The Minisforum NPB7 is a system we have gotten a few requests to review. As a result, we purchased one from Amazon and put the system through its paces. While many of the mini PCs we review are AMD-based, this one offers a 13th Gen Intel Core processor with both P-cores and E-cores making it very different. Let us get to it.
Minisforum NPB7 Overview
As we have been doing with the STH Mini PC series, we have a video review of this unit that you can find here:
As always, we suggest watching it in a dedicated tab, browser, or app for the best viewing experience.
The system itself we purchased for $650 after discounts. That included an Intel Core i7-13700H processor, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and Microsoft Windows 11 Pro.
Something we were somewhere between surprised and shocked at was the difference between this and the Minisforum UM790 Pro we reviewed.
With that, let us get to the hardware overview.
Minisforum NPB7 External Hardware Overview
The front of the system we get two USB 3 Type-A ports and a 10Gbps USB 3 Type-C port. If you want USB4, that is on the rear of the system. There are standard buttons like a recessed reset button, power button, and a combo headset jack as well.
There is a small hole on the left front. This seems to be for the microphone. While that may be a checkbox feature, it effectively just picks up fan noise and then a bit of everything else.
Comparing this quickly to the Minisforum UM790 pro, we can see some major differences. The USB ports are completely different. Even the order of the ports/ buttons is different.
One may also be able to tell that the Intel version is notably taller than the AMD version.
On the side, we get a vent.
On the other side, we get two vents. At this point, that bottom vent is a clue that something is very different.
Moving to the rear of the system, we get almost a Noah’s Ark of I/O. There are pairs of USB 3 Type-A ports, HDMI ports, 2.5GbE ports, and even USB4 ports.
The bottom fan should give additional context into how different this system is from the UM790 Pro. Here are the two systems side-by-side. If you did not know both were from Minisforum, you might easily assume that they are from completely different manufacturers.
The top is also slightly different.
Here is the bottom with vents.
Next, let us get inside the system, and we are going to start by removing this bottom side, which requires removing the rubber feet.
I tested the NPB7 vs the NPB5 and was expecting a good (decent?) value bump for my workload which was a sustained multi threaded load. It had a meaningful difference for the initial load but then stepped down and ultimately wasn’t sufficiently better than the NPB5 for the cost.
As such, I stuck with the NPB5. I’m also running Linux Mint 21.2 desktop on it and am very, very happy. It is indeed really responsive. Additionally, again for my workload, Linux performed about 8-10% faster than on Windows 11. Back to Linux Mint… I had to update to a 6.x kernel to get audio working. I suspect the same is true on the NPB7. Easy but not out of the box easy.
One other consideration on the NPB7 5 and 7 is the location of the m.2 2230 underneath the m.2 2280 port. I wish they’d not stacked them so that using the m.2 2230 for something other than wifi was easier. Niche use case, I know, but I keep wondering about using that port for other purposes and it’s just hard to see how to fit anything, admittedly hacky, in. The NAB5 and 6, OTOH, don’t have them stacked. I really like those as well but no usb4 (or unofficial TB).
Power is a bit high but under actual configurations for me, not much different than AMD configs I’ve worked with. More for sure but probably only 3w or so which is $3/year in my part of the world.
Oh, and worth noting that GPU wasn’t a meaningful factor for me. AMD platforms looked a lot better if I weighted that higher. I ultimately decided the NPB5 met me needs best today and it _seems_ like eGPUs on the secondary market are plentiful and _should_ be a good workaround if I decide later that I care. But there’s some risk to that bet.
Correction – I was confusing the layout with another mini PC. The M.2 2230 is NOT under the 2280 on the NPB5 or NPB7.
This was very handy. I bought a NPB6 which was on sale on Amazon, with an i7 13620H, slightly fewer cores, 32GB and a 1TB SSD. I put an 8TB SATA SSD in it (once I found the tiny sata cable which fell out of the box), created some Hyper-V VMs and let my dev work commence! Cheaper than my Azure VMs. I may yet buy another for windows server 2019 or 2022…