The Minisforum even supports up to 64Gb ram configuration if that is a factor, BUT the AS 6 has much better IO. The 6900HX is actually slightly faster than the 7940HS tho.
@@mrdali67 the part about the io may be right, but the 6900hx being slightly faster than the 7940hs is just not true, the 7940hs beats it in both CPU and GPU tests.
Geekom is now offering Intel based models using i5-13500 through i9-13900, with a slightly smaller form factor than the AMD models. It is hard to say at this stage which mini-pc is the most reliable, because that is an important long term consideration.
For those not in know, amd laptop cpu has better battery life bc it cuts all the IO function to lower uncore power consumption down so yes u get better battery but u don’t get thunderbolt. the nuc has thunderbolt meaning the uncore will be high so it won’t be as efficient as laptops. At daily usage amd chip is also a hot garbage, sometimes even worse than intel
@@opathoris daily power consumption doesn’t equal to FPU does not equal to run R23. A normal human being doesn’t run rendering 24/7 that is why those “benchmarks” u get does not mean sht
For those curious, and if I did my math correctly, then the Intel NUC took about 29 Watt-hours to complete the render, while the AS6 took about 22 Watt-hours to complete the same task.
That was my calculation too. In terms of battery capacity consumption (because this is running from a UPS) that would mean the AS6 would consume ~25% less of the battery's capacity by the end of the job.
@@sorryidgaf.6043 Well IMO it may be living up to the name more than it ever had since when AMD was founded. Nevertheless AMD still does a brilliant job at pushing the market to evolve and innovate, especially back when Ryzen launched and when every time it gets performance bumps.
If it’s anything like the rest of Apple’s new silicon it’d easily have the most performance per watt. Those ARM M2 chips are insane how well they perform for how much power they draw
@@schizofennec I actually wonder we’ll start to see more arm devices make their way into other computers. I’d like to see something like a regular business laptop with a 60Wh battery combined with an Arm cpu. Decent performance and the battery would almost easily last a full workday and then some. Of course in the case of an OS like Windows the biggest issue would be program compatibility.
@@Silentguy_ funny thing is MS was actually the first on ARM and currently have volterra for devs. MS saw the value in ARM ages ago (with the original surface I think it was), hopefully getting apps supported will be easier this time around given Apple and Linux are doing the same. Not to mention the enterprise.
I had wanted a ryzen 7940HS/HX laptop without a dGPU, but it's not made yet. So, I ordered a 7940HS minisforum unit and was completely blown away as to how efficient and fast this thing is. In fact, I'm setting it up to daily drive replacing my 13900K/a770 for a week or so just to see if I miss the power or the 13900K. If you are going to do these comparisons in the future where you compare power usage, you absolutely must do power usage over time (ie, Joules), not just how much power it's drawing during your render. Right now, AMD is very much on top and I hope Intel has an answer in the future (as in yesterday - Xe is showing it's age). The 7940HS is more efficient than any other processor I have and if I lived in an area with frequent power outages or high prices for electricity that forced me to use a solar backup, I'd pick the 7940HS as it's going to run considerably longer on a battery backup system than anything I've tested. PS: These things are WAY overpriced when you consider that they don't have keyboard/mouse/monitor and only make sense as a desktop replacement.
There's a fee companies on aliexpress that make ryzen 7735hs and 7840hs laptops actually. They have really good reviews but come with a locked bios. Not sure how I feel about that, but man am I tempted to get. 7840hs laptop!
Correction. The Intel NUC versions is overpriced. A serious Laptop for more heavy workload is still more expensive than a desktop system, and a dedicated Gaming Laptop that really can push the newest aaa games is extremely overpriced. These 7940Hs and 740 radeon NUCs pack a good punch for both reasonable gaming performance and also some really good multithreaded performance without costing a fortune and being very power efficient. Unless you seriously need the highest single core performance and most effective gpu encoding both Intel and Nvidia has totally lost ground control of how much you can push power usage and prices to claim to be the fastest in class. Intel IS already beaten, Next in line is to get Nvidia either to leave the gaming market for good or start making products that makes sense for normal users.
I’d like to see a comparison to the BeeLink AMD based mini PC. Looking at: - Throttling - Expandability - Connectivity I bought my Sister-in-law and Nephew both a BeeLink from Amazon Prime Day. His is a little better as he will actually use it for school etc; where she will mostly be online or editing documents. I set them up, and thoroughly impressed with both units.
The best part about the mini pc market is you can spend from ~$200ish to ~$900ish and find something to suit most needs. The bad part is there are so many out there it can be hard to find mini's for more niche uses.
For anyone that wants to know - the AS6 is built on the Asus PN53 ExpertCenter Mini-PC - there is an even newer model the PN53-S1 with Ryzen 7000 CPUs - we use them as our barebones kits at work and we love them!
