking antenna set from aliexpress for about $10 and attached it to the side of the case magnetically. Solved the WiFi issues.
Most of the ITX Mobo with built-in mobile CPU (Blue / Red Team) has a full size 16x PCIE slot for ext GPU but only 8x slot pins soldered on the mobo. Hence, your ext GPU has lower FPS. Yet, it is still better to connect ext GPU via a laptop M2 Nvme Slot which is 4x only.
Testing a few more fan option would be interesting. For slim fans would suggest Silverstone air slimmer 120mm & alphacool sl-15 fans. For larger cases Super Flower megacool 120mm would interesting. Cheers
I builded a Dan A4-SFX System yesterday with this Baby. 32gigs Corsair Vengeance 5600 (they run at 5200 CL46), 2* MP700 (1Tb & 2Tb) and an Inno3D RTX 4070 ti 3X OC. Runs nice so far but gets [as expected] hot and loud. But awesome performance in this tiny package ❤❤❤ Btw the Board costs 477€ over here in Germany. 🙄
@ Not entirely unusable. You can still put at least an M.2 adapter in the slot. Also the suitability depends on what you want. Personally I think that the Chopin suits an APU integrated motherboard better than putting the motherboard in a larger case with a discrete GPU.
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@@phyotyla you can, and it does, but doing that would be even more wasteful IMO because you would have even less of a reason for fast storage on a case that's clearly meant to be a display piece and lacks the space to install a dedicated GPU to process the kind of demanding graphics of games that would require such fast loading times to begin with, so the only reason where using such a case makes sense in my head would be a media center PC or SFF desktop for work/light gaming, therefore my initial comment.
I would like a HX90G(or whatever from that series) in motherboard form, it's basically mitx already if you open it up. Would be awesome for computers shoehorned into old consoles and the like.
I think having two Ethernet ports by default would be nice, as then it opens up the possibility of using it as a router/ firewall. Paired with any multi port switch, two Ethernet ports is all a device needs to route the traffic through the switch to many other devices. I think it’s the perfect use case for these miniature devices. Considering that hobbiest computer enthusiasts usually have a full size flagship PC and would really appreciate the miniature size for something like their own router.
More than two Ethernet ports, the lack of connectivity and extensibility is quite dramatic. Sure the PCIe x16 and the two M.2 brings some options if you add conversion cards but the rear i/o shield should be more populated than that for such an ITX motherboard. For server purpose: is there at least a RS232 onboard port somewhere?
I hope mobile on desktop really takes off. Modern mobile processors are +8 cores, powerful, and power efficient. I could see it being a solid option for unraid. Convert 1 m.2 to a 10gb adapter, and keep my HBA in the pcie slot.
I would love to see you review the MINISFORUM AR900i as well. I'd really like to know if it would be usable as a small form factor Proxmox host. Thanks for your good work!
A review of the AR900i would be too late for me. I couldn't wait and ordered it the day it was announced. The board matches almost exactly my needs. Looking forward to receiving the board. I have a Fractal Terra case already, but will probably install the board in a
My 5800X with mITX mobo, NH-C14 and PBO gets 2230/10773 in Geekbench 6. I'm running it @ 130W. So I guess it's quite close, close enough for me. 18% slower single core can take some FPS with it. But for homelab use this will be sick. I also wondering if this mobo would fit in my relatives old MSI SFF prebuilt. Would be a huge upgrade from i5-6400.
This is almost exactly what I wanted. A mobile processor in a desktop motherboard. Now, add a bunch of SATA ports, m.2 ports, bifurcation, and.. yeah, we're there. I want a bunch of x1 to x4 m.2 devices for storage - depending on what is cheaper, SATA or m.2, at any given time. Some SATA controllers, what not. Would make a perfect server - for me.
1. Lack of proper front panel header (no usb-c etc). 2. As far as I am aware, despite having 3 rear panel audio jack connectors, this thing does not support 5.1 audio (one jack is for mike only) - this is at least what manual says. Those 2 things are "deal breaker" for me. Otherwise - this seems like a very good option to save cash and to make the whole process of building a pc easier as you don't have to mount CPU & Cooler yourself. If cash is not your limiting factor and you still want power efficient, but powerful PC - then using Ryzen 9 7900 seems like a better option.
