Minisforum Mercury Series EM780 packs an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U and 32 GB of DDR5 RAM in a 1/4 L chassis

Minisforum previously launched the Mercury Series EM680 – an incredibly compact PC based on the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U. As a follow-up to the device, the Mercury Series EM780 has received a proper upgrade. The new model comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U, which is part of the Phoenix series. The eight Zen 4 cores had a solid showing in our testing and delivered better multi-core performance. But the updated model is slightly below expectations if we look solely at single-core performance. The new SoC is able to provide a considerable gain in 3D performance. As a result, the pint-size PC can now handle plenty of games at rather playable frame rates.

If the good graphics performance is still not enough, you can also plug in an external graphics card via USB4. During our review, we checked out the performance gain from connecting the EM780 to a GPD G1 and then a Razer Core X fitted with an NVidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. Both eGPUs can further improve 3D performance, though you’ll have to live with the limitations of the USB4 interface, which only connects to the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti over PCIe 3.0 x4.

We are impressed by the cooling solution, which is able to remove heat from the SoC reliably despite the highly compact design. Under load, the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U managed to maintain its power usage at a stable 28 watts. Minisforum has proved many times in the past that it has the ability to build very tiny PCs with effective cooling units. The company has also used liquid metal to ensure optimal heat transfer. Because of this, Minisforum strongly recommends against removing the cooler. 

You can find all other information on the Minisforum Mercury Series EM780 in our in-depth review.