ASRock announces AI BOX-A395 mini workstation PC with AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU

ASRock was among the few mini PC makers that did not announce SFF models powered by AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 last year. This is most likely due to the company’s close ties to Intel, yet, this year, ASRock’s Industrial branch is finally starting to collaborate with AMD once again, as a new model dubbed AI BOX-A395 has been announced.

The AI BOX-A395 is marketed as a compact and portable workstation-class small form-factor PC based on AMD’s Strix Halo platform targeting AI inference scenarios. Besides the 16 Zen 5 cores with 32 threads and the powerful XDNA 2 NPU adding 50 TOPS to the inference capabilities, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 also features a Radeon 8060S iGPU that is essentially as fast as an Nvidia RTX 4070 laptop GPU, making it a noteworthy rendering solution, which, alternatively, may be used as a reliable 1080p gaming GPU.

What sets AI BOX-A395 apart from other Strix Halo mini PCs is the stylish aluminum chassis that comes with a special handle for a portable experience. The aluminum case measures 200 x 100 x 232 mm (7.87 x 3.94 x 9.13 inches). Inside, there is a six-heatpipe cooling design with a copper base and optimized airflow and ASRock also includes an internal power supply. A feature that is usually found on business and enterprise models is the dual BIOS setup with a redundant BIOS for increased security and stability.

Port selection and connectivity is on par with other similar models, offering 2x USB4, 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 and 2x USB 2.0 connectors. There are 2x HDMI 2.1 plus 3x DP 2.1 video outs, as well as a mic-in and audio out jacks. Networking is handled via 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps NICs as well as a Wi-Fi 7 + BT 5.4 M.2 card.

With the RAM and storage crisis still in full effect, this model’s price is expected to cost $4,000 when sporting the maximum 128 GB LPDDR5X-8000 RAM capacity plus 2 to 4 TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD storage in RAID 0/1 matrix, even though ASRock does not provide any pricing and availability info.