Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT review

I don’t understand how AMD classifies the Ryzen 9 7945HX as a mobile chip. The key is the HX suffix: H stands for “high-performance mobile APU” and X stands for “extreme,” which generally means higher clock speeds and higher power consumption than the regular Ryzen APU.

That means 16 cores, 32 execution threads, and a maximum turbo clock speed of 5.4 GHz. AMD estimates that this little Hellion will run at 45-75W, but that’s clearly not the case quite enough for Minisforum. Set to performance mode, AtomMan G7 PT pumps a respectable 85W of power into the 7945HX.

Does that make sense for a mini-PC? Those kinds of numbers would send any self-respecting laptop maker running for the hills screaming “kill TDP! Kill it or WE’RE ALL LOST!” But the AtomMan G7 PT is a desktop, so portability isn’t a factor. It has its own 300W external power supply, there’s no battery to drain, and the system gets Minisforum’s proprietary NASA-grade cooling to keep it in check. So why the hell not?

In tandem is the AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT, a discrete RDNA3 mobile GPU that’s most commonly used to boost frame rates in notebooks and portable eGPU boxes like the OneXGPU. It features 2,048 shader units, 32 CUs, a 128-bit aggregate memory bus, clock speeds of up to 2,600 MHz, and 8GB of dedicated GDDR6 VRAM. It’s a solid step up from its predecessor, the RX 6600M, and a huge step up from the Radeon 780M iGPU that many micro APU gaming machines are based around. However, it can’t quite keep up with the mobile RTX 4070, which we’ve seen powering other offerings in this branch of the discrete GPU mini-PC family.

From the outside, the AtomMan G7 PT is about the length and volume of a pair of Steam Decks put together face-to-face. It ships with a vertical stand, which you should definitely utilize, since there are cooling fans under each side panel—laying it flat will almost certainly leave it gasping for air. The stand itself is heavily magnetized, and the device connects to it with a tight and physically satisfying latch. In its natural tower orientation, the G7 PT’s build surface is very modest.

A translucent film is attached to the underside of the right-hand side of the case, and it sits above a pair of vast square LEDs mounted in the main body. This arrangement is used to illuminate the Legend of Asaku logo, a popular Taiwanese entertainment IP, when the machine is powered on. Given that I’m not familiar with the series—and, to be candid, I’m a bit distracted by the constant color-switching—I was pleased to find an LED switch in the BIOS.

You can turn it on or off, there are no other options to personalise the LED, which is a shame. The logo sheet is removable and I imagine you could provide its dimensions, as well as your chosen image, to an online etching service and have your own panel graphics made if you felt like it.

The rest of the specs are great. It supports two M.2 drives (one PCIe 5 and one PCIe 4), is Wi-Fi7 and Bluetooth 5.3 compatible, and can hold up to 96GB of DDR5-5200 in the SODIMM form factor. In terms of video output, you get HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.0, and a USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C slot on the back that can also be used for charging and data transfer. Below that are three USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A slots, a 2.5G LAN port, and separate 3.5mm audio and microphone jacks. Up front, you get another USB-C, another USB 3.2 Type-A, a 3.5mm combo jack for audio, and a performance mode button that toggles the 7945HX and its accompanying cooling solution between two TDP settings.

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In its default Balanced mode, the processor runs at a TDP of 65W. Tapping the button instantly switches it to 85W performance mode, without the need for a reboot. Of course, this comes with an augment in heat generation and fan activity. Essentially, it goes from near-silent at 65W to a slightly breezy — albeit without coil whine — at 85W. As with the AtomMan X7 Ti, Minisforum’s Cold Wave phase-shift cooling technology proves its worth once again, keeping fan noise to a minimum while completely taming the heat generation of a high-TDP mobile chip. In our multi-core Cinebench test, 65W cooled the 16-core 7945HX to 69°C. Raising the TDP to 85W raised temperatures to just 83°C.

