Minisforum Teases AMD Ryzen-Based Tablet
by Anton Shilov on August 29, 2023 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablet
- AMD
- Ryzen
- Zen 4
- MinisForum
Having received worldwide recognition for its compact desktop computers, Minisforum is looking beyond PCs to grow its business. Earlier this year the company introduced its first tablet and is prepping a tablet with AMD's Zen 4-based accelerated processing unit (APU) inside.
The tablet that Minisforum plans to introduce will be a 2-in-1 device with a detachable keyboard and a stylus, according to the company's presentation in China, which was caught by Liliputing. For now, Minisforum plans to use AMD's eight-core Ryzen 7 7840U APU with Radeon RX 780M GPU as the foundation for the device, though by the time the product shows up the form might decide to go with something else.
Specifications of the device have not been touched upon, which is not particularly surprising given that it is at its early stages of development. Meanwhile, the company stressed that it will take advantage of AMD's AI-co-processor built into Ryzen 7 7840U processor and will therefore use Windows AI capabilities.
For now, it is hardly a good business to speculate what to expect from Minisforum's tablet, though the company is known for offering products with decent specifications at moderate price points.
While we do not know much about Minisforum tablets, the very fact that the company is going this route is remarkable. Keeping in mind that Minisforum is known primarily for PCs, notebooks were arguably the most logical way to expand its business. Yet, the market of notebooks seems to be too crowded, so the company opted for Windows tablets, an untapped market largely because Microsoft's platform is not particularly popular among tablet users.
The choice of AMD's Ryzen platform for a tablet is also noteworthy since we have not seen tablets based on AMD for quite a while. Perhaps, because the company makes so many systems based on AMD's APUs, it knows the platforms so well that it decided to use AMD's Ryzen 7840U for tablet, a form-factor that has not been tapped by this processor just yet.
Source: Liliputing
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yannigr2 - Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - link
Throw a gaming controller into the package and you can advertise it as a gaming tablet.sjkpublic@gmail.com - Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - link
Cooling is an issue. Imagine doing a CPU/GPU intensive task with the 7840U. A cooling fan will rev up and be noticeable for a tablet. For tablet users that will be a different experience. Will be interesting to see how minisforum handles the heat.nandnandnand - Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - link
They could make it fanless, nothing stopping them, but performance will be left on the table.The dope option would be to use Frore AirJet, which has been seen in the ZOTAC PI430AJ Pico using an i3-N300. I don't know if 2x AirJet Minis are enough for a 7840U at the normal TDP though.
NextGen_Gamer - Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - link
@nandnandnand - Two wouldn't be enough, if they were able to fit 4-6 on a small heatsink, that maybe could work? The Intel Core i3 N300 has just a small TDP of 7-Watts, whereas the Ryzen 7 7840U can be configured from 15-30-Watts. So, even in its lowest mode, it would still be substantially higher. Of course, comparing TDPs between Intel and AMD is always hard, *but* with the N300 being Intel's E-cores only, I would guess it sticks closer to the 7-Watts than the regular Intel i5/i7/i9 CPUs (?)wr3zzz - Thursday, August 31, 2023 - link
Who would want a tablet using 4 fans? I don't even want a tablet using 1 fan let alone 4-6.nandnandnand - Thursday, August 31, 2023 - link
AirJet is very different from a fan, with higher performance while being much quieter and relatively slim, but much more expensive. They are planning to use it in smartphones eventually, so it can probably be used in gaming handhelds, tablets, etc. I doubt that using more than 2 of them is feasible in a tablet form factor, but we'll find out in the future.meacupla - Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - link
AFAIK, AirJet has 5W cooling per 27mm unit. Using 9 of them attached to a heatpipe or vapor chamber should allow for 45W-ish TDP.lemurbutton - Wednesday, August 30, 2023 - link
It would be awful.And Apple Silicon M1 chip can idle at 7mw. This Ryzen CPU would be terrible compared to Apple Silicon.
erinadreno - Thursday, August 31, 2023 - link
At least it's doing something instead of only being able to stay idlingwr3zzz - Thursday, August 31, 2023 - link
Every tablet I've ever bought pretty much ended up collecting dusts. The 7" and 8" tablets got replaced as soon as 6.7" phones became the norm. Tablets larger than 10" are not light enough to be used as always carry devices and not powerful or large enough for productivity. I also kept buying 2in1 devices thinking things will be different but 99% of the time they are used in notebook mode.