Minisforum mini PC with up to Intel Core Ultra X9 "Panther Lake" CPU and powerful Arc B390 iGPU set to launch soon

A plethora of reputed brands in the mini PC arena have announced systems based on Intel's Panther Lake family of processors. For instance, Minisforum announced the M2 Pro with up to the Core Ultra X9 chip, and it now appears that the mini PC is set to hit shelves soon.

The M2 Pro AI mini PC was first showcased at CES 2026, although any availability or pricing details were not shared. An exact launch date is still not in sight, but the company has now claimed in a recent teaser that the M2 Pro mini PC is "coming soon".  Based on the information, it is possible that the system witnesses an official launch as early as this month.

Minsiforum does like to bring its products to the international market, and the same is expected for the M2 Pro, likely soon after an official launch in China. We already have pretty good idea of what to expect from the mini PC in terms of features and I/O. At the highest-end, the mini PC will be equipped with the Core Ultra X9 388H chip along with 96 GB of LPDDR5X-9600 memory.

Dual Ethernet (10G, 2.5G), triple USB4, as well as a bunch of other ports will also be available. There is no option for discrete GPUs, but the Arc B390 iGPU should be able to handle most moderately-intensive workloads and lightweight AAA gaming. In fact, the B390 iGPU is over twice as fast as the Radeon 890M found in AMD Strix Point systems such as the Minsiforum AI X1 Pro (currently $736 on Amazon).

As for pricing, considering that the Core Ultra X7-powered Asus NUC 16 Pro was confirmed to be priced at over $1,600 in China, we can expect high-end configurations of the M2 Pro mini PC to be priced in the same range. Of course, skyrocketing memory prices have a massive role to play, which means barebones variants are likely to be much more affordable.