Mini PCs are computers with a very small form factor, and as such they usually incorporate very low consumption hardware (including laptop hardware) so that their cooling systems are not very large and thus take up little space. However, the new NUCXI7 and NUCXI5 from Minisforum incorporate hardware that has little or nothing to envy to a desktop PC, and not exactly one that is not very powerful.
As a general rule, the concept that users have of a mini PC is a small computer with “just enough” performance, although it is also true that manufacturers such as Intel have striven, within their NUC range, to provide a performance even enough to play. Now Minisforum has taken this almost to the extreme with its new creations, since among other things they incorporate up to an RTX 3070 as a dedicated graphics card.
Is this the most powerful mini PC of 2022?
Actually, as we have noted at the beginning, there are two different variants within the same mini PC model, one called NUCXI7 and the other NUCXI5. Both share the same exterior design, with a size of just 80 x 260 x 394 mm (about the size of a game console), and with the same connectivity that includes HDMI and Thunderbolt 4. In addition to this, both they have two M.2 2280 sockets for PCIe SSDs, and if they are purchased with the included storage they will come with Windows 11 Pro installed from the factory.
Let’s start by talking about the lower model, the NUCXI5 which, as its name suggests, is equipped with an Intel Core i5 processor, in this case a Core i5-11400H with six cores and twelve processing threads, belonging to the Tiger Lake H45 family and which reaches 4.5 GHz operating frequency. This processor has 12 MB of L3 cache and supports up to 64 GB of DDR4 RAM at up to 3200 MHz speed.
This small and above all fine computer has a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card with 6 GB of dedicated GDDR6 memory, so it should deliver more than decent gaming performance.
On the other hand we have the older brother of the family, the NUCI7 that integrates an Intel Core i7-11800H processor , a processor model superior to the previous one that incorporates 8 cores and 16 process threads at a Boost speed of up to 4.6 GHz, with 24 MB of L3 cache and that also supports up to 64 GB of DDR4 RAM at 3,200 MHz. In this case, this mini PC has an RTX 3070 Mobile as a dedicated graphics card, also more than enough to offer us excellent performance in all kinds of games.
Price and availability
Minisforum has announced that both mini PCs will be available “very soon”, but they have not indicated the exact date on which we can buy them or at what price (although you can imagine that they will be relatively expensive, given the hardware they integrate). Yes, they have said that we can choose the configuration of both RAM and internal storage of both computers, and that in the case of choosing that they include SSD, they will come with Windows 11 Pro installed as standard.