Minisforum Venus Series UM690 desktop review: small office PC with Ryzen 9 6900HX and USB4

[Redaktion]

Chinese system manufacturer Minisforum offers a plethora of compact desktop PCs tailored to a wide range of applications. The UM690 from the Venus series uses AMD's latest Rembrandt SoC, with support for USB4 and Thunderbolt. In this in-depth review with lots of benchmarks and measurements, we'll tell you what advantages this device offers and how it stacks up against the competition.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Minisforum-Venus-Series-UM690-desktop-review-small-office-PC-with-Ryzen-9-6900HX-and-USB4.689326.0.html

[heffeque]

Can't wait for the 7940HS version, taking into consideration that it's quite a bit faster than the 6800HX:
10-20% on single core, 30-50% faster on multicore, and 220% faster iGPU.

And it's an engineering sample... can't wait for final!
https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/amd-ryzen-9-7940hs-vs-amd-ryzen-9-6900hx

[Räuber Hotz]

Can't wait for the 7940HS version, taking into consideration that it's quite a bit faster than the 6800HX:
10-20% on single core, 30-50% faster on multicore, and 220% faster iGPU.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but according to the first tests the upcoming iGPU is exactly as fast as the 680m iGPU. Check the latest Wccftech or Videocardz news for verification.

What you see there is that it has only 25% improvement (far away from your estimated 220%), and even more: the main reason it is faster is, because it uses 20% faster RAM.

This was however only tested on a benchmark, not a real game. Maybe in practice it's better and maybe future drivers can pull out more performance. But as for now you definitely have to keep your expectations in check or you'll end up disappointed (which you may already be after this comment).

[AntEronast]

You hear a bit less fan noise and more audio by installing it with VESA behind monitor, together with short HDMI cable (2.0 or 2.1 supported by UM690?) + wireless keyboard and mouse combo, feels like tidy set ready :)

[T Funk]

Although it has a USB4 port, which is backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 3, it only has 15W of power available to it.  That's not enough to power a Blackmagic UltraStudio 3G Recorder, which only can be powered via the TB3 cable - and which is unfortunately my exact purpose for buying the pc.

Had they made it clear that it was so underpowered before my purchase, I would have saved a lot of time and money.

[nautist]

Sorry to hear that, but at least you just saved me from buying this device. I also planned to connect the BMD Ultrastudio HD mini to its USB4 port, now I know it would not work. Real shame, the Intel base mini PCs have a very weak iGPU, this one is much better but it is not reall compatible with Thunderbolt.

[nautist]

Although it has a USB4 port, which is backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 3, it only has 15W of power available to it.  That's not enough to power a Blackmagic UltraStudio 3G Recorder, which only can be powered via the TB3 cable - and which is unfortunately my exact purpose for buying the pc.

Had they made it clear that it was so underpowered before my purchase, I would have saved a lot of time and money.

I asked Blackmagic support. According to them, my Ultrastudio HD Mini requires 9-12 W of power, I don't think your Ultrastudio 3G Recorder needs more. There must be another reason why it did not work with this PC.