SFF Gaming PC without the SFF Tax??? - Minisforum G1 Pro 16-Core / RTX 5060

The best time to build a new gaming PC in 2026 was probably in 2025. The second best time, though, yeah, that's going to have to wait until 2029 at this rate. Building your own gaming PC may not make much financial sense today, but there are tons of pre-built and specialty options out there right now that might be worth considering. Case in point, today I'm going to take a look at the Minis Forum G1 Pro. A sleek gaming desktop PC that would look right at home next to a PS5 along with having enough performance to blow one away. Welcome back to Mixology March, everyone. The one month per year where we drink nothing but craft cocktails here on the channel. As always, I'm Jeff and today I am drinking a Chicago typewriter. Stay tuned to the end of the video to uh see how this one was made. We first heard about the Minis Forum G1 Pro back in November of 2025. It's a slim desktop PC or home theater PC with some serious hardware inside. We'll get straight to the point on this one. I think the PC is actually a bit overpowered for gaming when it comes to the CPU as this PC is rocking an AMD Ryzen 8945HX, a Zen 4-based chip with 16 cores and 32 threads with a 5.4 4 GHz boost clock and the 8945HX is the only CPU option available with this system. So, I guess that's where the Pro in the G1 Pro comes from. 16 cores is basically more than enough for any pro workstation at this point, even if this is the mobile variant of AMD's 16 core desktop chips, but that's not to say this doesn't still make for an awesome gaming machine. Alongside the AMD 8945HX is a full desktop RTX 5060 tucked neatly into the top of the case here. They're using Gigabytes small form factor RTX 5060 8 GB and it's a solid little card for 1440p gaming with 3,840 CUDA cores, 8 GB of GDDR7 and a 145W power draw. As for the rest of the specs, this review unit provided by Minis Forum is set up with 32 GB of DDR5 5200 memory along with 1 TBTE of Gen 4x4 NVME storage. There's 5 GB Ethernet thanks to a RealTech 8126 chip along with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth on a MediaTek MT7925. Like I said, the design of the G1 Pro is very much home theater PC coded, looking just at home sitting next to a PS5 as it would sitting on your computer desk. And I especially love that the G1 Pro has an internal power supply. So no giant power brick that you need to hide behind your TV stand that absolutely no one has anymore because TVs have been wall mountable for nearly 20 years now. Now, one odd thing about the G1 Pro is the screen printing on the case itself. The Minis Forum logo right here in particular. This PC looks like it's supposed to be able to sit vertically in the included screw on stand like it is right now or be able to go horizontally on the top of your desk, but from their marketing and design, it looks like they only ever want it in the vertical orientation, which I think is a bit of a miss. See, the case is designed with three vented side panels and three solid side panels. So air comes in from the side right here with all of that uh nice ventilation cut out and then the CPU exhausts out the back and the GPU exhausts out the top. This side right here is completely solid there. There's no ventilation on this side of the PC. So you would think I'd be able to lay it flat, but there's no feet to support it laying this way. And in fact, the whole base has this wavy texture. So, I don't think you could put feet on here even if you wanted to. Also, the Minis Forum logo is upside down placed in this orientation. I think that's a miss. I would love to see a revision with a flat side panel on one side or just eliminate the wavy texture entirely uh and add some feet to this side so I could choose whether or not I want to have it vertical like this or maybe underneath a monitor on my desk. I like horizontal orientations. Moving inside of the PC, the top of the case actually comes apart with just a pair of screws on the bottom of it. Shockingly easy considering this is a full custom PC and not a standard form factor like ITX. We can see that the GPU is a standard Gigabyte two slot lowprofile unit mounted on its side, but with a custom IO shield around the rear. That's a bit unfortunate as it limits any upgradeability down the road without doing some janky [ __ ] to the rear panel. I know it would mess with some of the aesthetic on the back. this being a completely flush rear panel, but I would have much preferred to see a standard PCI mounting finger similar to what they have in the MS01 mini workstation style from Minisum. As it is, we have what's essentially a one-off panel for an off-the-shelf GPU, which is going to limit the ability to replace that GPU somewhere down the road. Interestingly enough, the GPU is flanked on either side by some quarterin closed cell foam to help contain its air flow. Now, normally this GPU pulls in air from the top and then blows it out the sides, but with the foam in