High-end mini PC with up to 16-core Core Ultra X9 and Arc B390 iGPU to hit shelves soon

It appears that the realm of mini PCs will soon have a new entrant, VZMore. The company has already revealed a total of four new mini PCs, each with high-end internals and some promising spec sheets.

Of the four, two are based on an AMD platform, while the other two, the iX9 Max and Ultra, are based on Intel. We have already covered the AMD-powered systems in a separate article, which can be found linked here.

Interestingly, unlike the AMD-powered variants, VZMore has opted to go with a very last-gen solution with its Intel-powered iX9 Max mini PC. Instead of playing it safe with a modern Intel Panther Lake-equipped architecture, the company has decided to go with the Core Ultra 9 185H "Meteor Lake" chip, which was released almost three years ago.

Despite featuring a 16-core setup with 22 threads, the Core Ultra 9 185H can barely keep up with modern "Gorgon Point" chips from AMD with much lower core counts. In fact, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 APU found in the iX9 Ultra is over 30% more powerful in synthetic multi-threaded benchmarks.

The iX9 Ultra, thankfully, is equipped with a Core Ultra X9 378H APU with a 16-core CPU and Arc B390 iGPU. The CPU easily keeps up with the Ryzen AI Max+ 388 APU found in the AX9 Ultra, although its iGPU, while impressively powerful, lags behind the Radeon 8060S by as much as 50% in certain synthetic benchmarks.

Regardless, most intensive workloads and moderately intensive GPU tasks should not be much of a challenge for either the iX9 Max or Ultra mini PCs. The I/O on offer is yet to be detailed, but VZMore does state that the cooling system across the board will be identical - a dual-phase vapor chamber with a Mac Studio-style bottom-mounted intake.

Unlike the AX9 Max, the iX9 Max is yet to be listed on VZMore's website. The entire family of AX9 and iX9 mini PCs is set to be detailed at IFA next month, with a launch date likely set sometime after that.

That said, folks who need a new well-equipped mini PC right away can check out the Geekom GT15 Max, currently available for $1,080 on Amazon.