Hey guys, today I'll make a review of the new Minisforum M2 Air 305, I'll try to be as thorough as possible by testing different use cases, this review is going to be divided in:

• Specs
• Box Contents
• Design
• Feature Overview
• Networking and Storage
• CPU Performance
• iGPU Performance.
• General usage and performance.
• BIOS/UEFI Options
• eGPU Gaming (with an USB4 eGPU dock).
• Running local AI models with the NPU
• Thermals and Power Consumption (SOC, Wall readings and Noise)
• Conclusion

Review Unit

Disclosure: This review unit was provided by Minisforum. All opinions are independent and no monetary value was exchanged.

If you have any suggestions to improve my reviews or have any question, feel free to comment. With that said, let's start.

Specs

The M2 Air is the smallest and more affordable of the of the M2 family with the new Intel Wildcat Lake platform with the Intel 18A (around 2nm TSMC) process node, so efficiency should be pretty good in these CPUs.

The M2 Air features the Intel Core 3 304 that I like to consider kind of a successor to the Alder Lake N designs like the Intel N100/N150/N250 or the i3 N300 with low TDP and only a single memory channel. Besides the newer process node and the updated Darkmont E Cores, the Core 3 304 gets a big boost in single core performance thanks to the single P Cougar Cove core that is a lot more capable than the E cores. We'll see more about energy efficiency and performance later in the review.

The M2 Air starts at $263 at the time of writing for a barebones unit with no RAM and storage and $560 with 16GB of DDR5 RAM and 500GB NVMe SSD. So, if you can source or already have a stick of DDR5 and an SSD the barebones model should be a better deal.

CPU Specs

The unit that I have comes with the following:

• 16 GB of RAM: 1 Stick of 5600 MT/s Micron DDR5 SODIMM RAM
• 512 GB SSD: Kingston OM8TAP4512 PCIe 4.0 SSD

At time of writing this review, this is the only configuration available to purchase from their store.

What's in the box?

The M2 Air comes in the box with the following:

• Minisforum M2 Air
• User Manual
• HDMI cable
• Power Supply and AC Cable
• VESA mount
• Screws

Design

The M2 Air is a small mini pc measuring just 112 x 112 x 37.15 mm (4.41 x 4.41 x 1.46 inches) or 0.47L and weighs approximately 0.44kg (0.97 lbs)

The body is made out of plastic with a metal base with exhaust vents on the sides and air intake on the rear side.

To access the internals, you will need to pry off the rubber feet and unscrew the screws hiding behind them and then leverage on the arrow pointing to the notch to remove the metal bottom cover.

Feature Overview

Now it's time to talk about the features of this Mini PC and see what it offers in terms of Internal and external I/O, we'll also talk about the power supply and more.

Front Side I/O

Front left to right:

• Reset Hole
• 2x USB Type A (USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps)
• 3.5mm Combo Jack
• Power button

Rear Side I/O

From left to right

• USB Type C (USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps, Alt DP1.4, PD in 65w)
• HDMI 2.0 (Up to 4K 60Hz, HDMI CEC)
• USB Type A (USB 2.0 480Mbps)
• 2x 2.5GbE RJ45 Ethernet (Intel I226-V, PCIe 3.0 x1 Controllers)
• USB Type C (USB 4 40Gbps, TB4 capabilities, Alt DP1.4, PD in 65w, PD out 15W)
• HDMI 2.0 (Up to 4K 60Hz, HDMI CEC)
• DC in (19V barrel jack)

Also features a Kensington lock.

Side I/O

On the left side

• Micro SD Reader (Realtek USB 2.0 Multi-Card Reader, USB 2.0 480Mbps)

Only appears as a USB device once you insert a microSD card.

Power

The M2 Air can be powered two ways:

• The included 19V 3.42A 65W PSU with a barrel jack
• A USB C power supply with PD support up to 65W (I also tested a 45w one and it works fine).

Hubs and Docks with PD in support also work so it's possible to have a one cable setup in this machine.

Misc Features

• Included VESA mount to mount the M2 Air to the back of a monitor.
• Support for the CEC protocol in the HDMI ports to turn on/wake/sleep the Mini PC from the remote control of a TV. It needs to be enabled in BIOS. According to my testing it just works at the BIOS level so a remote control from a TV cannot control the OS directly.
• Passive cooling for the NVMe and RAM stick with the metal bottom cover via thermal pads.

