The Beelink SER9 is one of the first mini PCs powered by an AMD Strix Point processor. First unveiled earlier this month, the little computer is now available for pre-order.
It’s not exactly cheap though: the only configuration available at the moment comes with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage and sells for $999 during a pre-order promotion. The suggested retail price is $1249 and the mini PC is expected to begin shipping by mid-October.
Your money does buy a lot of horsepower in a compact package, though. The Beelink SER9 has metal chassis that measures 135 x 135 x 45mm (5.3″ x 5.3″ x 1.8″). And the beating heart of the system is an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 12-core, 24-thread processor with Radeon 890M integrated graphics featuring 12 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores and a Ryzen AI NPU with up to 50 TOPS of hardware-accelerated AI performance.
The processor is packaged together with 32GB of LPDDR5x-7500 memory, so the RAM is not user replaceable or upgradeable. But the computer also has two M.2 2280 slots for user-replaceable PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs.
Beelink also packed a few unusual features into the SER9, including a built-in pair of speakers as well as an array of 4 microphones, allowing you to use the computer as a sort of smart speaker with support for voice recognition, and a cooling system that Beelink says allows AMD’s processor to run up to 65 watts (it’s normally rated as a 35-54 watt processor) without generating much noise, thanks to a combination a vapor chamber, an SSD heat sink, and a “silent” fan that can run at low speeds to keep noise levels around 32 dB during some unspecified workloads.
Ports include:
- 1 x USB4 Type-C (40 Gbps)
- 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (10 Gbps)
- 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (10 Gbps)
- 2 x USB 2.0 (480 Mbps)
- 1 x HDMI 2.1
- 1 x DisplayPort 1.4
- 1 x 2.5 GbE Ethernet
- 2 x 3.5mm audio (front and rear)
- 1 x DC power input (19V/5.26A)
Beelink also includes an Intel AX200 wireless card with support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. While the price tag may be a little hard to swallow when looking at a mini PC from a Chinese company that may offer limited customer support to international customers, as VideoCardz points out, there are some indications that AMD may be charging substantially more for its new “Strix Point” mobile processors than the company did for the previous-generation “Hawk Point” chips, so it may be a while before we see lower-priced mini PCs with the new chips.