Minisforum Neptune HX99G review

Mini PCs have steadily gotten better in the last year or two and the Minisforum HX99G is a prime example of that. This machine packs in a 6th-gen Ryzen 9 CPU, a dedicated Radeon RX 6600M GPU, DDR5 RAM and dual Gen 4 NVMe slots, all starting at just over $1,000.

Better yet, this PC packs a punch given its slim design. The quiet cooling system barely registers to my ears, especially when I set this up as a living room console. You can upgrade the RAM and SSDs at your leisure, and you have a lot of ports to choose from (including four display outputs).

As you’ll see in this Minisforum HX99G review, I love almost everything about this mini gaming PC. From the looks to the performance and low noise, I have no trouble recommending this to anyone looking for an affordable gaming machine.

Minisforum Neptune HX99G review: Price and availability

At time of writing, the HX99G sits at under $1,000 for the 16GB/512GB variant. If you go the barebones route you can get one for as low as $759, but then you have to provide your own RAM and storage. All HX99G models come with a Ryzen 9 6900HX and Radeon RX 6600M. You can upgrade the storage and RAM if you wish.

Minisforum might raise the price again in the future, as the rates I saw while writing this review appear to be sale prices. It seems that the MSRP of the base model comes in closer to $1,219. This is still a fair deal, as you would be hard-pressed to find an equivalent gaming laptop for the same price. A custom-built PC might come close to that, but you likely wouldn’t get the Ryzen 9 6900HX’s power.

Minisforum Neptune HX99G review: Design

The HX99G sports a subtle yet aggressive design, especially if you use the included stand. It has some carbon fiber styling, a faux honeycomb plastic, and plenty of angles to give it the impression that it means business. I quite like what this PC has to offer in the looks department, since it sets itself apart from the typical cube I’ve often received for review.

With its gaming prowess, Minisforum needed to bulk up the HX99G to allow for the excellent cooling system. That makes for a chassis that’s nearly eight by eight inches and almost three inches thick. Make no mistake, the HX99G is a lot larger than most mini PCs you’ll find — weighing nearly three pounds — but with that extra horsepower under the hood, it makes a lot of sense.

Minisforum Neptune HX99G review: Ports and upgradeability

One of the HX99G’s biggest strengths is its port selection. Up front, you get a USB-A 3.2 Gen1 port along with a USB-C 3.2 Gen1. This is also where you’ll find the power button as well as the 3.5mm headphone and microphone jacks.

Around back is where the HX99G starts to show it’s serious. There are two more USB-A 3.2 Gen1 ports, plus a USB-A 3.2 Gen2 and two USB4 Type-C. The latter can serve as two display outputs, along with the dual HDMI ports. That means up to four monitors on this one machine. There’s also a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet jack.

Given its size, the HX99G comes stacked with ports, but crack it open and you’ll find even more to love — once you get through the annoying disassembly process. (You have to peel off the two rubber strips to access the chassis screws, which weakens the strips’ adhesive.) Inside are two SODIMM RAM slots that support DDR5, up to 64GB in total. There are also two 2280 Gen 4 NVMe slots that support up to 2TB drives each.

Minisforum warns you upfront not to mess with the cooler on the CPU and GPU unless you know what you’re doing with liquid metal, so I don’t recommend taking it apart.

Minisforum Neptune HX99G review: Performance

A killer price-to-performance ratio is the HX99G’s claim to fame.. With the Ryzen 9 6900HX mobile chip (8 cores/16 threads) and the RX 6600M, also a mobile part, the HX99G certainly has enough power to play just about anything at 1080p high to ultra settings. It can even dabble in some 1440p gaming if you play around with the games’ options.

We put this mini gaming PC through its paces in our lab, and we’ll start with the CPU results.

As you can see, the Ryzen 9 6900HX puts out some serious performance. It can power through the Handbrake transcoding test in just over five minutes, while scoring pretty high on both Geekbench 5 and the newer Geekbench 6.

Following that, let’s take a look at the GPU, starting with the 3DMark suite.

That’s an impressive showing for the HX99G’s GPU. The 6600M is a great graphics chip and certainly flies through synthetic benchmarks. Of course, those don’t tell the whole story, so here are some real-world gaming tests.

A 4K gaming machine the HX99G is not, but it’s a monster at 1080p. In all but the most demanding titles, the 6600M gives more than passable frame rates at 1080p, well exceeding 60 in most cases.

Of course, Metro Exodus and Red Dead Redemption 2 are extremely intensive, so it’s no wonder that the HX99G struggles with them. Still, you can get seriously awesome performance out of this mini PC.

Minisforum Neptune HX99G review: Software

The HX99G ships with Windows 11 Pro, which is great if you intend to use this as a desktop replacement. I encountered no trouble with this setup in the last few months that I’ve had the HX99G, but given the relatively diminutive size, I wanted to set this PC up in my living room as a game console.

So that led me to try HoloISO (Steam OS 3) and ChimeraOS, both of which are Linux distributions meant for couch gaming. The former is actually a version of the Steam Deck’s operating system. Given the AMD GPU, Linux gaming on the HX99G is a great time. I had a blast, just leaning back on my couch with a controller and playing my favorite games.

Granted, you can do something similar with Windows if you set up auto-login and get Steam to auto-launch into Big Picture mode. I tried that, too, but it was not a smooth or seamless experience. I much preferred the Linux route.

That’s the HX99G’s final charm. It’s so flexible with its software given its hardware that you can run whatever OS you want on it and you should be fine.

Minisforum Neptune HX99G review: Verdict

I’m a big fan of the Minisforum HX99G. In fact, it’s difficult to find anything truly wrong with it other than some particular issues with my unit. For example, it seems like the model I received struggles with display output inconsistencies, where it simply won’t output to any monitor from any of the HDMI or USB4 ports. I never did figure out the problem, and I suspect a manufacturing defect is to blame.

Ignore those hopefully one-off issues and the HX99G is a killer value, especially if you jump on the current pricing. I have yet to find anything in this product segment that comes close — the HX99G really is in a league of its own. I have no trouble recommending it to anyone who needs a low-cost gaming PC, especially one that doesn’t take up too much space on a desk or behind a TV.