The BEST BUDGET Ryzen mini PC 😲 [VEGA 8 vs 660M vs 680M vs 780M]

[@chronicle_4]

Thanks for the comparisson between generations. This is what i need atm.

[@TeamPandory]

You're most certainly welcome ✌️

[@MargieBynum]

Excellent presentation! It really goes to show that Zen 3/ DDR4/ PCIe 3.0 (5800H) is aging out when compared with Zen 3+/ DDR5/ PCIe 4.0 running two less CPU cores and two less GPU cores (6600H). Nice! Really like this format. Would like to see something similar, comparing U vs HS/H, with both matched and unmatched power levels. Comparing performance gain to the percentage of additional power required (possibly with wall outlet wattage readings), could be thought provoking for some. My nephew purchased and received his GEM10 6800H ($400?) earlier this week, and is running a Linux OS (not SteamOS) as a Steam Deck alternative. He's pretty excited (I gave him half the money, don't tell my sister-in-law), says he enjoys the performance so far. Maybe you could possibly use one of these, in a Steam Deck comparison? He plans to add an OCuLink eGPU (with Christmas money?), and is looking at the Minisforum graphics card dock. He's figuring (hoping) it will be $70 on Amazon by the holidays. He already has an 850W modular PSU from his failed attempt to build his own PC, so at least that's out of the way. That GPU dock does look very clean. Once again, not your average review video! Did miss the bouncy music at the end.

[@TeamPandory]

Thanks for the comment 🙂 Personally, I reckon the 6800H is an awesome chip. Depending on the game I think many game settings can push it to another level, for example using the AMD upscaling in the adrenalin settings can bump up resolution to 4k even though your computer is running at 720p or 1080p. External GPUs can be really messy. It'll work, sure, but you're paying much more that'll take away from the aesthetics of your mini pc. So uh. Yeah 😁 We'll have more reviews soon, but the last one took a lot out of me- and now this took even more out of me 😂... Might need an alcoholiday sometime soon 😂

[@ChuwiEnjoyer]

it goes to show how much data bandwidth matters, as vega was really limited by that DDR4 memory And its also nice to see that the performance on new platforms translates well into the lower tiers, a ryzen 5 with the same performance as a ryzen 7, with only new memory and iGPU? lovely!

[@TrusteftTech]

Good video, I like the execution. I don't know what music you decided to use, but the music pieces were just beautiful. I wish you had a playlist.

[@TeamPandory]

I use a mix of royalty free bossa nova in a pack I got from Humble Bundle, and work from Chris Huelsbeck. He has a Patreon, link is in the video description. Legendary artist 😎

[@Just_Mike64]

Hey thanks for the video, got myself a gmktec m6 for under 200 euro, fantastic value

[@TeamPandory]

Nice! ✌ The M6 is certainly great value. It'd cost 200 euro to get a motherboard and Windows license alone only a few years back. The consumer is definitely winning out nowadays.

[@TheRizalp]

this is excellet mini pc igpu comparisons! Thanks

[@TeamPandory]

@@TheRizalp you're most certainly very welcome 👍

[@richardmcgowan1651]

The cheaper mini PCs are great. They end up being much better Raspberry Pi's and you will spend the same by the time you get everything you need for a Raspberry Pi. As you go up in price on mini PCs it's all about the games you play. As there is no point in getting a Ryzen if all you are going to use it for is a basic Linux machine.

[@TeamPandory]

For the under $200 bracket, the Intel chips are great, especially when compared to a Raspberry Pi. Those haven't been relevant since the days of the 3b+. But if you're wanting a PC for PC gaming, and upper tier emulation (Wii-U, Switch, PS3), then Ryzen is a must.

[@jabonorte]

Interesting to see how they compare. Which one is the current gen Core chip compared to most closely?

[@SilverTester]

​@@TeamPandory you just triggered my curiosity. Whats the most bang for buck rizen i can get sub 200$?

[@TeamPandory]

​@jabonorte we only have the 125h from intel, and that feels slightly slower than the 680m in gaming. Regarding apps, things are a bit different though. We reviewed and made game tests on the 125h mini pc a month or two back

[@TeamPandory]

@@SilverTester on sale, you might be able to get a 5700u. That'll be the low power variant of the 5800h and tbh they're excellent, and use the Vega 8. I'll see if I can put one in the Amazon shopping list in the video description

[@tonycoffee7335]

I just bought the GMKtec G5, tiny little thing and cheap. When windows 11 is set up right it does great for basic online stuff and low end games if you want. For 160 bucks on amazon i cant complain.

[@TeamPandory]

For sure 😁. It's all a matter of needs. That G5 and even the earlier G3 is plenty enough for Windows / online use.

[@jinty83]

This is a great comparison so thanks for all of the hard work. I bought the Trigkey 5800H about a year ago and it comes with Crucial ram and nvme so no worries about quality. I got the 500gb 16gb ram version and it's a great little workhorse with a portable display. I run windows and linux on this as needed and it performs well and is surprisingly decent for gaming if you manage your expectations. I paid £299 so it was a great deal at the time.

