AtomMan G1 Pro evaluation | PC Gamer

The Minisforum Atomman G1 Pro has sat on my desk now for about two weeks. Happily bimbling away, working benchmarks, stress checks, and going via all method of arduous rigamarole that we require these mini gaming PCs to endure in our pursuit of testing excellence, (write that down, it’s going to be within the firm name later).

In essence, it is fairly distinctive. Effectively a bizarre hybrid of types. Fluidly blurring the strains between a mid-range gaming laptop computer and an entry-level ITX rig. The case is outlandishly compact, with solely 3.8 L of inside capability, and but someway, Minisforum has slammed a 350 W PSU in there, a motherboard with 32 GB of dual-channel DDR5, an RTX 5060 low-profile GPU, and at least two M.2 slots as properly. It’s so slim. So sheepishly svelte, it is laborious to consider that this plucky little case truly manages to carry all that in there with out buckling on the seams. Looking extra akin to a PS5 than a devoted gaming desktop.

The saving grace is, indubitably, that CPU that Minisforum has strapped up below the cooler, puttering away beneath that chassis. Namely AMD’s Ryzen 9 8945HX. This is one of Big Red’s latest Ryzen 8,000 series chips (I say latest, it launched over a year ago now, but I wouldn’t hold out hope for new silicon these days that ain’t going into an AI datacenter), and arguably the reason why this might make it into our best Mini PC list, albeit in a bit of a roundabout way.

It’s successfully a low-powered Zen 4, 16-core unit, working off the again of TSMC’s 5nm FinFET design. Primarily, it is aimed on the high-end laptop computer market, but it surely’s obtained some severe chops by way of general processing energy too, notably if you present it with sufficient juice. And it is that one distinctive aspect Minisforum is making an attempt to make the most of right here.

The G1 Pro comes with its personal desktop app, and as you most likely have already guessed, it permits you to swap between three completely different profiles that successfully alter the facility supply to the CPU immediately. There’s “Office Mode”, the place the 8945HX is locked at 60 W TDP, “Gaming Mode” the place it stumbles alongside at a fully placid 80 W, and “Beast Mode” (phwoaaar…) that ramps that wattage all the way in which as much as 100 W, (though formally AMD’s 8945HX is simply rated to run between 55 and 75 W). It’s very comparable in some ways to Lenovo’s Legion 9i laptop computer line. As you possibly can think about with that, although, you get extra efficiency, greater frequencies for longer, but additionally much more warmth.

The GPU itself, a low-profile RTX 5060—full with 8 GB of VRAM and packaged up properly by Gigabyte in a spectacularly slim Low Profile OC design—will fairly fortunately trundle away at 145 W it doesn’t matter what profile you set. Really, you are solely impacting CPU efficiency with this, and even with it set to Ultra Instinct Mega Beast mode, at max, you are still leaving that PSU with an excellent 105W of headroom. No drama on energy provides going pop right here.

That CPU, although, will not be a cool chip. Not on this design anyway. And not even in dull-as-dishwater workplace mode both. It’s silicon that is been constructed very particularly with low energy supply in thoughts, as a result of it is meant for use in laptops, and merchandise the place cooling is proscribed in comparison with, you realize, these desktop machines the place you may simply slap a full-fat 360 mm wham-bam-thank-you-mam AIO into it and name it a day.

In the G1 Pro, as a result of it is obtained such a compact type issue, it naturally runs scorching. In that default mode, max CPU temps all through our computational checks landed at 93 °C. In-game, that high temp hit a staggering 91 °C in consecutive runs of Metro Exodus, with a mean of 89 °C general.

Now, sure, technically the 8945HX does have a TJmax temp of 100 °C, however outdoors of bragging rights, and that one-off benchmark run you do when your workplace is 7 levels, since you’ve left the window open all evening, these profiles arguably aren’t actually price it. Particularly because it would not have an effect on the GPU. That’s a bit bizarre, too, by the way in which, as a result of that RTX 5060 is surprisingly environment friendly given its dimension (good work, Gigabyte).

In computational checks (Blender particularly), it maxed out at 67 °C general. In-game, although, the determine was markedly greater at 77 °C general. Clearly, there’s headroom there nonetheless, particularly for that graphics card to be pushed somewhat tougher, which is shocking that Minisforum did not bake one thing in for that particularly.

A tiny peak inside rapidly reveals simply what is going on on right here, and it is purely a matter of type issue over operate, and I do not know if I ought to be impressed or not. It’s cramped, cables are tidy, properly secured, out the way in which as greatest they are often. Cooling is optimized, and {hardware} positioning is intuitive. There are two M.2 slots right here, one housing a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD (Kingston’s OM8TAP41024K1-A00, full with Kioxia’s 162-layer BiCS6 QLC NAND), and Minisforum has included an extra M.2 heatsink as properly if you wish to add an extra drive (a genuinely good contact). But boy, they di not have a lot house to work with. Still, should you do need to improve it in a while, say if OpenAI awkwardly cannot purchase up 40% of the world’s reminiscence provide, and DRAM costs plummet all of a sudden because of this (oh no, what a disgrace), you possibly can… with a little bit of effort.

