News Minisforum announce $559 AR900i Mini ITX motherboard with Intel Core 13900HX and four M.2 2280 slots

[Admin]

Minisforum AR900i Mini ITX motherboard with pre-fitted Intel Core i9-13900HX and cooler, plus four M.2 2280 PCIe4.0 SSD slots now available for $559.

Minisforum announce $559 AR900i Mini ITX motherboard with Intel Core 13900HX and four M.2 2280 slots : Read more

 

[dwd999]

Looks promising, I may get one in a few months for my 2024 spring build. But maybe I'm missing something, I don't see a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port that most motherboards now have for the case front connector port.

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

Looks promising, I may get one in a few months for my 2024 spring build. But maybe I'm missing something, I don't see a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port that most motherboards now have for the case front connector port.

These are certainly neat little ITX devices. With that amount of M.2 and a full size PCIEx16 slot, theres a lot of potential for these boards, especially at this price point.

 

[coromonadalix]

Meh expensive for what it is ???

 

[sjkpublic]

If I had the money I would get this. The i9-13900hx list price is over $600. But here you are getting the whole package. Minisforum is killing it.

 

[deesider]

Meh expensive for what it is ???

Wait until you see how much the NUC equivalent costs!

 

[sjkpublic]

This is not a NUC. The power supply and case are separate. And yet the power usage and size are close to a NUC. What stands this apart from a NUC is you can use a PCIE card (correct me if I am wrong), memory can go beyond 64GB (finally), and the CPU kicks butt (32 threads 44K on cpu benchmarks).

 

[cyrusfox]

Tempting, I am rocking a 13900 itx build, I would rather they made full slot dimms as I think the selection/speed is better for the price, but good compromise of IO and nice to see 4x M.2 (mine only has 2x). Seems like a very competent cooler solution as well that should fit in any sandwich design ITX case.

 

[johi]

Awesome board, great price, the possibly only drawback is really the sodimm ram with max 5600 MHz, perhaps you can anyways install faster ram and set it in bios? Would it have been 2 weeks earlier I'd buy it but as it stand I got a cheap mit z690 board with a cheap 13900 just recently... The price in the end with import duties pretty much the same, even slightly cheaper for my combo. But surely this board has a lower idle power draw and is, having a mobile cpu, under load more efficient. Using it with a single card psu should make it really great!

 

[SyCoREAPER]

The pre-sale price should be the regular price. Retail of over $130 more post launch makes it not quite as appealing.

 

[abufrejoval]

Minisforum AR900i Mini ITX motherboard with pre-fitted Intel Core i9-13900HX and cooler, plus four M.2 2280 PCIe4.0 SSD slots now available for $559.

Minisforum announce $559 AR900i Mini ITX motherboard with Intel Core 13900HX and four M.2 2280 slots : Read more

This is the point where I'd expect Tom's hardware to make a difference and dig into how Minisforum decides to make this happen.

The current Intel desktop and mobile chips have a maximum of 20 PCIe lanes available (not counting the DMI) from the SoC, so obviously with a full GPU slot and 4 M.2 slots to an editor at TH there should be a rather obvious lack of lanes: otherwise these boards would flood the market!

Of course they could just decide to use the SoC's 4+4+4+4 bifurcation mode and give only four lanes to the dGPU slot... and that's a valid choice for some! My Intel NUC11 Panther Lake connects an RTX 2060m like that. Or 8+4+4 with some creative sauce (see below).

But it could be a bit of a bother for some games and gamers, because it means that say an RTX 4090 only gets 4 lanes of PCI 4.0 bandwidth (least common denominator) or 1/8 of PCIe x16 v5 bandwidth.

Obviously you could also cut down the M.2 connectors to 2 lanes each (or a single lane for that matter). or you could actually put a PCIe switch somewhere to make this magic happen.

But it's this sort of detail that TH should add to an article like this, because that's where you add value over echoing vendor marketing.

And in any other way this isn't that far from what a lot of Chinese vendors seem to be doing these days. putting notebook chips Intel seems to sell on a budget once newer onces are in the pipeline onto a desktop mainboard.

Erying has been doing that for quite a long time, I've got one of them with an i7-12700H in a Mini-ITX with only three M.2 slots (the GPU slot only gets 8 lanes and the 3rd M.2 is 2 lane SATA only), which I use mostly as a small form-factor server where a 10Gibt Ethernet card goes into the "GPU" slot.

 

[8086]

Meh expensive for what it is ???

Considering you are getting a high end cpu, on a motherboard and with a hefty heatsink; then I'd say this is a pretty good deal.

 

[newtechldtech]

guys , if you want low voltage mobile cpu just get the "T" models form intel. and pick ANY itx motherboard you like.
Intel allways released the laptop version of their i7 and i9 for desktop motherboards. look for i7 13700T / 14700T and i9 13900T/ 14900T etc

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Considering you are getting a high end cpu, on a motherboard and with a hefty heatsink; then I'd say this is a pretty good deal.

