Colorful Smart 900: Sleek gaming mini PC arrives with Ryzen AI Max+ 395 'Strix Halo' APU
Mini PCs continue to soar in popularity, with a multitude of PC hardware brands joining in on the fun. However, when it comes to gaming mini PCs, it is hard to deny that AMD's latest 'Strix Halo' APUs, with the beastly Ryzen AI Max+ 395 at the top, provide a truly exciting experience.
Colorful's latest offering in the mini PC segment clearly has the gaming and AI community in sight, dubbed the Smart 900 AI. Powered by the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU, the system promises impressive performance in a decently compact form factor.
At around four liters, the mini PC is far from the smallest in its category, although one can expect that the powerful system will make use of this space by packing a sufficient cooling system.
Considering that the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 boasts a TDP ranging from 45 to 120 watts, cooling will undoubtedly play a crucial role in determining overall performance. That said, the Smart 900 AI mini PC's thermal performance can only be determined after independent testing by reviewers.
AMD Strix Halo: True discrete-class graphics performance
Packing Zen 5 cores with massive integrated GPUs, the 'Strix Halo' products allow for gaming performance that was previously unfathomable for APUs. The aforementioned Ryzen AI Max+ 395 boasts a whopping 16 powerful Zen 5 cores and 32 threads, along with an equally commendable Radeon 8060S iGPU with 40 CUs based on RDNA 3.5.
To put it in simpler terms, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 allows for CPU performance that rivals the Ryzen 9 7945HX, and trades blows with an RTX 4070 Laptop in terms of GPU performance. For an APU likely to be found in compact mini PCs, that is no small feat. The APU's XDNA 2 NPU also packs up to 50 TOPS (INT8) for AI acceleration.
Moreover, the Strix Halo APU also sports up to 128 GB of on-package memory that is shared between the CPU and the GPU, which opens up a world of possibilities for high-end workloads such as local LLMs and 3D rendering, among others. However, the memory is non-upgradeable, for obvious reasons. The storage, thankfully, is user-accessible, courtesy of dual M.2 2280 slots (2 TB Samsung 990 Pro curr. $149.99 on Amazon).
Connectivity options are plenty, including dual USB 4, triple USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.1, 2.5 G Ethernet, SD 4.0, dual USB 2.0, as well as an audio combo jack. Support for Wi-Fi 7 as well as Bluetooth 5.2 is also present. There are no details yet regarding pricing or availability, although more information should be available soon enough
Source(s)
Colorful PR via TechPowerUp