But what does that extra 20W give you in terms of performance? Actually, very little in terms of gaming, as our benchmarks show. More CPU-dependent titles will see a boost in frame rates — Homeworld 3 is particularly noticeable — but for the extensive majority of games, there’s no difference at all between the two modes. With so much CPU power, even at 65W, gaming frame rates are almost entirely GPU-limited. That’s why our advice is to leave it in Balanced mode for gaming. It’s so tranquil you’ll forget it’s there at all.

CPU-intensive production workloads are where you’ll see the benefits at 85W. In Cinebench and Blender, the 7945HX beats every other APU mini PC we’ve tested—even those with processors like the Ryzen 9 8945HS and Intel Core Ultra 9 185H. It even beats my desktop Ryzen 9 7900, for God’s sake. That makes it a great machine for rendering videos and other similarly intensive tasks.

Gaming relies heavily on the RX 7600M XT, a minuscule GPU that’s great at 1080p and can handle 1440p if you’re willing to compromise on a few specific settings. But the benchmarks you see in the tables don’t tell the full story. To provide a solid comparison with the other mini PCs we’ve tested, our standard 1440p tests are run with each game set to Ultra, which isn’t exactly the G7 PT’s forceful point.

Let’s take A Plague Tale: Requiem as a test case. At 1440p and Ultra settings, the G7 PT averages 51 fps, with a 1% minimum of 40 fps. That’s not bad, of course, but if you drop the setting to high, it averages a golden 60 fps. Drop the resolution to 1080p at Ultra settings, and you’ll see a much healthier average of 76 fps with a 1% minimum of 59 fps. It’s similar in other titles, and there’s definitely room to make hay by tweaking individual settings to a 1440p baseline.

The RX 7600M XT really struggles with ray tracing. Doom Eternal, set to 1440p, with details set to Ultra Nightmare and RT enabled, hits 46 fps with a 1% drop to 23 fps, which isn’t a great experience. Turn ray tracing off and keep all other settings and you’ll be sitting comfortably at 103 fps, with the worst drop at 66 fps. Drop the resolution to 1080, stick with Ultra Nightmare settings and turn RT off, and you’ll be ecstatic with 172 fps with a 1% drop to 73 fps.

The same goes for Forza Motorsport, but in this case the demands are compounded by Forza’s thirst for VRAM. Set the game to 1440p Ultra with RT enabled and you’ll get a “VRAM out of budget” warning, resulting in an average of 38 fps with a 1% low of 26. Phew. Even on Ultra without RT, you’re still over budget. Stick with 1440p, lower your settings to medium, and disable ray tracing, though, and the warning evaporates, jumping to 80 fps with a worst-case drop of 68 fps, which is very velvety and still looks great.

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That puts the AtomMan G7 PT in its own mid-range class. It’s significantly more powerful than smaller mini-PCs that rely on iGPUs for gaming, but it doesn’t quite match the 1440p performance of mini-PCs that have the mobile RTX 4070, namely the Zotac Zbox Magnus and ASUS ROG NUC. The RTX 4070 is better at tracking rays, opens the door to Nvidia’s Frame Gen features, and generally delivers faster frame rates across the board. It’s better geared towards 1440p, and requires you to sacrifice less detail at that resolution.

Such machines are consequently considerably more exorbitant, and this is where the G7 PT carves out a niche. The barebone costs just under a grand — almost half the price of the ASUS ROG NUC — and that’s very attractive. Although you also have to factor in an extra $150 or more for 32GB of 5200MHz DDR5 memory, a 1TB M.2 drive, and a Windows 11 key.

Where does all this leave us? To sum it up, the AtomMan G7 PT eats CPU-intensive tasks for breakfast and offers stunning 1080p gaming performance. Gaming at 1440p is by no means out of the question, but you’ll have to find the sweet spot by tweaking individual game settings.

It gets extra points for running frigid and tranquil even under ponderous loads, and it comes at a price to match. There are mini-PCs that charge a similar price for lower CPU performance and rely on an iGPU that uses shared system memory rather than a separate GPU with 8GB of dedicated VRAM. In that context, the AtomMan G7 PT is uncomplicated to recommend.