Unusual trend: Tower PCs with soldered mobile processors
At Computex, the Taiwanese IT trade fair, several manufacturers presented large desktop PCs and micro ATX boards with mobile CPUs. That's not just to save money.
The Asus ExpertCenter P700 office PC with Ryzen mobile processors is available in two different case sizes.
(Image: chh / c't)
The ExpertCenter P700 office PC and the TUF Gaming T500 gaming machine have another unexpected thing in common, apart from the manufacturer, Asus. Instead of a replaceable desktop processor with an AM5 or LGA1851 socket, the Taiwanese component manufacturer installs a motherboard with a soldered-on mobile chip. The TUF Gaming T500 features the ten-core Intel Core i7-13620H from the penultimate CPU generation Raptor Lake together with a current GeForce RTX 5060 Ti. The low price of the processor for the manufacturer probably plays the decisive role here. It presumably still has a relatively large number of them in stock.
In addition, the mobile CPU's energy requirement of 115 watts in Turbo and otherwise 45 watts nominal is comparatively moderate to many desktop models. Heat pipes conduct the waste heat to cooling fins with a fan at the rear of the case. The lack of a CPU socket and the use of two SODIMMs for the RAM saves space on the mainboard, so that together with a compact TFX power supply, the tower case is much smaller than comparable devices. As a special feature, the power supply unit only supplies 12 volts to the board. The gaming computer costs between 1300 and 1500 euros, depending on the configuration, and should be available in a few weeks.
(Image:Â chh / c't)
Office PC with the latest Ryzen mobile technology
The ExpertCenter P700 office PC instead relies on the much more modern Ryzen AI 7 350 mobile processor from the current Kracken Point series, with four Zen 5 and four Zen 5c cores. Much more important, however, is a Copilot+-capable Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for AI calculations with 50 TOPS computing power. The current socketed desktop CPUs from AMD and Intel lack this. The Ryzen 9000 has no NPU at all, and the Core Ultra 200S Arrow Lake and Ryzen 8000G only have weak versions that are not suitable for Microsoft's Windows 11 integration Copilot+.
(Image:Â chh / c't)
The office computer is available in two different case sizes, as a small form factor (SFF) and as a slightly larger mini tower. Asus installs the Nvidia RTX A400 professional graphics card with four mini DisplayPort connections in the first variant. More powerful cards up to the GeForce RTX 5060 also fit into the mini tower. As with the TUF Gaming T500, the manufacturer relies on SODIMMs and a power supply with 12-volt-only technology. Despite all the more modern hardware, Asus delivers the office PC with a hard disk in addition to a fast NVMe SSD.
Micro ATX board from China
The Chinese mini PC manufacturer Minisforum is venturing into new territory with the BD795M and is presenting a micro ATX mainboard for PC hobbyists at the Computex IT trade fair. The powerful AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX mobile chip with 16 Zen 4 cores is soldered onto it. The Dragon Range CPU uses the same structure as the desktop versions of the Ryzen 7000, the only difference being that the three chiplets are housed in the FL1 package for notebooks instead of on a carrier for the AM5 version.
(Image:Â chh / c't)
A large aluminum plate with a copper core surrounds the CPU so that standard desktop coolers fit. Other features of the BD795M include two SODIMM slots, three M.2 slots and standard connections for HDMI, Displayport, SATA, USB 3.2 Gen 1 and 2.5 Gbit/s Ethernet. It costs 440 euros.
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