MINISFORUM Neptune HX99G Mini PC AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX 32GB
MINISFORUM Neptune HX99G Mini PC AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX 32GB DDR5 1TB SSD AMD Radeon RX 6600M Mini Gaming PC Wi-Fi 6E/BT5.2,2xHDMI,2x USB4 Port,2X Slot PCIe/SATA SSD,5X USB3.2 Port,
| Weight: | 2.81 kg |
| Dimensions: | 24.4 x 23.8 x 15.6 cm; 2.81 Kilograms |
| Brand: | MINISFORUM |
| Model: | HX99G |
| Colour: | Black |
| Manufacture: | Micro Computer (HK) Tech Limited |
| Dimensions: | 24.4 x 23.8 x 15.6 cm; 2.81 Kilograms |
Blazing fast performance for most of the tasks. Possible to play 1080p games on low settings with good fps. The computer which was delivered had an SSD slot issue which was sorted out immediately with replacement.
Highly recommend and definitely a NUC beater.
So, I awas very pleasently surprised by it’s performance. Is quiet, fast, plenty of ram and smooth! Very smakk box, smaller than I anticipated.
But… the biggest downside is my monitos, refresh only at 50Hz – on 4K. (previously on my Gefore 1080Ti 100Hz 2 monitors @ 4K. Updated drivers and cables… can only get it at 60Hz on 1080p :/ Which is a big, big bummer. For me as I am staring at the screens for 10+ hours a day… now get fatigued much sooner :/ very noticable the difference. Would gladly sacrifice some more money and a bigger box for a dedicated card that would support 100hz refresh… Hopefully can find an enclosure and repurpose my graphic card and use it as external one
The other thing I noticed… the blootuth is not the best quality nor range… visibly deteriorated the listening on my sony headphones over 4m (and a wall)… on the other one or on a laptop I have no issues with 7+m and couple of walls.
A great deal of research went into the purchase of the UM790 Pro. A friend bought a 32gb RAM one at the beginning of December. I went for the 64gb RAM version (it was the only one in Amazon stock). I edit photographs and create videos, so I was hoping the increase in RAM would ensure the onboard video element would have enough. The unit is very small and keeps surprisingly cool. I haven’t heard a fan yet. It worked straight out of the box and in the two weeks I’ve had it I’ve transferred key files from my old tower PC, installed Office 365, games and photo/video software. The more you use the PC the quicker it boots. The service centre responded to a query form within 24 hours. Great service. My friend’s unit shipped with Windows 11 Pro, but I’m advised that they are now shipped with Windows 11 Home. As far as I can make out, that means you don’t get Bitlocker without upgrading to Windows 11 Pro. You decide whether you need it or not. I’m yet to be convinced. Value for money wise, I couldn’t update my tower PC to a similar spec for anywhere near the cost of this unit, and it is cheaper than its mini PC rivals.
As MinisForum has been making MiniPCs for a long time now and has a good reputation overall, I thought this was the best option and fairly good value for money.
I was not dissapointed with the packaging, the presentation or the system itself, all appeared well designed and well built.
It is without question a powerful system and should suit most peoples needs. It is NOT a AAA gaming machine, although it will perform well on most games upto 1080p with medium settings, and occassionally with FSR turned on to balanced where needed to achieve a minimum 60fps.
I also tried out some video encoding using handbrake, to see what it could do, and again I was very impressed with the speed.
However… there are a couple of issues with my system at least, and I think most people will suffer from this as it is a design flaw. If you need to use WiFi, and bluetooth, like many do these days, the performance is very poor, due to MinisForum for some unknown reason, deciding to place the WiFi and Bluetooth chipset and antenna under the bottom of the unit which then also suffers from interference from the NVMe drive near it.
This was very annoying, and it took a long time for me to discover this was the cause after much searching and messing with drivers.
The good news is, I fixed it by purchasing a USB plugin WiFi chipset with builtin antenna, a TP-Link AC1300 for onlu 14 from amazon, and I now max out my router bandwidth at the other end of my house.