@@kahvac Not in the traditional palm-top cube factor that I'm aware of. Units in that size typically haven't had a dGPU in them and just use the iGPU, when AMD's next range comes out with a better iGPU I would expect you'd get a formidable entry-level battle box out of the R7 version. Getting bigger than the 'cube' Intel used to make 'NUC Extreme' but that is more of a Micro tower as it allows you to install video cards with an x16 slot. This has been taken over by ASUS after they purchased Intel's NUC business - it's now called the ASUS NUC 13 Extreme, up to 750W 3-slot video cards are supported
I appreciate the reply. I need to replace the Dell Precision 7910 Tower with Dual Xeon processors I'm using now I've had it for 7+ years. I don't use it for gaming but need a good unit to run 4 monitors for stock trading and editing 4K videos. Never had an issue with any of these but need to update. I don't need the tower but comes in hand to store (4) 18TB UltraStar's Also never had a problem with those either. Thanks in advance if you have any thoughts.@@theironangel767
Hey, I have a question for you ? Have you ever encountered any issues with those pn-53 devices ? Like reliability issues ? In short, how reliable is it ? I'm asking these questions because I have had a lot of bad experiences with ASUS
@@amandeepsinghnarula We've been using the PN5x series since their Ryzen 4000 APU series in Oct-2020, I suspect we've sold in excess of 350 units in that time. In that time we've had: 1 DOA - which occasionally happens to everything 2 further have been returned after sale due to some kind of warrantable defect, one was an iGPU issue where drivers would cause it to crash and the other was general main board failure. In short, 3 bad PN series machines in greater than 350 over the course of 4 years and multiple product generations.
Spend a lot of time in front of computers. The biggest relief I get is not just the heat, but the quiet that one experiences when they shut down their full sized desktop machine.
That’s the tall NUC. You can expand the IO on the NUC with that bottom portion with another Ethernet, another USB, another HDMI, dp, thunderbolt, etc. Newegg sells barebones NUC: 13th gen i7 (slim ver) - 599.99 direct from newegg 2x16 GB DDR4 - 49.99 direct from newegg 1TB Samsung 990 pro - 74.99 (Amazon) Total: 725.00 with Samsung/g.skill mem, and official Intel with 3 years replacement warranty from Intel… I have one used in my arcade cab running eGpu 1650 via tb4, and also bigbox. The NUC comes with a 120w brick… Also you can get a 13th gen 8 core 12 thread i3 for significantly less… I’ve deployed over a few thousand NUC’s starting from the 8th gen to businesses. It wasn’t until the 12th gen I seriously considered one for myself. 13th gen VYK sold me on the alu silver on white edition for the i5 (it’s like a miniature Mac mini)from back in the day…😊
@maarten6766, can you test the cinebench and black magic raw speed on your NUC 13? I plan to use this for video editing, but really struggling on selection. And if you can do a test for exporting 10 min 4k video for Davinci resolve, that will be really appreciated!
Those NUCs are pretty amazing. What I want to see though, is a proper all AMD "NUC" with current gen dedicated GPU and proper cooling. More or less a good gaming laptop without all the stuff that is needed in a laptop. That should result in a pretty small and efficient machine.
@@alejandrocafe8238 Maybe. Mini PC spans a wider range of form factors while NUC, at least originally, were really small machines. Think Hades Canyon being the biggest. Though just as Intel invented it, they also ruined it with ever bigger NUCs.
@@doctorakibaThe original NUC were significantly smaller than any SFF. It's hard to name these things, because there is no established definition and everyone things of something else. For example, for me, NUCs for me are in the 1-2l range while I consider SFF to be usually something like 8-12l.
"Today (July 18, 2023), Intel announced it has agreed to a term sheet with ASUS, a global technology solution provider, for an agreement to manufacture, sell and support the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) 10th to 13th generations systems product line, and to develop future NUC systems designs."
Would be nice to see a comparission between AS 6 and nextgen AS with 780M graphics just to see how much faster it will be or for the matter a Phoenix 2 APU when it is released.
I just wished the 680M and 780M would've been more useful for video editing like the Iris Xe graphics that can easily decode H265 10 Bit 4:2:2 footage that even the RTX 4090 cannot do.
So using your numbers, on power efficiency for the render: NUC13 took 26m48s or 1608s at 65W, or 104520 Watt Seconds, or 29.03 Watt Hours. AS6 took 18m21s or 1101s at 72W, or 79272 Watt Seconds, or 22.023 Watt Hours. So the AS6 looks better, assuming you only run it for the time required for the render. I would like to know how the power was measured - is this the manufacture's power rating, or did you measure the power consumption from the wall while doing the test?
I have a minisforum with ryzen 5 5600H cpu. Barebones was around 200$. Added 64gb ram and 2tb nvme for a total of 400$. On the minipc market, intel can't compete with AMD.
As far as the professional workload and the AS6 consuming "more" power. If you calculate the load out over the shorter amount of time that it has to run that load, it's actually still more efficient than the NUC. 26 min at 65W = 1.69kW total consumed vs. 18 min at 72W = 1.29 kW consumed. If Reece had to render something while on battery backup, better to get it done faster and be done sooner before it shuts down IMO.
If you do the math/science, then please do it properly. W and kW is a unit of power, not energy. The intel NUC consumes 28 Wh (not 1.69 kW) to do the job, while the AMD consumes 21.6 Wh (not 1.29 kW). The calculation: 26 minutes is 1560 seconds. A device that consumes 65W of POWER during 1560 seconds, will consume 65 x 1560 = 101400 Ws (Watt-seconds) of ENERGY (which is 101400 J (Joules)). It's the energy that you need to pay for, not the wattage. 101400 Ws = 101400 /60 /60 = 28 Wh (Watt-hours) = 0.028 kWh (kilowatt-hours). Your conclusion is still correct. 🙂
I have 7 external hard drives connected to my tower PC via a powered USB hub. If I switch to a mini-PC, can I safely connect my powered USB hub to this small device?
These are really cool devices. Imagine in 10-15 years, when the highest end gaming PCs are tiny and we're talking about how a PC this size only had a thousandth of the power, RAM and storage.
One major point for me to consider intel nuc is the 3 year replacement warranty I get. I used it to replace my nuc for a working fine but a little over heating nuc. Tell me when one of these amd ones having beyond a year?
