- Minister MS-A2 fits the hand, but it flexes harder than most full size desks
- Dual ports of 10gbe and 16 nuclei: this box is built for serious jobs, no games
- The welded CPU avoids update, but that is not a concern in this case
Compact systems have long been seen as little power, but the MS series of Minister changes that notion.
The company’s last flagship, the mini PC MS-A2, uses the Ryzen 9955HX or 7945HX chips of AMD that increase to 5.4GHz and get up to 100W, taking advantage of the desktop territory while retaining thermal efficiency.
With a chassis that measures only 196 x 189 x 48 mm, this mini PC comes with welded CPU, which avoids future updates, but incorporates an integrated cooling to maintain performance at high power levels.
A Networking King
Networks, often a last moment idea on compact PCs, is an outstanding feature in the MS-A2. Designed with advanced use cases, such as starting laboratories, media servers and edge implementations in mind, this device admits 10gbe dual through SFP+ and 2.5gbe dual LAN.
The Minister MS-A2 presents three slots with NVME capacity, including two M.2 2280 slots and a bay compatible with U.2. Despite losing a M.2 slot compared to the previous MS-A1, the device still offers up to 15 TB of rapid storage through the U.2 and NVME slots, together with Raid’s support.
Support for discreet GPUs, although limited to low profile models through a PCIE 4.0 X8 slot, add credibility to its work station claims.
System design includes bifurcation support, allowing advanced users to execute computer cards or media accelerators for tasks such as plex transcoding or AI inference. Matter with up to 96 GB of RAM DDR5, this configuration places the MS-A2 in severe containment as the best work station in its size category.
The Barebone version of the MS-A2 costs $ 839, while the 64 GB version of RAM and a 1TB SSD is priced at $ 1,103 for US customers.
Minister has a history of thrust limits, with models such as MS-01 that support the high-end mobile CPUs of Intel, such as the Core I9-13900H, and offer characteristics such as three M.2 slots, a SATA bay and a 10 GBE network.
The MS -02 continued this trend with a disconcerting variety of options, including four Ethernet ports, two of which are 10gbe, and support for up to four SSD.
Through Videocardz
