Minisforum launches 0.47L Wildcat Lake mini PC
© Minisforum Minisforum has launched another mini PC based on Intel Wildcat Lake. The Elite Mini M2 Air-304 starts at $263 as a barebone system and is expected to ship in early September. This is currently a discounted price, down from the listed $329 regular price.
The system uses the Intel Core 3 processor 304, an Intel 18A chip with one Performance-core and four Low Power Efficient-cores. This gives it five cores and five threads, with a maximum boost clock of 4.3 GHz. Intel officially rates the processor at 15W base power and 35W maximum turbo power, although Minisforum runs it at 28W in Balanced Mode.
Core 3 304 with single-channel DDR5
Wildcat Lake supports only one memory channel, and the M2 Air-304 has a single DDR5 SO-DIMM/CSODIMM slot supporting up to 64GB at DDR5-6400. Storage comes from one M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, while a TF card slot provides another storage option. The Core 3 304 also includes Intel Graphics with one Xe-core and a 15 TOPS NPU.
The 0.47-liter system measures 112 × 112 × 37.15 mm and weighs 440 grams. Minisforum equipped it with two 2.5GbE ports, two HDMI 2.0 outputs, USB4 at 40Gbps, another 10Gbps USB-C port and three USB-A ports. Both rear USB-C connections support 65W Power Delivery input, so the machine can run from a compatible USB-C power supply instead of its DC adapter. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4 are also supported.
$263 barebone, $559 configured
The $263 model ships without memory or storage. Minisforum also lists a $559 configuration with 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD . Interestingly, the company’s specification table lists configurable SSD capacities as 1TB and 2TB, so the 500GB entry on the store may be an error or a separate configuration not reflected in the specifications. Both versions currently list early September shipping.
© MInisforum This is not the first Core 3 304 mini PC we have covered. Beelink previously showed its EQi 304 with UFS 3.1 storage, while BOSGAME announced the $380 E6 ECO with 12GB LPDDR5X. We also covered Lenovo’s ThinkCentre Neo 50q Gen 7 yesterday, although that system goes up to the faster six-core Core 7 350.
Sources: Minisforum