The only thing it has going for it is the form factor. Otherwise I could go to Microcenter and get the desktop version of the CPU, DDR5 RAM and a Motherboard for the pre-sale price right now.

If they do intent do increase the price after the initial batch, I agree with @coromonadalix that it's expensive.

 

[abufrejoval]

guys , if you want low voltage mobile cpu just get the "T" models form intel. and pick ANY itx motherboard you like.
Intel allways released the laptop version of their i7 and i9 for desktop motherboards. look for i7 13700T / 14700T and i9 13900T/ 14900T etc

In a way you're right. Mostly when a guaranteed peak energy consumption is the principal goal.

But I've gone looking for these Erying boards for a combination of size and value.

Size: A mini-ITX board in a low-profile case isn't that much bigger as a µ-server than a NUC, while internal expandability can be crucially better where it counts (e.g. 10Gbit Ethernet via M.2). And these mobile-SoC mini-ITX boards are just a little less cramped than a socketed board, which typically require a cube-type chassis for air-flow.

Value: you get some pretty awsome deals e.g. on an 8-core Tiger Lake i7-11850H SoC with the mainboard for less than €300. Compare that to an i3-305 Alder Lake Atom and you may opt for the slightly higher idle power consumption but the vastly higher peak performance at still reasonable and regulatable energy expense.

Socketed T-type CPUs don't tend to sell at bargain prices, but cost nearly the same as non-T or even -K chips, when new. I have not seen them get bargain deals, even when older.

Older generation mobile chips, on the other hand, just don't get put into new notebooks. So if there is a surplus, they tend to go into NUCs or Mini-ITX boards at evdiently high discounts, while their performance is still top notch, expecially with the expanded thermal headroom of a stationary device with a proper Noctua fan.

I have an i7-12700H, which is offically a 35Watt TDP device, configured to 120 Watts peak and 90 Watts sustained. It has my Ryzen 7 5800X3D look rather bad in most synthetic benchmarks at very similar power usage, but runs very quiet and efficient with a Noctua cooler.

Yes, you get a soldered SoC, but you tend to pay a high premium for the flexibility of a socket in this segment, while the probability of using that tends to be migher in high-end gaming towers.

I like that you're given a choice and am only sad that Erying doesn't sell the Xeon variant of Tiger Lake in Mini-ITX, only the slightly larger board variant, still at around €300: I prefer ECC RAM even in servers that are µ.

 

[newtechldtech]

In a way you're right. Mostly when a guaranteed peak energy consumption is the principal goal.

But I've gone looking for these Erying boards for a combination of size and value.

Size: A mini-ITX board in a low-profile case isn't that much bigger as a µ-server than a NUC, while internal expandability can be crucially better where it counts (e.g. 10Gbit Ethernet via M.2). And these mobile-SoC mini-ITX boards are just a little less cramped than a socketed board, which typically require a cube-type chassis for air-flow.

Value: you get some pretty awsome deals e.g. on an 8-core Tiger Lake i7-11850H SoC with the mainboard for less than €300. Compare that to an i3-305 Alder Lake Atom and you may opt for the slightly higher idle power consumption but the vastly higher peak performance at still reasonable and regulatable energy expense.

Socketed T-type CPUs don't tend to sell at bargain prices, but cost nearly the same as non-T or even -K chips, when new. I have not seen them get bargain deals, even when older.

Older generation mobile chips, on the other hand, just don't get put into new notebooks. So if there is a surplus, they tend to go into NUCs or Mini-ITX boards at evdiently high discounts, while their performance is still top notch, expecially with the expanded thermal headroom of a stationary device with a proper Noctua fan.

I have an i7-12700H, which is offically a 35Watt TDP device, configured to 120 Watts peak and 90 Watts sustained. It has my Ryzen 7 5800X3D look rather bad in most synthetic benchmarks at very similar power usage, but runs very quiet and efficient with a Noctua cooler.

Yes, you get a soldered SoC, but you tend to pay a high premium for the flexibility of a socket in this segment, while the probability of using that tends to be migher in high-end gaming towers.

I like that you're given a choice and am only sad that Erying doesn't sell the Xeon variant of Tiger Lake in Mini-ITX, only the slightly larger board variant, still at around €300: I prefer ECC RAM even in servers that are µ.

You can use the "T" CPU in any itx case you want ... even in passive cooled itx cases .. they generate the same heat of high end mobile chips .. and the price is almost the same , Mobile CPUs are not cheap you can check their prices on ark.intel and compare ...

There is nothing to gain from soldered Mobile CPUS when it is the same itx motherbard .. there is no point ! ONLY if they make a smaller motherboard then it is worth going for mobile soldered CPU.