Would probably fit in a 1u with a tiny bit of ducting to force are through that heatsink. Could make for a great compute node for a few things. the lack of bifurcation on the x16 is a problem tho
I was looking into this for my home server upgrade which I am still running on my old Z77/2600k. It was looking interesting until - No PCIe Bifurcation. I am planning all NVMe SSD server and need that x16 slot in x4x4x4x4 config for it to work with the add-on M.2 card.
can confirm: its a headache to oc the ram. have the step up of this board(the BD709i SE which has the 7940HX and not the 7945HX like the one in the non-SE model). Runs great in my mff rig. I run the program called Fan Control as the built in fan control is confusing and not as granular on control. This replaced my 3900x rig as it was starting to struggle with these poorly optimized game coming out and its been a massive improvement to frame pacing and 1%/.1% lows.
Not sure why this was being compared to the 7800x3d when that CPU alone costs exactly the same as the BD770i. Would've been a bit more fair to pair it up against a 7600X and a $100-150 motherboard because that sits it along side the BD770i in terms of cost. I know that the 7800x3d is the best gaming CPU you can upgrade to, so maybe you could've compared them both to show how much of a performance difference there is between the equivalent priced CPU as well as the best CPU for the platform (so far).
I read this doesn't support Pci-e bifurcation. Is this true? Do you think there will be a bios update to enable it? Looking to run 4+ nvme NAS with a drop in expansion card. Would the AR900i be a better choice for that?
I would like to see how a board like this performs as a network router with a few 10GbE or 25GbE ports doing full routing with a IDS/IPS/Snort set of rules running.
The Ryzen 7 7745HX is just a binned Ryzen 7 7700 being packaged for laptops. And now Minisforum is bringing it back into the desktop form factor but soldered onto a board. What a weird product.
Hearing how low the power consumption actually is, I am quite astounded that Minisforum did tell me that the BD770i is not considered compatible with a XT-150 / XT-160 Pico-PSU... (Yes, I did ask their support exactly that question, as I happen to have exactly that laying around from an old project.)
I'm one of the guys who preordered and received the first batch of this, the original thermal paste on it is shit, had to remove it but it worked well until few weeks ago when it stopped working with GPU riser cables, very frustrated with BD770i, not recommending it to anyone until they can fix all these dame issues.
Wonder why they didn't go with ECC RAM... Also really wish board designers would pursue DTX more. You could make such a good NAS solution if you moved all of the front-panel I/O above the PCIe slot (or right-angled it if you run out of room) and kitted out all the available edge real-estate with SATA ports. You'd only have to design the board once, effectively, just changing the chipset and socket pinout with each generation.
Got 2x P12 slim as intake in the bottom of my SFF build and when they go over 70% RPM, it sounds as the blades are hitting the fan frame and it gets super loud, I would recommend Silverstone Air Slimmer 120 or FN124 or something from Noctua over the P12 slim tbh.
It annoys me they don't publish (online) what the cooler mounting form factor is. Is it AM4/5 mounting holes + height? Would be great if the existing heatsink could be swapped for a Noctua downdraft cooler.
Miniforums has a intel 13900h version of this but it only supports up to PCIe 4.0 x8 speed. Would be nice to see a 13980hx version of this with a 4.0 x16 or a 5.0 x8 or x16 slot.
This would have been much more interesting if this had used a platform appropriate GPU, like a rx6600XT or some such. The whole concept of budget goes right out the window with that GPU
PCIe 5 x16 + x4 and no USB4 as well as the wattage aren't all that surprising. That CPU is basically an R7-7700(X) - only in a BGA package, not socketed.
Yo Dawgs. Please do a followup on this case. Is virtualzation enabled? Could minisforum add the toggle option In the bios? What are the option to hack your way to working front panel usb-c? And why doesn't minisforum post links to compatible cases? Like they show the cases without naming them. How are we supposed to know what to buy? I have Googled to no avail.
Unfortunately I asked to them for the Intel model and it not support resize bar for the pci x16... Have you checked this features on the amd variant you have that is newer than the intel one ?