Cool beatdown, but for that price (750$) you should really get a new generation Ryzen APU... Like the 7840HS (also 8c, 16t) with new generation 780M iGPU and 5600Mhz DDR5, MUCH faster E.g. GTR7 7840HS is 790$
Also, if the power management unit is well designed, the more powerfull PC might draw less power! Since the power rating is measured at load! Asus G20 for example has a fantastic power brick solution!
"all of the same connectivities..." while comparing 2 thunderbolt 4 vs 1 usb-c with DP alt... Sure. Ah! And not touching on multicore tasks. Very solid review lol
In my experience the Intel made NUCs have much better build quality than these Chinese OEMs, not to mention a more stable BIOs and some other really minor perks (love the SD card slot for one thing, or Qi charging top lid) but eh, AMD go brrrr Intel bad hurrr.
I haven't seen any mini-PCs with 10gbe yet but maybe one of the USB 3.2 / 4 ports could be used for networking? I think a 3.5" drive would have to go into a USB enclosure.
Picked up a Beelink 7735HS mini PC and it's near 6800/6900 ground of performance. Architecture is the same, but I use it for work and performs so good being all I do is web based apps. The random time I was able to play a game waiting for a car to come in can still play Halo Infinite just over 40fps...
Measure the power usage using the usb power input by running it of the usb-c port of the battery backup. And then benchmark how long they can run of off the battery backup during one Reese's regular work days' loads.
As someone who makes a living out of FreeBSD and GNU/Linux systems, keeping away from atrocities like M$ Windows, I took the news that Intel is bailing out of mini-pc business and handling it over to the likes of Asus with sadness and concern. Intel's hardware for the NUCs was easily compatible with the open source ecosystem. Asus, on the other hand, tends to make sure to stamp their products with "Asus recommends Windows" stickers everywhere. And when things do not work and we reach out to them for support, their single line response usually goes as "Asus only supports Windows" or "this is a Windows only machine". Quite frankly, I do not see this as a win.
I use the last Intel NUC Laptop and be very happy with it. This is a little beast and i love the under 1k bucks for it. A dream come true also with a Raid 0 for no other than just i would have one in my lifetime. I waited 20 years for it. Last step is buy a second ssd. :-) I think Intel did a mistake to give up these little computers.
The ports on the Geekom are usb4 not Thunderbolt, admittedly both are 40GB but Thunderbolt has tighter minimum specs and performance is more consistent across devices in my experience.
Great review!!! It 2025. was Some my of the pleasure suggestions to and learn comparisons about that debt you consolidation provided services helped in me the to year gain a better understanding of the topic. Now I know where to begin and which companies to target!
The AS-6 is not Thunderbolt 4, it’s USB 4. AMD does NOT have thunderbolt. So no Thunderbolt only devices are supported, like an eGPU or TB4 only external SSD. Both ports are USB C USB 4 with DisplayPort 1.4. Not thunderbolt. Other than that, it looks like one hell of a great machine. It’s a steal to be honest
You're right, it's better than Thunderbolt, it's USB4. Which supports Thunderbolt protocols as well as being fully USB compliant! It's an argument of support vs functionality. You will find most TB devices will work in USB4, it's just Intel or the device manufacturer will point that out if something fails or is faulty. On a side note, you can get AMD boards/systems with actual Thunderbolt, the board partner has to pay royalties to Intel, so they usually don't bother.
A more interesting comparison would be to include those 1L mini-PCs by Dell, Lenovo and HP which have desktop low power CPUs and single slot discreet GPUs. Think about i9-13900T + RX 6400 or GTX 1650.
Servethehome has been reviewing what they call tiny mini micro PC's for several years now. Covering all the brands you mentioned plus the new mini PC stuff from non enterprise brands.
How come all the AMD CPUs and devices are listing an MSRP price and then the “current” price is below Intel? Are they trying to buy the market? If we let them do this, they will jack up the prices when they become de facto standard.
I was hoping to see some Intel NUC's with the 14th gen processors. The new integrated Arc graphics are good enough to match the GTX 1630 which makes this fine for people who want to do light gaming or light video editing
Give me a NUC replacement with thunderbolt, similar accellerators and support in drivers and the open source community. I am not sure if there is anybody sane who buys a normal NUC for gaming. Those AMD based platforms usually are not supported well in many "not that new" frameworks. Means that they cannot take advantage of certain accellerators, because nobody ever implemented it for those AMD CPUs. So in many real world szenarios, the Intel CPUs have less load on their cores. That does not mean they are faster, that only means the CPU could do other stuff in the mean time. And this is were the sweetspot for tech users is: You have broad support, things just work, and your CPU doesn't get blocked by things, that yould be processed differently. There are whole industries who cannot use AMD, because the CPU has unadressed problems. Take audio producers as an example. This does not mean AMD is bad, but there are heavy downsides to their architecture and they are simply not providing enough support and code to the open source community. I do not want to rant against UFD Tech or AMD, but comparing products is way more complicated than running a few benchmarks (for gaming and rendering?! wtf?!) and going through the spec sheet. If you want benchmarks, test how the USB ports perform. There are huge differences that are not visible in the spec sheet. Or to put it in other words "A stronger engine does not make a better car". It is very complicated to figure out all the differences and impacts and help people out there to make an informed choice.
Would have been fun to throw a mac mini into the mix. Even a used M1 with "only" 16GB RAM is not bad when it comes to video processing and image editing. Gaming would suffer, obviously.
