Credit to @bamzero for pointing out that the price of the M4NEO has dropped from $1069 to $949 while the 30% off coupon is still active, making it a better deal than the Reatan A6 I posted yesterday.
See previous deal for more details.
CamelCamelCamel.
wow
TB5 will certainly alleviate the bottleneck issues TB4 had when connecting eGPU's. Consider though that you can use an NVME slot in most Mini PC's and get a $15 M.2 to Oculink Adapter to boost bandwidth to 64GB/s (so long as the eGPU dock supports Oculink, which most do these days). No this isn't plug and play like TB but is a way to extend the life of some of these older Mini PC's which could be had at a bargain. Keep in mind, most of the cheap-mid range Mini PC's CPU's will be the bottleneck in gaming (particularly multi-core performance) even with the increased bandwidth of a TB5 port, unless you stick to a modest GPU. What is the point of all of this.. don't wait for TB5 devices if you can get a good deal on a solid Mini PC today, you have options if eGPU connectivity is of importance.
The most important thing you have to consider is scalability where Oculink hasn't got ATM. I have laptops, handhelds with TB3/4 & USB4 and will all be compatible with Razer Core X as i currently have. Yes, they're always going to be compatibility & teething issues however I've used it with several systems and it's stable.
Note that Oculink is simply a PCI Express connector that isn't a card edge. It's just an adaptor to make it possible to plug and unplug the PCIe device on the other end - there's no active tech or smarts involved.
For this reason, it's pretty useless compared to Thunderbolt - there's no hot plug ability etc. in Oculink, it's just a dumb connector.
@Nom: How many Laptop owners are going to open up the bottom, use the Oculink PCIE adapter and use with it half open?
@vinni9284: None - which is why Oculink ports exist in the first place 😁 It's to make the PCIe bus available externally - but that's the only thing it does.
@Nom: It'll be great if they started to include Oculink into laptops etc. That way, competition is welcomed resulting in price reductions.
@vinni9284: Not many laptop users, but this post was about Mini PC’s which changes things due to ease of upgrading.
@EitherWayUp: If you're going to buy a mini PC and decide to have an eGPU, you might as well build a mini itx PC with a decent GPU.
@vinni9284: Not necessarily. I’ve had a Mini ITX in the past and whilst small, nowhere near a portable as a Mini PC. Also, more power draw.
@EitherWayUp: An eGPU will suck power as well. Plus you can build normal specd PC parts on an mini itx rather than mini pc compromised components; all the nomenclature they use to make you think that's retail spec CPU by adding a suffix etc & noticeably slower. No upgrade path.
@vinni9284: I get what you’re saying. But the simple fact is, a Mini PC is extremely tidy and portable and upgradable more-so than a laptop. I mean, you can even plant them behind a monitor for an AIO solution. Have an eGPU dock underneath and off you go. Neat and tidy. Yes you can pay less building a Mini ITX that outperforms it, but that’s not the point of Mini PC’s.
a Mini PC is extremely tidy
…until you plug in an external GPU with an ATX Power Supply to run it. You've now got a flying spaghetti monster.
If you want tidy and upgradeable, then you're going for the ITX machine, not a mini PC with an external GPU.
Tbh I think with 40Gbps on TB4/USB4 the bottleneck is really not a huge issue (for now). My experience with USB4 egpu has been really positive and benchmarked within 90-95% of direct on motherboard.
More egpu options the better though!
That’s great to hear. Some games certainly aren’t as impacted as others.
Do you mind me asking what hardware are you running?
@vinni9284: Built one for a Lenovo 6800u powered laptop with USB4 connected to a ADT UT3G. Cheap ATX power supply and RX6800
Can you explain how it affect the price?
They seems like different product target different demographic of users.
Can this do 120hz 4k for gerforce now output?
Unfortunately this looks like it's only 4K@60Hz
Why cant they use type-C for power supply?
They could, the power input is just a standard DC barrel - use one of these https://www.amazon.com.au/Cablecc-Female-5-52-1mm-Charge-Lap… (obviously you need to match the voltage and the barrel size, but these trigger adaptors come in every possible variation - that link is a 65W 20v unit but you'll need a 12v for some mini PCs and sometimes you'll need a 100W unit).