Love the case and that there are more doing these soc motherboards, but damn it, using a drill to assemble a pc just feels so barbaric to me for some reason lol
Since the board doesn't have any SATA ports I am considering replacing both M2 slots with 6-SATA adapter on each. I will also plan to add a PCIe-5 4 M.2 NVME Raid adapter. I am concerned about the BIO detecting the connected drives and being able to boot to to any of the NVME or SATA drives?
Send mobo and/or entire rig to GN for sound testing? Would be interested to know if this combo of components can eliminate the "whine" that the Tera was known for.
I have been watching this for a while now and really want one for a nice mitx gaming build, apparently they are going to make a 7945hx3d variant?? But the thing I find limiting is no sata ports 😢 also been wondering about using an aio liquid cool 🤔
The build was too low a TDP, that's why you had the boiler snake appear. Get one of the fire breathing setups going and it keeps the boiler snakes away.
It should perform very similarly to an R7 7700X since it's basically the same chip. The big performance difference might be due to the slow JDEC SODIMM memory. Does the minisforum support memory overclocking or XMP/EXPO?
just ordered a bd790i motherboard from minisforum. Identical to the BD770i. Wondering if it is possible to attach an am5 water-cooling block in place of the custom cooler
RF nutcase here (ham radio and WiFi wardriver). As long as they're 1/4 wavelength or further, you're fine. 2.4ghz is ~13cm. 1/4 of 13cm is 3.5cm, so by bananascale, your most excellent WiFi antennas are A-OK 👌 as they are. Loved the review and now considering the board for low power homelab!
There'd be at least one other here… 73 de kf7qzc.
Aren't they kind of close together to benefit from diversity gain?
@@Vegemeister1 I don't think there is a design care for reception diversity.
Haha, same; want to use it with Proxmox and running some containers: Bitwarden Server, Paperless ngx, Gitlab Server + Runner + Jellyfin (with the files stored on a NAS, not the system itself).
Did you go through with it? And if so, which RAM/SSDs do you recommend?
Also which case + PSU did you use? I'm having trouble deciding. Was thinking about 19" and putting it into a small wall mounted rack together with a 2.5 Gbit switch.
Having a natively "de-lidded" and soldered CPU is a nice benefit for a SFF build. You get better cooling with a small cooler, and better efficiency.
True but not novel, in that it's the general approach to building any laptop chip based system, including all of the sub mini ITX boxes like NUCs
IHS should have died the moment heat pipes had become standard in CPU coolers.
Its a heat stopper at this point.
@@sznikers When you get into higher power desktop chips, a soldered IHS is going to perform better than direct die cooling with paste. You'd need liquid metal to get better than stock performance, not really feasible for consumer DIY builds. The IHS also protects the die and makes installing a cooler basically foolproof. I can understand why they still use them, but I do think they could be improved.
@@taylorsharp5928 nope, thats still worldview back from solid block of copper cpu cooler times. Literally every respectable person on yt that removed that crap from their cpu and has managed to do correct mounting of cooler shows -10 to -20C better results without IHS. Which is completely in line with basic laws of physics as ihs doubles gaps which are terrible for heat transfer (cpu->ihs->cooler instead of cpu->cooler) and adds 5 millimetres of metal which is completely unnecessary thermal resistance.
And you dont have to tell me how to mount a cooler, i did it all the time in athlon times, never cracked anything, that what cpu shim is for.
@@sznikers Unfortunately for you, you aren't the only person who builds PCs, and regardless of if it's happened to you a cracked die is a very real risk of direct die cooling, so the IHS isn't going anywhere
I do want to throw my hat in the ring for this one, I bought a bd770i, it was DOA, the fans would spin up as soon as 24 pin power was inserted, the return process was a bit long but eventually I got there and got my refund from minisforum (and didn't need to ship it back to HK, they had a local warehouse.) 10/10 support
Sounds like you forgot to plug in the 8pin for the soc 😂
@@1xXNimrodXx1 Um no, I did not forget, I've build dozens of PCs and servers
@@akr4s1a do you know if it has ecc support?
This looks like it would make a really good 1U homelab server. The no bifurcation is not ideal if you want to add M.2 expansion card, but would be just great for 10G+ NICs. Seems like it would be a GREAT virtualization platform. I am super interested.
