MINISFORUM UM890 Pro Mini PC, AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS (up

So, I’ve been playing around with this little pc – this thing is rocking an AMD Ryzen 5 7640HS processor, which is basically a gaming-grade CPU (6 cores and 12 threads), so it handled anything you threw at it. The graphics are pretty impressive too – Radeon 760M, obviously integrated but it can handle 4K gaming at around 30-40fps and even some demanding titles (like ‘Starfield’ for example) at low-mid graphics settings in HD. I was honestly surprised by how well it performed with one of my fav games, Forza Horizon 5. I tried to edit 2K videos on it in DaVinci Resolve in you’re editing videos, some light gaming (Forza Horizon 5), and obviously for tasks like browsing the web this thing just flies. What I like the most, despite the pc is being small, it’s got a decent selection of ports (USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, DisplayPort, and more), 16 gigs of ram and 1 terabyte ssd – more than I would ask for a home-entertainment pc. At its price point (just over 300 at the time of writing this), this pc is a really good value. Good performance, mini factor, good connectivity, windows 11 and reputable brand (they are on the market for a few years), all positives. I can’t comment on longevity, but will update my review if I’d discover anything new, good or bad. But so far, so good, I’m very happy with the purchase and I would gladly recommend this machine to for anyone who needs a powerful PC but doesn’t want to deal with the bulk of a traditional desktop. Thanks.

I was wary when ordered this PC.
It arrived fast in proper packaging.
Setting up and installing the updates was a breeze.
I have been using the PC for more than a month with no real issues. (WEB browsing with having plenty of tabs open; emails, MS Word, Excel, and some gaming: Counter Strike source and Counter Strike 2. AVG FPS playing CS Source is around 280-290 and playing CS2 on high settings is 60-90.

In some reviews I read complaints about noise via USB; I have not experienced it using gaming USB headset. My overall experience is good so far. I would buy this PC again.

It is staggering how much power and modern architecture is packed into this small box. I got fed up with having very old and slow PC architecture in my previous PCs, slowing down data transfers and photo editing. In this system, everything is up-to-date. The fast processor, decent graphics card and 64GB of DDR5 RAM should last me a long time. Oh, and it comes with Windows 11 Home. It doesn’t say what OS comes with their products on Amazon. Someone told me that it comes with Windows 11 Professional.

After reading many reviews, and watching the infamous youtuber ETAPrime’s video review, I decided to purchase this system for both my everyday needs and for retro emulation.

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.