A Laptop With No Screen? Checking out the MinisForum AtomMan G7 Ti MiniPC

A mini pc with a laptop form factor? That's weird! Let's take a look!

0:00 - Intro
0:40 - Unboxing and overview
3:47 - Thermal and cpu/memory benchmarks
5:46 - Hardware considerations
8:28 - Gaming benchmarks
8:52 - Outro

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Music: "Earth Bound" by Slynk

[moundercesar]

a laptop that doesn't sit on top of a lap, what a time to be alive

[hugevibez]

That title is exactly what this device is. A lot of people are knocking it for only having a laptop 4070, but its a miscategorization of the device. Cut down ada is less than perfect, sure, but its still an interesting form-factor to look at.

[acarrillo]

2:31 right above the M.2 connectors is a vestigial BATT connector. Pretty safe to say this was a laptop mainboard. Likely why it has such anemic IO.

[exturkconner]

It's clearly just a headless laptop. It's a very high end current headless laptop but that's what it is. You could pretty easily buy a laptop with a broken display, 3d print, or have a 3d print case made and you are in this same place. This form factor just seemed weird to me. If there were keyed holes to mount this on the wall behind your monitor and have the front do the majority of the ventilation sure. If it was flatter and had some feet and was designed to be a horizontal desktop that a monitor sat on? Sure 100%. But as it stands? Yeah it's super narrow but it's massively tall. It's really awkward to work into most setups. And the vent location means it has to either be upside down or vertical...just weird choices.

[catalystguitarguy]

I’ll be waiting for a Ryzen based version of this. Minisforum + Ryzen I’ve had great results with as gifts for parents and grandparents. Reliable, small, very little tech support needed.

[KenS]

I really like this but the I/O is so anemic. A mouse and kb uses up all the front USB and there isn't exactly a lot on the back. I get space considerations but no one buys something like this and then wants dongles hanging off it all the time.

[enilenis]

A friend just lost his 14th gen i9 CPU a week ago. When the CPU fried, it took 2 DDR5 sticks to silicon heaven along with it. Don't trust anything Intel says. Skip 13th and 14th gen. Either go with AMD, or wait till 15th gen is out and been on the market for half a year. Avoid these machines, unless you plan to upgrade again in about a year and have money falling out of your behind.

[Maxjoker]

10:10 I think the ending card is scaled wrong(Don't take this as a criticism; take this as free engagement for the algorithm! :P)

[bluephreakr]

MinisForum was _this close;_ they could have had a removable panel on one side with screws, provided security screws, and replaceable bezels to disable some functions physically for use in cyber cafés.

[arnox]

I was for this thing at first, but the price... I dunno, maybe I'm being a tight-ass, but ~$1200 for a gaming laptop with no monitor, keyboard, or trackpad seems too high.

[milescarter]

It could be a paste issue, but don't discount it being a fan speed issue. I find Mobile fans usually err on the side of noise instead of thermals. Disconnecting the PWM wire (which may get quite loud) is an easy way to verify potential cooling capacity.

Now we are curious what laptop this motherboard could fit in. Although I can see this being a great use for last gen laptop hardware, put a newer motherboard in the laptop shell and sell the old board as a 'desktop'

[tzviasegal]

A headless laptop in search of a reason. I don't understand where it fits... I would rather have an ITX board in an appropriate case; get the option of GPU choice, case choice, PSU choice... For a small 'all in one' it's way too big. Maybe look at the Beelinks and similar... Laptops, there are 'gaming' and 'content creation' laptops like the Gigabyte Aero 15 I own. Where does this fit and what does it provide that is an improvement of the other choices...

[rhoharane]

This seems like a good way for laptop manufacturers to give more options without purposefully designing new hardware.

[eldibs]

I kinda love the form factor. Still small enough to tuck behind a monitor, but big enough that I could actually get my hands in there to do a component swap without struggling, and powerful enough to be a good daily driver.

[jonahhekmatyar]

I think a female and male vesa mount on the front and back would have been an interesting idea for having it mountable on the back of a monitor.

[TestarossaF]

maybe a good one to indeed test LTT PTM7950 thermal pad out on, but also compare the der8auer thermal grizzly kryosheets with! could be a good video, maybe.

[Hawlkeye-ep]

DEAR MANUFACTURERS...
IF YOU WIRED IN A PCIE X16 PORT
YOU PRODUCT SALES WILL PUMP.
FULL X4 X5 PCIE SPEEDS.
NOW YOU HAVE SOMETHING SPECIAL.

[CEUOTC]

MinisFourm mini PCs are fantastic bits of kit, rocking an HX99G as my main Linux gaming rig. Great content!

[aranykai]

This is based on an Intel NUC laptop reference design. I have an older version sold by Minisforum and I've been generally happy with it apart from the limited IO.

[MGSBESTProductions]

Omg something I always wanted finally exists! 😅 thanks Wendell!