You can totally ditch the M2 cooler, and slap in a M-Key SATA controller on the far M.2 port, you get 5 drives on top of a regular M.2 drive. I'm really thinking hard about trying it with a Jonesbo N2, maybe throw a P4 in with the cracked driver for graphics virtualization. 🤤
Edit: If you're feeling extra exotic, there's ones with dual JMicron controllers on the same M.2 card, getting up to 8 drives. 2 boards, 4 adapters, 32 drives, a pair of T4s, and you've got enough VM grunt and storage for a full office in 1u. Scary from a security perspective, but amazing from an efficiency perspective.
That looks great for using in a rack mount enclosure as well.
Yes.
This would be great to use as a rack mounted Laptop replacement for live Audio
Yeah I have 4 old super micro 1U Citrix server enclosures that I’m just dying to something like this in for my k3s Experimenting
Yes but which one and which PSU?
It's great to see we finally get laptop SoCs on itx boards
I so want this with the 780m APU and am4 cooler mounting. That would make a great passive cooled PC.
FYI bifurcation was added in BIOS 1.05
Excellent review as usual. And great product chosen. Would like to see very low end, lower power, low cost solutions like this for home server or enterprise type of displays and production systems. We don't game on production floors as you know perhaps.
The review is not excellent since they published results that are way below the expected performance. They should have contacted Minisforum and ruled out the error first.
I'd be very interested in the $200 or $250 version of this with a bit more down market CPU. maybe more like the 7545U. It looks like a great way to build a decent starter gaming machine. for pairing with a GPU like a 7600.
yup a 4c zen4 is needed aswell..i hope more options coming
I'm thinking minisforum has those.
@@DeltaSierra426 they have mini pcs (zen3 or zen 2 based) but not itx sized boards.
Yeah a step down to midrange would be a killer emulation machine. Paired with a one-fan or LP GPU would be amazing.
Seem a decent choice for 1080p gaming at long term
Just bought this board, cant wait till it arrives. Updating my topton intel N5105 itx board with this one for my Unraid server. To bad minisforum didn't slap on some sata ports, 4 at least or better 6 sata ports would be perfect. I'll use my nvme to 5x sata adapter since I only use one native nvme for cache, 4x 18tb sata hdd and a 4tb sata ssd for semi cache so this board should suit these needs.
I got this bd770i for $427 after tax and shipping. A b650 board plus an r7 7700 comes in a little over $600 after taxes. Considering theyre essentially the same cpu there is savings to be had if youre willing to forego upgrade ability and and a sata express controller.
Informative, and it looks like a decent product. If they add more functionality to their bios I wouldn't mind seeing them do something simular with Strix Halo.
👍👍👍👍
Two things that made me chuckle - First, I picked up a WiFi antenna like that earlier this year when taking my MiniITX PC on a trip to a convention. worked great, way better than the ones that came with the motherboard.
Second thing was Wendell's use of a drill to work on the PC. I did that once in the late 80s and had to take it into a computer store because of a virus (1st and last time I ever needed to do that) as I didn't have access to another machine to create a clean disk to remove the virus. Store techs did a check on the machine and immediately noticed that I'd gone full power on one screw and had to replace it with a larger machine screw. That drill did not have a clutch setting or keyless chuck. I picked up a power screwdriver shortly thereafter. 😅
I just built a ITX 7800X3D build, this would have been perfect for it. Bravo, Minisforum!
Two questions:
1) Any plans to test the 7945hx variant? I’m very curious to see if that bottle necks the GPU less.
2) Any testing done with a higher pressure fan? Again the curiosity being a better cooled CPU might be throttling less if at all giving more headroom.
Other than that, great to see! I’ve been really excited for this platform for a while.
@Level1Techs 12:26 That annoying boiler snake could be avoided if you tilt the radiator block a little more toward the radiator shutoff valve side for the condensate water to return more easily to the pipe and prevent those thermal shock which makes the pipes crunching sound.
The boiler snake is an institution!
for future nerding out, I would also love to hear your thoughts on the best JBOD configuration in addition to a best video accelerated configuration. JBOD+low power is a sweet spot I'm still searching for
I'd really love to have this same mobo but with something like 7745HX3D and USB-C header.