One factor I’ll spotlight as a possible situation, although, is the entire I/O scenario. Just full cease, interval. It’s extremely restricted. You’ve obtained a complete of two USB Type-C ports (one on the entrance, one on the again), three USB Type-A (once more one on the entrance, two on the again), a 5G Ethernet, one audio out (in entrance), and properly that is it (except for the apparent show outputs, WiFi 7 and Bluetooth). It ain’t rather a lot, so should you’re severe about your setup, you are going to need to spend money on a strong USB hub of some description.

Generally, although, construct high quality, superb. Aesthetics, top-tier. Expandable, internals glorious. Cooling, a little bit of a swing and a miss in some instances. I/O, eugh. But the efficiency, now that’s the fascinating bit. And let’s face it, it form of must be for the worth (£1,350 within the UK, $1,439 within the US with a hefty low cost at time of writing).

In the G1 Pro, as a result of it is obtained such a compact type issue, it naturally runs scorching. In that default mode, max CPU temps all through our computational checks landed at 93 °C. In-game, that high temp hit a staggering 91 °C in consecutive runs of Metro Exodus, with a mean of 89 °C general.

Now, sure, technically the 8945HX does have a TJmax temp of 100 °C, however outdoors of bragging rights, and that one-off benchmark run you do when your workplace is 7 levels, since you’ve left the window open all evening, these profiles arguably aren’t actually price it. Particularly because it would not have an effect on the GPU. That’s a bit bizarre, too, by the way in which, as a result of that RTX 5060 is surprisingly environment friendly given its dimension (good work, Gigabyte).

In computational checks (Blender particularly), it maxed out at 67 °C general. In-game, although, the determine was markedly greater at 77 °C general. Clearly, there’s headroom there nonetheless, particularly for that graphics card to be pushed somewhat tougher, which is shocking that Minisforum did not bake one thing in for that particularly.

Temps apart, gaming efficiency general is pretty strong. At 1440p, Cyberpunk manages 32 fps on the Ray Tracing Medium preset. Stick DLSS on at Quality and slap body gen as much as x2 with the CNN mannequin, and that determine shoots as much as 86 fps, making the factor greater than an gratifying expertise. Similarly, Metro Exodus on Ultra equally manages 52 fps, and Black Myth is available in at 37 fps (albeit with the assistance of some DLSS goodness). I additionally examined this in Total War: Warhammer 3 at 1440p Ultra, and each the battle benchmark and marketing campaign benchie got here in at 72 and 65 fps, respectively, for the plucky little RTX 5060. That’s not quite as good as its full-fat desktop cousin, at least not from our own results, but given there’s a laptop CPU powering the lot, masquerading as a desktop big boy, you’ve maybe got to expect some losses there.

CPU performance, though, well, again, it does depend on how hard you want to run it. In Office mode, Cinebench 2024 saw scores of 1,323 on the multi-core and 111 on single core, that’s about 41 points per thread on the multi-thread test, which is okay for efficiency, not bad by any means, but about 50% less efficient than what you’d find on something like the 9950X3D.

Still, it’s doing all that in a tiny 3.8L case, with a 350 W PSU, and a remarkably compact cooling solution to boot. Credit where credit’s due, there are literal physical limits to what can be achieved at these kinds of form factors, and if you want a machine that’s smaller than a PS5 that sits on your desktop comfortably and quite happily games at 1080p and 1440p, you’d be hard-pressed to find something just as potent for less. It certainly beats out the much older G7 PT.

I’ve had a quick peruse online too, and to match the G1 Pro, spec for spec, with the cheapest available components I could find, the price you’re looking at is about $1,440, or £1,342 or so (eerily close, guessing the humies at MinisForum have done their research). That’s with a Ryzen 5 9600X, A620I motherboard, RTX 5060, 1 TB SSD, and 32 GB of DDR5, sat inside of a Cooler Master MasterBox NR200P V2 (although you could switch for the slightly larger Phanteks XT V3 and shave off about $60).

But here’s the thing. You have to build that. You still have to buy Windows, and it’s still going to be considerably larger than the AtomMan G1 Pro, for maybe only slightly better performance, and in CPU terms not really. To circle back to what I was saying earlier, the G1 is very much this hybridisation design. It’s built very specifically to challenge traditional gaming consoles, laptops, and ITX PCs while encapsulating what they do best, but with far greater versatility. You can fit this thing in a rucksack, carry it to the office, a LAN event (people still do those right?), or claw back some much-needed desk space so you can show off more of your Warhammer 40K collection. Is it perfect? No. Is it as powerful as a full desktop equivalent? No. But it shouldn’t need to be.