Minisforum UM790 Pro Review | EliteViser

Minisforum UM790 Pro – 30 second review

The Minisforum UM790 Pro impresses with its compact size and impressive performance. While its design is plain and a little boring, setup is simple and efficient, and the ports and connectors are all where you’d want them to be for sheer convenience.

The machine excels at gaming and 4K video editing tasks, making it an ideal choice for creative professionals. Marketed as a desktop replacement, it offers exceptional power for its size and will appeal to anyone looking for versatility and performance, so ideal for creators. Despite its somewhat mundane design, its capabilities as a compact and powerful PC and its focus on gaming and content creation make it an attractive choice and make it one of our picks for the best mini PCs.

Price and availability

The Minisforum UM790 Pro is priced in the mid-range for a high-end mini PC, so whatever your looks, it’s one of the best PC buys out there. Considering its impressive specs and desktop-level processing power, this price point makes it an affordable option for anyone who needs high performance in a compact form factor.

While the UM790 Pro offers powerful desktop PC-like performance, its limited upgradeability should be considered. However, GPUs and external hard drives can be plugged in, so it’s not a big deal when you consider the RAM and internal storage option upgrades. The mid-range price and simple design make it a strong and sensible choice.

Project

The Minisforum UM790 Pro is everything a compact Mini PC should be and offers a simple, space-saving solution ideal for desktop and creative setups. While its exterior design looks fairly standard, its true capabilities lie within. The machine is built with practicality in mind, allowing it to be easily mounted to the back of a monitor, thus maximizing desk space. Its integrated metal body enhances durability while ensuring it stays cool even under heavy workloads.

While the UM790 Pro may not be as upgradeable as traditional desktops, its dual-channel DDR5 memory slots allow for a maximum of 64GB of RAM, meeting your multitasking needs. Additionally, dual PCIe 4.0 SSD slots allow users to expand storage capacity and enhance data performance through RAID0 and RAID1 configurations.

Characteristics

The Minisforum UM790 Pro employs cutting-edge technologies, housing an AMD Ryzen™ 9 7940HS processor with boost up to 5.2GHz and an AMD Radeon™ 780M GPU, delivering extraordinary performance for gaming and intensive tasks.

The UM790 Pro’s AMD Ryzen™ 9 7940HS processor boasts 8 cores and 16 threads, while the AMD Radeon™ 780M graphics card ensures smooth images and lag-free gaming, as well as being sufficient for video and image editing tasks.

Supporting the processing are dual-channel DDR5 memory slots and support for frequencies up to 5600 MHz; the UM790 Pro offers fast access to data, an important consideration for content creators dealing with large files.

These large files are perfectly catered for by the M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 SSD slots, of which there are two, although only one is already full.

Providing connection options, there’s a good range of ports, including USB3.2 Gen2 Type-A and USB4 ports, and support for high-resolution displays, there’s HDMI 2.1 and USB4 video outputs.

Measuring 130mm x 126mm x 52.3mm, the UM790 Pro’s compact size makes it suitable for limited desk space, and it’s VESA-mount compatible, which is a nice touch, especially in studios where you want the surface is free from cables and machines.

As for network connections, there is a 2.5G Ethernet port and a Killer™ AX1675 Wi-Fi 6E network card; in testing, this all seemed more than fast and reliable enough for most lab and studio tasks as well as gaming.

Performance

The Minisforum UM790 Pro demonstrates solid performance across our series of benchmark tests, translating to outstanding real-world performance when used with Premiere Pro and Photoshop. Its AMD Ryzen™ 9 7940HS processor, paired with the AMD Radeon™ 780M GPU, handled games, pictures and videos with relative ease.

In 3DMark Wild Life, the UM790 Pro achieved a graphics score of 15402, which reflects its gaming performance. Fire Strike got a graphics score of 7351, with additional scores highlighting the CPU and performance combined.

Time Spy posted a graphics score of 2674 and a CPU score of 10862, illustrating its many capabilities. In Cinebench R23, the machine showed a multi-core score of 15874, stating its computational strength and this was again reflected in the video editing.

GeekBench 5 reflected the other results with multi-core and single-core scores of 12387 and 2714, respectively. CrystalDiskMark revealed read and write speeds of 3905.29 MB/s and 1970.44 MB/s, demonstrating decent but not remarkable transfer speeds.

PCMark 10 returned a score of 7110, reinforcing the all-around performance which was complemented by a Windows Experience Index score of 8.2.

You should buy a Minisforum UM790 Pro

The Minisforum UM790 Pro presents a powerful solution in a compact form. With outstanding performance that surpasses its peers in this price range, it proves to be a reliable mini replacement for PCs and desktops. Its understated design may lack style, but it’s a testament to functionality and fits easily into any professional setting.

From robust gaming features to smooth video editing, the UM790 Pro delivers on multiple fronts. While it may not be the right choice for someone looking for a design that stands out or offers a multi-colored light show, its performance-focused approach and simplicity make it a great option.

Value: It’s priced well for its capabilities, and it delivers desktop-level power. (5/5)
Project: Simple and practical, but lacking in visual appeal. (3/5)
Characteristics: Cutting edge technologies, CPU, GPU, RAM and versatile storage options. (4.5/5)
Performance: Impressive benchmark scores translate into outstanding real-world performance. (4.5/5)
Total: A solid mini PC with powerful performance and practical design, suitable for various activities. (4/5)

Why you should buy

Don’t buy it if