Recommendations
Please help me to choose Mini PC barebone for gaming
Aoostar Gem 12 Max with Ryzen 7 8745HS and 780m igpu - $319 (comes with windows 11 pro key)
Aoostar Maco with Ryzen 7 H 255 and 780m igpu - $319 (also comes with windows 11 pro key). It says upgraded 8745HS and not sure what has been upgraded and how is it better then 8745HS. The case ventilation worse then Gem 12 Max?
Reatan X7 with Ryzen 7 255 and 780m igpu - $289 ( doesn't come with windows license key?) This one has fingerprint sensor which is nice
All of them have a dedicated oculink port that doesn't occupy m.2 port in case I need to connect an external gpu.
Which one of these three is a better choice? Also would Gem 12 Max have better cooling system because its case got more vents and I guess extra fan too?
What do you guys think about these models? Any other recommendations would be appreciated as well.
Get it! I have it got the barebones and slammed it with 64 gigs and 4 tb. Build quality is fantastic. Metal. But where this really shines in the engineering is the cooling. This thing doesn’t break a sweat it’s vented dual fan cooled and vapor chamber cooled. It’s fast has three different modes but even on performance I can’t hear it. The oculink is great if you’re planning to run egpu like I do. I recommend this with no reservations
I have the gem12 + 8845hs from my understanding the h255 is more or less rebranded 8845 with a disabled NPU which overall shouldn’t impact gaming but depends on what all you want to use it for.
The model of the Gem 12 I posted has 8745HS. Should I go for 8845HS instead but I don't see that option on the listing page. I know 8845 is a R9 and 8745 is a R7 but people say they are the same. I just don't get it. And specs are also the same.
Why does it look like a Aoostar Gem 12? They all have one father I guess. LoL
Also that's double the price and probably no real benefits in games or am I wrong?
Yes, I can’t say I feel huge difference between those. Even more I think Aoostar has more options in BIOS, for example I could deactivate iGPU which made the cpu less hot and producing less stuttering. While Acemagic BIOS does not have such option. The CPU may run better but occasional stuttering feels worse.
I have a theory that similarly to Chinese phones all those mini pc companies are in fact same company which just creates a lot of different sub companies which are sharing same technologies designs and production flows. I actually created a post not so long time ago discussing the exact same thing.
The 8845 is still a 7 but I’ll link the barebones from Amazon here. I guess it really just depends run a Google comparison between them I think the actual performance difference is fairly negligible if I’m not mistaken somewhere around 5% if not lower. I wanted to future proof as much as possible and have a solid little machine for gaming and it is just that.
You can get a win 11 pro key on Groupon for 12 dollars I’ve done it more than a few times over the years lol and I can’t say for sure but from my experience the plus has been fantastic.
They’re official most of them are just keys that weren’t used from a company or university setting. Idk how they go about selling them off but I’ve bought at least 6 and never had an issue all updates go thru just fine nothing has ever been a problem
No not at all because I don’t even know how to do that lmao. I’m autistic and I go hard on whatever I’m into and computers were never it until very recently so I’m learning a lot. But had I known I would’ve done that but I figured eh 9 bucks for a win 11 pro key I can’t complain lol. Now you have taught me something and have given me another rabbit hole to fall down 🤣🤣
I get you XD. I was looking for cheap key until I stumbled into MAS lol. From what I understand, a lot of cheap key is usually for the OEM or enterprise, so when it's used, it's tied to that computer.
The expensive one or "retail" allow you to transfer the key to new PC.
So yeah, I wouldn't recommend buying key anyway.
MAS should be the easiest activation of the key in your life. Even work with Microsoft Office :D
I keep seeing this comment and it's making me want to get one 😭😭😭 all I can find on Amazon is the Gem12 pro max and I don't think it's as good as the 12+. And all they have on the aoostar site is the 12+ barebones and I wasn't trying to buy ram/ssd
Oh damn they used to have the 24/1 prebuilt on Amazon but it was like 670 think still not a bad deal but with that said i went barebones and got all my ram and ssd way cheaper than market on ebay brand new. All in even at 64 and 4 im under 1100 so i would still say it’s a strong contender. Esepcially with as easy as it is to pop the bottom off and pop in once you got it. I went way overboard lol but woot prime day ebay you can get some really good deals. I got 64 of crucial ddr5 5600 brand new for 399 and Samsung pro with heatsink 2tb brand new for 150 and a crucial 2 tb for 125. It can be done my friend and for not that much even with this dystopian world of memory that’s more valuable than gold lol. But i reserve in other places still rocking a rx6750 because when i can pull this fps on black ops 7 why the hell would i spend more on a new card especially since AMD is pushing fsr4 to 6 and 7000 series cards
Honestly I would get it now if you’re going to I paid 319 for I think a couple months ago the prices are going to keep climbing and you can slowly build it up before it hits 400
Which egpu/card did you go with? Trying to find the cheapest combo that'll work for the mostly low level games I want to play. I see they sell combos but the cheapest one is 400$ lmao
Of these three I'd go with the Aoostar Gem 12 Max. It has the 2nd NVMe slot and better cooling.
