Mini PC specialist Minisforum has launched its third MoDT (Mobile on Desktop) motherboard product, the AR900i. In an email to Tom’s Hardware it fanfares this powerful Mini ITX form factor product, featuring a laptop Intel Core i9-13900HX and pre-fitted cooler, as “the Ultimate MoDT… designed specifically for gamers.” Two other things in the Minisforum AR900i’s favor are its inclusion of four M.2 2280 PCIe4.0 SSD slots and a release price of $559. This is advertised as a pre-sale discount on the regular retail price of $689.
To make it clear, this is a mini ITX form factor motherboard for PC DIYers, but it is a little bit different as it has a soldered laptop CPU on board. In this case, the laptop designated CPU is the potent Intel Core 13900HX. The 13900HX offers 24C / 32T, 32 MB smart cache, and a max turbo frequency of 5.4 GHz. We see that Minisforum’s promotional material also briefly mentions the Core i7-13650HX, so it looks like there will be a follow-up packing Intel’s 14C / 20T laptop chip with 24 MB smart cache, and a max turbo frequency of 4.9 GHz.
If you are worried about getting a desktop CPU cooler to fit these products, don’t be. They are lower wattage than the desktop series, and Minisforum has pre-installed “customized CPU coolers” supporting an optional 120 mm fan on top, capable of handling 100W, it says. On the topic of cooling, a custom PCIe SSD heatsink with an active fan can be seen on one side of the CPU heatsink.
In the intro, we mentioned the four M.2 2280 PCIe4.0 SSD slots on this motherboard, which is a lot for a Mini-ITX solution. We only see two M.2 2280 slots on the upper side of the board. A product page image reveals two further M.2 2280 slots on the underside, flanking the CPU socket retainer. Thus, the SSD active cooling covers the “front SSDs only”.
Other DIY delights on this motherboard include the provision of two DDR5 SO-DIMM slots (up to DDR5-5600 and 96 GB total capacity). Building a well-rounded SFF gaming PC also relies upon adding a discrete GPU to the system, and on this motherboard there is a PCIe 5.0 X16 connector ready for the best GPUs. Alternatively, you can use CPU onboard graphics via the system’s integrated HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4, or USB-C ports. Full Minisforum AR900i motherboard specs can be checked in the table below.
The Minisforum AR900i is the third Mini-ITX motherboard with a pre-installed laptop processor. In September it launched the AD650i board with the Intel Core i7-12650H. That one also offered superlative storage options for the size, with single M.2 SSD and twin SATA 3.0 drive ports on board – as well as a bundled MXM card for up to three further M.2 2280 PCIe3.0 SSDs.
Minisforum also launched the BD770i MoDT with built-in AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX CPU and dual PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots at $399, back in October.