there, it really limits where you can push all that hot air to, with most of it probably coming out the back of the GPU. Really though, the cards seem to stay perfectly cool enough in use, so I'm really just lobbing some armchair critiques at it. A 145 watt GPU doesn't need the same airflow considerations as an RTX5090 and in testing showed no real issue trying to stay cool, hitting around 82 degrees C at a full 145 watts while maintaining a 2700 MHz boost clock on the GPU. So, pretty solid performance overall. The CPU is right here in the center of the chassis and is cooled by a single large blower fan aided by some massive heat pipes underneath it and forced to go through an aluminum fin stack around the rear. CPU temps also stayed pretty reasonable, hovering around 73° C under full load in gaming with a full 95 watts of power draw. My one critique of the cooling design for the G1 Pro actually isn't in performance, just in volume. The system is a little loud for my liking. I like my PCs to be seen and not heard, and the G1 Pro can be heard from basically anywhere in this room, even at idle. At full bore with 100 watts to the CPU and another 145 to the GPU, it's leaning towards irritating more than noticeable. Rounding out our look at the inside, the power supply is a 350W Flex ATX unit and a pretty unremarkable one at that. I'm sure some people are going to be offended that it's not an 80 plus platinum unit, but at just 245 watt TDP for the whole system, we're going to be right in the middle of any efficiency curve imaginable for a power supply of this size. Sometimes cheap is just fine when you're only using twothirds of the capacity anyway. But the same people upset by the power supply are going to be the same people upset when they see VRM rated for 120 degrees C hit 80° C under load in a gaming PC. And those are the people you shouldn't focus on pleasing anyway. Now removing the CPU fan, we get more access to the board underneath. And I'm both really happy, but also slightly horrified at what I found. First off, the good. Everything possible is replaceable. That being the NVME drive is a standard M.2, though it is hanging off the side of the board in kind of an awkward position, but it works. And the better news is there's a second M.2 slot sitting right next door if you needed a second drive. Same thing with the Wi-Fi. It's a standard M.2 add-in card, so if you ever wanted to upgrade the Wi-Fi, you could easily swap that out. Moving on to the memory, and the G1 Pro uses standard SODM sticks as well and DDR5200 to boot. But here's the slightly horrifying part. I got a single 32 GB stick. So, we're running this amazing Ryzen 8945HX16 core processor off of a single memory channel. Yes, Virginia, there is a RAM crisis and it's going to exist in every device you purchase and in the downtrodden faces of every consumer for the next couple of years, or at least until the AI bubble finally pops. What was shocking about this discovery though was in testing out gaming performance, I couldn't have even told you that we were only running on a single channel. And I bet most people who buy this system probably won't either. Now, normally I wait to talk about pricing until the end of the video, but that's a perfect segue to do it now. The Minis Forum G1 Pro is available as seen here with a Ryzen 9 8945HX 16 core processor, Gigabyte RTX 5060 8 GB graphics card, 32 GB in a single stick of DDR5200, and a 1 TB gen 4x4 NVME drive for $1,439. And honestly, I really like that price point. Looking around at similar pre-builts, particularly this MSI Codeex R2 available from Costco for $1,399, I actually really like the G1 Pro in this price bracket. Sure, the MSI has a two TB storage drive, but it's also a full tower and probably seven times the size of this G1 Pro. Sure, the MSI being a midtower probably breathes a bit easier than the G1 Pro in its proprietary small form factor and fairly constrained enclosure. The MSI probably has lower overall system temps as well as being considerably quieter. Maybe because of that, it's a couple percent faster in games, too. But if you're looking for a small form factor desktop for your desk or an HTPC for your living room, you probably aren't shopping for an ATX desktop PC either. Buying decisions are based on more factors than how many frames can possibly go burr. But the people who only think that way probably stopped listening to me anyway after they found out the G1 Pro only ships with a single stick of memory inside. So maybe those aren't the people that I should focus on pleasing. Anyway, besides, the G1 Pro is also available in a barebones kit, so you can add two sticks of memory if you so desire, if you can find any memory for sale. With all of that said, how is the performance? Like I mentioned right off the bat, I don't love this CPU and GPU combo from Minis Forum. I think the RTX 5060 8 GB is a solid choice at 1440p capable GPU with high and ultra settings capable in just about every game at 60 frames per second or more. Sure, the 8 GB is a bit limiting in a couple of titles like Cyberpunk or the Oblivion remaster, but most every game runs great beyond those. And Cyberpunk and Oblivion we can turn down to medium settings anyway. The 16 cores on the CPU feels a bit wasted if you're not planning on using this PC for more serious content creation or professional work. I'd much rather see the Ryzen 8840HX or the 8745HX, which are 12 and 8 core parts, respectively. 