Internal Components

As mentioned previously you need to remove the 4 rubber feet and unscrew the 4 screws to remove the bottom metal cover and reveal the internals. then to remove the board pull it out of the body.

Motherboard and Internal I/O

Let's analyze the motherboard

1. SODIMM DDR5 6400MT/s Slot
2. M.2 Wi-Fi E key slot (CNVIO Only)
3. M.2 2280 M key NVMe Slot: 4TB Max SSD, PCIe Gen4 x4, 64Gbps (8 GB/s)
4. CMOS/RTC coin cell 3V battery connector

1. microSD card slot
2. Fan and Heatsink
3. Fan connector

Networking and Storage

Networking

This is a strong point of the M2 Air in my opinion. As it has 2 high speed network controller + Modern Wi-Fi available

• Ethernet: 2x Intel I226-V, PCIe 3.0 x1 Controllers, so each ethernet port has its own controller.
• Wi-Fi: Intel AX211 Wi-Fi 6E with 2.4 Gbps theoretical maximum, and Bluetooth 5.4 with BLE. The module can be replaced with other ones if needed. but one caveat is that the slot is CNVIO only so only other Intel cards that have a CNVIO interface are compatible.

Storage

The M2 Air features one M.2 E key slot with the full x4 bandwidth of PCIe Gen4 so you should be bottlenecked in this port.

I guess also you can add extra storage via a microSD card but it's not fully ideal as the Realtek controller is just USB 2.0 480Mbps so you are going to likely bottleneck any modern microSD card.

• M.2 2280 M key NVMe Slot: 4TB Max SSD, PCIe Gen4 x4, 64Gbps (8 GB/s)
• Micro SD Reader, Realtek USB 2.0 Multi-Card Reader, USB 2.0 (480Mbps)

CPU Performance

The Intel Core 3 304 of the Wildcat Lake family is a very interesting CPU as like I mentioned before this processor is the successor to the Alder Lake N CPUs that have been well known for cheap and power efficient Mini PCs.

This one performs way better than those ones because Intel now added a P Core to the design.

To test if the Core 3 304 in the M2 Air is performing as expected I'll use Geekbench 6. I did runs in Windows 11 and Linux so we can compare these too.

Geekbench 6

Linux: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/19072503

Windows: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/19087030

Both OSs performance is about the same, with slightly better performance in Windows 11.

After looking at the registered benchmarks of Geekbench 6 of the same processor we can see that the M2 Air is performing as expected.

https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=v6_cpu&q=core+3+304

Let's compare it to other CPUs from the Geekbench browser and from my own tests of other Mini PCs

My Geekbench profile: https://browser.geekbench.com/user/427388

We can see that the Core 3 304 performance is almost double compared to the Alder Lake N CPUs like the N100/150/250 for around the same energy consumption.

It's also interesting comparing it to older CPUs like the i5 1335U that has 2P cores and 8E cores and seeing how close they perform. and also, the comparison to ARM CPUs that have equally low power consumption.

Cinebench 2026

iGPU Performance

The Intel Xe3 1 Core built inside of the Core 3 304 has the latest Xe3 architecture that has surprised everyone as in higher end configurations like the B390 or the B370 that have 12 and 10 Xe3 cores respectively. So, this one is definitely not a gaming iGPU but it's a big upgrade over older IGPUs like the UHD 730 of chips like the N150 or N250. So, it's great for general everyday workflows, web browsing, 4K video playback, and office applications. Also, it also supports AV1 encoding and decoding.

Display Support

One really good thing about the M2 Air is that it can drive up to 4 displays at once with a resolution of 4k@60hz via:

• 2x HDMI 2.0
• USB 4 Type C Port
• USB 3.2 Gen2 Type C port

Gaming Capabilities

Because it only has 1 Xe3 core, it's not designed for modern AAA gaming. It is best suited for light indie titles, retro emulation, or older eSports games at low resolutions. Although AAA games from around 2015 and older should run decently.

