Minisforum Venus UM790 Pro, Ryzen 9 7940HS, 32GB, 1TB SSD

A Ryzen 9 workstation stuffed into a box the size of a sandwich. Great for developers, useless for gamers.

The 7940HS is the star here. Eight cores, sixteen threads, boost up to 5.2GHz, and it chews through compile jobs and virtual machines without breaking a sweat. What surprised us most is how quiet the Cold Wave 2.0 cooling keeps things. Liquid metal on a mini PC at this price is unusual, and it shows. The Radeon 780M integrated graphics are fine for driving four 4K displays, but don't expect to game on this thing. Our gaming score of 17.3 out of 100 tells you everything you need to know there.

The UM790 Pro sits in a weird spot. The Lenovo Legion 90YA003GUS will crush it in gaming but costs more and takes up way more desk space. The Apple Mac Studio M5 Max is in a completely different price bracket and performance tier, but if you're deep in the Apple ecosystem, this Minisforum won't pull you away. For pure CPU performance per dollar in a tiny form factor, the UM790 Pro beats most towers we've tested at this price point. The HP OMEN GT16-0364 is a better choice if you want any gaming capability at all.

At $879 USD, this is a lot of compute for the money. You're getting a CPU that would cost you significantly more in a laptop, plus 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD already installed. If you need a compact workstation for development, this is a no-brainer. If you want to play games, save your money and buy something with a discrete GPU.

The Minisforum Venus UM790 Pro is a tiny box that punches way above its weight class for productivity. You're getting a Ryzen 9 7940HS with 32GB of DDR5 and a 1TB NVMe drive in a chassis that weighs about a kilogram. The one thing to know? This is a developer's dream machine that just happens to look like a router.

If you're looking for a gaming machine, this isn't it. Go get a Lenovo Legion or HP OMEN with a real GPU instead. Also, if you need something that just works out of the box without tinkering, the lack of an OS and that reliability score should give you pause.

Buy this if you're a developer, a homelab enthusiast, or anyone who needs serious CPU power in a tiny footprint. The Ryzen 9 7940HS is a monster for productivity, and the dual USB4 ports plus 2.5G Ethernet make it a fantastic little server or workstation. Just don't expect to game on it, and maybe buy an extended warranty given that reliability score.