MINISFORUM H31G Mini PC Comes With A Discrete GPU And Some Caveats

When it comes to PCs, power is most often associated with size. After all, you can't really escape the laws of physics so the more power you need, the more and bigger components you need. That said, you might not actually really need all that power and some desktops try to make a compromise in size, performance, and price. The MINISFORUM H31G Mini PC is one such example and, depending on your needs, it might actually hit the sweet spot even for some gamers.

Mini PCs have become popular for their small footprint, lower power consumption, and relative silence. They aren't really popular for their lower throughput, especially when it comes to graphics capabilities. Most dedicated graphics cards come in sizes and forms designed for desktop towers and consume a lot more power than mini PCs are capable of giving.

That's what makes the combination of MINISFORUM's new H31G mini PC and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti rather rare. The latter comes in a more compact form that fits tightly inside a small box, giving the H31G graphics and gaming chops while not losing out on space and power savings. Of course, it does bump up the TDP to 150W but that shouldn't be surprising.

There are, however, a few catches to this otherwise dreamy configuration. The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is hardly the latest in NVIDIA's GTX line and the H31G only comes with 9th gen Intel Core i5 or i7 F series processors. It does support up to 64GB of RAM though only of the previous-gen DDR4 kind.

Part of the reason for these compromises is to keep physical and power footprints low. The other part is in keeping the price also low. Starting September 29, the MINISFORUM H31G Mini PC will be available for purchase at $659 for an Intel Core i5-9500F or $799 for a Core i7-9700F, both with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage.