Sapphire enters mini PC market with Edge AI models powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300 APUs

Sapphire is better known for its quality GPU cards as the company has over 20 years of experience in the sector. Earlier this year, in March, the company teased some tech specs for an Edge AI lineup of mini PCs, signaling that it intended to enter the small form-factor system market. Just recently, Sapphire updated its site with a product page for the Edge AI products, which displays the case design and a series of new spec details.

The latest product pictures reveal an elegant chassis design with black panels and gold accents. It measures 117 x 111 x 30 mm.  In order to allow for easy RAM and SSD access, the case features a magnetic top cover. Sapphire also made sure to include a wide area at the bottom for fresh air intake and plenty of hot air exhausts on three of the sides, providing optimal cooling.

There are three variants, each integrating a 50 TOPS dedicated NPU for AI workloads:

• Edge AI 370 powered by the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 12-core / 24 thread APU with Radeon 890M iGPU
• Edge AI 350 powered by the Ryzen AI 7 350 8-core / 16-thread APU with Radeon 860M iGPU
• Edge AI 340 powered by the Ryzen AI 5 340 6-core / 12-thread APU with Radeon 840M  iGPU

Sapphire’s internal tests pitting the AMD APUs against Intel Lunar Lake equivalents powering Zenbook S16 / S14 laptops from Asus reveal a considerable lead for the Team Red processors. In Cinebench R24, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is said to be 90% faster than the Core Ultra 9 288V, while the Ryzen AI 7 350 is up to 54% faster than the Core Ultra 7 258V in Cinebench, Handbrake and Blender. The lead is reduced in the case of the Ryzen AI 5 340 that is only up to 16% faster than an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V in Handbrake, Puget Photoshop, Blender Classroom and Cinebench R24.

All three variants have barebone versions with no RAM and SSD storage. Users may add up to 96 GB of DDR5 RAM via two SO-DIMM slots and there is support for two M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 SSD slots.

Port selection includes 2x USB4 (with PD 3.0), 3x USB-A 10 Gbps, 1x USB 2.0, 2x HDMI 2.1 video outs, audio jack and 2.5 GbE jack. Sapphire provides a 120 W external PSU for each model. Wireless connectivity is offered via a Wi-Fi 6E + BT 5.2 card.

Pricing and availability info is still missing from the product page.