The Mac Mini may finally have a worthy Windows rival after PC vendor Beelink unveiled a new mini PC called the GTR7 Pro that uses the most powerful 8-core AMD laptop processor to date, the AMD Ryzen 7940HS, to deliver what is probably the most powerful computer in its category (less than 1 liter). Whether or not it will be good enough to be listed in our best workstation PC guide, our best mini PC listing or our best PC for video editing one, we’ll find out when we review it in June 2023.
The 7940HS is based on the Zen 4 architecture and features eight cores and 16 threads with an integrated RDNA3-infused AMD Radeon 780M GPU. While it usually has a TDP of up to 54W, Beelink has adjusted it, thanks to better cooling, to 65W, which allows it to run longer at higher speeds on all cores, eliminating the risk of throttling.
Overclocking the system allows the GTR7 Pro to gain up to 10% in some benchmarks (e.g Photo editing with Photoshop) with a 5.1GHz 7940HS CPU hitting 2380 and 12576 on Geekbench v6.0 (single core/multi core); in comparison, the 12-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5945WX reached about 2130 points and 16170, respectively.
Some puzzling design choices
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We don’t know how much it will cost and what configuration it will sport as Beelink has been quite coy about it. Its predecessor, the GTR6, costs about $900 / £800 / AU$1,500 with a 6900HX CPU, 32GB RAM and a 500GB SSD, so a $1,400 / £1,300 / AU$2,100 price tag wouldn't be out of order.
What we do know is that the top end configuration will have two 32GB Crucial DDR5 SODIMM memory modules running at 5.6GHz (64GB in all) and a 1TB SSD (you can plug a second one as well).
The rest of the specification is full of (good) surprises: other than the metal chassis, there’s a fingerprint reader, two 2.5Gb Ethernet ports (powered by the ubiquitous Intel I225 chip), two USB 4 ports (allowing up to four 4K monitors to be connected and 100W power delivery) and two audio ports that toggle between each other.
Expect the GTR7 Pro to come with Windows 11 Pro which makes it eligible for our best business PC. Note that Beelink decided to stay away from the traditional black color scheme instead opting for green, gray, blue and orange.
We reached out to Beelink to find out more about the pricing as well as the reason being the decision to stay away from the far more powerful 7945HX, a 16-core mobile processor. Equally puzzling is the presence of the two-decade old USB 2.0 ports, a rather oddly shaped magnetic power connector that has an apparently flawed design, WiFi-6 (rather than WiFi-6e) and a 110W power supply unit (which appears a bit weak for this configuration).