Note that if the machine can draw 300W at full tilt, then USB C ceases to be an option… and I haven't seen any DC trigger adaptors that can do more than 100W.
Full fat 240W USB C is a 48v supply so it's not going to be useful for a mini PC…
I believe you can power this one via one of the USB-C ports..
Can it run Crysis? 😜
I'd say this is a better deal:
https://www.amazon.com.au/MINISFORUM-UM870-Slim-Processor-Co…
It's an extra ~$30 with a newer CPU. Might be a little biased as I own one and am happy with it.
Bought a minisforum UM773 lite (ryzen 7 7735hs) recently for $430 on amazon sale 4 weeks ago, good value but reading some reviews and reddit comments have me wary of minisforum with report units are dying between 3-12months mark.
So far it's good, ordered 32gb/1tb came with Crucial RAM and Kingston NVME, so branded components at least.
Plan on using as a HTPC.
My OneXplayer Pro 2 8840u 32gb ram just died, and I only had it for 16 months. I believe the fan has stopped working, which prevents the device from posting. I sent it back for repairs early this week. I'm covering the cost of everything, including shipping, tariffs, and repairs.
I knew what I was getting into with limited warranty with these companies, so I wasn't surprised.
$32 extra for the M4 nabs you the 8745HS, which benchmarks a bit quicker, presumably because of the slightly lower TDP letting it boost a bit better.
This guy fu*ks.
Is that the only difference between the neo version?
If it matters to you, the 8745HS has a slightly slower 780M @ 2600MHz and no NPU vs the 7840HS @ 2700MHz with NPU.
(8745HS was a China release, something about conforming to the government cryptography standards.)
Yep. Using for mostly 1080p games so that 100mhz will help. Thanks
Being tied to system RAM, dual channel is a must (usually the 32GB models are 2x16GB but not a given.)
The TDP is sometimes set conservatively on these too. If they don't have any suitable BIOS settings, Universal Tuning Utility might let you squeeze a little more performance out of it (maybe with a little more fan noise)
I have a little 3550H I was testing on. Running Superposition at 1080P Medium single channel to dual channel gave an increase of 52%. Running Extreme tuning profile gave it close to another 8% on top of that (BIOS TDP max is 25W, lower than the 35W it's capable of). No idea how it might translate to these newer processors though.
would it be worth paying an extra $315 and getting the extra 32GB RAM and 1TB HDD?
The SSDs in these tend to not be that good so you are better finding an aftermarket SSD and installing it.
This is pretty good for SteamOS 😁
Process is a breeze
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1B71-EDF2-EB6D-2B…
Once controllers are setup u might need the following (wireless controllers lag sometimes)
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/169jled/xbox_con…
at this price and it's still only HDMI 2.0.
Yeah nah
Why does this matter ?
If you want to game at massive framerates then you're buying an ITX machine with a proper graphics card, and there's also a Display Port output anyway 🤷
People may want a higher refresh rate than 60Hz even if they're not gaming.
Then use the DisplayPort 🤟
If your monitor has no DP input then you can get 240Hz HDMI from it with a https://www.amazon.com.au/UGREEN-DisplayPort-Multi-Screen-Pr…
because some of us want higher refresh rate or Dynamic HDR.
I'm using a LG C2 48 inch as my monitor for the record. I have no computer monitors in the house.
@he11bent https://www.ozbargain.com.au/comment/16753922/redir - you don't need an HDMI port for any of these things, modern display outputs are all interchangeable with the right active cable.
Mac mini still the better buy
different OS, different hardware, different price range.
Let me rephase that for you;
better os, superior hardware, better value
Cringey
Nice to see some of these with two network ports for use as a network device. Anyone know if you could use it as a wifi access point in addition to a router/firewall?
Can do - won't be out of the box or power efficient - but in windows you can automate the task with a bat file to auto turn on Wireless Hotspot and schedule the task on boot. There's also software options, but inbuilt windows should do it unless you need specific DHCP and traffic management.
You'll be seeing further price drops as eGPU Razer Core X V2 is coming out featuring TB5 where it'll be plug and play.