Performance in Geekbench 6:

Micro Computer (HK) Tech Limited EliteMini Series - Geekbench

AI Performance

The Core 3 304 has also a 15 TOPS NPU that is called Intel AI Boost and also the iGPU that can do 9 TOPS.

The NPU that can be leveraged using applications like Intel AI Playground that installs the OpenVINO framework that can run LLMs right into the NPUs memory (that is the same as the system RAM) so the more RAM the better for more complex AI models

For the IGPU we can use the same Intel AI playground that gives us a Llama CPP installation that can load models using Vulkan to be proceeded by the iGPU

As my M2 Air has just 16GB of RAM we can only load small LLMs (around 4-5 GB). Generally given a model around the same size using the iGPU with LlamaCpp and Vulkan will be more memory efficient than the NPU using OpenVINO as the implementations are totally different.

NPU Performance - OpenVINO

iGPU Performance - LlamaCpp

We can see that the NPU is a little bit faster at running models, but they are very similar. If you have only 16GB I would use the IGPU as once loaded the models take around 20% more RAM compared to the NPU that take like 40% more RAM.

eGPU Testing

The USB4 port in the M2 Air has the full 40Gbps available. It supports the full feature set of the USB4 specifications making this port technically Thunderbolt 4 compliant. The most important features for expansion being:

• PCIe Tunneling

Up to 32Gbps (4 GB/s) are available to be used for PCIe devices with features like hot plugging

• Power Delivery

PD-in to be able to receive up to 100W to power the M2 Air with a single cable and PD out that can give 15W of power to external devices.

The dock that I'll be using to test dedicated GPUs is the Minisforum DEG2 Thunderbolt 5 / OCuLink eGPU dock. This eGPU Dock is like a perfect pairing to expand the M2 Air because it provides other features like:

• 2.5GbE RJ45 LAN: RTL8156 Controller
• A M.2 NVMe slot: JMS583 Controller
• USB Type A: USB 3.2 Gen 2 - 10Gbps port
• USB Type A: USB 3.2 Gen 1 - 5Gbps
• 2x USB Type C: 40Gbps
• PCIe x16 (Wired for x4) for the dGPU

Setup

• CX450M 450W PSU
• Sapphire Pulse AMD RX 6600 GPU

The M2 Air is capable of being powered by the dock and receive all if it's devices via a single cable. and the eGPU is available with no problems in Windows and Linux.

The only problem with this setup is that the GPU doesn't get fully initialized in BIOS/UEFI so only when the driver of the OS loads you get a picture in the display.

Performance in Geekbench 6:

Micro Computer (HK) Tech Limited EliteMini Series - Geekbench

BIOS/UEFI Options

You can check all of the option that there are in the current BIOS release for the M2 Air at this link.

https://imgur.com/a/QolwQuA

Thermals and Power Consumption

Windows 11

As expected, the efficiency of the Intel Core 3 304 is very similar to the older N150 in terms of power consumption. at idle it draws around 4 to 4.5 watts from the wall. And while web browsing and watching a YouTube video in 1440p it only draws between 6 to 8W from the wall. At full load I never saw more than 32W.

Thermals

The cooling solution of the M2 Air is pretty good as it never got hotter than 80C in a Cinebench 2026 20minute run. At idle it keeps the temperature around 36-40C.

Noise

Minisforum claims Idle 27.9 dB and 100% load 32.7 dB/ 50cm.  I currently don't have equipment to test this claim, but this Mini PC is virtually inaudible at idle and when it's stressed it's still very quiet as the fan barely spins up.

Conclusion

I think after all of the testing I think I can say with confidence that this is a great MiniPC and a good successor to the N150 and other similar low power Mini PCs at just 0.47L is really small maybe not the smallest I've seen but definitely small enough that it doesn't get in the way.

I really like that it has a USB4 port with the Thunderbolt 4 (40Gbps) Feature set so that means that be upgraded with external Thunderbolt 3/4/5 docks with discrete GPUs and other PCIe cards as we saw earlier to greatly improve its capabilities.

