Originally, we did not plan to review the Minisforum UM890 Pro, but we finally convinced the boss to do this one. This is an AMD Ryzen 8945HS mini PC, which means that it is not far off from the Minisforum UM790 Pro from a performance perspective. On the other hand, Minisforum overhauled the system and added an option for Oculink so that one can connect an eGPU.
Minisforum UM890 Pro Overview
Of course, we have a video for this one. We go into the system but also talk about setting up the DEG1 Oculink expansion and show how to use the two together. You can watch that here:
Price-wise, the barebones is $479. We are reviewing a version with 32GB of memory and a 1TB NVMe SSD that costs around $649. There is another version with 64GB of memory for $729. With the pre-built models, you also get Windows 11 Pro if that is something you use. On the other hand, if you want 2TB or 4TB on the primary SSD, you will probably want to get a barebones unit. It is a bummer that the 64GB model is not at least 2TB these days given the 1TB to 2TB cost difference.
If you want just to get a link, here is an Amazon affiliate link.
Minisforum UM890 Pro External Hardware Overview
The front of the unit has a great set of I/O. A power button is standard and the clear CMOS button is interesting. A headset jack is another nice to have feature that not all mini PCs have these days.
Having both two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A and a USB4 port on the front is nice since that gives solid options for devices that you might want to connect quickly to the front of the system.
On both sides, we have big vents.
In the rear, we have more vents, but a lot of functionality. We have two more USB 3.2 Gen2 ports and another USB4 port. That is the same configuration we see on the front. We also get two Realtek 2.5GbE ports. For display outputs, we get a DisplayPort and a HDMI port. If you want four display outputs, the USB4 ports (one front and one rear) can run in alt DP mode as well.
When we unboxed the system, it came with a small cover over the OCulink port. There is a small board that you can install inside this system to make the OCulink port functional.
Here is the bottom of the system.
Next, let us get inside the system to see how it works.
Couple questions. Does the occulink “expansion” perform equal or better than TB4/USB4 for PCIEe expansion? Why use one or the other? More lanes? Faster clock?
Is the eGPU expansion really “any PCIe” expansion? I can’t see why that wouldn’t be the case, but for some of us, running 10 Gbit might be the killer-app?
TB3 to PCIe chassises seem to go for nearly $400 these days which seems like $100 of hardware and $300 of greed built in. Is occulink “better” in the price-per-PCIe transaction perspective?
I would like to see a slightly larger case with a standard fan(connector). They would get a better air flow, low noise and the miniPC would be able to run without RAM and SSD heatsink. What is most important, this would improve serviceability. You don’t just replace this custom fan when it breaks, and that will be the first thing that breaks there.
I own a um790Pro and this fan is the loudest thing in this mini PC.
@chris h
OCuLink uses raw PCIe lanes so it’s not affected by the myriad of bandwidth and latency limitations of TB/USB4.
However it’s not usually designed for hot-plugging, especially if using M.2 to OCuLink converters like in this case. See the STH review of DEG1 – the eGPU Dock with PSU+GPU has to be powered on before the host in order to function correctly, and can’t be disconnected/reconnected at runtime. This is partly a limitation of the motherboard used.
Device compatibility depends on what PCIe endpoint is implemented on the other side of the OCuLink.
What you’re paying for with TB/USB4 is compatibility and certification. You know that certified devices will work, they will behave correctly with hot-plugging, and so on. Certification isn’t cheap, especially TB, so devices are more expensive than a hodgepodge collection of random PCIe elements from Aliexpress ;)
How fast would this compile chromium? I would love to know, I’m looking for a portable machine for my work related travels that would allow me to have a decent build speed locally when working on chromium.