ⓘ ETA Prime

With GPU, RAM, and storage prices going through the roof, many people are turning towards prebuilt gaming PCs as viable alternatives to a DIY system. This also includes Mini PCs, which have gone up in popularity as small but capable gaming systems thanks to APUs like the AMD Ryzen AI Strix Point and AMD Ryzen AI Strix Halo. Moreover, many Mini PCs also allow you to connect an external GPU dock to massively enhance the graphics performance.

One such Mini PC is the Minisforum X1 Lite with the AMD Ryzen 7 255 APU. ETA Prime has now tested the Mini PC with an AMD Radeon RX 7800M-powered OneXGPU 2 eGPU dock connected through OcuLink. The whole system was running SteamOS, as an all-AMD setup works quite well with SteamOS, according to ETA Prime.

ETA Prime tests the gaming performance of the Minisforum X1 Lite + OneXGPU 2 in games like Cyberpunk 2077, Forza Horizon 6, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and more. Unsurprisingly, the RX 7800M shines in these games, proving capable enough to output well above 60 FPS at 1440p with ultra settings. The performance in Forza Horizon 6 is particularly impressive, as Xbox’s premier racing title could even be run at 4K with ultra settings at over 70 FPS without any FSR.

Single-player games that prioritize immersion and graphics over performance, like Cyberpunk 2077 and Crimson Desert, are obviously much harder to run. But even then, the RX 7800M with 12 GB of VRAM and the 8-core Ryzen 7 255 prove to be a speedy duo. In Cyberpunk 2077, ETA Prime measures over 70 FPS at 1440p/ultra with FSR 2.1 “Quality”.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, however, requires no FSR to reach 100+ FPS on average at 1440p with “very high” graphics.

Finally, in Crimson Desert, ETA Prime is able to push the frame rate to over 100 FPS on average with FSR Frame Gen at 1440p and ultra settings.

All in all, the combination of the Minisforum X1 Lite Mini PC, the OneXGPU 2 RX 7800M eGPU dock, and SteamOS proves to be a fantastic gaming setup. However, the combined cost of the components might not make sense for many people. 

The Minisforum X1 Lite Mini PC with the Ryzen 7 255, 32 GB of LPDDR5 memory, and 1 TB of storage is $739 on Amazon. The OneXGPU 2 with the RX 7800M costs $960 at the time of writing. So, you are looking at around $1700. At this price range, you can simply buy a much more powerful RTX 5070 or an RTX 5060 Ti prebuilt gaming PC on Newegg.

Fawad Murtaza - Senior Tech Writer - 1694 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2021

I am Fawad, a fellow tech nerd. As a tech junkie, my relationship with technology goes back to my childhood years. Getting my first Intel Pentium 4 PC was the start of journey that would eventually bring me to Notebookcheck. Finally, I have been writing for tech media since 2018. From small no-name projects to industry leaders, I have worked with a number of tech publications.