I’ve often thought about what sort of components you can cram into the smallest space, because I’m a nerd and this is the sort of thing I think about when my head hits the pillow every evening. However, when it comes to gaming I’m still stuck on the idea that I’ll need a proper GPU somewhere in any miniature build to really get the sort of tiny powerhouse I truly desire.
That’s a bit of an old-fashioned concept, though. Take this Next SBC model, for example. It’s so small it could easily be mistaken for a mini-GPU in its own right, but when it comes to gaming it’s still got the goods.
ETA Prime got its hands on a review sample of this as-yet-unannounced X86 SBC (single board computer) model, replete with a Ryzen 7 7840HS and an adorable miniature cooler (via Notebookcheck). And I’ll bite: It’s got my heart all a-flutter thanks to its combination of weeny dimensions and proper power.
It’s so small it can be held easily in the palm of your hand, but thanks to that Phoenix Point APU and the Radeon 780M handling the graphics duties, it’s still capable of cranking out some decent gaming performance. It’s the sort of chip you’d find in some fully-fledged gaming laptops (albeit usually in conjunction with a proper GPU), and many high-powered mini PCs, meaning it’s got a surprising amount of grunt for its size.
Plus, just look at it. Don’t you want to take it home, plug it into your monitor, and marvel at how far miniature gaming devices have come?
There are some caveats to going this small, of course. The LPDDR5 RAM is soldered to the board, although there are apparently going to be 16 GB and 32 GB variants. Plus, that APU isn’t one of the latest Strix Point chips, which is likely to be an attempt to keep costs down. Still, it’s got that RDNA 3 iGPU and it can swing for the fences in certain games in ways you might not expect for something so teeny.
Doom Eternal is a very well-optimised game, but a stunning-looking one, too. At 1080p medium settings, the little monster manages a plenty-smooth average of 79 fps, which is more than enough for an excellent experience.
Overwatch 2 at 1080p medium manages to stay mostly in the 80-100 fps range, while Spiderman Remastered and God of War needed some frame gen help to stay liquid smooth, but looks pretty great running at high frames in the video.
Impressive, no? Of course, upscaling does some truly magic things to framerates these days, but it’s pretty incredible to me that this mini machine would actually make a great budget gaming PC, and you could easily stick it in your back pocket. Don’t do that, by the way. As a caseless model, it’s just going to fill up with fluff.
Plus, you get three M.2 slots. Three! My current micro-ATX board in my main machine only has one, mainly because I cheaped out on the mobo and thought that I’d realistically only need one large and fast SSD.
(Image credit: Future)
Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines.
Best gaming laptop: Great devices for mobile gaming.
I mean, I wasn’t wrong, but it’d be nice to slot in some extra capacity on a whim, and this micro-machine has my (much more powerful, it must be said) primary rig beat in that capacity. How embarrassing.
ETA Prime says the little beastie will be priced up to $329, although it’s pointed out that—as it’s said to initially be an Indiegogo release—early pricing might not be reflective of what the product ends up being if it enters into full production run.
Still, that’s miniature gaming performance for less than the MSRP of an RTX 4060 Ti on its own, and while that’s still a decent gaming GPU, grabbing a whole system for that kinda money is pretty impressive in its own right. It might be micro, but this unannounced little terror looks like it has Jack Russell levels of bite.
