My goal is to give honest reviews of miniPCs with nothing held back / no manufacturer influence. Please note that I'm typically a more of an adult "professional" user who uses machines for office tasks, file servers, media pcs, and occasional light gaming, but i'm not a heavy gamer.

I'll focus on the quality control, heat, thermals, and general components, but I'm also going to share some benchmarks from games from other reviewers for reference.

OK, let's go:

Beelink just introduced their GTR7 model with the 7840HS, and based on what I’m seeing they’ve addressed many of the past complaints of their line making this a great option compared to the GTR6.

The long awaited RDNA3 igpus are here with the release of the Ryzen 7840HS and 7940HS mobile cpus. Previously, the RDNA2 chips (6800H, 6900HX, 7735HS) were the first time in history that miniPCs had a reasonably competitive graphics offering, doubling the performance of the previous generation.

RDNA3 is now offering another 20-25% increase from the last generation, meaning that many games that were on the edge before are playable now in the 40-60fps range at 1080p low to medium. However, we’re seeing a nice bump on BOTH the gpu and igpu side which is what makes this chip some compelling. 8 teraflops is roughly in range of the the Apple M1 Pro w/ 24 cores has.

Overview & Specs

Beelink seems to really have gone out of their way to be more innovative on this machine. First, they seemed to be really focused on power delivery and thermal management more than anything. The default suggested TDP from AMD on the 7840HS is 35-54w, but on this machine it was unlocked to up to 65w. I verified this value in the PPT and smartstep settings within the bios. They also completely reworked their cooling system with a vapor change and new fan setup.

To be honest, I was really worried that this was going to be a noisy machine, but have been pleasantly surprised to find out that it’s really quiet. The Beelink GTR6 in the past was quite noisy, but Beelink seems to have learned from that with their GTR6 model. Now, idle and low load environments have minimal fan noise (~30db) which is great. Under load the fans crank up of course, but the pitch and tone is very reasonable. It hits around 40db. I’ll try to provide a recording of this. In the past nearly any activity would force the fans to jump to the max.

Next, they introduced a magnetic power port. I like that if you unplug and replug it in it won’t wear out a port like USB or a barrel jack, but I do have a few gripes. First, it’s very difficult to remove. You have to yank rather hard on it to get it off and it feels like you’ll damage the cable. Second, the cable is permanently attached to the wall adapter, which means if you need to snake the power cable through anywhere the magnetic piece has to fit through. With all that said, you can fall back on the USB-C port for PD charging. Beelink tells me that if you use USB-C PD though you have to limit the cpu to 45w TDP instead of 65w.

Stability notes

Before diving into benchmarks, I think it’s worth discussing stability. Lately with miniPCs thermals and stability are the #1 concern when it comes to these smaller manufacturers. Directly out of the box on an early unit, I encountered a couple of reboots while running cinebench. Another youtuber ran into the same. However, I promptly received an updated firmware dated 6/13 that addressed the crashing issues as well as a few small patches and have had no other issues.

Since that patch I have probably re-run and stress tested the machine 30 times across 3dmark, cinebench, aida64, and basic game play, and have not run into a single problem yet.

CPU temps tend to hover around 70c. Others have commented on concerns around RAM temps. Mine maxed out at 80c under gaming conditions, but when I asked Beelink about this, they said that it is the SPD controller temperature reporting that, not the RAM itself, so it is not a concern. I’ve continued to stress test with these temps and have not seen any stability issues. I can’t speak to longevity, but will try to see if I can find more information on this. My gut feels is this isn't a problem but I'm asking around to some hardware engineers.

UPDATE 6/27: Beelink has indicated that they are working a new version of the case bottom to try to improve temperatures even further.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Please see my review link above for screenshots of all the benchmarks, but I summarized them in a table below here:

GTR6 (6900HX) -> GTR7 (7840HS)

Summary

If you want an integrated GPU, the RDNA3 780M is absolutely the fastest option out there. Intel has nothing remotely competitive at this time. When it comes to affordable miniPC manufacturers, I trust Beelink more than the rest right now. Minisforum has continually shown to have failures, overheating, and other issues on their recent UM690 and other lines.

If size is a priority for you, this little machine can now compete with many low to mid range full size desktops at 1/4 the size.

GTR7 Strengths:

• Absolute best mobile igpu on the market right now. 4nm, 8 cores, 65w, and screaming fast 780m. With another 20% or so boost most games can now be played at 1080p low to 1080p medium.
• Unlike the 7735HS chip, we also got a nice 20% cpu bump this generation along with the igpu increase
• Quiet at idle and reasonable under load
• Great port selection with USB-C PD, a new magnetic charging port, and front USB-C
• Name brand DDR5 5600MT/s ram
• 7840HS chip now also supports AV1 hardware encoding (not just decoding), which means if you want to stream with it or use it as a plex server you can transcode with the latest codec. This is huge if you're a streamer
• Now uses 2 full NVME slots. The GTR6 uses 1 NVME and 1 SATA M2, and the SER6 models were 1 NVME 2.5" SATA. This was a big one for me since 2.5" SATA doesn't make sense anymore given how low NVME prices have become.

GTR7 could be improved:

• Downgraded wi-fi 6 from wi-fi 6e
• SSD isn’t as fast as KC3000 in last GTR6 model
• Magnetic power adapter is interesting but proprietary. The USB-C PD option limits you to 45w TDP. Have to really yank on it to get it off. Beelink told me the cable was tested heavily for durability though.

See my full review here: https://thebestgear.org/309/beelink-gtr7-review-rdna3-is-here/

I'll be updating this shortly with some gaming numbers found across the web for summary but wanted to get this up.

Overall I'm thrilled to see Beelink fix all of the noise/thermal issues I saw on the GTR6. Similar to the SER6, I think this will prove to be a good model. In talking with my rep at Beelink, he indicated that they are making thermals and QA testing an extremely high priority.