[@TeamPandory]

Oh, nice! TBH the 5800H is pretty damn awesome, especially if you think about the amount of trash-for-gaming laptops that have been sold throughout the years. Over the last 10 years, I tried out two with GeForce cards in, and was totally disappointed with their performance. Compared to back, any one of the computers in this video are an absolute bargain!

[@snakerville]

Feelin the prog house background music. Getting Digweed vibes there my man :)

[@esteban_dido_1]

thank you so much for making this video 👍

[@TeamPandory]

My pleasure 😊

[@ericliume]

Probably you can add Black Myth: Wukong benchmark tool in the future.

[@Mclaneinc]

Got a K1 for my daughter and a K6 for me and I'm dead happy, I mostly emulate and thanks to Emu / Tims advice I have to say the K6 (and even the K1) does the job. And the idea of a mini PC with a huge ass graphics card hanging off of it is just DAFT. Great video as always..Gives the folks a real chunk of excellent choice info.

[@TeamPandory]

Thanks 👍 Tbh I wasn't expecting there to be 3 GMKtec mini pcs in the face-off. Thought the heavy cooling of the beelink and the Reatan would have faired better, but in performance mode the gmktec models took the lead, and got pretty noisy. 😂. I have the K6 set to either balanced or quiet. Works great 👍

[@Mclaneinc]

@@TeamPandory I've left the K6 on the default Balanced (I think) I certainly don't want more noise :) The fan for the K6 turned up and now I have a nice quiet PC :) (except when it's running PS3 stuff :) Keep it up good sir.

[@TeamPandory]

@@Mclaneinc oh yeah the squeaky fan! You got sorted then ?

[@taowang5270]

Now the M7 comes.

[@JeremyLeePotocki]

How I see it: 5800H - For Emulation/Retro, or a HTPC then yes if you can pick up for under $200. Vega GPU is technically EOL at this point. 6600H - At $300 a great Ultra Setting 720/900p Budget gaming rig, or Steam Machine with HoloISO or Bazzite OS. 7735HS - At $380 a best bang for buck in 900p High/Ultra to 1080p Low/Medium for majority of games, or 1080p Steam Machine with HoloISO or Bazzite OS using FSR. 8845HS - Most powerful, can do FSR & Frame Gen 1080p gaming like a champ, but price is not great for what you get. Only good it you can get for less than $450 though that ain't happening for quite some time even after the AI300 series Mini PCs come out. For me if I was need to get one now I would go after the GEM10 Mini PC from Aoostar with the 6800H/680M. I would grab the cheaper $350 deal because I would replace the 512GB SSD with a 4TB NVME SSD, and fill the other two slots with similar 4TB SSDs when I get the spare cash. Have one with Bazzite Linux installed, and the other two SSDs will be used for HTPC files & ROMS. It's always best to have upgrade options, and three M.2 port is a great option to have. You can also make the third M.2 port a DIVI Link with a adapter & a bit of case modding.

[@TeamPandory]

Aoostar have contacted via email asking us to check their products out, but they never when we reply 😂 - But yes, they do look pretty interesting, especially with the amount of M.2 slots available. It seems that they've managed to punch their own hole in the market. Re: Steam Machine / Bazzite / HoloISO / Pop!OS, yes - definitely. If you're not fully set on using Windows for production (music, video or whatever), then 100% go the Steam game pc! - MS with their Orwellian mindset should never be encouraged.

[@ChuwiEnjoyer]

loving the look of these, the 680m/780m are looking really good, just gotta wait one more generation for that performance to become available at the 200$ mark I reckon. Im waiting on my GMKtec m6, cant wait to make it look silly with an external GPU ;)

[@TeamPandory]

External GPU? I'll call a doctor! ✌😅

[@brainfodder3233]

Under $200 still not likely, you've forgotten the costs of the system in general, where you getting custom mini motherboard, case, RAM, SSD, wifi, for so far under $200 at good specs that you can afford ANY APU with what's left? $600+ (inc tax) for cheapest 7840HS/32Gb RAM [min DDR5-5200] (15% performance hit for 16)/1TB SSD I found searching currently.

[@ChuwiEnjoyer]

@@TeamPandory sadly I dont have an apple device to keep the doctor away.. 😆

[@ChuwiEnjoyer]

@@brainfodder3233 currently, as I understand it, iGPUs scale very well with more bandwidth. the 780m in one gen may be too much, but the 680m is already aging quite a bit. The 780m is already close to 2x the performance of what we saw on vega, it wouldnt surprise me if an 860m with lpddr6 would match or beat a 680m. I do get that there's more that goes into a system, but if you get good architectures on cheap nodes, it might just work out!

[@henryhau7987]

Superb buying advice! Instant sub

[@TeamPandory]

Awesome, thank you! 🐔✌

[@dlewis9760]

While eGPUs do look stupid, if you buy a mini PC now for stuff out now and you know what you will get, eGPUs will let you bottom feed when current graphics cards become old news in the future. So, you do get a bit of future proofing but have to pay the ugly setup look tax.

