MINISFORUM MS-S1 MAX Mini AI Workstation PC, AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (16C/32T),RDNA3.5 GPU,128GB LPDDR5x RAM 2TB SSMINI PC, Dual M.2 PCIe 4.0,PCIe x16 Slot, USB4 V2(80Gbps)& Dual 10GbE, 320W PSU,Wi-Fi 7

First you should know I am a huge fan of Minisforum. I own many Minisforum mini PCs because I find them unique, well made and a great value. With that out of the way, when I saw the MS-S1 MAX announced, my jaw about hit the floor! I've never seen a Minisforum mini PC this powerful or expensive. However, when looking at all the specifications, the cost to build my own alternative with similar specs is much more costly. To put it simply, this is the single most powerful computer I have ever owned. It basically does everything from being a powerful workstation to even AAA gaming. The fact it has USB4 v2 on it is icing on the cake. USB4 v2 can move data at 80gbps! Plus there are two addition USB4 ports (not v2). There are also 4 USB I don't yet have any external devices that can take advantage of that, so it's a nice change of pace to get ahead of the technology rather than just keeping up or catching up later. Of course it has USB 3.2 on the front (one) and two more in the back, along with 2 more USB 2 in the back as well! Talk about connectivity options! While it has a single HDMI out, each of the USB4 ports can be used as a Display Port video output, for a total of 5 monitors in use at the same time! All can independently support video resolutions of 8K@60Hz or 4K@120Hz! Imagine getting a car that is fully loaded with every feature and every bit of performance possible. That's what this is in the computer world. two 10Gbe eithernet networking, Wi-Fi 7, a 16 core, 32 thread CPU with 125+ TOPS for AI processing. It comes with 128GB of RAM already installed, along with a 2TB NVMe Gen 4 x 4 NVMe storage drive. There is a spare NVMe slot to add a second storage drive, but it does run a Gen4x1 (just fyi). Did I mention it has a built-in 320 watt power supply? No external bricks or adapters to worry about! And the cooling system is insane. This thing just stays whisper quiet and runs cool regardless of what workloads I throw at it! It has a full-length PCIe4x16 slot for a low profile add-in card option (though it runs at PCIe 4 x4). Windows 11 Pro is pre-installed and activated. Scanned for any spyware or malware and it is 100% clean and bloat-free! Talk about you get what you pay for! This thing is an absolute beast of a computer, let alone a mini PC. Am I happy with it? What do you think? In the words of Ferris Bueller, "If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up."

It works. The unified memory does allow for running large models. It is slow as molasses for anything over 70b parameters and I had to install Linux to make the pc properly take advantage of the video card. On paper this looks like an amazing computer, but between the bus speed and the heavily restricted bios, I have greatly regretted buying this computer. I should have saved another $1000 and gotten an Nvidia DGX spark like I initially planned. Every time I use this with my local models it makes me sad.

This is an impressive product that came out a little too early for people to fully appreciate. If you're trying to run AI workloads and you bought this a months ago that means that you benefited from massive savings at the cost of needing to wait for ROCM and AMD support to catch up. It's caught up - and now price is skyrocketing. Yes, it runs AI workloads very well 120B nemotron will work on Ubuntu+latest ROCM+lemonade server or llamacpp forked for AMD. The performance is very good for the price. Inference is also "slow" on dgx, but dgx does have better support for AI (obviously). I should have bought more for a cluster. Personally I'm very happy, but I understand why someone would be upset if they got it before AMD and ROCM support caught up.

This is a unicorn with the 128gb of unified memory architecture. With this you can easily run 70 billion parameter LLMs. The ports coverage is ahead of its time with 80gb usb-c and 10gb ethernet.

Excellent, high-performance mini PC. However, be aware that it requires a wired mouse for the first-time setup; Bluetooth and wireless dongles (like the Logitech MX series) didn't kick in until after I was finished with the install.

I can burn through a lot of AI tokens even when I'm doing relatively simple coding tasks, so I knew I wanted a local AI machine to at least offload some of that to free LLM models I can run at home. I've owned this mini pc for a few weeks now and I use it daily in opencode. The 128gb of shared memory means I can keep a number of LLMs and diffusion models resident in memory. Being able to do this has let me build a pipeline where stable diffusion generates an image, drops it into a watched directory, scripting picks up the image and processes it for use as a game asset. It then pipelines back into an LLM to get a validation description of what the image is. I can use the whole process as much as I want and never pay for external model usage. It's a high price tag, but I suspect I could burn through the cost of entry really quickly just using commerical LLMs. All that, and it's tiny and sips power. I'm quite pleased.

I ordered the Minisforum MS-S1 Max through Amazon for $3,039. The shipping box arrived fully sealed with an intact Amazon label, but it was completely empty inside. Just packing paper. No computer. I noticed immediately that the box was far too light for a mini-PC with a 320W internal PSU. I work at the freight forwarding facility where it was delivered, so I can confirm with absolute certainty that no one opened or tampered with the package at any point after delivery. I proceeded to inmediately contact Amazon and Minisforum. Minisforum's after-sales team confirmed in writing that "all machines were shipped to Amazon's warehouse as complete units, not empty." So somewhere between Amazon's FBA warehouse in Kentucky and my delivery address, the product vanished from inside a sealed box. Amazon refused to help because my shipping address is a freight forwarder but it is actually my WORKPLACE!. Minisforum says it's Amazon's responsibility once it's at their warehouse. Neither party has resolved this. I'm out $3,039 with no product and no resolution. Amazon even mention about policies that should not apply to my case and they even sent me a warning for explaining that… incredible. If you're looking for a high-performance mini-PC, I strongly suggest exploring other brands. Corsair, HP, ASUS, Beelink, GMKtec, and GEEKOM all offer competitive options with far more reliable purchase experiences and actual customer support when things go wrong. Under no circumstances would I recommend buying from Minisforum. They are not a company you can trust with a high-value purchase. When something goes wrong, customer service is inadequate and they won't stand behind their product.