MINISFORUM AI X1 Pro

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• AI X1 Pro $759.99
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Let me cut through the noise right away: the MINISFORUM AI X1 Pro isn’t trying to be subtle. It looks like a Mac Mini, sure — that silver brick silhouette is practically a cliché at this point. But underneath that familiar exterior lives something entirely different: a mini PC that actually respects your right to upgrade, expand, and tinker.

And in 2026, that’s almost revolutionary.

I’ve spent the last few weeks putting both the HX 370 and HX 470 versions through their paces. Here’s the unvarnished truth about whether this little box deserves a spot on your desk.

First Impressions: Dense, Premium, and Deceptively Simple

Pull the AI X1 Pro out of the box and the first thing you notice is the heft. This thing is dense. The metal chassis feels like it was milled from a single block of premium material — buttons are tactile, edges are crisp, and everything screams “I cost more than a toaster”.

MINISFORUM has done something genuinely clever here: they’ve built the power supply into the chassis. No more wrestling with a brick the size of your fist. Just a single cable from the wall to the PC. It’s a small thing, but once you’ve lived with it, you’ll wonder why every mini PC doesn’t do this.

The footprint is roughly 195 x 195 mm and about 47.5 mm tall — smaller than a standard sheet of paper. It’ll vanish on any desk, tuck under a monitor, or mount to the back of a VESA-compatible display.

And yes, there’s a fingerprint reader baked into the top panel. One tap and you’re in. No typing passwords like some kind of digital peasant.

The Memory Situation: A Cautionary Tale

This is the part that makes me want to shake MINISFORUM’s product team.

The AI X1 Pro has two SO-DIMM DDR5-5600 slots, supporting up to a staggering 128 GB of RAM. That’s desktop workstation territory in a box the size of a hardcover book. And because the memory is user-upgradeable, you’re not locked into whatever configuration you bought on day one.

Here’s the catch: multiple reviewers have received units shipped with a single RAM module — running in single-channel mode. And let me tell you, the performance hit is brutal.

Tom’s Hardware found that their single-channel test unit performed “comparatively poorly until it was upgraded to dual-channel RAM”. Notebookcheck echoed this, calling it “the biggest point of criticism” and noting that “the memory bandwidth is significantly limited due to the use of only one SO-DIMM module”.

The Radeon 890M iGPU craves memory bandwidth. Starve it, and your gaming performance, video rendering, and AI workloads all take a nosedive.

Buyer beware: if you’re ordering one of these, make absolutely sure you’re getting a dual-channel configuration. Or budget for an immediate RAM upgrade. The slots are there — use them.

Performance: Punching Way Above Its Weight Class

When configured properly (dual-channel RAM, performance mode enabled), the AI X1 Pro is an absolute monster.

CPU Performance

In benchmark testing against Intel’s Core Ultra 7 255H — a chip with 16 cores — the AI X1 Pro’s 12-core AMD processor beat it by about 10% in multi-threaded workloads. The OpenSSL RSA4096 benchmarks showed a “phenomenal” performance advantage over the competition.

Graphics

The Radeon 890M is no slouch. It’s based on RDNA 3.5 architecture and can handle 1080p gaming with surprising grace. Think 85-100 FPS in games like Naraka: Bladepoint. It’ll also drive up to four 4K displays simultaneously, making it a multi-monitor productivity powerhouse.

AI Workloads

With 50-55 TOPS from the XDNA 2 NPU, this thing cruises past Microsoft’s 40 TOPS requirement for next-gen AI PCs. Local AI inference, voice recognition, and even running models like DeepSeek-R1 are genuinely practical. No cloud dependence. No privacy concerns. Just local AI that works.

Connectivity: The Ports Keep Coming

MINISFORUM didn’t hold back on I/O:

That OCuLink port is the secret weapon. It lets you connect an external GPU enclosure, turning this $1,000 mini PC into a gaming rig that can hang with full-size desktops. The HX 470 version reportedly has even better eGPU compatibility.

The dual 2.5GbE LAN ports are overkill for most home users, but if you’re running this as a homelab server, a NAS gateway, or a network firewall, you’ll be grateful for the bandwidth.

And yes, there’s Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. Because why not?

Cooling and Noise: The Unsung Hero

The cooling system deserves special mention. MINISFORUM uses a combination of phase-change thermal material, dual copper heat pipes, and active fans. Under sustained load, the system stays below 80°C and noise levels hover around 45 dB.

Notebookcheck called it “excellently coordinated” — the housing and SoC remain at “uncritical temperature values” even under prolonged high loads, and the system stays “pleasantly quiet”.

I ran Cinebench R23 loops for an hour. The fan ramped up, sure, but it never became annoying. It’s a well-tuned machine.

The Surprise Feature: Built-in Speakers

Yes, you read that right. The AI X1 Pro has integrated stereo speakers. And they’re not terrible. Notebookcheck called the sound quality “surprisingly good for a mini PC”.

Are they going to replace your desktop speakers? No. But for system sounds, video calls, or quick media playback, they’re a genuinely nice convenience.

Final Thoughts

The MINISFORUM AI X1 Pro is, in many ways, the anti-Mac Mini. It looks like Apple’s creation, but it’s built on a completely different philosophy: you own this machine, you can change it, you can upgrade it, and it will grow with you.

The single-channel RAM shipping issue is a black mark — and MINISFORUM needs to fix that yesterday. But once you populate both SO-DIMM slots with fast DDR5-5600, this little box transforms into something genuinely special.

It’s not perfect. But in a world where most mini PCs are sealed, disposable appliances, the AI X1 Pro feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s a machine that respects its owner. And that, more than any benchmark score, is why it earns a spot on my desk.

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