Beelink SER9 mini PC evaluation

AMD’s Strix Level Ryzen APUs landed this 12 months, and commenced rolling out in notebooks to a refrain of excessive reward. These smashing cell processors come armed with AMD’s new RDNA 3.5 built-in graphics structure, aka the Radeon 890M. Laptop computer producers typically choose low-power variants of APUs, or set decrease TDP limits, so as to protect battery life and minimise warmth. That is prudent in a cell context, however what in case your use-case is the desktop? I say plug it in and provides it all of the watts!

Enter the Beelink SER9 mini PC, sporting the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370: AMD’s top-shelf Strix Level APU. Yep, new chip era, baffling new chip designation… it is virtually like AMD is in competitors with Intel not merely for market-share, however to see who can troll customers the toughest.

At any highway, chances are you’ll be assured that the HX 370 is a step up in efficiency from AMD’s Zen 4 Ryzen 8000-series APUs, and outperforms Intel’s Meteor Lake headliner, the Core Extremely 9 185H.

Strix Level additionally marks an architectural gearshift for AMD. Fairly than fielding a bunch of similar cores like earlier Ryzen CPUs, it is a dual-cluster design of 4 Zen 5 cores which run as much as 5.1GHz, and eight Zen 5c (compact) cores, that are smaller, extra power-efficient, generate much less warmth, have half the L3 cache, and max out at 3.3GHz. Intel led the way in which on the massive/little philosophy with its twelfth Gen CPUs, however that is new floor for AMD.

There’s additionally a heavier deal with AI—the clue’s within the title—so the AI 9 HX 370 additionally sports activities an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) able to delivering 50 TOPS, or trillions of operations per second, the defining metric for NPUs. Beelink claims this rises to 80 TOPS if the CPU and iGPU cores get in on the motion, which far exceeds the 40 TOPS threshold required to qualify for Microsoft’s Copilot-branded PC initiative. The SER9 is not Copilot branded, however there’s loads of poke there to handle helpful AI duties comparable to voice recognition, sensible noise-suppression in calls and such.

Beelink suggests the SER9 can be appropriate for text-prompt art-gen fashions comparable to secure diffusion; it will by no means be as fast as setting a hench GPU unfastened on the duty, however it’s a nice-to-have all the identical. AI nonetheless has baggage of untapped potential, however my curiosity will not be intensively piqued till NPC behaviour and dialogue in video games begins getting the Neural Processing remedy.

The SER9 can run the HX 370 in balanced (54W) or efficiency (65W) modes, and fortunately I discovered that switching to the latter makes zero distinction to its noise output—it cools the APU successfully and stays extraordinarily quiet even at full tilt. In truth, the one factor that kicked the cooling-fan into overdrive was Forza Motorsport’s shader-compiling course of, which that specific title appears to need to do each time I blink.

Benchmarking highlights a strong efficiency uplift over the earlier high iGPU, AMD’s Radeon 780M. Which is not any shock, because the 890M options 25% extra Compute Models, Shader Models and RT cores than the 780M, amongst different enhancements. This makes it able to knocking out 5.9 TFLOPS to the 780M’s 4.3 TFLOPS. So: greater, higher, quicker, extra, principally.

Positive aspects range per sport, however let’s begin with the chart-topper. The Radeon 780M in a Ryzen 9 7940HS operating at 65W TDP averages round 50 fps in Cyberpunk, at 1080p, medium settings, Body Gen and FSR set to balanced, which is none too shabby. The 890M within the SER 9 boosts that to a gangbusting 88 fps common on the identical settings, with 1% lows remaining above 60 fps. I feel that is merely unimaginable for an iGPU.

Not each sport goes to see such a dramatic enchancment, however it’s nonetheless good points all spherical for the 890M at 1080p and medium settings, when set towards the 780M. Warhammer III sees efficiency hikes of 26% in marketing campaign and 25% in battle, reaching 38 fps and 53 fps respectively. Forza Motorsport sees a 14% uplift to 53 fps, although Homeworld 3’s built-in benchmark, which all the time advantages from higher CPU grunt, solely sees a lift of 1 fps, so no change there. The 780M was all the time proud of indie titles, and the 890M much more so; I threw Stray and Subnautica its method and it returned averages of 68 fps and 82 fps respectively. So it is all excellent news. In a nutshell, the Radeon 890M is the brand new king of the iGPU hill.

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So how about the remainder of the SER9 package deal? RAM-wise it packs 32 GB of LPDDR5-7500, and it is fast off the mark. Benchmarked towards 32 GB of 5600MHz desktop DDR5 utilizing MaxxMem, it has solely 6% larger read-speeds, however outperforms the desktop RAM with 22% quicker copy speeds and an enormous 77% uptick in write speeds. Given the Radeon 890M ringfences a block of this to make use of as VRAM, it is undoubtedly a contributor to the system’s gaming efficiency.

The draw back is that it is soldered onto the motherboard Macbook-style, and Beelink solely sells a 32 GB configuration of the SER9. In the event you’re proud of 32 GB for all times—which I think about is true for most individuals—then nice. But when your use-case calls for 64GB or extra then you definately’re outta luck, because the RAM can’t be changed or elevated.

IO-wise, you get a ten Gbps USB-C and a single Sort-A up entrance, plus a 40 Gbps USB4 and one other three Sort-A ports around the again. There is a selection of DisplayPort 1.4 or HDMI 2.1, networking is dealt with by a WiFi 6 / Bluetooth 5.2 M.2 card or 2.5G LAN, and also you additionally get a quad-microphone array, entrance and rear audio jacks, and a tiny pair of rudimentary built-in audio system. Launch the screws on the underside to pop it open and you will find a steel-mesh mud filter, plus a heavy-duty SSD cooler-block protecting each M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots. So whereas the reminiscence is not upgradeable, you’ll be able to a minimum of bump up the storage with an additional M.2 drive.

In abstract, It is a tidy, super-compact, all-aluminium affair, and whisper-quiet below load. It is fairly well-appointed in IO, and is hands-down the very best mini-PC we have examined for 1080p gaming, in need of a machine with a discrete GPU comparable to Minisforum’s G7 PT. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and Radeon 890M are a killer combo, which you pay for on the checkout; at $999/£761, it isn’t an inexpensive mini-PC. However if you would like the very best pixel-pusher within the tiniest form-factor out there, the SER9 is the one to beat.