16 cores just isn't needed for gaming, especially at 1080 and 1440p, and could easily knock $1500 to $200 off the price if we went with a lower CPU skew while keeping everything else exactly the same. And the longer the RAM shortage drags on, the higher RAM prices are going to get anyway. So, we need to be thinking about knocking other components down to keep PCs like this affordable. That being said, the 8845HX is a blazing fast chip with 16 cores and up to a 5.4 GHz boost clock, all for under 100 watts of total power consumption. Running Cinebench on this chip shows it as spooky close to some high-end desktop CPUs like the 13900K or the 285K from Intel or the Ryzen 9950X. And as most consumers don't need anywhere close to that level of multi-threaded performance, all the more reason to give us some lower tier offerings to help save your customers a few bucks. Hint hint minis forum. Moving on to gaming, we're going to keep this one short and sweet. testing a wide variety of games ranging from old to new and from esports to Cyberpunk and Game Income Delivery 2. At 1440p, there was absolutely nothing off limits despite the 8 GB of video memory. While a couple games needed to hold back settings to medium to compensate, high and ultra settings across the board were used way more often than not. Some notable titles were the Oblivion Remaster and Cyberpunk, both being limited to medium settings because of the video memory. But at 1440p, both games were more than playable at those settings at 170 FPS on average, respectively. And sure, they don't have all of the I Candy enabled, but both games still look pretty fantastic, especially if you're playing from a 55 or 70in TV from a couch across the room rather than sitting 2 feet away from a 1440p monitor. Hell Divers 2 at 1440p and ultra settings was the picture of consistency with an average of 70 frames per second and a.1% low of 61. Absolute perfection in terms of predictable gameplay and a phenomenal overall experience. Representing some esports titles, we had Crab Champions and Rocket League, both at 1440p and max settings, and both were easily able to eclipse 350 frames per second on average with 1% lows above 130. So, the Minis Fororum G1 Pro with Ryzen 8845HX and Nvidia RTX 5060. What's the verdict? When you get into custom form factors and niche product markets like this PC right here that is only 2 and a/4 in wide at its thickest point, it's less about comparative performance and more about will this product make someone happy? And I think absolutely the answer here is yes. There are some things I don't like. By default, the G1 Pro is just too loud. It did come shipped to me in performance mode out of the box, though, which I don't know if that's going to be the normal consumer experience. In performance mode, at idle, the fan will run at 1,800 RPM all the time and ramp up close to 3,000 RPM. Under load, it's downright annoying and a bit distracting when gaming. I did all of my testing with the PC basically sitting about this close to me on my desk and I'd happily take a few percent off my performance to run at a much friendlier mode. Maybe a thousand RPM at idle and closer to 2200 RPM at full load. I don't love that you really can't lay the PC on its side. There's no real way to do that other than just taking the base off and laying it down, but then your logo's upside down and that's just going to drive me nuts. This is likely going to be my living room PC and serve as an HTPC. And I may just take a sugar cube to the Minis Forum logo and then stick a couple of rubber feet on the side and see how that goes. Honestly, horizontal mode should have been an option from Minis Forum already. And like I mentioned earlier, I don't like that they don't use a standard rear IO shield for the Gigabyte RTX 5060 as that is just a standard desktop ITX card. I would much rather have a small cutout or even a bump on the rear of the case to support a standard IO bracket rather than having zero upgrade options in the future without modifying either the GPU bracket, the rear of the case, or both. It's silly that almost all of Mini's forum's other mini workstations have managed to do this just fine, but the gaming PC that ships with a GPU inside of it doesn't. Now, I know it sounds like I'm really down on this system, but there's a lot of good here, too. Performance was downright excellent, as was cooling, despite the slightly cramped quarters for this GPU. The internal power supply means no giant brick taking up half of the space of the PC itself. A