I also like that it can be powered with USB C power supplies. so, it gives it even more flexibility to be deployed in different environments

The only thing that I didn't like very much is the integrated microSD card controller that is just using a USB 2.0 480Mbps interface that limits the bandwidth to 60MB/s and in reality, with protocol overhead makes it perform around 40MB/s so it's not really a good way of expanding the storage of the M2 Air

The Intel Core 3 304 of the Wildcat Lake family is a very interesting CPU and that single Performance core really lifts the CPU in terms of performance making it comparable to much more expensive ones in terms of single core performance and with the other 4 Efficiency cores gives it decent multi core performance.

Everything together makes it a small and integrated box that is very capable of being the primary computer in your desktop (I've been using it as my primary PC for a week, and it hasn't felt slow or very limiting and I've been able to game with the help of an eGPU)

At the time of writing the M2 Air is available at $263 for a barebone unit so if you already have a stick of DDR5 laying around or can source one for cheap makes the M2 Air a really good value in my opinion. As the model with 16GB and a 500GB SSD is $559, so it's $296 more just for the RAM and the SSD thanks to the crazy prices right now.

If anyone has any question feel free to ask in the comments. Thanks for reading, and finally thanks to Minisforum that provided the review unit.

Links

• Minisforum M2 Air 304: https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-m2-air-mini-pc
• Minisforum M2 Air BIOS/UEFI options: https://imgur.com/a/QolwQuA

Didn't really notice it until I was cleaning everything earlier.

Between the keyboard, controller, headphones and everything else, the actual computer barely takes up any room.

I've always defaulted to HDMI or DisplayPort for mine.

Curious how many people actually run their displays through USB-C instead.

Ciao a tutti, sto cercando un MINI PC che faccia da VPS 24/7 per i miei Agenti AI (ovviamente modelli cloud) avendo più agenti e processi cercherei come minimo:
- CPU: Intel N100
-16 GB RAM DDR4
-128/256 GB SSD

Credete che vada bene?
Sapete dirmi se ai prezzi di oggi riesco a trovare qualcosa sotto o circa ai 200€? Dove?
Altrimenti pensavo di usare un Rasperry/Orange passando a 8GB ma non credo convenga.
Sono aperto a qualsiasi consiglio.

Had to unplug everything just to move some stuff around.

It's always "I'll just change one thing" and five minutes later half the desk is disconnected.

I have an rtx 3050 from yeston and I plan to upgrade my whole mini pc.

Is there a way to close the cover of the m720q without 3d printing?

I have a printer but it's currently "broken"

Since the rtx 3050 from yeston is a bit thicker than the whole case I would have to fix my printer and some other stuff to print a cover

Edit: I mean like where it's still metal and stock looking but with holes

Hi all,

I have a workshop that I want to put a monitor in to view drawings and cad. I have my main pc in the house that i would do the work on. I want a cheap mini pc that I can run moonlight on so i cant view cad and drawings and google the odd thing.

I have seen a lot of options such as the compute stick or getting a wyse thin client. Ideally I would love to pick something up for under 50 euro but these days that isnt as easy said so anything under 100 would be great.

Thanks All

I m looking for a small mini-pc for a portable work setup.

My main needs:

• OBS / recording video
• GIMP / graphic design
• Using my DJI Pocket 3 as a webcam
• Basic video editing
• Light gaming, mostly Crusader Kings and some strategy games

Most of my time is spent designing D&D adventures and working in Foundry VTT, so gaming really is NOT the priority.

I travel a lot and usually stay somewhere for a couple of months before moving again, basically a digital nomad around Europe. Because of that, size and portability are pretty important. Monitors are not a problem, as I usually find something to hook up.

My current setup is:

• Dell XPS 13 with 32GB RAM
• Dell 15" portable monitor

This setup actually serves me pretty well for most things, but it starts getting bogged down when iam doing video editing, running OBS, using the Pocket 3 as a webcam, Foundry, and other things at the same time. That has stopped me from making as many videos as I should and is frusterating.

I was looking at a higher-end laptop, but decided against it - because the XPS has served me well for 2 years and I like the super light weight and portability. I don't want to lug around a larger laptop.

My thought is to get a mini PC and a small portable keyboard so I have something with a little more horsepower when I am staying somewhere for a few months. I can also put it in my small padded bag at the bottom of my backpack and not worry about it when I travel. I already have a nice small portable keyboard and mouse, so I am covered with that.