Finally, on my system, the graphical BIOS which this MiniPC uses, has an issue which causes flickering, but it only happens if or when I need to go into the BIOS settings at boot, so it is not really a deal breaker again, just annoying.
And I would just mention one last point, it appears we are currently stuck with Chinese manufacturers for MiniPCs right now, so the customer service and aftercare is practically none exixtant, so please keep that in mind when buying… and NEVER buy a MoreFine MiniPC as they sell you over priced units with Engineering Sample CPUs, as I found out to my own expense when supporting an IndieGoGo campaign just over a year ago now.
Overall you will not be dissapointed if you keep in mind the above comments and my own experience.
This is the second UM790 pro I’ve bought, as I had to return one with a jammed screw on the SSD mount. But this one, which arrived today, has a new plastic case top, and the WiFi and Bluetooth antennae have been moved. This should be a marked improvement to the WiFi signal, which has been frequently remarked on as being poor. I have not yet built in the RAM and SSDs, but it has a good reputation and hopefully will be great for what I need.
I have had it for a week now and set up was easy and mine came with Windows pre-installed. Performance is exceptionally good. I pulled some video work off my old laptop (i7 16GB) for a test, and a video that took 50 minutes to render on the old machine was done in 10 on this one. Playback whilst editing in DaVinci Resolve is smooth.
It is tiny, smaller than my wifi router, and pretty much silent. It is running 2 x 27″ monitors through the front USB Type C.
I did put a couple of older games on here , though mostly older stuff as I have a console for modern games, but GTA IV, Manhunt and Bioshock remastered all perform brilliantly. I only scored 3 as GTA IVs frame rate wasn’t great, so I imagine newer AAA games would struggle.
All in all, I’m very happy and would highly recommend this.
Got it so I could still game while visiting family, since-then I’ve ended up using it more than my Gaming PC. It is a very reliable 1080p / 960 Resolution Scaled machine
Get a 2TB+ SATA SSD for it though, you’ll need it!
However, it does have a thunderbolt 4 port for use with an external GPU.. I decided to buy a razor core x external gpu enclosure and equip it with my nvidia 1070ti from my desktop. After plugging it all in it was initially working – for three or 4 days. Then a few days ago, it just stopped detecting the graphics card over the thunderbolt port.. I have found similar problem reports on the minisforum forums. So if use of an external GPU is important to you, I would probably recommend not purchasing a UM690 unfortunately. It should work on paper, but your mileage may vary.
This small pc is very fast and easy to upgrade, you can add more RAM or one more ssd, I very happy with it, and if you believe or not I can play forza horizon 5 without any lag.
MinisForum promptly sent me a replacement PC that now functions as expected, and I’m genuinely pleased with the level of customer support I received. If anyone encounters similar problems with this product after the Amazon return window has closed, I recommend reaching out to MinisForum via their Facebook page. They are incredibly helpful and responsive.
It arrived and I was so excited to try it. The MINISFORUM EM680 has a Ryzen 7 8c/16t CPU with 32GB of RAM and 1TB SSD. For the price that I got it for around 479 was a steal. Other computers of this spec were more expensive.
However, this computer does come with some drawbacks. For example, the RAM appears to be soldered, therefore, no upgrades from the 32GB. For most that will never be a problem but for my use case maybe.
The CPU, it runs around 50 degrees celsius idle, which is absolutely astonishing considering the size of this machine.
GAMING… This computer albeit not sold as a gaming machine, is certainly able to game. And I am not just talking about small indie games. I was able to play GTA V at 1080p 30FPS. Now that is impressive. BUT… Cyberpunk 2077 brought this computer to its knees only getting 10FPS!
This computer has one other downside and that is the significant lack of an ethernet port but makes up for that with WiFi 6E. Again for most people, it won’t be a problem but for me it was.
I am not returning this item as I think it is awesome and cannot wait to see the next version!