Excellent idea from MinisForum.
ever since i saw this motherboard i thought it was one of the coolest itx boards out, really considering buying it for a custom itx build with the gigabyte low profile 4060
FYI, the XX45 mobile processors are desktop processors in a laptop BGA package, except for the 8000 series which seems to have re-branded some of the 7X40 to 8X45
Leave it to AMD to break their naming scheme in a single generation
This being a desktop processor is actually pretty nice if you plan on adding a GPU
Yes you lack an AI engine, and your iGPU is piddly 2CUs of RDNA2 insteaad of 12CUs of RDNA3 found in the 7740
On the up side you get 2x the cache per core on the 7745 over the 7740(monolithic AMD APUs normally have 1/2 the cache per core of their desktop equivalent chiplet based solutions)
Also of note, you give up a significant amount of efficiency, not only is the 7740 monolithic, but its also 4nm, where as dragon range 7745 is 5nm+6nm, requires higher power to reach the same clock speeds, memory controller is on 6nm so it is probably less capable, and the increased picojoule per bit needed to send data back and forth between cores and IO is..... not as much as i'd expect, but still alarming.
Need more innovation like this! Thank you for finding gems like this!
I'd like something like this but with dual 2.5gbe ports and 2-4 sata connectors for a nas. I've been looking around and the stuff I seen that kind of meet those specs are by companies I've never heard of.
You're not alone in the regard. I've been on the hunt for a low power, Ryzen embedded solution for a couple years now. Unfortunately, most solutions have been way pricier than standard desktop hardware, and the energy savings simply weren't worth the extra money.
Was looking at this to upgrade an older computer (3rd gen intel CPU), not usually an early adopter of any new tech, so thanks for a look at the MOBO & BIOs, and will wait till it becomes more mature and bugs are flushed out, planned on using the old case & PSU.
Artic is indeed underrated. Have an Arctic Freezer 64 that ran from 2008 till 2020 without a hitch. Still works, just upgraded to a liquid freezer...
I saw that one a few days ago - I just love it!
This seems to be a REALLY great board for a small homelab server running Proxmox and a few containers. Thinking about using it as a Bitwarden Server, Paperless ngx, my local GitLab Server + Runners and Jellyfin (with the video files stored on a NAS).
Laptop CPUs are underrated. Those Chinesium Intel laptop chips slapped onto a lga 1151 adapter are pretty sick. 8 cores on Z170? Yes please.
It reminds me of the older days of ITX, running a Pentium M with direct die. More interesting than just running normal desktop chips.
Artic cooling is underestimated, so true been using their stuff for more than 2 decades and some of them are really good, like even outperform noctua sometimes.
Id like to use this for a small ITX 5 liter build. Would be interesting to see overclocking performance with Ryzen Master since that's an HX variant.
I keep coming back to this video. Performing better than a 9900K, and it's got E-sports GPU performance out of the box. RandomGaminginHD has a video showing what it looks like in a few titles
I have the same wifi antenna sitting on my desktop now. It came with 2 meter cables. There was so much loss I couldn't connect to the router 15 feet down the hall. Line of sight. Get your soldering iron out and trim the cables. The antennas close together like that makes it directional. The direction is perpendicular to the antennas
For my fellow 🇬🇧 folks minisforum has a flash sale (£30 off) the BD770i till 10am Saturday 20th it's £359 delivered
I was having issues with WiFi 5GHz on MSI x570 Tomahawk WiFi Max board that has tiny little antennae sticks. I bought those exact looking antenna set from aliexpress for about $10 and attached it to the side of the case magnetically. Solved the WiFi issues.
Better idea for a homelab to replace an old and power hungry processor
I really want coreboot support. BIOS support and lack of updates have become far too often. I really want good updates when security issues come up.
I love the Boiler Snake animation!
Most of the ITX Mobo with built-in mobile CPU (Blue / Red Team) has a full size 16x PCIE slot for ext GPU but only 8x slot pins soldered on the mobo. Hence, your ext GPU has lower FPS. Yet, it is still better to connect ext GPU via a laptop M2 Nvme Slot which is 4x only.