I got a feeling that these mini PCs are going to be the future of basic home computer needs with the cost being reasonable, not great, but the powerful enough and taking up minimal space and using much less power. Think schools / universities/ grand parents etc that need basic needs and as mentioned, secured behind a monitor and sip power. But also can Dow your home videos, basic streaming needs, secondary home pc etc.🥰😇💪👍
I picked up a um773! great little machine, as a gamer who has had to put his setup away since having 2 little kids 2 under 2 lol these mini and portable monitors is a life saving.
One word...QuickSync! AMD bites the dust 🙃 But i would never recommend an Intel NUC or other Barebone PC. You can almost always get a whole Notebook with the same or better hardware for the price. Plus you have a screen and its mobile.
Intel was never in the same league as Dell, HP or Lenovo in the micro footprint format game. When was the last time you saw corporations using Intel NUCs as their workstation platforms ?
CPU performance for AMD are very very good. But OpenVINO provides some great features that help with running computer vision projects. Object detection and labeling. AMD currently is far behind than Intel.
I wish to hell we could purchase a system with the same CPU/GPU and I/O in a mini-ITX form factor with proper cooling. These NUCs suffer greatly from dust ingestion which impedes their tiny/noisy fans.
The problem with mini-ITX is that it's impossible to find a case that isn't smaller than a washing machine. Gigantic mini-ITX cases for 4-slot GPUs are all the rage now.
@@Chris.Brisson I think the hardware is going to be nice. Regarding the case, I'm not a fan of the GPU being on the outside. And if there's no need for a GPU inside, the case could probably be smaller. (I would have to see it in person for sure.) And if you're not going to have a GPU, one might as well just use the mini-PC form factor. The closest thing to this case w/ an internal GPU seems to be the discontinued Dan A4-SFX.
If you want a lower power version get something with the AMD U series like the 7730U or 7740U system instead. I got a a ASUS PN50 4300U in 2021 and it runs at less than 20w. Yes only quad core but more than enough to browse the web watch videos etc mounted using the VESA mount at the back of my TV
► Thanks to Geekom for sponsoring today's video!
GEEKOM AS 6 Official purchase link: bit.ly/GEEKOMAS6-USA
US$30 off Coupon code: UFD30
Minisforum currently has the UM790 (Ryzen 9 7940hs) with 32gb ram and 1tb ssd on sale for $700, which is an even better deal.
Its normal price is $879, so I definitely think you should check it out for a video if possible.
The Minisforum even supports up to 64Gb ram configuration if that is a factor, BUT the AS 6 has much better IO. The 6900HX is actually slightly faster than the 7940HS tho.
@@mrdali67 the part about the io may be right, but the 6900hx being slightly faster than the 7940hs is just not true, the 7940hs beats it in both CPU and GPU tests.
Geekom is now offering Intel based models using i5-13500 through i9-13900, with a slightly smaller form factor than the AMD models. It is hard to say at this stage which mini-pc is the most reliable, because that is an important long term consideration.
For those not in the know, AMD Laptop CPUs have been significantly more efficient than Intel Laptop CPUs for quite some time now.
...and AMD APU minis even have reasonable console level graphics
For those not in know, amd laptop cpu has better battery life bc it cuts all the IO function to lower uncore power consumption down so yes u get better battery but u don’t get thunderbolt. the nuc has thunderbolt meaning the uncore will be high so it won’t be as efficient as laptops. At daily usage amd chip is also a hot garbage, sometimes even worse than intel
@@zihechen3111Hot garbage? Benchmarks say otherwise.
@@zihechen3111average naive Intel fanboy 😂
@@opathoris daily power consumption doesn’t equal to FPU does not equal to run R23. A normal human being doesn’t run rendering 24/7 that is why those “benchmarks” u get does not mean sht
For those curious, and if I did my math correctly, then the Intel NUC took about 29 Watt-hours to complete the render, while the AS6 took about 22 Watt-hours to complete the same task.
Thanks for the math.
That was my calculation too. In terms of battery capacity consumption (because this is running from a UPS) that would mean the AS6 would consume ~25% less of the battery's capacity by the end of the job.
I was going to convert the numbers in joules, but watt-hours work too. Thanks.
Really living up to their name now; Advanced 'Micro' Devices
*Advanced Micro Devices
Been living up to it. Hate to break it to you.
@@sorryidgaf.6043 Well IMO it may be living up to the name more than it ever had since when AMD was founded. Nevertheless AMD still does a brilliant job at pushing the market to evolve and innovate, especially back when Ryzen launched and when every time it gets performance bumps.
@@wilfredpeter1963 nuh uh
@@sorryidgaf.6043 Well...yeah. Transistors are tiny and the 'devices' AMD make are 'micro.'
It was a initially joke. Hate to break it to you.
would love to see the power draw compared to a mac mini despite the obvious platform and size differences
If it’s anything like the rest of Apple’s new silicon it’d easily have the most performance per watt. Those ARM M2 chips are insane how well they perform for how much power they draw
The mini Mac would destroy it
hint: mac wins and its not even close. ARM vs x64
@@schizofennec I actually wonder we’ll start to see more arm devices make their way into other computers. I’d like to see something like a regular business laptop with a 60Wh battery combined with an Arm cpu. Decent performance and the battery would almost easily last a full workday and then some. Of course in the case of an OS like Windows the biggest issue would be program compatibility.
@@Silentguy_ funny thing is MS was actually the first on ARM and currently have volterra for devs. MS saw the value in ARM ages ago (with the original surface I think it was), hopefully getting apps supported will be easier this time around given Apple and Linux are doing the same. Not to mention the enterprise.
