MSI introduces new AMD-powered mini PC with up to Ryzen 9 8945HS APU and plenty of ports

The Cubi lineup of mini PCs from MSI is often priced at a premium, and sport office-friendly elegant designs with plenty of attractive features. The latest to join the family happens to be the new Cubi Z AI 8M, powered by capable AMD Ryzen 8000 series APUs.

Hawk Point lives on

It is unclear why MSI chose to opt for the older Zen 4-powered Ryzen 8000 family instead of the newer Zen 5-powered alternatives. However, the Hawk point chips are no slouch and should provide extremely respectable performance numbers. For instance, the Cubi Z AI 8M mini PC can be specced with up to the Ryzen 9 8945HS APU, which features 8 cores and 16 threads, allowing for multithreaded performance that sits between the Intel Core Ultra 7 255H and Core Ultra 9 285H in Cinebench.

Other APU options for the Cubi Z mini PC include the Ryzen 7 8845HS, and the Ryzen 5 8645HS. Memory requirements are taken care of by dual DDR5-5600 slots, which can accommodate up to 64 GB. A single M.2 2280 (PCIe Gen4 x4) slot handles storage requirements. At just 0.9-liters, the Cubi Z mini PC is indeed tiny and lacks room for discrete GPUs. That said, the Ryzen 8000-series iGPUs are pretty decent overall, and should allow for lightweight gaming at modest settings. The I/O is as follows:

• Dual HDMI 2.1
• 5x USB Type-A (10Gbps)
• Single USB 2.0 Type-A
• Dual USB4 Type-C (DP 1.4, 100W PD from one port at a time)
• Dual 2.5G Ethernet
• 3.5 mm audio jack

Wireless connectivity is present, thanks to Bluetooth 5.3 and WiFi 6E support. The MSI Cubi Z AI 8M mini PC is VESA mountable, which should allow for clean setups. Pricing details appear to be unclear as of this writing, but more information should follow soon enough. Considering that the Ryzen 7 8845HS-powered Minisforum UM880 Plus is currently priced at around $520 on Amazon, the MSI Cubi Z AI mini PC should most likely be priced in the same ballpark.