Minisforum X500

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• MINISFORUM X400 $599.99
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Minisforum EliteMini X500-5700G Mini PC

It can be said that the Minisforum X500 fits between different solutions. The Minisforum HM50, for example, offers a Ryzen 5 4500U. The Minisforum HX90 has a Ryzen 9 5900HX. With its Ryzen 7 5700G this newcomer wants to be the umpteenth solution on this particular market.

I always wonder why the brand offers so many different machines and designs. It would probably be simpler to design a chassis and to decline it to the different chips available on the market. Instead, it multiplies the references. So this Minisforum X500 seems to replace the X400 released under Ryzen 4xx0 last May in its EliteMini range.

The Ryzen 7 5700G is a little monster in its kind, it is first of all a chip developing 65 watts of TDP. Not a small matter to dissipate in such a small case as the one proposed. With 15.4 cm wide by 15.3 cm deep and 6.2 cm thick, this particularly airy chassis seems to be cut for this task. The X400s also offered chips developing up to 65 watts of TDP with the Ryzen 7 Pro 4750G, for example.

So we should enjoy the same features on this newcomer: three storage units with an M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe, an M.2 2242 SATA and a 2.5″ SATA slot. The RAM will be able to climb up to 64GB of DDR4 with two dual channel SoDIMM slots.

The connectivity should also be the same and the Minisforum X500 will offer all the equipment that one could ask for in a MiniPC intended to replace a classic machine. However, we can hope for a change since the X400 was devoid of any USB Type-C plug. Maybe this new version will offer one. The rest is very interesting with four USB 3.0 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet, an HDMI output and a DisplayPort, audio jacks and even a MicroSDXC card reader. A combo jack is also available on the front.

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