GEEKOM Teases Upcoming AMD Phoenix Mini PC With a Familiar Design

[Fouquin]

The market for mini PCs has been blooming recently, and GEEKOM has been working to put themselves at the forefront with exceptionally well priced and decently performing machines mainly benefiting from their partnership with ASUS. We don't have much info about this upcoming mini PC except that it will offer configurations based on either the Ryzen 7 7840HS or Ryzen 9 7940HS and departs from the ASUS PN series styling for an aluminium chassis that takes clear inspiration from Apple's Mac Mini. Whether this is due to a vendor change or the efforts of internal R&D we'll likely learn when it launches. Aside from the rounded corners, bead blasted aluminium finish, and rear I/O laid out on a black accent fascia plate little else about the machine compares to the Mini except the tiny size at a mere 112.4 x 112.4 mm (4.43 in). Despite this tiny frame the I/O compliment is decent; three 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A ports, a 5 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A, a 40 Gbps and a 10 Gbps Type C that can each handle DisplayPort out, two HDMI ports, a 2.5G Ethernet jack, SD Card reader on the side, and one 3.5 mm combo audio jack at the front.

GEEKOM is expected to launch this new mini PC model in Asia within the next month. Worldwide availability should follow soon after. Competitor offerings with similar hardware configurations have been available for a few months by now and have been seen discounted down to around $600 USD in recent weeks, with barebone unit prices going even lower. GEEKOM has quite the challenge ahead of them to offer competitive value.



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[P4-630]

Noice mini PC.

 

[Bruno_O]

AMD needs low cost offerings.

You can easily buy Atom N95/100 mini PCs with 256/8GB that can run Windows fine and decode 4k60 x264/x265/AV1 for ~130 USD, making them perfect for small HTPCs, all using ~15-20W - cool and quiet.

AMD has nothing similar, the closest would be a Ryzen 7000 APU that's 3x the price, as their old Ryzen 5000/6000 APUs can't decode modern codecs.

 

[Fouquin]

AMD needs low cost offerings.

You can easily buy Atom N95/100 mini PCs with 256/8GB that can run Windows fine and decode 4k60 x264/x265/AV1 for ~130 USD, making them perfect for small HTPCs, all using ~15-20W - cool and quiet.

AMD has nothing similar, the closest would be a Ryzen 7000 APU that's 3x the price, as their old Ryzen 5000/6000 APUs can't decode modern codecs.

AMD has low cost offerings. They still have Ryzen 3 options, but nobody is using them probably due to profit margins on new designs simply being too low to justify it. Also legitimately what necessitates AV1 right now? Most streaming services that offer AV1 are still in limited rollout and have HEVC/VP9 containers for the majority of content. I've had Arc graphics with AV1 support for over a year and I can't think of a single time where it was ever in use. Watching YouTube videos below 4K is still just VP9, which RDNA2 IGPs support just fine.

 

[Bruno_O]

AMD has low cost offerings. They still have Ryzen 3 options, but nobody is using them probably due to profit margins on new designs simply being too low to justify it. Also legitimately what necessitates AV1 right now? Most streaming services that offer AV1 are still in limited rollout and have HEVC/VP9 containers for the majority of content. I've had Arc graphics with AV1 support for over a year and I can't think of a single time where it was ever in use. Watching YouTube videos below 4K is still just VP9, which RDNA2 IGPs support just fine.

if you download anything (movies, anime, etc.) AV1 is getting quite popular. You can also force Youtube to use AV1 in the user settings, for better quality / lower bandwidth.

and cheap Ryzens come with the old Vega that is very limited, only Ryzen 6000 APUs comes with RDNA2, costing twice as much as an Atom

 

[SL2]

AMD needs low cost offerings.

You can easily buy Atom N95/100 mini PCs with 256/8GB that can run Windows fine and decode 4k60 x264/x265/AV1 for ~130 USD, making them perfect for small HTPCs, all using ~15-20W - cool and quiet.

AMD has nothing similar, the closest would be a Ryzen 7000 APU that's 3x the price, as their old Ryzen 5000/6000 APUs can't decode modern codecs.

The upcoming Phoenix 2 is the answer to that.

 

[bonehead123]

Say what you will, but it seems these little mini-me boxes are getting more & more powerful every time a new one comes out....and this one is really nice looking too..

The problem is the price points...depending on this one's configs (which is unknown ATM), at $600+, you could easily find a nice laptop with similar specs that could do the same things, perhaps more, as these little boxes do.... but if you already have the right ram & SSD etc, then getting one of these as a barebones kit could put a whole lot of power at your disposal for ~$250-300...

Hell, even the used barebones 11th Gen/i5 unit (in my specs) that I picked up last for $135 does everything I need it to, including some light database and CAD work nottaproblemo, and I see no reason whatsoever to go back to the big hulking ATX towers that I used to have a few years ago, since my company has an extremely powerful server/cloud workstation that I can access for the heavy duty stuff