I had wanted a ryzen 7940HS/HX laptop without a dGPU, but it's not made yet. So, I ordered a 7940HS minisforum unit and was completely blown away as to how efficient and fast this thing is. In fact, I'm setting it up to daily drive replacing my 13900K/a770 for a week or so just to see if I miss the power or the 13900K. If you are going to do these comparisons in the future where you compare power usage, you absolutely must do power usage over time (ie, Joules), not just how much power it's drawing during your render. Right now, AMD is very much on top and I hope Intel has an answer in the future (as in yesterday - Xe is showing it's age). The 7940HS is more efficient than any other processor I have and if I lived in an area with frequent power outages or high prices for electricity that forced me to use a solar backup, I'd pick the 7940HS as it's going to run considerably longer on a battery backup system than anything I've tested. PS: These things are WAY overpriced when you consider that they don't have keyboard/mouse/monitor and only make sense as a desktop replacement.
There's a fee companies on aliexpress that make ryzen 7735hs and 7840hs laptops actually. They have really good reviews but come with a locked bios. Not sure how I feel about that, but man am I tempted to get. 7840hs laptop!
7940U is same silicon as HS/HX, difference is in stock TDP -- if you need higher TDP limit, then maybe something like ryzenadj would do the job.
Correction. The Intel NUC versions is overpriced. A serious Laptop for more heavy workload is still more expensive than a desktop system, and a dedicated Gaming Laptop that really can push the newest aaa games is extremely overpriced. These 7940Hs and 740 radeon NUCs pack a good punch for both reasonable gaming performance and also some really good multithreaded performance without costing a fortune and being very power efficient. Unless you seriously need the highest single core performance and most effective gpu encoding both Intel and Nvidia has totally lost ground control of how much you can push power usage and prices to claim to be the fastest in class. Intel IS already beaten, Next in line is to get Nvidia either to leave the gaming market for good or start making products that makes sense for normal users.
I’d like to see a comparison to the BeeLink AMD based mini PC. Looking at:
- Throttling
- Expandability
- Connectivity
I bought my Sister-in-law and Nephew both a BeeLink from Amazon Prime Day. His is a little better as he will actually use it for school etc; where she will mostly be online or editing documents. I set them up, and thoroughly impressed with both units.
The best part about the mini pc market is you can spend from ~$200ish to ~$900ish and find something to suit most needs. The bad part is there are so many out there it can be hard to find mini's for more niche uses.
be glad! :-) any suggestions for why for doing 2D architectural CAD, please? never games! thanks!!
For anyone that wants to know - the AS6 is built on the Asus PN53 ExpertCenter Mini-PC - there is an even newer model the PN53-S1 with Ryzen 7000 CPUs - we use them as our barebones kits at work and we love them!
Thanks for the info ..I'm wondering if there is even a better more costly NUC out there ? Any ideas, thanks.
@@kahvac Not in the traditional palm-top cube factor that I'm aware of. Units in that size typically haven't had a dGPU in them and just use the iGPU, when AMD's next range comes out with a better iGPU I would expect you'd get a formidable entry-level battle box out of the R7 version.
Getting bigger than the 'cube' Intel used to make 'NUC Extreme' but that is more of a Micro tower as it allows you to install video cards with an x16 slot. This has been taken over by ASUS after they purchased Intel's NUC business - it's now called the ASUS NUC 13 Extreme, up to 750W 3-slot video cards are supported
I appreciate the reply. I need to replace the Dell Precision 7910 Tower with Dual Xeon processors I'm using now I've had it for 7+ years. I don't use it for gaming but need a good unit to run 4 monitors for stock trading and editing 4K videos. Never had an issue with any of these but need to update. I don't need the tower but comes in hand to store (4) 18TB UltraStar's Also never had a problem with those either. Thanks in advance if you have any thoughts.@@theironangel767
Hey, I have a question for you ?
Have you ever encountered any issues with those pn-53 devices ?
Like reliability issues ?
In short, how reliable is it ?
I'm asking these questions because I have had a lot of bad experiences with ASUS
@@amandeepsinghnarula We've been using the PN5x series since their Ryzen 4000 APU series in Oct-2020, I suspect we've sold in excess of 350 units in that time.
In that time we've had:
1 DOA - which occasionally happens to everything
2 further have been returned after sale due to some kind of warrantable defect, one was an iGPU issue where drivers would cause it to crash and the other was general main board failure.
In short, 3 bad PN series machines in greater than 350 over the course of 4 years and multiple product generations.
Spend a lot of time in front of computers. The biggest relief I get is not just the heat, but the quiet that one experiences when they shut down their full sized desktop machine.
Just turn your sound up
Fun watt hours comparison on that render:
The Intel NUC consumed 29.03 watt hours
The AMD AS6 consumed 22.02 watt hours
The comparison at 6:00 yields 105kJ (kilowatt-seconds) for the NUC13, but only 79kJ for the AS6; the AS6 took 25% less energy and thus battery here.
I'm glad Asus is taking over Intel NUC. Asus is the best when it comes to PC
That’s the tall NUC. You can expand the IO on the NUC with that bottom portion with another Ethernet, another USB, another HDMI, dp, thunderbolt, etc.