I haven’t even tried adding an external graphics card with occulink yet. Honestly, I’m not even sure I’ll need to with the games I play. This machine is just a beast.
It amazes me how far pcs have come over the years. But this one is pushing the boundaries of what I even thought was possible.
I’d say we’ll done minisforum, but most of the credit here goes to amd. Minis forum packaged it all and did a good job. The the performance is coming from that amd cpu and graphics card.
I can’t fault it. If its still on sale and you need a new pc, nothing, and I mean nothing on the market right now compares.
It does have one problem, the audio output is very noisy. This is present whether the HDMI or headphone socket is used or using an external D/A converter and appears to be related to radiated noise from the processor.
This is present on the UM690 and UM590 which I have set up for other users.
Fan noise however is non-existant especially when used flat on the desk rather than in the stand supplied.
Contrary to some comments, I find Windows 11 to be at least as stable as Windows 10 and the updates that have come through in recent months now make it the O/S of choice.
25th June 2023
Running it for a couple of months now and its held up well, no crashes, BSOD or other weirdness, updated the AMD drivers without incident and gone through a couple of Windows 11 updates too! I leave it on 24×7 and if I am not running World of Warships the fans are not audible and it sips power!
By Comparison, for the same amount of money, the MF comes with 32GB DDR5 RAM and a 512GB SSD, both branded Kingston. It also includes Windows 11 Pro which was straightforward to set up out of the box, and a powerful AMD processor.
The MF fan spins up when the machine is first switched on, which I think it just a re-assuring check that the fan is working, before settling down to silent operation.
The only issue that I have had is that it failed to switch on after a couple of weeks and I diagnosed the issue to a faulty power supply, so thankfully nothing wrong with the unit itself. I contacted MF and they responded quickly notifying me that the company who supplies their power supplies had none in stock but they directed me to another compatible power supply on Amazon, which I then ordered and they reimbursed me within 48 hours. They have been very easy to deal with and professional.
Incidentally, I too was worried about the cooling prowess of this small machine, so I copied a UM690 video reviewer who ran Prime95 testing on this unit and I did the same thing, running Prime95 for 30mins and my temps were actually lower at around 72C – this is truly impressive. (The video reviewer was very impressed that his temps had ran at around 78C). Normal operation is silent and the temps are usually around 42C. This is genuinely impressive for such a small machine with a fairly powerful CPU. Incidentally, I purchased the pre-built specification, rather than the barebones. I think some users have been reporting mixed results with barebones.
I had no difficulty in attaching to the USB ports at the back and they all work as expected.
In summary, the Zotac has been great and if this MF continues as strongly as it has started, I expect it to be a solid purchase, with great customer support and so I have no difficulty in recommending it.
Many Thanks.
What a brilliant purchase this has turned out to be. Windows 11 aside, I’ve had no issues at all and it runs quiet even when hammering the dedicated gpu. Best of all, this does output at 4k/120 unlike the description and the minisforum website that, says max 4k/60.
Ive not played the most demanding games yet, I’m working through some classics on my steam library. Max payne 3 flies on this machine, getting well over 100fps at 4k which looks great on my LG C2. Tried out some emulation 2 and everything I’ve tried with yuzu works great too, some at 2x resolution. I have this setup to boot straight to steams new big picture mode and within seconds of powering on, I’m straight into big picture giving a console like experience.
Biggest letdown is the WiFi card on board, I feel like speeds aren’t as good as what they could be but not helped by the location of where the pc is kept. I may upgrade to the Intel ax210 at some point since its just a standard M2 slot. Already ordered a 2tb ssd which I’m looking forward to upgrading and will give me plenty storage for my library.
Depending on your needs, I would definitely recommend this pc if it’s for a living space or you are short on room. Yes it’s not a 4k AAA powerhouse but will comfortably run modern games at 1080/1440p without Ray tracing. This should keep me going for years to come or until minusforum realise something a lot better than catches my eye!