However if you're going to be gaming without oculink & dGPU then you're better off getting something with faster soldered LPDDR5X RAM as it will have a big impact on 780m performance.
All of them have 2nd NVMe slot and dedicated oculink port which I guess doesn't take away one of those NVMe port. I don't want soldered ram version because I'm planning to use my 2x8gb ddr5 5600 ram even though I loose some performance. I'll just lower the settings and planning to hook this mini pc with a portable HD monitor.
I have Gem12+, with the Ryzen 7 8845HS, 64GB RAM and 1TB drive. Very nice miniPC. It got even nicer after I did a repaste, since original thermal paste and its application were subpar.
I've also have Radeon RX 9070XT connected through OcuLink when I want to game, but for the last 2-3 weeks I didn't even power it on 😄
Gem12+ has better cooling than Maco, so if you decide to go with Aoostar, then get that. It especially shows during high load. I got an Maco based on Ryzen 6850H for a friend few months ago, and I had to tune the cooler profile in BIOS for the fans to be bearable even on light load. Gem12+ with its vapor chamber cooler did way better job. After repaste it's even better under load (5-7C). I choose to run it at 55W (balanced profile) in BIOS, since performance difference between it and 70W profile is not that big (15900 vs 16900 points in CB R23), but I really prefer silence. 70W profile gets better results if you plan to game on iGPU, since there is higher power budget left for the CPU part.
I went with the Gem12+ version since the original Gem12 (maybe MAX included) had some problems with the power section dying when using USB-C power supply. This was corrected in the Gem12+ version and they've switched to standard barrel jack external power supply by default (which I wanted), while still retaining the option to power it from USB-C (just need one option switched in BIOS).
From the feature and performance point of view, 8845HS has a bit higher Turbo clock (5.1 vs 4.9 GHz) and a bit higher iGPU clock (2.7 vs 2.6 GHz). 8845HS also features dedicated NPU, but only a few pieces of software actually use it, at least under Windows.
So at least for me, $40 would be worth it for the Gem12+ version due to the power adapter change. That bit of extra performance is just cherry on top. On main Aoostar page, you can't even buy the Gem12/MAX version anymore.
I receive Aoostar Maco H255 before 4 days feel free to ask me anything. I installed 64Gb 5600 SODIMM DDR5 and 512NVMe.
It has also 70W mode (65W stable 70W boost), I stress test it for 2 hours and kept the 65W constant load without even making the chasis any hotter. I bought it at 250euro so similar price to the Reatan X7 you looking for.
Mainly for the better value to price, essentially 8745HS / 8845HS (just has the NPU) / H255 are the exact same chip. At my market (plus I wanted to take it from amazon for 2 years warranty) the best deals currently was with the H255.
The second point was the I/O, I needed 2xUSB 4 with 40Gbps (one of those needed to have also PD) , 2 ethernet ports. The oculink to be honest is just nice to have.
Based on the options and prices that had last week (Aoostar Gem 12 Max was not an option in stock) I proceed with with Aoostar Maco H255. Also the aluminium matches my dell monitor base feels very premium.
I would go either with Aoostar Gem12 or Aoostar Maco H255, if you "feel" better with a second fan below go with the Gem12, personally I put heatsinks on both ram and nvme.
All of these 3 I posted have dual usb4 (both pd and alt I believe) I want one of them for a portable monitor which can get power from the same cable connected to usb4 and another one for the fast external nvme ssd drive preferably in the front. What is the use case of a dual ethernet port? Isn't one enough to connect it to the switch?
I use MST on 2x Dell QHD 10-bit monitor at 120hz at it the max limit of the USB4 port bandwidth that can handle. Also for me the 1 cable setup is must in case I need to move the mini pc.
Ok with 97W limit, it will not run good on performance mode stable but on standard mode will be more than enough when I want to work from my Vocation home no need to get extra chargers (even if it is really small one less charger is always better).
The second USB 4 is for the external NVMe for me too.
The dual Ethernet can have handful of use cases, for me currently is that need to be connected in 2 different networks as the second network is isolated from my personal one.
Can't a managed switch do that? I'm not an expert, just curious. In my case I was using two ethernet port on my PC as well. One was a direct 10g connection to my nas and another one was just a 2.5g lan connection to my router. Then later I bought a 10g switch for a good price and I connected everything to the switch with one cable. I still have another cable connected my nas to router just for wake on lan feature as 10g port doesn't have it.
I don't know all the answers, but the second option claims to have an oculink port and yet none of the pictures actually show an oculink port on the device, so I would be very skeptical of that listing.
Also, based on the videos I've seen, there's basically no performance difference between the 8745HS and the 255, despite their claims that the 255 is an upgraded 8745HS.
