It’s pretty ironic, if you think about it. AMD makes desktop CPUs, then turns them into BGA chips for the high-end mobile market. Laptop vendors don’t buy as many of those CPUs as AMD would like, and they start to filter into the market via alternative channels—like these Minisforum “Mobile on Desktop” (MoDT) products. So it goes that we have the Minisforum BD790i X3D, a Mini-ITX motherboard with a Ryzen 9 7945HX3D onboard.
It’s exactly like the BD790i we reported on before: a full-featured mini-ITX motherboard with socketed RAM, standard 24-pin-plus-8-pin power connectors, a PCI Express x16 slot, and a soldered-down AMD CPU. In that case, it was the Ryzen 9 7945HX; essentially a Ryzen 9 7950X with a more restrictive power limit. In this case, it’s the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D, which is the exact same CPU, just with 3D V-Cache on one of its CCDs.
In that regard, it’s thus like the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, but once again with a lower power limit. That’ll restrict multi-core performance somewhat versus the desktop part, but it’s still a damn fast CPU in both single- and multi-threaded workloads, and the 3D V-Cache on this model will accelerate gaming considerably. In fact, we expect that this combination will probably outpace anything short of a desktop X3D part in games.
Notably, one of the limitations of these “MoDT” setups is that they use SODIMMs and they don’t support memory overclocking, so you’re limited to 5200 MT/s on the memory transfer rate. That definitely hurts gaming performance, but it will matter a lot less on this machine thanks to the huge 128MB of L3 cache on this CPU. Big cache means fewer trips out to main memory, which means the relatively slow RAM will have a reduced impact.
The bare motherboard of the BD790i X3D.
So here’s the deal: $599 gets you a sixteen-core Zen 4 CPU with 3D V-Cache and a 100W TDP, down from the 120W of the desktop Ryzen 9 7950X3D. You also get a down-draft cooler with a 120-mm fan and a second, smaller cooler strictly for the dual PCIe 5.0 M.2 sockets. The primary PCIe x16 slot is 5.0, too. All you need is an M.2 SSD and a couple of DDR5 SODIMMs and you’re good to slap this in an SFF chassis with a power supply.
Oh yeah, and the motherboard also has 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E with Bluetooth 5.3, and three video outs in the form of HDMI 2.1 with FRL support, DisplayPort 1.4, and a USB Type-C port with DisplayPort alt mode support, all served by the Radeon 610M integrated graphics. Of course, you’ll want to connect your own graphics card for anything beyond light desktop use, but you absolutely can power three monitors off this thing by its lonesome.
Not pictured: the Wi-Fi antennas, which go next to the Ethernet port.
It’s honestly a killer value considering a Ryzen 9 7950X3D will run you upwards of $750 right now, and even the eight-core Ryzen 7 7800X3D is going for $450, to say nothing of the unobtainium Ryzen 7 9800X3D. This makes an awesome foundation for a dedicated gaming system, so snap one up before they’re gone, because we’re sure this thing won’t last long at this price.