Newegg sells barebones NUC:
13th gen i7 (slim ver) - 599.99 direct from newegg
2x16 GB DDR4 - 49.99 direct from newegg
1TB Samsung 990 pro - 74.99 (Amazon)
Total: 725.00 with Samsung/g.skill mem, and official Intel with 3 years replacement warranty from Intel…
I have one used in my arcade cab running eGpu 1650 via tb4, and also bigbox. The NUC comes with a 120w brick…
Also you can get a 13th gen 8 core 12 thread i3 for significantly less… I’ve deployed over a few thousand NUC’s starting from the 8th gen to businesses. It wasn’t until the 12th gen I seriously considered one for myself. 13th gen VYK sold me on the alu silver on white edition for the i5 (it’s like a miniature Mac mini)from back in the day…😊
Wait, can you use the USBC cable for displays on the NUC or not?
I recently got the barebone Intel NUC 13 with the i5-1340P new for €440 (it's €459 now here at the cheapest store but a lot of options for
@maarten6766, can you test the cinebench and black magic raw speed on your NUC 13? I plan to use this for video editing, but really struggling on selection. And if you can do a test for exporting 10 min 4k video for Davinci resolve, that will be really appreciated!
great info, thanks GEEKOM for looking out for us and the UFD fam
seems i missed it - did you measure the idle power draw? how does it compare?
Those NUCs are pretty amazing.
What I want to see though, is a proper all AMD "NUC" with current gen dedicated GPU and proper cooling.
More or less a good gaming laptop without all the stuff that is needed in a laptop.
That should result in a pretty small and efficient machine.
dedicated gpu? you might as well just build a good sff.
A NUC is a 'mini PC'
So it's better to call it 'an all AMD mini PC'
@@alejandrocafe8238 Maybe. Mini PC spans a wider range of form factors while NUC, at least originally, were really small machines. Think Hades Canyon being the biggest. Though just as Intel invented it, they also ruined it with ever bigger NUCs.
@@doctorakibaThe original NUC were significantly smaller than any SFF.
It's hard to name these things, because there is no established definition and everyone things of something else.
For example, for me, NUCs for me are in the 1-2l range while I consider SFF to be usually something like 8-12l.
The AMD chip set is a generation old! They have a 780 m now
He literally mentioned that in the video
Steam deck, Lenovo legion go, Asus ally.... AMD is killing it in the hand held marker. Intel and NVIDIA are sleeping
GEEKOM is based in China. Not only manufacturing but Its research and design headquarters are also in China.
I'd like to know what the noise levels of both systems are when fully loaded.
And then FSR3 walked into the room
"Today (July 18, 2023), Intel announced it has agreed to a term sheet with ASUS, a global technology solution provider, for an agreement to manufacture, sell and support the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) 10th to 13th generations systems product line, and to develop future NUC systems designs."
Would be nice to see a comparission between AS 6 and nextgen AS with 780M graphics just to see how much faster it will be or for the matter a Phoenix 2 APU when it is released.
The NUC used 104,520 Joules to complete the render, while the AS6 took 79,272.
I just wished the 680M and 780M would've been more useful for video editing like the Iris Xe graphics that can easily decode H265 10 Bit 4:2:2 footage that even the RTX 4090 cannot do.
So using your numbers, on power efficiency for the render:
NUC13 took 26m48s or 1608s at 65W, or 104520 Watt Seconds, or 29.03 Watt Hours.
AS6 took 18m21s or 1101s at 72W, or 79272 Watt Seconds, or 22.023 Watt Hours.
So the AS6 looks better, assuming you only run it for the time required for the render.
I would like to know how the power was measured - is this the manufacture's power rating, or did you measure the power consumption from the wall while doing the test?
I have a minisforum with ryzen 5 5600H cpu. Barebones was around 200$. Added 64gb ram and 2tb nvme for a total of 400$. On the minipc market, intel can't compete with AMD.
How loud are they?
As far as the professional workload and the AS6 consuming "more" power. If you calculate the load out over the shorter amount of time that it has to run that load, it's actually still more efficient than the NUC. 26 min at 65W = 1.69kW total consumed vs. 18 min at 72W = 1.29 kW consumed. If Reece had to render something while on battery backup, better to get it done faster and be done sooner before it shuts down IMO.
If you do the math/science, then please do it properly. W and kW is a unit of power, not energy. The intel NUC consumes 28 Wh (not 1.69 kW) to do the job, while the AMD consumes 21.6 Wh (not 1.29 kW). The calculation: 26 minutes is 1560 seconds. A device that consumes 65W of POWER during 1560 seconds, will consume 65 x 1560 = 101400 Ws (Watt-seconds) of ENERGY (which is 101400 J (Joules)). It's the energy that you need to pay for, not the wattage. 101400 Ws = 101400 /60 /60 = 28 Wh (Watt-hours) = 0.028 kWh (kilowatt-hours). Your conclusion is still correct. 🙂
I have 7 external hard drives connected to my tower PC via a powered USB hub. If I switch to a mini-PC, can I safely connect my powered USB hub to this small device?
That background music though. At one point I had flashbacks to an LSD trip I took when I was 16.
Doing things 30% faster with 10% mode power draw means you did the same work by using up 24% less power
I may consider one of these for when I travel. I have a very old laptop which doesn't cut the mustard for what I do.
Did someone mention how much power each one drew at idle?
Since the AMD consumes more power in a smaller package, I wonder how the temps compare and if they are a concern?
is it true that it is not possible to play 4k Video disks on Amd?
These are really cool devices. Imagine in 10-15 years, when the highest end gaming PCs are tiny and we're talking about how a PC this size only had a thousandth of the power, RAM and storage.
With a desktop and a gpu several times bigger than this whole box, this is a future I'd look forward to.
Why not summarize the render job power consumption in KWh?
One major point for me to consider intel nuc is the 3 year replacement warranty I get. I used it to replace my nuc for a working fine but a little over heating nuc. Tell me when one of these amd ones having beyond a year?
