**The HX90: A PC with Unreliable Performance and Poor Execution**

We recently had the opportunity to put the HX90 through its paces, testing it out in various benchmarks and seeing how it fared. The first test we ran was Fortnite at 1080p with DX11 low settings. The results were underwhelming, as the HX90 averaged only 81 frames per second (fps), with some extreme hitches when turning corners or aiming the camera at new models and textures. While this is enough performance headroom that firefights would mostly remain playable, it's still a concern for gamers who rely on smooth visuals.

Despite the low settings, the HX90 struggled to maintain a consistent frame rate, averaging only 37 fps in our combat-free test area. This puts the HX90 just above the Phantom Canyon Nux G7, which averaged 1165G7 at the same test. This is somewhat disappointing, considering that the 5700G averaged an impressive 102 fps in this test, and the 5600G averaged a respectable 94 fps.

However, when we switched to Fortnite's experimental performance mode, the HX90's performance improved significantly, with an average of 131 fps. This was still not enough to keep up with the 5700G, which averaged a head-turning 169 fps at the same test. The 5600G also performed well, averaging 155 fps.

**Rainbow Six Siege Benchmark**

The Rainbow Six Siege benchmark is another demanding test that pushes even the most powerful GPUs to their limits. We ran it at 1080p with very high settings, which is a tall order for most IGPs. Despite being perhaps the least demanding CPU and GPU benchmark, the HX90 still struggled to maintain a playable frame rate, averaging only 45 fps with a 37% low frame rate below what we'd consider acceptable for a fast-paced game like Rainbow Six Siege. Dropping settings or render resolution would be necessary to support the frame rate.

The 5200G averaged a respectable 29 frames per second at this test, while the 1165G7 pulled ahead with an impressive 50 fps. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was another test that the HX90 struggled with, averaging only 67 fps in 1080p medium settings. This is still better than some other IGPs we've tested, but it's not enough to make up for the poor frame time consistency and frequent hitches.

**The Bottom Line**

So, what does this mean for consumers? The main reason to not buy the HX90 is because of the company's demonstrated unreliability with liquid metal cooling. This is a major concern that goes beyond just performance or price; it speaks to the company's ability to manufacture and support their products.

As a consumer, it ultimately comes down to a product-level decision. While the chassis itself seems okay for what it is, the execution of the HX90 was extremely poor, with odd assembly and a confusing marketing strategy that uses security screws as a tamper-resistant mechanism. This doesn't make sense, and it's clear that the company didn't put much thought into how they would implement these features.

If you're considering buying the HX90, there are some numbers to keep in mind: it's too expensive for the performance it offers, and the motherboard is still ITX-sized, which makes it easy to build a comparable system yourself. You could also buy a pre-built mini-ITX PC that's similar in size but more cost-effective.

One potential upside of the HX90 is its compact design, thanks to an external power brick. This means that you can mount the PC on the back of a monitor, which might be seen as a cool feature by some users. However, this is not unique to the HX90, and other manufacturers offer similar designs.

