{"id":1552427,"date":"2026-04-13T16:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T16:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pcSti8K9UnGHBRwPHcRG4b"},"modified":"2026-04-13T16:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T16:51:10","slug":"atomman-g1-pro-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/atomman-g1-pro-review\/","title":{"rendered":"AtomMan G1 Pro review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Minisforum Atomman G1 Pro<\/a> has sat on my desk now for about two weeks. Happily bimbling away, running benchmarks, stress tests, and going through all manner of arduous rigamarole that we require these mini gaming PCs to endure in our pursuit of testing excellence, (write that down, it’ll be in the company call later). <\/p>\n

In essence, it’s quite unique. Effectively a weird hybrid of sorts. Fluidly blurring the lines between a mid-range gaming laptop and an entry-level ITX rig. The case is outlandishly compact, with only 3.8 L of internal capacity, and yet somehow, Minisforum has slammed a 350 W PSU in there, a motherboard with 32 GB of dual-channel DDR5, an RTX 5060 low-profile GPU, and no less than two M.2 slots as well. It’s so slim. So sheepishly svelte, it’s hard to believe that this plucky little case actually manages to hold all that in there without buckling at the seams. Looking more akin to a PS5 than a dedicated gaming desktop.<\/p>\n

The saving grace is, without a doubt, that CPU that Minisforum has strapped up under the cooler, puttering away underneath that chassis. Namely AMD’s Ryzen 9 8945HX. This is one of Big Red’s latest Ryzen 8,000 series chips (I say latest, it launched over a year ago now, but I wouldn’t hold out hope for new silicon these days that ain’t going into an AI datacenter), and arguably the reason why this might make it into our best Mini PC list,<\/a> albeit in a bit of a roundabout way.<\/p>\n

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G1 Pro specs<\/caption>\n
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CPU<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Cores | Threads<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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16 | 32<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Clock speed<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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Up to 5.4 GHz<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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GPU<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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Gigabyte RTX 5060 OC Low Profile 8G<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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RAM<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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32 GB DDR5-5200<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Storage<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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1 TB Kingston PCIe 4.0 M.2 (2x PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots available)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Rear I\/O<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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1x USB 3.2 Type-C, 2x USB 3.2 Type-A, 1x RJ45 5GB, 2x HDMI 2.1, 2x DisplayPort 1.4<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Front I\/O<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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1x USB 3.2 Type-C, 1x USB 3.2 Type-A, 3.5mm combo jack<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Power<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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350 W<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Dimensions<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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215 x 57 x 315 mm<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Price<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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\u00a31,350 | $1,449<\/a> (as configured)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

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Buy if…<\/div>\n
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\u2705 You value compact portability: <\/strong>Smaller than a PS5 and arguably twice as versatile the G1 Pro is remarkably well designed, producing impressive performance given the size constraints<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Don’t buy if…<\/div>\n
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\u274c You can build your own and don’t care about space that much: <\/strong>You could probably build one of these with slightly better performance for the same cost, with off-the-shelf parts, but it won’t be anywhere near as small.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It’s effectively a low-powered Zen 4, 16-core unit, running off the back of TSMC’s 5nm FinFET design. Primarily, it’s aimed at the high-end laptop market, but it’s got some serious chops in terms of overall processing power too, particularly when you provide it with enough juice. And it’s that one unique element Minisforum is trying to take advantage of here. <\/p>\n

The G1 Pro comes with its own desktop app, and as you probably have already guessed, it allows you to swap between three different profiles that effectively alter the power delivery to the CPU directly. There’s “Office Mode”, where the 8945HX is locked at 60 W TDP, “Gaming Mode” where it stumbles along at an absolutely placid 80 W, and “Beast Mode” (phwoaaar\u2026) that ramps that wattage all the way up to 100 W, (although officially AMD’s 8945HX is only rated to run between 55 and 75 W). It’s very similar in many ways to Lenovo’s Legion 9i laptop<\/a> line. As you can imagine with that, though, you get more performance, higher frequencies for longer, but also a lot more heat.<\/p>\n