Testing a few more fan option would be interesting. For slim fans would suggest Silverstone air slimmer 120mm & alphacool sl-15 fans. For larger cases Super Flower megacool 120mm would interesting. Cheers
I builded a Dan A4-SFX System yesterday with this Baby. 32gigs Corsair Vengeance 5600 (they run at 5200 CL46), 2* MP700 (1Tb & 2Tb) and an Inno3D RTX 4070 ti 3X OC. Runs nice so far but gets [as expected] hot and loud. But awesome performance in this tiny package ❤❤❤
Btw the Board costs 477€ over here in Germany. 🙄
In Win Chopin would probably work well with this. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be (widely) available nowadays.
It would be a terrible waste since you would be rendering that pcie5 slot unusable.
Antec Minuet too
@ Not entirely unusable. You can still put at least an M.2 adapter in the slot. Also the suitability depends on what you want. Personally I think that the Chopin suits an APU integrated motherboard better than putting the motherboard in a larger case with a discrete GPU.
@@phyotyla you can, and it does, but doing that would be even more wasteful IMO because you would have even less of a reason for fast storage on a case that's clearly meant to be a display piece and lacks the space to install a dedicated GPU to process the kind of demanding graphics of games that would require such fast loading times to begin with, so the only reason where using such a case makes sense in my head would be a media center PC or SFF desktop for work/light gaming, therefore my initial comment.
I would get that if it gets released for the 8000 series APUs that will come out next month.
Best thing to use this for imo? A compact gaming console-like PC
I would like a HX90G(or whatever from that series) in motherboard form, it's basically mitx already if you open it up.
Would be awesome for computers shoehorned into old consoles and the like.
looks like a great drop in replacement to the old system i3 i built my dad almost 10 years ago
THat would be quite a nice replacement indeed! (But, unless he is a 4k Cyberpunk fan, perhaps a 13100-based DDR4 rig would save you $400?
@@mdd1963The model shown in the video is $399 right now (RAM not included). Though the normal price is $499.
I think having two Ethernet ports by default would be nice, as then it opens up the possibility of using it as a router/ firewall. Paired with any multi port switch, two Ethernet ports is all a device needs to route the traffic through the switch to many other devices.
I think it’s the perfect use case for these miniature devices. Considering that hobbiest computer enthusiasts usually have a full size flagship PC and would really appreciate the miniature size for something like their own router.
More than two Ethernet ports, the lack of connectivity and extensibility is quite dramatic. Sure the PCIe x16 and the two M.2 brings some options if you add conversion cards but the rear i/o shield should be more populated than that for such an ITX motherboard.
For server purpose: is there at least a RS232 onboard port somewhere?
this processor is pretty overkill for a router though.
I hope mobile on desktop really takes off. Modern mobile processors are +8 cores, powerful, and power efficient. I could see it being a solid option for unraid. Convert 1 m.2 to a 10gb adapter, and keep my HBA in the pcie slot.
I would love to see you review the MINISFORUM AR900i as well. I'd really like to know if it would be usable as a small form factor Proxmox host. Thanks for your good work!
Came here to say exactly this. Would love to see the AR900i. I wish it had vPRO enabled on it but I don't think it is based on their website.
A review of the AR900i would be too late for me. I couldn't wait and ordered it the day it was announced. The board matches almost exactly my needs. Looking forward to receiving the board.
I have a Fractal Terra case already, but will probably install the board in a
Please update when you get the board. It could be a great solution for a lot of people.
Been wanting to see their i9-13900HX version (AR900i), this will do for now.
My 5800X with mITX mobo, NH-C14 and PBO gets 2230/10773 in Geekbench 6. I'm running it @ 130W. So I guess it's quite close, close enough for me. 18% slower single core can take some FPS with it.
But for homelab use this will be sick.
I also wondering if this mobo would fit in my relatives old MSI SFF prebuilt. Would be a huge upgrade from i5-6400.
This is almost exactly what I wanted. A mobile processor in a desktop motherboard. Now, add a bunch of SATA ports, m.2 ports, bifurcation, and.. yeah, we're there.
I want a bunch of x1 to x4 m.2 devices for storage - depending on what is cheaper, SATA or m.2, at any given time. Some SATA controllers, what not. Would make a perfect server - for me.
I think the I/O shield is a bit of an oversight on MinisForum behalf. I hope they'll make it integrated in the future.