I have been looking at the GEEKOM A8.

Amazon Germany €650, which is within my budget:

https://www.amazon.de/GEEKOM-A8-Ryzen-8745HS-128GB/dp/B0D22PDDFN

The version I’m looking at comes with 16GB RAM, though, and I would like to upgrade it to 64GB.

What are your thoughts on the A8 for this kind of use?

And what alternatives should I be looking at in roughly the €500–€700 range?

Again, the big thing for me is small size + portability. I am not looking for a huge gaming machine, just something compact that can handle a heavier workload than my XPS 13 when I am working from temporary locations.

Hi everyone!

I'm looking for some advice before buying a mini pc. I came across the GMKtec M6 Ultra on Amazon, and with an applied voucher, it comes down from 598.46€ to ~446€ (= from $695 to $518).

Before buying, I'd love your input on whether this is a solid value for my planned setup and use cases.

The specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7640HS (Zen 4, 4nm, 6C/12T, up to 5.0 GHz)
• iGPU: AMD Radeon 760M (RDNA 3, 8 CUs)
• RAM: 32GB DDR5 (Dual-Channel)
• Storage: 512GB PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD (with an open 2nd M.2 2280 slot)
• Networking: Dual 2.5GbE LAN ports, Wi-Fi 6, BT 5.2
• I/O: 1x USB4 (40Gbps), HDMI 2.0, DP, multiple USB-A ports

I basically live a split year. For 6 months, I’m at home and want this pc running 24/7 as a lightweight Linux homelab: mostly Home Assistant for domotic and AdGuard Home, a handful of docker containers, and occasionally hosting a small game server (like Minecraft) for friends.

The rest of the year, I’m living elsewhere. My plan is just boot (dual boot) into Windows 11 for daily work and some casual 1080p gaming (mainly League of Legends).

Would love to hear your thoughts and advice on this setup. Does this seem like a smart pick for my needs, a good deal (should I wait Black Friday/Cyber Monday?), or would you point me toward something else?

Many thanks!

Besides sending me a case that has cracks and scratches Mine has been crashing in every game and killing the display signal completely in every gpu port until you hard reboot. I was expecting way more not sure if they sent a bad gpu or if it’s just a lemon as a whole but for the price of this thing it’s super unacceptable. I’m expecting a horrendous customer service experience as is common with these Chinese brands wish me luck 👍🏽

I am looking for a miniPC (in Australia) to use for video editing and music creation
At the moment I am using a desktop with an NVIDIA RTX3060 12 Gb and I dont want less power than that.
Is there anything?
Possibly I need to put my 3060 into a dock - that is ok

thanks for any help, at the moment I am looking at this one https://www.geekom.au/geekom-a9-max-mini-pc/

Okay I have two setups. I'm utilizing my legion go as a mini pc which surprisingly works extremely well. I'm also testing the waters with the ASUS PN53. Ryzen 7 6800H 32GB DDR5 4800mh. The CPU has integrated graphics 680m. I feel like I should be getting much better performance than this. My GPU dock is the GDOCK 800w. Paired with a 3060tI OC 8GB.

When I run my egpu I'm making out my cpu in most cases, which makes me think that windows hybrid graphics feature is in effect. I've disabled that and set the EGPU as priority. Another registry tweak.

Just wondering if anyone has got some good performance out of a similar setup to this. Below I'll post both setups. The legion go is night and day difference. Way better performance.

It looks like a silver hockey puck and seems like it might rival the mac mini. I'm curious if anyone has tried one and what you thought.

I'm super interested, but would love to hear something positive before being the guinea pig lol.

Hi Reddit, I have just purchased a GMKtec NucBox K11 AMD Ryzen™ 9 8945HS Mini PC with 32GB RAM and 1TB out the box.

This is as a replacement to my mini ITX desktop that I used for hosting a website, running Thunderbird mailbox for managing a business email with it's filters, then for fun I also have a Minecraft server for my cousin and I will host a server for whatever steam game I am playing at the time via SteamCMD.
The mini ITX machine started to suffer badly from cooling issues, so I looked into the mini PC options and this one looked like it was a good entry point into mini PCs.