The GPU itself, a low-profile RTX 5060\u2014complete with 8 GB of VRAM and packaged up nicely by Gigabyte in a spectacularly slim Low Profile OC design\u2014will quite happily trundle away at 145 W no matter what profile you set. Really, you’re only impacting CPU performance with this, and even with it set to Ultra Instinct Mega Beast mode, at max, you’re still leaving that PSU with a good 105W of headroom. No drama on power supplies going pop here.<\/p>\n

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\"Minisforum
Future<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Minisforum
Future<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n

That CPU, though, is not a cool chip. Not in this design anyway. And not even in dull-as-dishwater office mode either. It’s silicon that’s been built very specifically with low power delivery in mind, because it’s meant to be used in laptops, and products where cooling is limited compared to, you know, those desktop machines where you’ll just slap a full-fat 360 mm wham-bam-thank-you-mam AIO into it and call it a day. <\/p>\n

In the G1 Pro, because it’s got such a compact form factor, it naturally runs hot. In that default mode, max CPU temps throughout our computational tests landed at 93 \u00b0C. In-game, that top temp hit a staggering 91 \u00b0C in consecutive runs of Metro Exodus, with an average of 89 \u00b0C overall. <\/p>\n

Now, yes, technically the 8945HX does have a TJmax temp of 100 \u00b0C, but outside of bragging rights, and that one-off benchmark run you do when your office is 7 degrees, because you’ve left the window open all night, those profiles arguably aren’t really worth it. Particularly as it doesn’t affect the GPU. That’s a bit weird, too, by the way, because that RTX 5060 is surprisingly efficient given its size (good work, Gigabyte). <\/p>\n

In computational tests (Blender in particular), it maxed out at 67 \u00b0C overall. In-game, though, the figure was markedly higher at 77 \u00b0C overall. Clearly, there’s headroom there still, specifically for that graphics card to be pushed a little harder, which is surprising that Minisforum didn’t bake something in for that specifically. <\/p>\n

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\"Minisforum
Future<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Minisforum
Future<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Minisforum
Future<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n

A tiny peak inside quickly reveals just what’s going on here, and it’s purely a matter of form factor over function, and I don’t know if I should be impressed or not. It’s cramped, cables are tidy, well secured, out the way as best they can be. Cooling is optimized, and hardware positioning is intuitive. There are two M.2 slots here, one housing a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD (Kingston’s OM8TAP41024K1-A00, complete with Kioxia’s 162-layer BiCS6 QLC NAND), and Minisforum has included an additional M.2 heatsink as well if you want to add an additional drive (a genuinely nice touch). But boy, they di not have much space to work with. Still, if you do want to upgrade it later on, say if OpenAI awkwardly can’t buy up 40% of the world’s memory supply, and DRAM prices plummet suddenly as a result (oh no, what a shame), you can\u2026 with a bit of effort.<\/p>\n

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\"Minisforum
Future<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Minisforum
Future<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n

One thing I will highlight as a potential issue, though, is the whole I\/O situation. Just full stop, period. It’s incredibly limited. You’ve got a total of two USB Type-C ports (one on the front, one on the back), three USB Type-A (again one on the front, two on the back), a 5G Ethernet, one audio out (in front), and well that’s it (aside from the obvious display outputs, WiFi 7 and Bluetooth). It ain’t a lot, so if you’re serious about your setup, you’re going to want to invest in a solid USB hub of some description.<\/p>\n

Generally, though, build quality, very good. Aesthetics, top-tier. Expandable, internals excellent. Cooling, a bit of a swing and a miss in some cases. I\/O, eugh. But the performance, now that is the interesting bit. And let’s face it, it kind of needs to be for the price (\u00a31,350 in the UK, $1,439 in the US with a hefty discount at time of writing).<\/p>\n

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