AtomMan G7 Ti review on the miniforum

Spend some time with Miniforum’s AtomMan G7 PT and you’ll see that you’re dealing with a solid piece of engineering. A look I could leave behind, but a selection of productive components, well managed by a silent and productive cooling solution, make for a neat case. It’s a beast at 1080p, capable at 1440p on confined settings, and in the world of pre-built machines, it represents the kind of technical innovation we love to see.

Another offering from Minisforum’s AtomMan line can be seen as the bigger brother of the G7 PT. Combining an Nvidia RTX 4070 laptop with an Intel Core i9 14900HX processor, the G7 Ti is a blade-thin desktop designed more for 1440p gaming. Thanks to neat and acute aluminum panels and cautious RGB lighting, it looks rather more solemn and mature than the G7 PT.

Remove the side panel and the reason for its slim and elevated chassis becomes obvious. It is literally built around the laptop’s motherboard, with four miniature daughter boards that are connected to cabling to perform external I/O tasks. This is not standard way of working for Minisforum, which usually opts for custom APU boards and cooling in their mini-PCs.

A copper Yakisoba heatpipe covers the lower half of the mobo, which is refreshing considering the processor choice. Mobile-wise, the mobile RTX 4070 isn’t shoddy, but the Core i9 14900HX is downright monstrous; 24-core, 5.8 GHz, desktop-level bulldozer. Together, they create the highest performing mini PC we’ve tested, outperforming both the ASUS ROG NUC and the Zotac Zbox EN – both equipped with the same GPU – in a number of synthesis and gaming benchmarks.

Like the previous G7 PT, the G7 Ti has two performance modes that change the CPU’s TDP from a maximum of 85W to a maximum of 115W, with different fan speed profiles configured for each. There is a button on the front of the housing that allows you to switch modes. You can also employ the pre-installed hardware management application, which also allows you to customize RGB lighting. Increasing TDP helps the machine perform rendering tasks at a noticeably faster pace, although the performance boost you’ll see in games is entirely dependent on the title.

There’s no doubt that the G7 Ti is both a capable workstation and a solid 1440p gaming machine. Running Cyberpunk 2077 at Ray Tracing Ultra settings, with DLSS and Frame Gen, produced a satisfactory 84 fps at 2560×1440 in 85 W mode and 86 fps at 115 W. Homeworld 3, a more CPU-intensive title, sees a larger raise at jump from 62 to 72 fps, but neither Forza (69 fps) nor Total War: Warhammer 3 (96 fps) saw a noticeable raise in TDP to 115 W.

And honestly, you won’t want to. The G7 Ti’s miniature turboprop blowers are silent at idle and maintain an acceptable 85W of noise under gaming load, generating a consistent but largely non-intrusive blow. Go to 115W, however, and the noise becomes unbearable. Neither mode produces unpleasant, variable coil whine frequencies; you mainly hear the airflow which is better. However, with a CPU load of 115W in Performance mode, it’s impossible to ignore the sheer volume emitted by the blowers at their maximum speed, even with the headphones on.

While I was comparing the machine, my wife (who works a few rooms away in our apartment) stuck her head out the door and said, “This is so weird, I swear I hear heavy rain, but it’s blue sky outside.” Then her eyes landed on the G7 Ti puffing out its cheeks and making a high-pressure TCHHHHHHH noise from the shelf on the desk, and the penny dropped.

CPU temperatures hover around 90°C, so my first assumption was “well, at least the cooling keeps things under control”, but HWinfo says otherwise. Whether it’s 85W or 115W, the CPU starts to throttle under load. This means you’re bouncing off the redline and not using the chip’s full potential.

All of this leads to the conclusion that this particular processor in this particular form factor is simply not the most sensible combination. The ultra-thin design doesn’t allow for as much copper or the larger, slower-spinning fans that the i9 14900HX so desperately needs to control heat without throttling or setting off car alarms.

It’s also not a sensible pairing with a GPU for mid-range laptops. I suspect the G7 Ti would perform equally well at 1440p with a less power-hungry chip; perhaps an i5, Core Ultra or a up-to-date Ryzen APU. And in fact, a variant of this machine – the AtomMan G7 Ti SE – is available at a slightly cheaper price with an i7 14650HX processor. It’s still a beast, but with lower turbo clock speeds (5.2GHz compared to 5.8GHz on the 14900HX) and 8 fewer electric cores, I feel like it’s something close to a more reasonable match for a mobile RTX 4070 in a slim form factor .

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While Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 are very welcome, the physical I/O isn’t quite up to par. Single USB Type-C port on the back and none on the front? This isn’t great. Additionally, the lack of a dedicated DisplayPort port means that if you want to run a DP cable to the monitor, you’ll need to dedicate a single USBC port on the back to it. Which of course means no USB-C peripherals for you, brave reader, unless you add a hub to your shopping list. The lack of an audio jack on the back is another annoying omission, as it means you’ll have to tighten the 3.5mm jack on the front if you want to connect a set of desktop speakers.

There’s also some awkwardness with the form factor. The vertical arrangement looks nice, but is not convenient because there is a lot of vertical weight on that slim base; it wouldn’t take much of a nudge to take him down. Additionally, the cable from the external power supply connects to the top of the back, providing an additional point of leverage. This wouldn’t be a problem if the connection was closer to the base.

Laying the device flat on a desk is out of the question, as the right side panel – which would be the “bottom” if you lay it down – is entirely the air intake. In any case, the horizontal aspect would take up space on a desktop computer much like a tower computer; you would lose one advantage of its blade-like design, which is a pleasantly miniature footprint.

All this adds up to a machine that is in a certain limbo. It’s a compact but visually powerful unchanging PC that performs worse than a desktop computer in the same price range. Likewise, there are laptops with identical specifications that cost about the same but offer the added benefits of a screen, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, and portability.

There is no doubt that this is a great piece of hardware at 1440p, even with the processor confined to 85W, which keeps the volume tranquil and pleasant for fans. But this gets to my biggest problem with the machine; if you want to get the best out of the Core i9 14900HX and power it with 115W in performance mode, you’re going to be penalized for doing so. It quickly begins to hit the throttle and the cooling system becomes unbearably raucous.

This particular processor in this particular case is overkill. And while I think Minisforum – a company with good form in the custom cooling space – has done everything it can to tame the beast, there are much more reasonable processors around which you can build a slim gaming machine, and that are better suited to mobile RTX 4070 graphics card.