Minisforum UM890 Pro Power Consumption and Noise
The Minisforum UM890 Pro comes with a 120W external power brick. Something that Minisforum did well is to include a power brick that was relatively small. We have seen many mini PCs with power supplies that were close to the size of the system.
In terms of power, this was 7-9W idle, and 80-90W under load. At idle, it was only 36-38dba in our 34dba noise floor studio, so it was very quiet. Under load, we would get up to around 40-42dba, so it was not silent, but it was quieter than many mini PCs we tested. The other notable property is that it would run at high speeds for a long time. For example, we could see the system spike to ~86-88W and then settle down to 81-82W. The larger chassis allows for better cooling which is a trade-off we are happy to make.
Key Lessons Learned
The Oculink expansion was interesting. On the one hand, we used many GPUs with the Minisforum DEG1 eGPU chassis over Oculink. However, with that expansion, we did not have great luck using storage and networking controllers. It also costs quite a bit, given that you need a $99 DEG1, a power supply, and a GPU.
Having the ability to pick OCulink or NVMe SSD for the second internal M.2 drive is useful, but it stinks that you have to pick one. AMD’s next-gen AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series has four fewer PCIe lanes, so this is not something that is going to get better with time.
Still, the other big benefit is really re-doing the cooling. It would have been nice if the NVMe SSDs and SODIMMs were easier to access, but the larger chassis made the system quieter and better cooled. After our experience with the UM690, we are happy to see a larger case with better cooling.
Final Words
This was a strange one. It felt like a small upgrade on paper. From a CPU perspective, despite going from a Ryzen 9 7940HS to a Ryzen 9 8945HS, the difference was a minimal paper upgrade. What we can say, however, is that the overall system got better in terms of I/O, including the dual 2.5GbE LAN. The new layout also seems to be much better albeit with a slightly larger chassis.
Using this system with the DEG1 is somewhat odd. There is a cabled connection to a platform with a power supply, a GPU, and a few cables flopping around. Visually strange, but it did unlock completely new levels of performance. Between the new cooling layout, better I/O layout, and the ability to change the second M.2 slot to a rear OCulink port, it felt like a very different system. There are few mini PCs that go through an evolutionary change like this and feel different even when the CPU is almost the same.
Where to Buy
If you are looking for current pricing here is the system on Amazon as well as some of the memory we tried:
- Minisforum UM890 Pro 32GB/1TB (Amazon Affiliate link)
- Crucial 96GB DDR5-5600 2x 48GB SODIMM kit (Amazon Affiliate link)
- Crucial 64GB DDR5-5600 2x 32GB SODIMM kit (Amazon Affiliate link)
- Crucial 32GB DDR5-5600 2x 16GB SODIMM kit (Amazon Affiliate link)
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.