Minisforum NPB7 Power Consumption and Noise
The power adapter that comes with the NPB7 is a 120W unit. That is important because the max turbo power of the Core i7-13700H is 115W, but that is based on the OEM’s settings.
At idle, this system sat in the 8.5-11W range with a noise level in the 35dba range in our 34dba studio.
Under load, however, we were getting 128-130W at the wall. The power consumption after ~30 seconds drops to 60-68W. The noise, however, increases in our 34dba studio to 39-41dba. So while one can say Intel is providing more CPU performance, it is also using more power.
The one item we should also address is that the ability to peak in the 128-130W range at the wall is a bit scary with a 120W power adapter. Even after taking into account power adapter loss, we are nervous. Using a USB4 monitor that can be in the 10-15W range, or two of them, would increase power consumption beyond what we saw. It feels like this system needs a bigger power adapter, but that is a challenge in small systems because then one ends up with a big power supply and a little PC.
Key Lessons Learned
Looking at the CPU performance alone, it looks much better than Minisforum’s competitive AMD offering. Still, that better performance comes at the expense of having higher power consumption.
The other set of lessons learned is just about the chassis and layout. It feels like Minisforum could go a bit bigger like Beelink, and get more room for quieter cooling. While we like the extra USB Type-C port and extra 2.5GbE LAN port, some of the design choices feel strange. The question of why the UM790 Pro and NPB7 are so different yet are also the current generation from the same vendor is unanswered.
A great feature is the NPB7 has what might be the easiest access to the DDR5 SODIMM memory, SSD, and WiFi module out there with the new top design. We hope to see this on more systems. At the same time, we are not sure it is worth adding another fan and losing a second M.2 slot for the feature.
Final Words
If we completely ignore power consumption then the Intel Core i7-13700H is an awesome processor. With more connectivity and an easy-to-service design, Minisforum did a great job updating this system. The power and noise feel like they could use some work to really refine it.
Still, if you want an Intel-based mini PC, then the Minisforum NPB7 ended up surprising us on the positive side as being much better than we expected when we ordered the system.
Where to Buy
You can find this unit on Amazon, which is where we purchased it from. Here is an affiliate link for what we ordered.
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…