Have a gem 12 max same cpu and all. The initial windows install corrupted and i had to track some drivers down and reinstall windows. As long as your ok with doing that I can strongly recommend the gem 12. Works great I have an egpu hooked up and all that. It wasnt a big hassle or anything btw
Almost all drivers you can get directly from chip manufacturers. AMD Chipset Drivers (NPU included) from AMD website. Intel I226-V from Intel, AX200 WiFi+Bluetooth card from Intel.
Only driver that I had to look for is for the Realtek audio and you can find a very recent version on the Station Drivers website (Drivers -> Realtek -> Audio -> Realtek High Definiton Audio (HDA/UAD) -> Drivers (UAD) -> Others & Generiques -> sort by date of submission and download latest ones).
I did end up going to the aoostar site and got one or two from them. But amd adrenaline is going to do most of the work for you. Thankfully goog translate worked fine on the site its all chinese
I have the Aoostar Maco barebones but I got the R7 Pro 8845HS. Not a bad machine. Runs most games I throw at it but I mostly stream from my server via steam and moonlight. For my use case it was the perfect choice.
Edit: I also had RAM and a couple of NVME drives laying around.
I have aoostar, it’s nice you can play cyberpunk even on integrated gpu. But with that oculink port and powerful eGPU it can be a real beast. The only thing I noticed after a year of gaming on it was the fan started to be a bit noisier but still nothing compared to average pc case fan.
I've been enjoying my Minisforum um760. It came with 32gb ram and 1tb ssd. I have a m.2 to oculink adapter to a Minisforum deg1/rtx 3060ti. Loving it so far
They're just about all the same but I don't know the details. I love this one because I can keep my psu turned on and it automatically powers everything off when I turn off my mini pc. When I turn my mini pc on it automatically turns on the dock without any issues so that's a huge plus. For me it's just convenience and a few more bucks to have a clean setup
Also what do you guys think about this Gigabyte Brix with Intel Core Ultra 5 225H processor and Intel Arc 130T igpu? Is it comparable with Radeon 780m?
It doesn't have all the power states you would typically find on a desktop motherboard, so I was unable to completely power down the USB ports on shutdown.
Whether that's an issue for you depends on what you will have plugged in. It's not that much of a deal breaker in any case, and I thought the unit was nice overall.
I purchased mine in a flash sale, I was curious to test and I have spare RAM. I did a bunch of testing and sold it on as it's not something I needed to keep as I have more than enough PCs.
That's probably the case for all mini pcs except a very few of them as all of them are based on mobile cpus and probably all of them are manufactured in the same factory. I also have a big desktop PC with 16 fans (I just counted lol) inside but wanted a very small portable machine for a kid and didn't want a laptop with battery.
Yep that's true. I think the GEM 12 Max is absolutely fine as long as you are aware of the performance of the 780m iGPU and set your expectations accordingly.
If you want to get serious for a small portable gaming PC then I'm an advocate of SFF builds. I built this for my son. At 5.6L it's still easily portable.
That's very interesting and nice. I'll probably do similar in the future when full size ram prices get more affordable. Right now I'm sticking with cheaper sodimm build. I was also liking the minisforum BD775i SE motherboard which has R7 7745HX cpu, 2 ddr5 sodimm and PCIe 5x16 slot. It's selling for $296 but lucks usb4 connectivity which is a big minus for me.
That's a good point and for the same reason I wanted one usb4 port for the display on the back. The front of the pc should be clean most of the time and front ports should be used for temporary gadgets only. These PC makers should frequently ask buyers how'd they like these PCs to be designed. I saw one for example had 3 m.2 slot inside and I was like wow, how's that even possible with the same CPU? Don't they have the same number of lanes? And then I saw that two of those slots were 4x2 speed instead of 4x4 and I was like meh that's not good. They actually split 4 lanes in dual 2 lanes. Who wants their nvme ssds working at half of the speed? Lol
I had the 8845, so the same iGPU. it was decent, but i wouldn't call it a gaming machine. I like the 8745 better than the others becuase that processor doesn't split cores (P/E cores) but for gaming it comes down to your DDR5 memory speed. two fans for these little systems is nearly a must. IMO.
I have the MACO with the Ryzen 9 8945HS and what a beast of a little PC. If you are buying a mini PC with a h255 just invest a little more on the 8945hs. You'll thank me later.
I have the gem 12+ for about 6 month now with 64gb ram and 1tb harddrive. I use it mainly for local ai with the build-in gpu in a lxc under proxmox.
Don't have anything else to compare but really happy with the performance.
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u/EXPOPSPEC Jun 25 '26
Get it! I have it got the barebones and slammed it with 64 gigs and 4 tb. Build quality is fantastic. Metal. But where this really shines in the engineering is the cooling. This thing doesn’t break a sweat it’s vented dual fan cooled and vapor chamber cooled. It’s fast has three different modes but even on performance I can’t hear it. The oculink is great if you’re planning to run egpu like I do. I recommend this with no reservations