[@TeamPandory]

Some people even like the Johnny Mnemonic look 😂

[@WickedGamerCollector]

Nice collection 😅

[@TeamPandory]

Thanks 😅

[@farfromirrational948]

Amazing review. Ive been learning all of this on my own over the past few weeks since realizing that a decent quality gaming machine is within my budget for the first time in nearly 2 decades 😂. That peladn you showed is going for $350 right now with a 780m.....im so tempted to pull the trigger, but im scared that the "lesser popular" brand will have poor build quality and issues beyond my capacity to fix. Im pretty remote so shipping and returning and whatnot is quite a pain so i really want things to work the first time. Have you tried the peladn? Do you have advice for or against less popular brands? Is there one brand that stands out as most reliable? What would you recommend for a gamer looking for a sub $400 mini pc. Thanks for reading, and double thanks if you respond! Im subscribing either way 😊

[@TeamPandory]

@@farfromirrational948 hey there 👋 no problem at all here. Tbh for cheap and good, either a Beelink or gmktec should be good at that price. We've recently reviewed the M7 and M7 pro, and they've really outdone themselves when it comes to these new cases 👍 If you want to try punting for the 780m, um. Good luck? 😂. We haven't tried that one, so as we state in the video, it's a bit of a dark horse 🐴

[@srvuk]

Another good, albeit not purposeful demonstration of how too many people have perhaps been lulled into the 'must have 60fps' trap in order to have decent gameplay. Whilst there was the occasional stutter in panning motions in a few games, in general, figures much lower than 60 clearly show decent enough gameplay. So from the specific purpose of gameplay only, you can likely save yourself a lot of money by seeing the results rather then relying on a number to guide you. When purchasing for a longer term use, where value now is still important, those added features and capabilities like AV1 decoding might potentially mean a lager outlay now but one what will last longer before the next purchase.

[@TeamPandory]

We just wanted to show the differences in speed compared to each other tbh. While 60fps games are playable, it shows how much headroom you have to play with graphics settings. - not everyone wants to play on super low - but not everyone needs to play all of them games. NVME, USB 4 and the faster memory would mean more to me than av1 tbh. I don't even use av1 video when video editing 😂

[@JoeyJoJoJr17]

it's important to note that visual smoothness from a youtube video isn't representative of real world experience. The youtube video you're watching is 60fps, regardless if the original video capture was at 33fps or 167fps, just as an example. There's also the very real youtube streaming video compression masking that even more. That being said, you can definitely have a fantastic time gaming even at 30fps, many console games have ran and continue to run at that framerate, and people still objectively have fun at the end of the day.

[@amigang]

I think second hand steam decks are going to be best value for money, I already seen a 64gb one with a crack screen go for as little as £170 on ebay, I was very tempted, as you can replace the screen easier than most device, but you also dont have to, as you could just get yourself a usb c dock with usb ports and hdmi out and you got a nice little gaming system.

[@TeamPandory]

That's where my steamdeck is (under the TV) A great little TV console 😁

[@ByteMeCompletely]

I bought a GMKtek K8, with Radeon 780M graphics. FreeBSD can't open an X window, but Linux Mint and kde neon can.

[@RyanKorea]

Love your videos! Do you think the two higher end models could handle streaming lightweight games like League Of Legends? If not, is the G6 good enough to play League? I could use my MacBook to stream it.

[@TeamPandory]

@@RyanKorea hey there, thanks for the comment. Do you mean the M6? League of Legends should be easy enough to stream, it's not that demanding of a title.

[@jonathont5570]

No Ryzen 9 minis? I would imagine those would beat the R7 with the same GPU..?

[@TeamPandory]

There's not much difference, for example the r7 7840hs and the R9 7940hs share pretty much the same specs, outside the GPU and CPU being 100mhz higher on the R9. Unfortunately that translates to more heat and power draw. Doesn't really translate to higher performance, again, it's the sum of all its parts.

[@andrewcrawshaw5809]

May be a dumb question, does this thing come with windows installed (If I choose the non-bare bones option)

[@TeamPandory]

Yep 👍

[@momentum3825]

We have the firebit 7735hs 680m and considering upgrading to 780m but unfortunately we wont be getting a refund. Is it worth the upgrade or we should be okay with 680m?

[@TeamPandory]

@@momentum3825 it depends what you're doing with it to be honest. For many, the 680m is enough. There is a noticeable bump in performance, but it might be worth waiting around until the 880m for a larger leap considering you're already on a 680m

[@TONBOX777]

Hello, What's model I should pick for playing retro games up to WiiU and PS3 at 1080P? thanks.

[@TeamPandory]

Wii U should be fine with any of these, PS3 needs more horsepower though. Go for a 780m equipped computer for that.

[@ETlandxoxo]

Nice one

[@TeamPandory]

Thanks 🙏. Steam Deck ? 😺

[@fr3shprnc358]

I got my beelink ser6 ryzen 9 6900hx

[@TeamPandory]

It's a really good system. They did an amazing job with the cooling 😎