This is one that we were not expecting. The Acemagic F3A is a mini PC powered by the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. That is a super cool CPU, but the last time we looked at it in the Beelink SER9 we were limited on memory capacity with a fixed memory configuration. The F3A, however, has DDR5-SODIMMs, so naturally, we thought, why not try the 128GB (2x 64GB) kit. It worked, and this has been running llama3.3 70b and deepseek-r1 70b for the past few weeks.
For this one, we have a video that you can find here:
As a quick aside, I sent a note to a Crucial contact since after our Lenovo ThinkCentre M75q Tiny Gen5 Review Amazon, Newegg, and others went out-of-stock on the Crucial 128GB (2x 64GB) kits. I was told late last week that we should see more stock later in the week we are publishing this review with the modules.
A lot of our discussion is going to be around this configuration. We had many folks bemoan that the Beelink SER9 at 32GB of fixed LPDDR5X was not enough. This is considerably more interesting. Just as a note: we also had the 96GB (2x 48GB) kit working as well.
Acemagic F3A External Hardware Overview
On the front of the system we have a poewr button and audio jack which are fairly standard. There are also two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports. The other big feature on the front is the USB4 port. We often get folks saying they want to see Type-C ports on the front when they were on the rear. When the ports are on the front, folks say they want them on the rear. The F3A has both.
On the top, we get an Acemagic logo as well as our AMD Ryzen AI and Radeon stickers.
The design is a bit different. That gap on the top panel is functional for airflow. We will show that in our internal overview. At the same time, it is not linked to the bottom side vent you see here.
The top portion is a clear plastic, but that is because there is some RGB here. We showed it in the video, but it did not photograph overly well. Here is what it looks like turned on as the colors go around the exterior of the system.
Here is the rear, and there is a lot going on. We have two more USB 3.2 Gen1 ports, but then two Realtek 2.5GbE ports. Next to that we have a HDMI and a DisplayPort. We showed this in the video, but the DP did not output video on the system setup, we had to use HDMI.
Next to that is the rear USB4 port. It is nice to have two combined with the front USB4. Then we have a 19V DC power input and another audio jack.
On the bottom, we have labels and vents.
Next, let us get inside the system.
Consider changing the hero image description to “Acemagic F3A: ISO 64,000” LOL.
According to the review this mini PC can run DeepSeek R1 70B distilled although slowly. How slowly? I’ve tried the same model on an older dual socket Epyc server and quickly realised that too slow makes a big difference in terms of usability.
As large language models perform differently than what’s included in the current selection of Serve the Home benchmarks, I think comparing DeepSeek R1 70B performance across a wide variety of CPU and GPU hardware would be make a very interesting article.