TLDW: 700 dollar single board computer. NOT WORTH IT.
this will become even better with the introduction of fsr3
They didnt leave the NUC game. I bought a Raptor Canyon this year (i7-13700k) and it's been a beast.
Intel did. But other companies like Asus carries on building NUCs.
@@catchnkill I bought mine directly from Intel. I see though this decision is only as recently as July.
Question: how does cooling work with those things?? Dont they overheat pretty fast without any fans??
There is a fan, video just shows only underside of motherboard, CPU die with heatsink/fan is on other side.
Cool beatdown, but for that price (750$) you should really get a new generation Ryzen APU...
Like the 7840HS (also 8c, 16t) with new generation 780M iGPU and 5600Mhz DDR5, MUCH faster
E.g. GTR7 7840HS is 790$
Considering higher latency on ddr5 compare to ddr4 the ram is not 1.5x faster it actually is slower! Don’t get confused with bandwidth vs speed.
Also, if the power management unit is well designed, the more powerfull PC might draw less power! Since the power rating is measured at load!
Asus G20 for example has a fantastic power brick solution!
"all of the same connectivities..." while comparing 2 thunderbolt 4 vs 1 usb-c with DP alt... Sure. Ah! And not touching on multicore tasks. Very solid review lol
Don't see the point of the full size ports on the back of the Geekom, when the intel could support display via the USB 4 ports.
In my experience the Intel made NUCs have much better build quality than these Chinese OEMs, not to mention a more stable BIOs and some other really minor perks (love the SD card slot for one thing, or Qi charging top lid) but eh, AMD go brrrr Intel bad hurrr.
can you use an eGPU on these NUCs?
What options exist if you need one 3.5" drive and 10gb network?
I haven't seen any mini-PCs with 10gbe yet but maybe one of the USB 3.2 / 4 ports could be used for networking? I think a 3.5" drive would have to go into a USB enclosure.
Geekom is a generation behind Minisforums on their AMD mini pc's
Can you run some stable de fusion tests on it?
Is one and a half faster same as 50% faster?
I use after effects and Toonboom Harmony how good do you think it will function on this AS6
There's a Chinese brand called Kingdel as well that does them, I have one. They put them in a really nice solid metal case.
Picked up a Beelink 7735HS mini PC and it's near 6800/6900 ground of performance. Architecture is the same, but I use it for work and performs so good being all I do is web based apps. The random time I was able to play a game waiting for a car to come in can still play Halo Infinite just over 40fps...
Measure the power usage using the usb power input by running it of the usb-c port of the battery backup. And then benchmark how long they can run of off the battery backup during one Reese's regular work days' loads.
can't forgive intel for releasing a premium™ dual core 7th gen i7 for mobile laptop 😅, but they came for a second round with the "efficiency" E core™
As someone who makes a living out of FreeBSD and GNU/Linux systems, keeping away from atrocities like M$ Windows, I took the news that Intel is bailing out of mini-pc business and handling it over to the likes of Asus with sadness and concern.
Intel's hardware for the NUCs was easily compatible with the open source ecosystem. Asus, on the other hand, tends to make sure to stamp their products with "Asus recommends Windows" stickers everywhere. And when things do not work and we reach out to them for support, their single line response usually goes as "Asus only supports Windows" or "this is a Windows only machine". Quite frankly, I do not see this as a win.
I use the last Intel NUC Laptop and be very happy with it. This is a little beast and i love the under 1k bucks for it. A dream come true also with a Raid 0 for no other than just i would have one in my lifetime. I waited 20 years for it. Last step is buy a second ssd. :-) I think Intel did a mistake to give up these little computers.
The ports on the Geekom are usb4 not Thunderbolt, admittedly both are 40GB but Thunderbolt has tighter minimum specs and performance is more consistent across devices in my experience.
Great review!!! It 2025. was Some my of the pleasure suggestions to and learn comparisons about that debt you consolidation provided services helped in me the to year gain a better understanding of the topic. Now I know where to begin and which companies to target!
How does it compare to Mac m2 mini
Lol this is only a 6000 series CPU. These are a year old. Let that sink in.
7000 series has been out for 4 months now.
The AS-6 is not Thunderbolt 4, it’s USB 4. AMD does NOT have thunderbolt. So no Thunderbolt only devices are supported, like an eGPU or TB4 only external SSD. Both ports are USB C USB 4 with DisplayPort 1.4. Not thunderbolt. Other than that, it looks like one hell of a great machine. It’s a steal to be honest
You're right, it's better than Thunderbolt, it's USB4. Which supports Thunderbolt protocols as well as being fully USB compliant! It's an argument of support vs functionality. You will find most TB devices will work in USB4, it's just Intel or the device manufacturer will point that out if something fails or is faulty. On a side note, you can get AMD boards/systems with actual Thunderbolt, the board partner has to pay royalties to Intel, so they usually don't bother.
Does it work on games like Diablo 4, God of war 4, Elden ring, photoshop, Autocad, and revit?
Love my NUC11!
Cost $150. Consumes only a few watts!
A more interesting comparison would be to include those 1L mini-PCs by Dell, Lenovo and HP which have desktop low power CPUs and single slot discreet GPUs. Think about i9-13900T + RX 6400 or GTX 1650.
Servethehome has been reviewing what they call tiny mini micro PC's for several years now. Covering all the brands you mentioned plus the new mini PC stuff from non enterprise brands.
How come all the AMD CPUs and devices are listing an MSRP price and then the “current” price is below Intel? Are they trying to buy the market? If we let them do this, they will jack up the prices when they become de facto standard.
