Minisforum built something weird. The AtomMan G1 Pro is a desktop. But also not. It sits on the wobbly line between a proper tower and one of their usual pocket-sized bricks. On paper, it’s exciting. Extraordinarily so. In practice? It’s complicated.
It uses its bulk—because let’s be real, it’s huge compared to a standard Mini PC—to cram in things other small boxes can’t hold. A proper CPU cooler. An integrated power supply. A desktop-sized graphics card. Well, kinda. It’s a tiny card, and if you ever try to swap it, good luck finding another one that fits.
It does plenty. It handles everyday tasks without breaking a sweat. It even manages triple-digit framerates at 1080p. But is it the right choice? Maybe. If you hate laptops but love tiny desks. Probably not if you care about value.
Not quite using its size right
The AtomMan G1 Pro doesn’t lead the market. It can’t. It runs laptop-grade hardware in a box that looks like it belongs in a server room. Or a high-end audio setup.
The CPU, though. That’s a Ryzen 9 8945Hx. Sixteen cores. Multithreading. In Cinebench R24, it actually outpaces the Ryzen 7 7800x3D inside a full-size Lenovo tower. That’s impressive. Until you look at Intel. An older Core i7-14600hX still beats it in competing systems.
General computing is a breeze. PCMark 10 scores hovered around 9,066. That’s top-tier stuff. Your work emails? Your spreadsheets? They’re fast. Boringly so.
Then there’s gaming. Here is where things get murky.
The box has a desktop RTX 5060. You’d expect that to crush laptops with similar GPUs. Right? Wrong. Out of the box, the AtomMan G1 performed roughly the same as the HP Omen 16. Same as the Lenovo LOQ. It lagged significantly behind beefier laptops like the Legion 5i.
Even worse than its older sibling. The AtomMan G7 Ti has a thinner profile and a mobile RTX 4070, yet it beats the new Pro model. How? Minisforum’s own software choices. Specifically, a setting called Gaming Mode. It’s the default. It’s also a bottleneck.
Switch to Beast Mode. Watch the magic.
Switching profiles increased performance by 38% in Steel Nomad. 20% in Time Spy. Suddenly, it was keeping pace with the competition. Sometimes leading it.
The fans got slightly louder. The temperatures held. But who is supposed to know to do this? It shouldn’t require a degree in systems administration to unlock your own hardware’s potential.
And what does this cost? A premium. A real one. The fully specced AtomMan G1 Pro costs $1,799 for 32GB of RAM and a 1TB drive. The barebones version? $1,299 for… well, just the metal and the brains. You have to add memory. You have to add storage. You have to install Windows.
For $2,300, Dell sells the Tower Plus EBT2250. It’s nearly seven liters. It has a desktop RTX 5070. The performance gap isn’t a margin. It’s a chasm.
You are paying for small. And you’re not getting a very small PC. It’s 3.85 liters. That’s smaller than a PS5, sure. But it’s bigger than you think it needs to be to get the performance inside it.
The software problem
It wasn’t just performance. It was a vulnerability.
I left the system on Gaming Mode. I went back a few days later to do more testing. Windows Defender screamed at me.
It flagged a file named Winring0. Dangerous. A driver used by hardware monitoring software to tweak fans and lights. Minisforum bundled it. It sat right there in a folder named for their software. Vulnerable to attack. So Microsoft’s guardian shut it down. Locked the file.
Here’s the kicker: Minisforum’s control app still worked. Lights stayed bright. Fans kept spinning.
But the performance profiles? Gone.
Without the driver, all modes collapsed into Beast Mode. The system ran hot and fast, constantly, no matter what you told it to do. It’s alarming to have a known security hole in your PC’s core control software. Even more irritating that fixing it requires ignoring Windows.
At least it didn’t slow the games down. If anything, the accidental overclock made them run better.
A weird middle child
Let’s look at the thing.
The chassis is white plastic wrapped around black plastic. Curved edges. RGB light bars on the face. It looks like someone gave a PS5 a haircut and asked it to dress for office hours.
Minisforum included a stand. You’re supposed to hold it upright. If you lay it down, the vents might block. Also, the logos end up upside down. That feels important to them.
Inside, it’s actually decently clean.
- CPU : Laptop processor. Big cooler. It’s overkill for the chip, but it keeps things cool.
- Power Supply : Integrated. No ugly brick hanging off the wall. This is nice.
- GPU : Desktop slot. The card installed is a three-fan Gigabyte. But it is tiny. It looks like a prototype. You will never fit a normal GPU here. Not now. Not in ten years. The physical size locks you in.
Upgrading is possible, but it’s a hassle. Two M.2 slots. They’re under a jungle of cables from the power supply. Want more RAM? Fine. Unsolder it? No. They used slots. But you have to take off the CPU cooler to reach them.
The air intake is on the left. Just… grills. No filters. Dust will eat this alive in six months. You will clean it. I hope you clean it.
Sound is surprisingly muted. The fans whisper. But the power supply fan clicks. Like a cricket. Click-whirr. Click-whirr. Annoying, but barely audible above music.
Ports? A mixed bag. Wi-Fi 7 is great. 5GbE Ethernet is great.
USB? Sad. Four ports total. One on the front, three in the back. All USB 10Gbps. No USB 4. No Thunderbolt. No high-speed transfer for big drives. Video out via HDMI and DisplayPort only. Why bother with all these extra pixels on a monitor when the connection is slow anyway.
So we are here. The Minisform AtomMan G1 Pro works. It is quiet. It looks distinct. It fits on small desks.
It is expensive for what it offers. It relies on software tricks to be fast. It has security flaws that feel sloppy.
Maybe that is okay for some. Maybe you don’t have space. Maybe you just hate carrying a laptop bag.
But standing in the void between “Mini” and “Desktop,” it serves neither group particularly well.
