Minisforum's BD790i SE motherboard offers great value with a 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX CPU & great specs for only $359 US.
Looking For 16 Zen 4 Cores At a Bargin? Minisforum's BD790i SE Has It Al With The AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX & A Powerful ITX Motherboard With Pre-Attached Cooling For $359
Minisforum has today introduced a brand new MoTD (Mobile on Desktop) motherboard, which comes with several pre-included components like CPU and heatsinks all over the PCB. The new motherboard is the 'BD790i SE', which features AMD's Zen 4-based Ryzen 9 7940HX CPU, featuring 16 cores and 32 threads.
The Minisforum BD790i SE is one of the cheapest motherboards with a high-performance Zen 4 mobile CPU, which only costs US$359 and gives users an alternative to the BD790i, which brings the Ryzen 9 7945HX for $539. The Ryzen 7940HX is a slightly downgraded chip compared to the 7945HX, featuring a 2.4 GHz base and 5.2 GHz boost clocks compared to 2.5/5.4 GHz on the latter.
The iGPU is Radeon 610M, which is the same as on the Ryzen 7945HX and will feature the same graphical capabilities. The BD790i SE, in a nutshell, will be on par with the BD790i except in some cases where the latter can execute operations a few seconds faster.
The BD790i SE is a mini-ITX motherboard, which has thick and properly grooved heatsinks all over the PCB for passive cooling. Apart from the change in processor, there doesn't seem to be much change over the BD790i. The BD790i SE brings the same connectivity and design as the BD790i but the PCI-E 5.0 M.2 connectors are replaced by the more budget-friendly PCI-E 4.0 M.2 connectors. These are still the regular 2280 SSD connectors that provide ultra-fast transfer speeds and will be decent enough for modern applications and games.
Minisforum BD790i SE can be used for compact mini-PCs where for productivity and also lets users install a graphics card for gaming and other graphically intensive loads. Due to its compact form factor, the BD790i SE will fit in most SFF cases and won't require a dedicated cooling solution since it comes with a pre-installed heatsink and a blower-style fan for the SSDs (CPU fan needs to be installed separately) for rapid heat dissipation.
Except for the CPU, which is permanently installed, a lot of tweaks can be done with BD790i SE as the motherboard allows connecting SSDs, chassis fans, dedicated GPUs (PCIe 5.0 slot), and front panel headers. For connectivity, there are several USB Type A and Type C ports at the I/O, 2.5G LAN for wired internet, and an M.2 2230 slot for installing a WiFi card.
Minisforum BD790i Specifications
The Minisforum BD790i SE can be purchased from the official website at US$359. Users can also purchase the flagship BD790i model for $539 if they want higher CPU clocks and PCI-E 5.0 M.2 connectors. You can check out our review of the 8-core Ryzen variant of this motherboard here.