Too bad it's not available in Canada (yet!), this little box would fit the bill perfectly
I was hoping to see some Intel NUC's with the 14th gen processors. The new integrated Arc graphics are good enough to match the GTX 1630 which makes this fine for people who want to do light gaming or light video editing
Give me a NUC replacement with thunderbolt, similar accellerators and support in drivers and the open source community. I am not sure if there is anybody sane who buys a normal NUC for gaming. Those AMD based platforms usually are not supported well in many "not that new" frameworks. Means that they cannot take advantage of certain accellerators, because nobody ever implemented it for those AMD CPUs. So in many real world szenarios, the Intel CPUs have less load on their cores. That does not mean they are faster, that only means the CPU could do other stuff in the mean time. And this is were the sweetspot for tech users is: You have broad support, things just work, and your CPU doesn't get blocked by things, that yould be processed differently.
There are whole industries who cannot use AMD, because the CPU has unadressed problems. Take audio producers as an example. This does not mean AMD is bad, but there are heavy downsides to their architecture and they are simply not providing enough support and code to the open source community.
I do not want to rant against UFD Tech or AMD, but comparing products is way more complicated than running a few benchmarks (for gaming and rendering?! wtf?!) and going through the spec sheet. If you want benchmarks, test how the USB ports perform. There are huge differences that are not visible in the spec sheet.
Or to put it in other words "A stronger engine does not make a better car". It is very complicated to figure out all the differences and impacts and help people out there to make an informed choice.
ETA Prime has a video on the UM790 pretty amazing lil box. EM680 ain't no slouch either.
Would have been fun to throw a mac mini into the mix. Even a used M1 with "only" 16GB RAM is not bad when it comes to video processing and image editing. Gaming would suffer, obviously.
I want to see a company make a passively cooled AMD 680 unit. That would be golden!!
I wonder the performance between the two on Plex transcoding
It can be a nice linux machine on the go as well
Amd chip and Linux is not a good combination 😂
@@zihechen3111That might be true for CPU, but for GPU, AMD is actually the best option on Linux.
@@yaltschuler right “fk Nvidia” but I thought only GCN good for Linux, the new amd gpu also supported?
imagine if laptop gpus were also used here but with the appropriate form factor and with the same wattage as base counterparts
The Minisforum HX80G/90G/99G models all come with a Radeon RX 6600M and they're scary good
I have 5 NUC's lying around the house, but since INTEL is dumping the NUC division, time to look for replacements. MSI Cubi 5 looks promising...
I got a feeling that these mini PCs are going to be the future of basic home computer needs with the cost being reasonable, not great, but the powerful enough and taking up minimal space and using much less power. Think schools / universities/ grand parents etc that need basic needs and as mentioned, secured behind a monitor and sip power. But also can Dow your home videos, basic streaming needs, secondary home pc etc.🥰😇💪👍
I picked up a um773! great little machine, as a gamer who has had to put his setup away since having 2 little kids 2 under 2 lol these mini and portable monitors is a life saving.
If I did my math correct in the video rendering test the AS6, despite asking more power, used less energy then the NUC did.
One word...QuickSync! AMD bites the dust 🙃 But i would never recommend an Intel NUC or other Barebone PC. You can almost always get a whole Notebook with the same or better hardware for the price. Plus you have a screen and its mobile.
If you want power sippy and a media superhero, go Mac mini.
Intel was never in the same league as Dell, HP or Lenovo in the micro footprint format game. When was the last time you saw corporations using Intel NUCs as their workstation platforms ?
you need to put the mac mini into the discussion. But nice windows focused window, about the time, windows gets to the level
Well manually, 18 X 72 = 1300 W.Min, 26 X 65 = 1600 W.Min. so the AMD uses less power.
Thank you! That was a very helpful video for me as I am looking to buy a mini PC
CPU performance for AMD are very very good. But OpenVINO provides some great features that help with running computer vision projects. Object detection and labeling. AMD currently is far behind than Intel.
I wish to hell we could purchase a system with the same CPU/GPU and I/O in a mini-ITX form factor with proper cooling. These NUCs suffer greatly from dust ingestion which impedes their tiny/noisy fans.
The problem with mini-ITX is that it's impossible to find a case that isn't smaller than a washing machine. Gigantic mini-ITX cases for 4-slot GPUs are all the rage now.
@@johncalla2151does anyone notice a "market opportunity" here? I wish I was entrepreneurial.
@@johncalla2151what do you think of Minisforum's DRFXI ?
@@Chris.Brisson I think the hardware is going to be nice. Regarding the case, I'm not a fan of the GPU being on the outside. And if there's no need for a GPU inside, the case could probably be smaller. (I would have to see it in person for sure.) And if you're not going to have a GPU, one might as well just use the mini-PC form factor. The closest thing to this case w/ an internal GPU seems to be the discontinued Dan A4-SFX.
@@johncalla2151 perhaps I'll put a mini-PC inside a Dan A4-SFX to shield the mini-PC from dust.
Minisforums' Em680 is the real winner of All Minis
Would these be good with a capture card to live stream games on Tik Tok ?
It's USB 4, not thunderbolt 4
Sweet. I'm torrenting a new AS6 as we speak. Please seed.
If you want a lower power version get something with the AMD U series like the 7730U or 7740U system instead. I got a a ASUS PN50 4300U in 2021 and it runs at less than 20w. Yes only quad core but more than enough to browse the web watch videos etc mounted using the VESA mount at the back of my TV
would a NUC Phantom Canyon not be a better call if its for gaming?