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ErYing Delivers a Fantasy SFF Motherboard

Chinese motherboard manufacturer (尔英) ErYing has released a “Fantasy” series motherboard featuring Intel 12th generation Alder Lake CPU’s, except it’s not what you might think.  The CPU’s available are mobile variants with a 45W base TDP and soldered to the motherboard.  It looks like it can use a standard intel cooler mount however, and might make for some interesting SFF builds.  While they offer both ITX and mATX boards, the ITX is the most interesting for SFF.  Currently on Chinese retailer JD.com, the board is listed (but not yet available) in 3 CPU variants.  Prices and specs are listed below. …
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Minisforum UM690 (6900HX) Review

Today the UM690 follows up on our previous reviews of Minisforum mini PCs.  Unlike the previous two reviews, we now have RDNA2 graphics and Zen 3+ CPU cores, which should offer a significant uptick in performance across the board.  As you may recall from the UM480 review, I was not particularly impressed with the chassis that Minisforum picked for that PC.  That chassis makes an appearance again today with the UM690, albeit with a more powerful 120W power supply.  Keeping in previous themes of comparing these mini PC’s with equivalent ITX APU builds, I will be benchmarking the UM690 against …
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Minisforum HM90 (4900h) Review

Over the next few months I will be releasing a series of Mini PC reviews.  Today I’m starting with one that I’ve been sitting on for awhile, over a year in fact.  It is the Minisforum HM90, powered by a somewhat dated but still powerful Ryzen R9 4900H mobile APU.  Like most mini PC’s, this means you cannot upgrade the CPU, but you can upgrade the RAM, SSD, and WiFi card.  PC’s like the HM90 are quite a bit smaller than even the smallest ITX builds, and could easily be mistaken for something like a Thunderbolt dock.  While the HM90 …
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Goodisory A01 Review

Review provided by forum moderator ignsvn with editing performed by John Morrison. Want to contribute a review or editorial? Private message John (confusis) on the forum! Many forum members know that I’m never a big fan of external AC-DC brick. I see them as something that adds more wire on my already cluttered, fully-wired PC setup, regardless whether you put the brick on top of the desk, or on the floor. However, recently I have found a need to to build a low power, APU-only HTPC for family entertainment purposes. Think of watching online TV channels, Youtube, play light games, …
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ASRock’s DeskMini A300 – Finally!

Around a year ago, AMD graced us with the Ryzen APU family, bringing higher logical core counts and the Vega GPU architecture to the APU platform. Unlike the rather.. limited.. FM1/2/2+ platform family, the new generation ran on the AM4 platform, allowing anyone to choose between CPUs and APUs for their builds. What the new Ryzen platform also offered is a chipset-less option – A300. Because Ryzen integrates so many controllers and devices into the die, it is possible to create a motherboard with no chipset at all, much like the ill-fated AM1 platform. SATA, PCIe, RAM, and more fed …
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Raven Ridge Review Roundup

(Alliteration!!) Forum member Legion spent some time finding a sizeable bunch of reviews of the new AMD Raven Ridge platform. So, here’s a few of them for your perusal in lieu of our review (coming… eventually!) Anandtech: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12425/marrying-vega-and-zen-the-amd-ryzen-5-2400g-review Hexus: https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/114962-amd-ryzen-5-2400g-ryzen-3-2200g/ Toms Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-5-2400g-zen-vega-cpu-gpu,5467.html#xtor=RSS-100 Techpowerup: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Ryzen_5_2400G_Vega_11/ And a video review: Thoughts? More links and videos in the thread here.
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AMD AM4 Bristol Ridge APU De-Lidded

Professional overclocker Nam Dae Won (NameGT) from Seoul, South Korea has de-lidded an AMD AM4 Bristol Ridge APU for all the world to see (Source, Facebook). Likely based on the Bristol Ridge A12-9800 that he took to 4.8GHz back in September (on the stock cooler no less), this unveiling comes with a very pleasant surprise. [mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″] [mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″] As you can see in the image above, AMD has decided not to skimp on the quality of the thermal interface material. AMD has chosen to use a liquid metal-based compound, at least on the engineering samples. This is a welcome addition over the budget TIM that …
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AMD Shipping Bristol Ridge APUs

AMD has announced that it is shipping its seventh generation of accelerated processing units (APUs), codenamed Bristol Ridge, ahead of schedule, with HP confirming that its Envy x360 convertible laptop will feature the parts. No word on whether or not these include the AM4 parts. Based on the same 28nm Excavator architecture as the sixth-generation Carrizo APUs but with further updates and improvements, AMD is claiming that the new Bristol Ridge APUs offer improved performance: using the fifth-generation Kaveri parts as a baseline at 100 per cent performance, AMD claims the Carrizo family offers 140 per cent performance and Bristol …