Are you planning to do the BD790i SE? That one looks amazing.
been wondering where the boiler snake has been
Great vid 👍🏾👍🏾
I wish I knew about this before snagging a used AM4 PC on eBay to be an in-home Steam-game-streaming PC, this would have been PERFECT.
1. Lack of proper front panel header (no usb-c etc).
2. As far as I am aware, despite having 3 rear panel audio jack connectors, this thing does not support 5.1 audio (one jack is for mike only) - this is at least what manual says.
Those 2 things are "deal breaker" for me. Otherwise - this seems like a very good option to save cash and to make the whole process of building a pc easier as you don't have to mount CPU & Cooler yourself. If cash is not your limiting factor and you still want power efficient, but powerful PC - then using Ryzen 9 7900 seems like a better option.
You can use usb 3 - usb C internal adapter :)
Looks like it would fit in a 2 U chassis for a home lab build. Probably a couple of them.
Would probably fit in a 1u with a tiny bit of ducting to force are through that heatsink. Could make for a great compute node for a few things. the lack of bifurcation on the x16 is a problem tho
I was looking into this for my home server upgrade which I am still running on my old Z77/2600k. It was looking interesting until - No PCIe Bifurcation. I am planning all NVMe SSD server and need that x16 slot in x4x4x4x4 config for it to work with the add-on M.2 card.
It does PCIe Bifurcation with latest BIOS
can confirm: its a headache to oc the ram. have the step up of this board(the BD709i SE which has the 7940HX and not the 7945HX like the one in the non-SE model). Runs great in my mff rig. I run the program called Fan Control as the built in fan control is confusing and not as granular on control. This replaced my 3900x rig as it was starting to struggle with these poorly optimized game coming out and its been a massive improvement to frame pacing and 1%/.1% lows.
Yeahh you may get some reflection if on 2.4. Totally a possibility. Would need to measure it with a meter and see.
Not sure why this was being compared to the 7800x3d when that CPU alone costs exactly the same as the BD770i. Would've been a bit more fair to pair it up against a 7600X and a $100-150 motherboard because that sits it along side the BD770i in terms of cost. I know that the 7800x3d is the best gaming CPU you can upgrade to, so maybe you could've compared them both to show how much of a performance difference there is between the equivalent priced CPU as well as the best CPU for the platform (so far).
Sorry, if it was mentioned and I misheard. Have you measured idle power consumption from the AC line ?
I read this doesn't support Pci-e bifurcation. Is this true? Do you think there will be a bios update to enable it? Looking to run 4+ nvme NAS with a drop in expansion card. Would the AR900i be a better choice for that?
This could be a mini fax server. Put a mainpine modem in it and a windows server license you would be good to go.
You get a thumbs up for having the most bizarre use case of the day!
I would love to build system like this for simple game server use and maybe as small storage space for person data and movies.
I would like to see how a board like this performs as a network router with a few 10GbE or 25GbE ports doing full routing with a IDS/IPS/Snort set of rules running.
For that, you'd want their new MS-01, which is a an i9-13900H with 2x10GbE SFP+ and 2x2.5GbE.
The Ryzen 7 7745HX is just a binned Ryzen 7 7700 being packaged for laptops. And now Minisforum is bringing it back into the desktop form factor but soldered onto a board. What a weird product.
these types of boards would be so much better if they either shipped with proper cooling system or allowed use of regular aftermarket sets
Hearing how low the power consumption actually is, I am quite astounded that Minisforum did tell me that the BD770i is not considered compatible with a XT-150 / XT-160 Pico-PSU...
(Yes, I did ask their support exactly that question, as I happen to have exactly that laying around from an old project.)
I'm one of the guys who preordered and received the first batch of this, the original thermal paste on it is shit, had to remove it but it worked well until few weeks ago when it stopped working with GPU riser cables, very frustrated with BD770i, not recommending it to anyone until they can fix all these dame issues.
Wonder why they didn't go with ECC RAM...
Also really wish board designers would pursue DTX more. You could make such a good NAS solution if you moved all of the front-panel I/O above the PCIe slot (or right-angled it if you run out of room) and kitted out all the available edge real-estate with SATA ports. You'd only have to design the board once, effectively, just changing the chipset and socket pinout with each generation.
