MINISFORUM UM690L Slim Mini PC, AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX Mini Computer (8C/16T, up to 4.9 GHz), 16GB LPDDR5 and 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, DP/HDMI 2.1/USB 4, 4 x USB Type-A, WiFi 6E/BT 5.3

Minisforum is by far the least sleazy mini pc manufacturer, now that Intel is out of that business.Avoid those N series celerons, they're bad now and will be worse in 2 years. This will still be a good computer. 2 performance cores and four of AMD's e-cores. My first brush with those. Spoiler: they beat the crap out of intel e-cores. Not a lot on youtube or in writing about them, but they just take their regular core and cut it down a bit. About 3/4 of the performance at half the electrical usage.I like how the windows scheduler handles the cpu. Keeps one p-core and one e-core going and throttles the clocks down. With the 13900K I have, windows drops you to one e-core and leaves you there until you very much overwhelm it. Then it'll unpark a p-core and move you there. I can see that ~ 1 second delay. Browsing a page, it'll drop you to the e-core, click a link and then wait a moment while it tries to save battery life on a desktop computer. Unsatisfactory!Cooling is the big problem with mini pcs. Old packages upgraded to the latest cpu and memory, one heat pipe in the heatsink or none because the package was made to cool a quad core low end and they've put an 8 core in it. Not here. Sweet flow through cpu cooling AND a fan/thermal pads on the nvme drives. What those actually NEED to not heat up and throttle the performance into the dirt.Overall a great computer that sips 9w at idle and still has six cores and very, very fast low power ddr-5. Way better than buying DDR4 today. It's already a dead technology.No weird fishy parts, all brand name stuff. Kingston drive is a very good performer, turning in around 7000Mb/s reads.I have nothing bad to say about it so far. It's been used as a desktop and now it's the perfect server with a mirrored pair of nvme gen 4 drives. I can now access all of my files in one place, my backup external hard drive and my printers. Barely uses any electricity just idling, and gives a solid desktop performance level when you hit the gas.I'm a retired Intel cpu guy too. I won't buy theirs anymore after years of eating my own dog food. This AMD cpu is underrated and powerful, while being incredibly efficient.

What can I say??? I have two cheaper n100 and nuc gmk mini pcs. I researched this heavily and saw great ratings. Aside from some aggravating sound issues with retro Linux which I had to go into windows reset sound back factory odd yes...The pc kicks butt! It's very fast and graphics have no equal in my eyes. Price is cheap and compares to many older pcs costing 600 or so. I like my retro stuff and this pc plays them all!!!! It has excited me for first time in last 10 years for even powerfull unit so very pleased with this so far!

It's very fast and can handle CS2 like a champ and most games in low settings. Mainly use it for work and some light gaming. The 32GB RAM is dual-channel out the box so you have two sticks of 16 gigs👌🏽I’ll soon add an additional 1 or 2 TB SSD and maybe upgrade to two sticks of 32 gig RAM.**I just wish you could access the internals without taking off the feet every time. They send you two extra rubber feet but I can see all of them losing their stickiness after a handful of times opening up the PC. (I don't even think there is an option to buy said rubber feet on amazon) Should have just put some holes in the middle of the feet or something.*Two issues about the PC (other people may not have experienced this but I did)*1. The first day using this PC, my monitor was flashing a black screen for a second and sometimes two or three blinks in a row. The monitor is new and worked fine with previous PCs and the DP cable is also new and works well with other PCs. I checked the power supply and display port and it's connected snug so idk what's causing this. This will happen every now and then so I will try to catch it on video and update this review with the video attached.2. The packaging it comes in was not the same as the ones when you see unboxings on youtube. It came in a brown box and the actual PC was wrapped in a white paper case. First thought was that it was refurbished/used but the sticker says new so I guess that's how they ship them now. It just kinda felt cheap when first opening it up.

Item was great. I liked it's compact size, and was worth it's prize. Unfortunately my unit may have been part of a bad batch because it broke down. The good thing is that I got in contact with customer support. They guided me through troubleshooting first, and when that didn't work they confirmed that upon return I would get a full refund. Great customer service.