really stupid issue that most mini PCs have, including Minis Forum's own mini workstations. The LED lighting on the front of the case is fully customizable and adds a modern and sharp look to it. And aside from me not liking the Ryzen 8945HX as the choice for a gaming PC, at $1,39 for a barebones unit or $1,439 with 32 GB of DDR5 and 1 TB of storage, pricing is right in line with full desktop offerings. So there's really not even a small form factor tax going on here. If you're looking for a sleek home theater PC or just a tiny gaming PC that you can take anywhere, I do like what Minis Forum has done here. If you're interested in the G1 Pro, I will have links on where to find one for yourself down in the video description. On your way down there, don't forget to drop this video a like and subscribe to Craft Computing if you haven't done so already. Follow me on social mediascrafting for daily shenanigans like this. And if you like the content you see on this channel and want to help support me in what I do, consider joining the Patreon. Link is down in the video description. And that's going to do it for me in this one. Thank you all so much for watching. I'm so happy it's March. And as always, I'll see you in the next video. Cheers everyone. God, I love March. It's Mixology March. Welcome everyone. Uh I'm excited for this one. Uh every single March we do mixology here on the channel instead of beer reviews. And so at the end of every video you're going to see a new cocktail being made. Uh today, like I said, I'm particularly excited. Uh this is a cocktail that was introduced to me by uh good friend of the channel, Scotty, down at 55 South in downtown San Jose. Awesome, awesome place. Uh this is the Chicago Typewriter. Into my mixer here, we are going to put in equal parts of the four spirits that are on the table. Starting with uh this Cascade Range Broken Top Ridgeline Rye uh distilled here in Sisters, Oregon. So, we're going to do 3/4 of an ounce of a rye. We're going to do 3/4 of an ounce of punt mess. It is a type of vermouth that is, we'll just say, punched up a little bit. Uh, it's as if vermouth and campari had some strange love child. It's actually quite delicious. And that's coming from someone who normally doesn't really like vermouth all that much. Going to do 3/4 of an ounce of appperol. And technically this calls for threequarters of an ounce of genevir, but uh gin is the closest alternative to that. In fact, genevir is the precursor to gin. So gin it is. This one we are using a Hrix standard gin. We're going to do two dashes of angor bitters. And give that a good stir. Then this is going to be poured neat into a rocks glass or if you've got it a Nick and Norora. And finally, finish that off with a swath of orange or lemon if you prefer, but I like the orange with this one. Uh here's an orange that I've sacrificed a number of times already for science. Give that a good spritz. Yeah. Drop it on in. And there you have one of my favorite rye cocktails, the Chicago Typewriter. H that is bright and warm all at the same time. H the punts, like I said, uh being kind of a Campari forward vermouth like spirit has this super sharp attack to it. Uh playing off of the orange really, really well. like it's bright, it's playful, and then it just slowly stair steps down in thickness and in darkness and in in warmth as it goes down. You never get this real strong rye presence. Like, I love rye. I I love adding more rye to this cocktail than it actually calls for. Uh but it never like quite materializes. It's It's always sitting there balanced between like the citrusy notes of of the Campari and the gin and this deep woody, you know, kind of finish with uh, you know, the punt mess and obviously the rye doing a little bit of that on the back end as well. It's just fantastic. God, this is so good. If it didn't call for such a wide array of of mixers, I would probably make this a lot more often than I do.

Grab yourself a Pint Glass at https://craftcomputing.store Follow me on Bluesky @CraftComputing.bsky.social It's Mixology March! And we're kicking things off strong with a Chicago Typewriter. 3/4oz Rye Whiskey 3/4oz Punt e Mes 3/4oz Aperol 3/4oz Genever (or Dry Gin) 2 Dashes Angostura Bitters Stir with ice, strain into a Rocks glass, serve neat with an Orange Peel Small Form Factor PCs often come with a whole host of compromises, from inferior parts to grossly inflated prices. The Minisforum G1 Pro suffers from neither of those, rocking an AMD Ryzen 8945HX 16-Core CPU, along with a full Desktop RTX 5060 8GB GPU, 5Gb Networking, and support for Dual m.2 NVMe drives. It's a pretty killer combo, but should it be your next Gaming PC or Living Room Gaming Machine? Check out the Minisforum G1 Pro here: https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-g1-pro-gaming-pc Support me on Patreon and get access to my exclusive Discord server. Chat with myself and the other hosts on Talking Heads all week long. https://www.patreon.com/CraftComputing