Minisforum is an easily recognizable brand that is well-regarded for its lineup of mini PCs. The MS-A1 is one such mid-range offering that boasts an AM5 socket, and the product is now available to configure with the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X with a 100 W TDP, which happens to be an absolute monstrosity of a desktop CPU with hefty cooling requirements.
The system was already available with a Ryzen 7 8700G, which was most likely performant enough for most people. The MS-A1 does not feature dedicated graphics, which is why the Ryzen 7 8700G was a great choice thanks to its relatively potent iGPU. However, it is no surprise that there are many workloads that demand raw CPU power over anything else, and the MS-A1 with the Ryzen 9 9950X will be an excellent option for such demanding scenarios. That said, since the system does not feature discrete graphics, the Radeon 610M iGPU found in the 9950X will simply not be able to keep up with any GPU-intensive workloads.
While the mini PC itself is rather compact, it features a dual-fan cooling setup with four heat pipes that sounds great on paper and should be sufficient to handle the limited 100 W TDP of the Ryzen 9 9950X. Since there is no dedicated GPU, thermal management should not be much of a hassle. The system features a whopping four M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots, and plenty of ports including OCuLink for speedy eGPU connections, dual 2.5 G RJ45 ports, DP 2.0, and HDMI 2.1. A USB 3 Type-C port is also present, which, unfortunately, loses out on USB4 support due to the Ryzen 9000 CPU.
As for pricing, the MS-A1 sure does command a pretty buck. The barebones variant costs $259, while the Ryzen 9 9950X variant starts at $919, although customers will have to supply RAM and storage on their own. Finally, the fully configured variant with a Ryzen 9 9950X, 32 GB RAM, and a 2 TB SSD costs $1,199.
View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
The system was already available with a Ryzen 7 8700G, which was most likely performant enough for most people. The MS-A1 does not feature dedicated graphics, which is why the Ryzen 7 8700G was a great choice thanks to its relatively potent iGPU. However, it is no surprise that there are many workloads that demand raw CPU power over anything else, and the MS-A1 with the Ryzen 9 9950X will be an excellent option for such demanding scenarios. That said, since the system does not feature discrete graphics, the Radeon 610M iGPU found in the 9950X will simply not be able to keep up with any GPU-intensive workloads.
While the mini PC itself is rather compact, it features a dual-fan cooling setup with four heat pipes that sounds great on paper and should be sufficient to handle the limited 100 W TDP of the Ryzen 9 9950X. Since there is no dedicated GPU, thermal management should not be much of a hassle. The system features a whopping four M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots, and plenty of ports including OCuLink for speedy eGPU connections, dual 2.5 G RJ45 ports, DP 2.0, and HDMI 2.1. A USB 3 Type-C port is also present, which, unfortunately, loses out on USB4 support due to the Ryzen 9000 CPU.
As for pricing, the MS-A1 sure does command a pretty buck. The barebones variant costs $259, while the Ryzen 9 9950X variant starts at $919, although customers will have to supply RAM and storage on their own. Finally, the fully configured variant with a Ryzen 9 9950X, 32 GB RAM, and a 2 TB SSD costs $1,199.
View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
