MINISFORUM BD790i X3D Motherboard AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D(16C/32T) Gaming Mini PC Without RAM/SSD/OS, 2xDDR5 SODIMM Slots, 2xPCIe5.0 SSD, M.2 2230 Key E Slot, HDMI+DP+USB-C Triple Video Outputs Computer

Unlike many, I bought this board as a board for Gaming. Replacing a 9th Gen i9 this board not only paddles it but does so while sipping power. Building it in a Case with as much volume as a Playstation 5 and pairing it with a high end graphics card this is easily able to hit high frame rates in the games that I play. It's cheaper as well, since the CPU and Cooler and Motherboard are all purchased together compared to a traditional build in which you need to buy those components separately. You just need to add RAM, Storage and Power and you're already booting a computer. The grunt work is done for you. It has WiFi and Ethernet like a regular motherboard would. My only gripe is the lack of SATA ports, and the lack of a dedicated front Type C port. But aside that everything is excellent. The fan won't need to spin often since the CPU only draws 100W at peak power and I have had no issues with stability either. It Literally, just works.

Great build quality and performance, was able to push a 4090 just as well as an i9-14900K. Beware if you are doing a small form factor build and you’re using a PCIe 5 GPU and you have a PCIe 4 riser cable, you will have hellish instability and black screens. Make sure you get a PCIe 5 riser! Really good board overall and stupid amounts of power for the size, remarkably efficient too!

I have decades of experience building and supporting computer systems for corporate and scientific environments. I know how to integrate system components and I keep detailed notes of my builds. After spending many hours over two weeks troubleshooting this motherboard I would never recommend purchasing it and would give it zero stars for being a technical time sink. Customer support seemed only to be interested in having the BIOS flashed (with the same version already on the board, this step did not solve the problem) and was willing to have me send them the board at my expense and wait for a replacement. I went through two of these and both had the same problem - the m.2 in the first slot "disappears" (and the system cannot boot from it if its your OS drive). If you have more than one m.2 SSD installed, the board becomes unstable in general, the system becomes slow to POST (if it POSTs at all) and file corruption can occur on your boot disk. Removing the SSD from the second slot does not fix the problem, I put the boot disk in the second slot and this made the board more stable but the first slot was still unusable. Even if I could get the system to see a drive in the slot it would become inoperable after a reboot, with errors in the Windows system event logs. It did not matter if I used a PCIe Gen 5 drive or Gen 4 drive in the slots. This seems to be a problem Minisforum has had with other older versions of this board with different CPUs.

Friends talked me into building a computer again. I knew I wanted a ITX and found this. Great value for the money. ITX boards with comparable performance are pretty expensive, and don’t come with a CPU, cooler, M2 heat sink and fan, etc. I was looking at comparable AM5 boards and CPU and it would have been $50-100 more for similar performance, plus the CPU cooler. Only downside I foresee is upgrading in the future, although it runs triple a games without even breaking a sweat, using a RTX 4070. it does seem to be picky about the fans it wants. I originally had a Be Quiet Silent Wings 4 mounted, but it wouldn’t come on or PWM unless I unplugged the fan header and plugged it back in, every power cycle. Reached out to support and they troubleshot with me. Ended up trying a Noctua and the fan works every power cycle now.

Make sure you have high quality bits for removing the m.2 heatsink screws. Mine were way over torqued and I nearly had to make the stripped screw walk of shame to have them removed due to my cheap tools. Excellent CPU with BIOS update ready to go on their website and easy to find. MINISFORUM is way ahead of the pack.

Its faster than my Desktop 5950x CPU (previous generation 16-core) by about 20% if I'm using AI apps. The memory doesn't seem to want to go over 5200MT/s, didn't see any UEFI/BIOS setting to make that any higher. The CPU fan seems to stay quiet until the CPU gets to about 70c, then ramp up, something a laptop would likely have set. I'm using an EK Vardar fan (3,000RPM) and the CPU has stays close to 80c, but has hit a peak of 90c. Definitely want a good 120mm fan on this board. There are a couple system 12v fan headers and another motherboard header for USB3, but that's about it for expandability.

This is an excellent Gaming Mini PC. I paired it with an RTX 4080 and it does very well. The performance of the CPU is on par with my 7950x, but with much less power draw. Make sure you pick up a good 120MM fan for the CPU like the Noctua NF-F12 iPPC 3000 PWM, Heavy Duty Cooling Fan. The BIOS is a bit clunky, but works fine for a gaming PC.

This board has incredible performance and great stability. It includes almost all the necessary features while omitting all the useless ones that drive the price up. It would, however, benefit from the inclusion of a high-speed Type-C connection. My Ncase M2 case has a Type-C connection that I can't use because there is no connection on the BD790i.