The next big wave of Ryzen AI 300-based mini PCs from Beelink, Aoostar, and Minisforum are set to hit the market in the next few weeks. Yesterday, a leaked graphic revealed the design of the Minisforum EliteMini AI370 ahead of its official reveal. We also received an email from Minisforum giving the full specifications of the upcoming EliteMini AI370.
The core specs of the EliteMini AI370's CPU, RAM, and storage are all in line with what we expect from this category. There's also 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB of NVMe PCIe 4 SSD storage. The speed of the SSD is not specified, but the RAM is rated for 7500 MT/s. There's an extra NVMe slot, so total SSD capacity will total 4TB with both slots occupied.
The EliteMini AI370 has a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, which is a 12-core, 24-thread CPU based on AMD's Zen 5 CPU core design, paired with a Radeon 890M iGPU, which has 16 RDNA 3.5-based Compute Units. By comparison, the best last-gen iGPU used in mini PCs and handhelds — the Radeon 780M — only had 12 of these Compute Units. So, not accounting for architectural or CPU improvements, that's roughly a 30% boost in graphics performance.
Besides that, all you really need to know about is the size and the I/O, both of which are partially pictured above. The real size of this Mini PC measures 5.1 x 5 x 1.85 inches (130 x 127 x 46.9 mm) — sure to fit nicely onto any confined desk setup you have. The I/O is nice, too, with one audio port, one USB 4 port, and two USB 3.0 ports up front. The rear I/O is a little more decked-out with two additional USB 3.0 ports, one HDMI port and one DisplayPort, two Ethernet ports, and an additional audio port.
At this point, the only thing that seems to be missing from this lineup of new Mini PCs seems to be OCuLink support. OCuLink would allow for more external GPU performance than a USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4 connection could ever hope for, but it's still a surprisingly rare feature (despite how many PCs are leveraging these iGPU-focused designs).
