Prebuilt Minisforum Elitemini B550 on Pre-Order

AlexTSG

Master of Cramming
Original poster
Jun 17, 2018
599
590
www.youtube.com
This looks like an interesting alternative to a NUC, mainly as it gives a option of adding a discrete GPU, and changing the CPU.

Minisforum Elitemini B550 AMD Ryzen™ 7 5700G / AMD Ryzen™ 7 4700G Mini PC

The dimensions look like they may be off, the height in particular. Although it's certainly in the SFF size category.

It supports 65W AM4 socket CPUs, which does give options for upgrades and could be fairly powerful for it's size with something like the upcoming Ryzen 5700X.

Given that you can't buy it without a CPU, it makes most sense for someone planning to use it, at least for a while, with the included Ryzen 7 4700G or 5700G.

Sadly, I can't think of a use case for it at the moment, or else I'd probably buy one just to check it out. I have a 600W SFF PSU and Radeon RX480 that I'm not using right now, and I think that would probably make for a pretty good entry level gaming system.

How do you feel about the exposed graphics card, and power supply?
 
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Houdini

Cable-Tie Ninja
Aug 15, 2019
155
83
I actually like the a lot! But I can't seem to find info on how the GPU is getting connected to the Mini. If that's just a PCI x4 then it will bottleneck big time..

Exposed GPU I'd actually love because my 3090FE looks so sleek and I guess you could 3D print something nice for the PSU too or use longer power cables and put it somewhere else.


But given their "Carbon" and LM fail last year I'm not sure if I want to pre-order...
 

AlexTSG

Master of Cramming
Original poster
Jun 17, 2018
599
590
www.youtube.com
It looks like there's a cover you remove from the bottom of the case to expose a "PCIe Riser" connection cable, which then plugs into the base of the dock.

No mention anywhere of what kind of connection speed you would get, but I'd hope it's at least PCIe 3.0 8x (Which is just about enough bandwidth for a 2080 Ti). Even PCIe 3.0 16x would cover most current graphics cards without the need to go to a more expensive PCIe 4.0 connection.

I'd imagine people looking at this kind of system with only 65W CPU support aren't likely to connect more than a mid range graphics card to it.

I did see a Gamers Nexus video last year related to that liquid metal fail, so hopefully this B550 is more carefully QCed!