XPlus XRival: Gaming mini PC with AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Strix Halo APU launched with lucrative pricing
Ever since its inception, the AMD Strix Halo family of high-end APUs has won the collective hearts of the mini PC enthusiast crowd. Packing full-fat Zen 5 cores with a very powerful iGPU, the highest-end Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU is already found in quite a few high-end mini PCs, with the XPlus XRival being the latest entrant to the Strix Halo club.
The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 sports a total of 16 Zen 5 cores and 32 threads. In synthetic benchmarks, the powerful APU is in the same league as the Apple M3 Max and Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX in multicore performance. GPU performance is where the Strix Halo APU truly shines, with its RDNA 3.5-based Radeon 8060S iGPU with 40 CUs pulling ahead of the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU by a substantial margin. Such performance was previously unheard of in a mini PC without dGPUs, but not anymore.
The XPlus XRival mini PC comes equipped with 96 GB of LPDDR5X memory, which is shared by the CPU and the GPU. 2 TB of storage is also on offer, which, unlike the memory, is housed in an M.2 2280 slot and is user-upgradeable. An additional M.2 slot is also present. The exterior of the mini PC is unsurprisingly quite bold, and gives off strong gamer vibes which may, or may not be a good thing. The port selection is quite generous, and includes the following:
- Triple USB 3.2 Type-A
- Dual USB4
- Dual USB 2.0 Type-A
- HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4
- SD 4.0 slot
- 2.5G Ethernet
Wireless connectivity is taken care of by Bluetooth 5.2 and WiFi 7. At just 22 x 11.9 x 5.7 cm, the XPlus XRival mini PC is decently compact, and sports a dual-fan, triple-pipe thermal system which does look quite capable on paper. Of course, the sustained performance of the Strix Halo mini PC can only be established with real-world testing.
Priced at $1,479, which includes an introductory discount, the XRival mini PC is actually quite affordable compared to its similarly equipped competitors from popular brands. Folks who would rather save a few hundred dollars and go the eGPU route will likely be well-served with the Minisforum UM880 Plus (currently $518.98 on Amazon) as well.
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