MSI have released a mini PC that looks like DeskMini. Looks like it has an STX motherboard. WIFI comes as standard. Only supports Ryzen 5300G, 5600G and 5700G.
CPU MSI PRO DP20Z 5M
- Thread starter fadsarmy
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I'm seeing reviews from August, so it's not very new, but it's the first I've heard of it.
Seems MSI rolled their own X300 board for it too!
Seems MSI rolled their own X300 board for it too!
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£130 for the barebone with WIFI is pretty good. The only thing is that there is no bios fan control but I heard you can control it in MSI Center. Also DDR4 tweaking options are non-existent. Is that an STX format?
I've been using this with a 5300G for a few months and I'm generally happy with it except the CPU fan profile. There is no fan control and the fan revs up and down between 40-50 C and that is usually the operating temperature of the CPU. I would have preferred a constant noise, even if slightly loud, over a fluctuating fan speed. You can install MSI Center but it seems to be only available for Windows 10. I installed it anyway on Windows 11 and if you enable power save mode, the fan becomes quiet (usually constant at 1000rpm with NH-L9i fan) but this sacrifices performance and other strange things started to happen like my Lenovo USB speakers would start to make a very loud static noise.
Yes, it's an STX format((more precisely of the miniSTX format like the ASRock DeskMini A300/X300 or their variation with Intel chipsets, because the integral microSTX format strangely corresponds to the motherboard format present in the ASRock DeskMini GTX (Intel B360/Z370/Z390 chipsets) or GTX/RX (Intel Z270) which are 2 inches wider being equipped most of the time with a dedicated mobile graphics card slot called MXM port and often additional M.2 NVMe slots).
And personally, I have already been interested and considered the idea of buying and testing an MSI PRO DP20Z 5M miniPC, especially to compare it to the ASRock DeskMini X300, but by asking people who have already bought it and had in their possession as well as through various Youtube videos of disassembly and tests of the MSI PRO DP20Z 5M, I could see that it had clearly more faults than advantages compared to the DeskMini X300:
Let's start with the pros though:
-Much more USB (3.0) connectors available as standard on the MSI PRO DP20Z 5M compared to the ASRock DeskMini X300
-Possibility to mount a heatsink with a height of up to 58mm instead of 47mm maximum on the ASRock DeskMini X300/
Now the big flaws:
-Despite the settings to create an AMD X300 chipset from AMD's Ryzen APU thanks to the "knoll" routine, the latter being supposed to support Overclocking, yet when exploring the bios of the MSI PRO DP20Z 5M miniPC, it there is not the slightest option to overclock the CPU, the iGPU or even the RAM!!! because no management of XMPs profiles nor even the possibility of increasing the DRAM voltage from 1.2v to 1.35v, the DRAM voltage remaining blocked at its 1.2v by default.
-No BIOS updates have been released in a year of commercial availability and none seem to be planned...
-The cooling of the VRM power phases of the APU do not have a dedicated heatsink like on the DeskMini A300/X300, they only benefit from a slight passive dissipation via clamping of the motherboard with noname thermal pad against the lower shell of the case made of stainless steel (in other words the heat dissipation of the VRMs phases almost non-existent)
-Impossible to reassemble the miniSTX motherboard of the MSI PRO DP20Z 5M in another miniSTX case because no removable IO Shield, the latter being integrated and machined in its original case.
Just the little faults that I mentioned (because there are many others to which I have not alluded) are sufficient to understand that the ASRock DeskMini X300 is much more interesting (even the A300 which allows overclocking, voltage boosting and XMP profiles for RAM kits). Moreover it seems to me that the MSI PRO DP20Z 5M miniPC kit costs more than that of ASRock;
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