At last month's meeting I briefly mentioned my toy, one of these Mini PCs. This review, from a usually reliable source, gives a nice description https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPjA1Lm4ftY
That model is outside my price range, but a cheaper model - https://www.amazon.ca/MINISFORUM-NAB6-Lite-i5-12600H-Computer/dp/B0D1VLLKXZ (679) looks interesting. What is your feel of MINISFORUM's quality? -- William On 2026-01-15 12:14, D. Hugh Redelmeier via Talk wrote:
At last month's meeting I briefly mentioned my toy, one of these Mini PCs. This review, from a usually reliable source, gives a nice description
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPjA1Lm4ftY ------------------------------------ Description: GTALUG Talk Unsubscribe via Talk-unsubscribe@lists.gtalug.org Start a new thread: talk@lists.gtalug.org This message archived at https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/M242ORF...
On Fri, Jan 16, 2026 at 2:22 AM William Park via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
That model is outside my price range, but a cheaper model - https://www.amazon.ca/MINISFORUM-NAB6-Lite-i5-12600H-Computer/dp/B0D1VLLKXZ
The deal about Hugh's system is that it uses a CPU/GPU/NPU system that is designed to run local LLMs better than most PCs, because they can allocate 96GB (or more) to video RAM. This is a major obstacle to regular PCs, in which the most powerful graphics card, the $6,000 RTX 5090, only comes with 32GB VRAM. While the Minisforum that Hugh has (and the slightly cheaper GMKtec one with the same chipset that I have) are expensive compared to other MiniPCs, they are still way cheaper than the other players in this particular field: the Mac Studio M3 Ultra and systems based on the Nvidia DGX Spark architecture which generally cost $5,000 and up. - Evan
From: William Park via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org>
That model is outside my price range, but a cheaper model - https://www.amazon.ca/MINISFORUM-NAB6-Lite-i5-12600H-Computer/dp/B0D1VLLKXZ (679) looks interesting.
My idea of what Mini PC's should cost has been thrown out the window by RAM and SSD prices, tariffs (somehow US tariffs seem to affect what we pay), and panic. I've not been a fan of Intel processors for a while. That's not a veto, just a weighting. One issue is power efficiency and the consequent noise. I don't know if the currently latest generations overturn this pattern. This particular processor is a couple of generations old. That's not a veto either. This one comes with 32GiB of RAM (generous), surely in the form of two DIMMs. Unfortunately, it is DDR4. I like 2.5G ethernet being built-in. Two ports is a bonus but actual use of this feature seems rare. This machine seems too powerful for router applications. It could allow better clustering, I guess.
What is your feel of MINISFORUM's quality?
There are now a million mini-PC vendors. My impression (note: not factual) is that Minisforum does more engineering than most of the brands but they sometimes get it a little wrong at first (in the past, anyway). Cooling seems to be a challenge for all vendors. Firmware isn't frequently updated. Minisforum might be better that average at that. Most of the Chinese brands of mini PCs are very similar and might well come from the same factory. Not Minisforum, as far as I've noticed. Nice metal cases feel good but I'm not sure that has any technical value. Machined metal feels better than sheet metal.
participants (3)
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D. Hugh Redelmeier -
Evan Leibovitch -
William Park