Affordable AMD-equipped Hasee mini PC launches with eGPU support

Hasee has released a new affordable mini PC in China, the Ares Mini R78D. It's powered by a Hawk Point AMD APU, the Ryzen 7 8745HS, which might be a bit old now, but it's still capable of handling everyday workload.

To be specific, with its 8 Zen 4 cores, it offers a similar level of performance as the Ryzen AI 5 340 in benchmarks, which is a relatively new APU from the Krakan Point lineup. The 8745HS also brings the Radeon 780M, a capable iGPU that can smoothly run many AAA games at the 1080p resolution with resolution scaling and settings dialed to low.

For those who might need a bit more GPU power, the Hasee Ares Mini R78D has a USB4 port, which brings eGPU support. Of course, an OCuLink port would have made the mini PC more ideal for an external GPU setup. In addition to the USB4 port, the system has the following ports:

• 5x USB 3.0 Type-A
• 1x USB 2.0 Type-A
• 1x USB Type-C (unspecified)
• 2x Ethernet
• 1x HDMI 2.1
• 1x DisplayPort 1.4
• 1x 3.5mm audio

There are two M.2 slots that support PCIe 4.0 SSDs, and the mini PC has two SO-DIMM slots that can be equipped with DDR5 RAM sticks rated up to 5,600MHz. The company didn't explicitly mention the rated capacity, but each SSD slot should be capable of holding an 8TB drive, while the Beelink SER8 with the same APU supports up to 256GB of RAM.

In China, the Hasee Ares Mini R784D starts at CNY 1,999, about $297, which makes the mini PC quite affordable, but it's worth noting that this price is for the barebone configuration. While the company has some global presence, this system is unlikely to be widely available in markets outside China. For those interested, the Geekom A8 Max has a similar spec sheet, and it did well in our review as well (barebone curr. $359 on Amazon).