MINISFORUM says it’s working on a small form-factor desktop computer with an AMD B550 chipset and support for up to an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X processor.

Measuring 166.5 x 158 x 67mm (6.56″ x 6.22″ x 2.64″), the computer won’t take up much space on a desk… but there’s also not room under the hood for a discrete graphics card – but the computer does support one. Update: The MINISFORUM EliteMini B550 mini PC with an expansion dock for discrete graphics cards is now available for pre-order for $499 and up.

MINISFORUM’s new B550 mini PC comes with a detachable graphics dock that hooks up to a PCIe connector on the main computer, allowing you to use a full-sized, desktop-class graphics card with this small computer.

MINISFORUM hasn’t announced a price, release date, or even a name for the computer yet, but after initially teasing the little computer in November, the company has released some more details and pictures showing how the mini PC and graphics dock will work together.

According to MINISFORUM, the computer supports AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors and comes with a 19V power brick and cooling system capable of handling chips with a TDP up to 65 watts. If you’re planning to use a 65-watt chip like the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G with integrated graphics, then you shouldn’t need to buy any additional gear.

But if you want a higher-performance system that pairs components like a Ryzen 5 5600X desktop processor with a discrete GPU, MINISFORUM says you can bring your own ATX or SFX power supply for up to 600 watts of power.

For what it’s worth, some of these details may be subject to change – when MINISFORUM first announced plans to release this mini PC with an AMD B550 motherboard and discrete graphics support, the company promised it would support up to a 105 watt Ryzen 9 5900X processor and power supplies up to 1000 watts, but neither of those claims show up in the latest press release.

MINISFORUM also seems to have scrapped plans to include PCIe 4.0 support, instead settling for PCIe 3.0.

I wouldn’t consider anything final until this somewhat modular mini PC actually starts shipping.

That said, here are a few other things MINISFORUM has revealed so far:

  • 2 x M.2 2280 slots with support for PCIe 3.0 NVMe or SATA SSDs
  • 2 x HDMI
  • 1 x DisplayPort
  • 2 x USB Type-C
  • 4 x USB 3.x Type-A ports
  • 1 x 3.5mm mic input
  • 1 x 3.5mm audio out
  • 2.5 Gbps Ethernet

There don’t appear to be any ports at all on the front of the computer.

This article was originally published November 9, 2021 and most recently updated February 11, 2022. 

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5 replies on “MINISFORUM is building a mini PC with discrete graphics and AMD Ryzen 5000”

  1. Either it supports ECC RAM, or I’m not interested (should not be hard with a B550 as many full-sized mobos do it already).

  2. This is the coolest little PC I have ever seen. I would love a little 5600G system. My only complaint is that it should either have a single 10g NIC, of dual NIC’s.

    I do wonder what the performance boost would be with a little 1650 or 3050 in there. I thing a 5600G or 5700G would be place that for a little PC. That would be such an improvement over the existing quad core systems, especially the graphics. I am dying to see AMD’s new APU’s with Vega.

  3. Can I assume that something of this nature will no doubt be priced something north of $1.2K? I am trying to figure out (other the size) where the value equation is for the device that is discrete in almost all its functions. Do people spend $2k for a ATX/mATX formatted system that they can incrementally update over time, or buy a single function mini that cannot be fixed or changed for its lifetime (~3 years probably before the heat does it in)

    1. I had a little NUC quad core that I abused and it is still running close to a decade later. Unless they cheap out on the motherboard. These things keep on going for far longer than 3 years

  4. Interesting. I like the idea of a B550 chipset in a small form factor build. I love my ASRock A300 but was disappointed that ASRock released the X300 which has virtually no changes in order to re-monetize their STX board. Support for the 5700G never came to the A300 and I ended up building a mATX system with a Ryzen 5950X instead. We’ll see how well Minisforum supports this platform but with AMD moving to a new socket soon, I wonder if it would be wiser for many folks to just wait a bit.

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