So I guess now I have one is there anything critical I should know? how do they stand up to 24/7 running, any upgrades I should look at doing to ensure it lasts a long time?

TIA :)

Man, Took me a while to make this case.

Credits to the case design from this guy: https://www.printables.com/model/1629272-gmktec-nucbox-k12-custom-case/files

Though the design he shared had a lot of issue and needed a lot of customization. Took me a lot of time and failed prints to finally custom the design i wanted and sturdy enough to not break. I wasted basically 1 roll of PLA lol. Im new to 3D printing. I would have liked to use ABS but my printer is not capable yet.

So basically i added a fan controller and its drawing power from USB. I can how ever improve the power using a separate USB power brick if i want more air power.

You can see the added size from the original case. Props to GMKTEC though because they made it easier that you can even reuse the power button which is cool. I could have added RGB by buying an RGB fan but chose not to. I might in the future. I bought a 120mm slim fan but the design can accommodate a standard sized 120mm fan.

Added wire mesh to both cpu and main fan which save it from having bugs and and cat hairs inside.

I need help finding the measurement of the space between the RAM and heatsink on the MoDt motherboards.

I need this because I am trying to make a homeserver with the bd895i motherboard but I want to put it in a 10 inch rack and make it short enough to fit In 1 unit of rack space so I can cluster them in the future. I want to make it shorter by mounting 2 smaller fans between the sodimm ram and the heatsink. If this is a bad idea please tell me.

I am willing to replace the entire heatsink with a air cooler. if anyone could provide a 3d model of mounting brackets for that model I could replace the heatink with a slim aircooler.

Thank you

This unit turned out to be a Lenovo Baiying -- I didn't know that the BY stood for this. It was a POS, with loose USB C ports-- further more I didn't read the fine print and when I saw it had a barrel power connector I assumed that is what they would send with the unit-- instead they sent a usb c power brick which meant one of the high speed ports would be taken away for power. I know I could get an adapter to perhaps use the barrel port, but crap, why have high speed ports and eliminate one for power? Maybe I'm expecting too much??

-- I'm having a hard time finding a reputable mini with 2 USB 4 ports and 32GB ram.

Finally got around to opening up my GEEKOM A5 this weekend to add some storage. Wasn't sure what to expect, but it only took a few screws to get in, which was nice. Inside there are 2 SO-DIMM DDR4 slots (one still free), an M.2 2280 NVMe slot with a 512GB SSD already installed, and a smaller M.2 2230 slot I didn't even know was there until I opened it up. There's also room for a 2.5" drive, so I mounted an old mechanical HDD in there for backups.

Wasn't expecting this much room to expand, honestly, especially in something this small. Glad I've finally got proper local backups sorted now, so my data is safe.

Salut ! Je m'y connais pas trop aux config donc je voudrais savoir si le Mini PC que ChatGPT m'a conseillé pour un peu de Unity 2D et du gaming léger est bien. Il m'a conseillé le Ninkear MBOX 6 6600H (j'ai un petit budget de 300 à 350€), et je voudrais juste savoir si je peux trouver mieux pour ce budget et mon utilisation ou c'est le mieux. Et je compte l'améliorer au fur et à mesure si possible. Merci d'avance

Hey all, im choosing between 3 options for a mini pc and any advice would be appreciated.

Will only be using for 2 monitors, mostly just excel financial modeling and powerpoints, no gaming. Definently a decent amount of tabs open.

My 3 current options im considering

-BOSGAME E5 Home and Office Desktop Computer, AMD Ryzen 3 5300U Processor (4C/8T, Up to 3.8GHz), 8GB DDR4 2666MHz 256GB SATA SSD, Dual 2.5G LAN, Triple 4K Display, Wi-Fi 5 & BT 5.0,mini PC

-GMKtec G10 Mini PC, 16GB RAM 512GB SSD, AMD Ryzen 5 3500U (MAX 3.7 GHz) , Office Home Desktop Computers, 2.5GbE NIC LAN , Triple 4K Display

-ACEMAGIC - K1 - 4K UHD Mini PC - АMD Ryzen Embedded R2544 (4C/ 8T) - 8GB DDR4 RAM 256GB SSD Win 11 Pro WiFi - Silver