Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470 review: AMD's Gorgon Point in a sleek mini PC desktop

Firm’s flagship ‘AI PC’ update doesn’t mess with the formula, but our sample was crippled by its single-channel memory config.

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Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470
(Image credit: © Tom's Hardware)

Tom's Hardware Verdict

Minisforum’s AI X1 Pro 470 mini PC is just an incremental update to last year's well-regarded AI X1 Pro 370. The winning formula hasn’t changed, and it relies on AMD’s silicon update to shine. Our test sample, with a 32GB/1TB config, performed comparatively poorly until it was upgraded to dual-channel RAM.

Pros

  • +

    Solid metal build quality

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    Built-in PSU, fingerprint reader

  • +

    Quiet, cool performance

  • +

    AMD’s latest mobile silicon

  • +

    OCuLink, 2x USB4 ports, 3x M.2 slots

Cons

  • -

    Hefty price for a mini-PC without dGPU

  • -

    Pricing adversely affected by the RAMpocalypse

  • -

    Sample shipped with 32GB RAM, but using a single SO-DIMM

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Mini PCs have gained a following over recent years by bringing the best mobile silicon to the desktop. The mix of processing power, the compact chassis, power efficiency, and portability hits a PC sweet spot for many folks. Here we are looking at Hong Kong-based Minisforum’s update to its well-regarded AI X1 Pro 370 from last year – the new Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470. As given away by the name, this model packs one of the latest AMD Gorgon Point mobile processors.

Specifically, the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 is installed in this machine, and the mini PC’s relative charms rely on the enhancements delivered by the AMD Ryzen AI 400 series. Sadly, the latest AMD mobile processors offer merely incremental uplifts, leaving enthusiasts underwhelmed. The CPU boost goes 100 MHz higher, and the NPU performance has been lifted from 50 to 55 TOPS in the latest silicon. Nevertheless, we thought it would be worthwhile to gauge the appeal of the new Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470, and check out the top-end AI 400 series laptop chip in a mini PC.

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Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

3 Comments Comment from the forums
  • usertests
    Uninteresting for AI. At least it's in the name.

    AMD's refusal to officially port FSR4 to RDNA2/3/3.5 is drawing a lot of attention. It's starting to look like Zen 6 Medusa APUs will have "RDNA4m", bringing full speed FSR4 performance while remaining area efficient.

    Buying Strix Point Refresh isn't a great idea if you can hold out. There's no guarantee that DRAM/NAND pricing will improve in 2027, but Gorgon will be a yawn compared to Medusa ("Halo Mini"?).

    I was going to say something about Borderlands 3 but I was confusing it with Borderlands 4.
    Reply
  • Notton
    Having used several mini-PCs in the past, No, you do not want a 3.5mm jack on the back. It's on the front for when you absolutely need to use it.

    The line noise, primarily from USB devices, is asinine and you will want a separate USB or HDMI DAC if you want clear and crisp sound coming from your speakers or headset.
    IDK if this particular mini-PC has good noise isolation on the audio chip, but I wouldn't count on it.
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    That single channel RAM will cripple iGPU performance, shouldn't exactly come as a surprise any more.

    In fact by now it should be quite obvious that RAM bandwidth is the one and only limiting factor for iGPU performance, last level caches have already worked quite a few wonders.

    You can go with much faster RAM clocks, but that means soldered or even stacked on-die-carrier and/or you can go wider like Strix Halo, the Fruity Cult, or the biggest Snapdragon Elite X2.

    AI: Judging from my experiments with a Hawk Point predecessor, it will actually run AI and with at least half of its installed physical memory. My Hawk Point Mini-ITX is pretty similar if a little older and has 64GB of DDR5-5600, of which 32GB are accessible to both the iGPU and the NPU for AI processing. So you can run relatively large models in that unified memory, but bandwidth and compute capabilities are still limited, resulting in output rates, that may not be to your liking.

    So yes, I could load bigger diffusion models than even on my RTX 4090 with only 24GB of VRAM, but image generation rates were perhaps one frame per hour: who has the time or patience?

    The Amuse demo application AMD sponsored for a few months (no longer maintained), tried to push the point by running early generation Stability AI diffusion models for image generation (on the GPU) and combining that with an image scaling model (running on the NPU) to show the 'additive benefit'.... Yeah, the promotional artwork on the website and the AMD ads were not achieveable with that software...

    Somewhat pathetic for most, perhaps a life-saver for someone.

    Or perhaps a life-taker, e.g. inside a drone for target identification where false positives aren't as critical as affordability: you don't need real-time 4k AI vision to distinguish a human from a tree, distinguishing an civilian from a soldier might require more, but most Shahed operators don't care.
    Reply