Do you have reason to believe they didn't route all 80 bitlines? ECC SODIMMS exist, but they're *expensive*.
Got 2x P12 slim as intake in the bottom of my SFF build and when they go over 70% RPM, it sounds as the blades are hitting the fan frame and it gets super loud, I would recommend Silverstone Air Slimmer 120 or FN124 or something from Noctua over the P12 slim tbh.
It annoys me they don't publish (online) what the cooler mounting form factor is. Is it AM4/5 mounting holes + height? Would be great if the existing heatsink could be swapped for a Noctua downdraft cooler.
I love mine! Slapped a noctua fan on it with a 3060. Only thing I didn't like was the fan mounting hardware. Felt really flimsy.
Want to see more of this/these setups.
Nice media center gaming on 4K TV setup. How's the Linux support for the motherboard?
Miniforums has a intel 13900h version of this but it only supports up to PCIe 4.0 x8 speed. Would be nice to see a 13980hx version of this with a 4.0 x16 or a 5.0 x8 or x16 slot.
This would have been much more interesting if this had used a platform appropriate GPU, like a rx6600XT or some such. The whole concept of budget goes right out the window with that GPU
6:08 those bechnmarks in CPU-Z and geekbench have to be flawed, they are extremely bad.
This would be perfect for a pfsense box I’m planning. it’s a shame I can’t find it anywhere
PCIe 5 x16 + x4 and no USB4 as well as the wattage aren't all that surprising. That CPU is basically an R7-7700(X) - only in a BGA package, not socketed.
Yo Dawgs. Please do a followup on this case. Is virtualzation enabled? Could minisforum add the toggle option In the bios? What are the option to hack your way to working front panel usb-c? And why doesn't minisforum post links to compatible cases? Like they show the cases without naming them. How are we supposed to know what to buy? I have Googled to no avail.
This but with the 7945HX would be an amazing little coding box
BD790i is coming.
@@Vhalikuporamee447 Well, then I know what I'll have for my next tiny passive coding box project :D
With 2 m.2 sata controllers this is gonna be my new NAS
Seems like the RAM would really gimp performance. Fastest compatible kit on Newegg was 5200 CL 38? That seems like a major performance compromise.
This is really cool but I want to see the AR900i !
Unfortunately I asked to them for the Intel model and it not support resize bar for the pci x16... Have you checked this features on the amd variant you have that is newer than the intel one ?
Love the case and that there are more doing these soc motherboards, but damn it,
using a drill to assemble a pc just feels so barbaric to me for some reason lol
Indeed poor mobo (and case).
Since the board doesn't have any SATA ports I am considering replacing both M2 slots with 6-SATA adapter on each. I will also plan to add a PCIe-5 4 M.2 NVME Raid adapter. I am concerned about the BIO detecting the connected drives and being able to boot to to any of the NVME or SATA drives?
Send mobo and/or entire rig to GN for sound testing? Would be interested to know if this combo of components can eliminate the "whine" that the Tera was known for.
Looking at these numbers it would appear for 1440 or 4K gaming this might be a VERY viable option even with a high end GPU
I have been watching this for a while now and really want one for a nice mitx gaming build, apparently they are going to make a 7945hx3d variant?? But the thing I find limiting is no sata ports 😢 also been wondering about using an aio liquid cool 🤔
How trusted are the bios from these manufacturers? Minisforum, Beelink etc?
The build was too low a TDP, that's why you had the boiler snake appear. Get one of the fire breathing setups going and it keeps the boiler snakes away.
It should perform very similarly to an R7 7700X since it's basically the same chip. The big performance difference might be due to the slow JDEC SODIMM memory. Does the minisforum support memory overclocking or XMP/EXPO?
No, the performance difference has to be due to some other error. I wonder why they even published these results, this is extremely bad.
Two questions. First what’s the overall height with the Slim fan included? second which screws did you end up using to mount the fan?
I think I'm in love... but I need that X3D cache. it doubled my fps (I know, very edge case...)
@Level1Techs - Wendell, can you confirm the cooler height with the P12 slim is 48mm? Looking to use this in a Velka 7.
just ordered a bd790i motherboard from minisforum. Identical to the BD770i. Wondering if it is possible to attach an am5 water-cooling block in place of the custom cooler