- Minisforum MS-A2 matches in your hand however flexes more durable than most full-sized desktops
- Twin 10GbE ports and 16 cores – this field is constructed for severe work, not video games
- Soldered CPU prevents upgrading, however that is not a priority in this case
Compact methods have lengthy been seen as underpowered, however Minisforum’s MS sequence flips that notion.
The corporate’s newest flagship, the MS-A2 mini PC, makes use of AMD’s Ryzen 9 9955HX or 7945HX chips, each 16-core cell CPUs that increase as much as 5.4GHz and draw as much as 100W,tapping into desktop territory whereas retaining thermal effectivity.
With a chassis measuring just 196 x 189 x 48 mm, this mini PC comes with soldered CPUs, which prevents future upgrades, nevertheless it incorporates built-in cooling to keep up efficiency at excessive energy ranges.
A networking king
Networking, usually an afterthought in compact PCs, is a standout function in the MS-A2. Designed with superior use circumstances corresponding to dwelling labs, media servers, and edge AI deployments in thoughts, this system helps twin 10GbE through SFP+ and twin 2.5GbE LAN.
The Minisforum MS-A2 options three NVMe-capable slots, together with two M.2 2280 slots and one U.2-compatible bay. Regardless of dropping one M.2 slot in comparison with the sooner MS-A1, the system nonetheless affords as much as 15TB of quick storage by way of U.2 and NVMe slots, alongside with RAID help.
Help for discrete GPUs – although restricted to low-profile fashions through a PCIe 4.0 x8 slot – provides credibility to its workstation claims.
The system’s design consists of bifurcation help, permitting superior customers to run compute playing cards or media accelerators for duties like Plex transcoding or AI inference. Paired with as much as 96GB of DDR5 RAM, this setup places the MS-A2 in severe competition as the very best workstation in its dimension class.
The barebone model of the MS-A2 prices $839, whereas the model with 64GB RAM and a 1TB SSD is priced at $1,103 for US clients.
Minisforum has a historical past of pushing boundaries, with fashions just like the MS-01 supporting Intel’s high-end cell CPUs such because the Core i9-13900H, and providing options like three M.2 slots, a SATA bay, and 10GbE networking.
The MS-02 continued this development with a bewildering array of choices, together with 4 Ethernet ports – two of that are 10GbE – and help for as much as 4 SSDs.
By way of Videocardz