Overall, we wouldn't recommend the HX90 based on its performance and execution issues. Instead, consider building your own system or purchasing a pre-built mini-ITX PC that offers better value for your money.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis company shouldn't be allowed within a mile of liquid metal it's all over the interior of the chassis of their mini pre-built computer and the best part is that there's not even liquid metal on the cpu it's just all over everything else it's on the motherboard it's on the chassis it's on the fan it's perfect for eventually causing a short circuit somewhere liquid metal is a fantastic conductor it's really good at conducting it's also good at conducting electricity that is and all it takes is one drop of it to lodge itself between the ball grid array of the soc to blow up the whole system especially because the parts soldered so you're never going to be able to fix it but that's not even the best part mini's forum which on its website claims that it quote provides people with big fun and much convenience and offers unparalled reliability along with listening to constructive suggest jones actually sent us two units and said that it would have liquid metal between the cpu and the heatsink and neither one of them did and by the way the one that jay's two cents got from mini's form also didn't have liquid metal between the cpu and the heatsink so this is clearly a problem the systems they sent out to press don't match the marketing don't match what they even told press if they can't get it right for us we have no reason to believe they can get it right for you for everybody else so it was all for marketing and removing the heatsink proves this simply and easily enough but considering that it was spattered all over the walls and the interior shell of the chassis it's probably best they stay off the syringe unless they want to make like remake terminator with the liquid metal terminator in which case it's it's a great gruesome murder scene for one of those before that this video is brought to you by evga's new keyboard evga's new z20 and z15 rgb optical mechanical gaming keyboards have abundant rgb leds and programmable macro keys on the left side of the keyboard they also have a sensor to detect and turn on the leds when you're in front of the keyboard and turn them off when distant offering a unique feature for keywords the keyboard claims a 0.5 millisecond response time and 100 million keystroke lifespan learn more at the link in the description below the worst part of this whole thing is that we actually had a neutral to positive review lined up for the hx90 but the company worked its absolute hardest to slowly chisel it away piece by piece until all that was left was this the bug bear of incompetence somnambulently meandering through the most basic requirement of making sure the chief marketing point is actually somewhere in the product we had filmed everything but we've scrapped it all because as we got further into the device we learned it was getting worse and worse in our first tear down we discovered liquid metal all over the chassis with dots scattered around the motherboard as if liquid metal was sprayed out of the rear end of a hippo at the chassis for this case and that was before we knew it was supposed to have liquid metal again it didn't at least not under the cpu like technically because it had liquid metal just not how it's normally used we stopped though and we requested another sample we also asked the company why as in why is there liquid metal an electrically conductive material all over the pcb for this motherboard waiting to drip into two contacts or pads somewhere and the company said oops and that was pretty much the recap of it so they sent out a second one the company apologized for wasting an enormous amount of our time this is probably the most time we've ever had wasted by a company on any singular review and it gets worse we'll get into that uh because we had already spent 40 hours of staff time testing it at this point poor went out for patrick who unfortunately sharpies but same idea had to deal with the testing process not once but twice for this device and both times we found out that it wasn't as marketed and the problem is this with liquid metal it's not so simple as just taking it apart to verify that it's there because once you've done that all the testing is going to be basically invalid we could reapply the liquid metal ourselves it would be no problem if all we wanted to do was test the thermals but the application of liquid metal is special it takes a an extreme amount of care it takes a lot of experience to do it right and that's part of the test so we need it to be completely assembled never taken apart before especially by us where we'll fix their problems by accident even apparently because they're that bad we need it to be assembled because otherwise we don't know if their liquid metal application is horrible all it takes is a microscopic dot uh well either one to short something which they're working on they're trying their best or two to have an extreme hot spot on the silicon so we've done a lot of work with liquid metal in the past and you need to apply it to both sides of one the heatsink and the soc i imagine that what i'm saying is new information from mini's form at this point because i can't trust them to express any level of competence in their product from what we've seen in the past week so perhaps they're taking notes but you need to apply it to both sides i'm sorry if this is repeat information for the rest of you and it needs to be evenly spread on both surfaces it shouldn't be a pool of liquid it should be an extremely thin film on both sides because the surface tension of them will bring them together and form that good bond if it's not done exactly as i've just described it will not work you'll have at least one core at 100 degrees celsius while the rest are maybe fine and you can end up with delta's core decor of upwards of 40 50 degrees this is obviously terrible and is exactly why it takes a lot of care to apply liquid metal to something anyway all that aside we were willing to give minis form a second chance and in fact we did we didn't get on camera right away and start talking about how much they screwed up the first one because the company expressed its mistakes apologized and said it would send a second one this time with liquid metal and said by the way sorry we don't know how to use the reply all button and emails but we fixed it our apologies so we said okay we'll start working on testing it we'll work on the second one mention it but it won't be the crux of the review and then we tested the second one for a week and then they emailed us after we said hey we would encourage you to be honest is there liquid metal on this one not telling them that the thermals look basically the same something seems fishy and they replied and said yes and then they replied a few days later and said no our bad anyway it's clear at this point that liquid metal should not be on the marketing sheet for this product even if they work towards putting it on here properly for consumers our concern is that it's going to end up killing parts because they're doing it completely carelessly a liquid metal can be done well and it's a fantastic tool especially if used as an end user where you have total control of the process but we can't trust them to use it that leaves the rest of the computer though if they drop the liquid metal marketing and they don't use it then perhaps there's something here that's worth buying it's an overpriced mini itx box that sort of skirts its way to looking a lot smaller than it is in reality because there's an external power brick so you've got two things to carry around and that's why it can look as small as it does but maybe there's still value there if none of that makes you say never mind i actually don't want that and so we'll look at some of that patrick unfortunately did generate something like 20 or 22 charts for this originally when we found out that a significant component of the product was missing and so then he retested it and generated about that many again and we're going to look at some of them but we won't be using them all because our end conclusion is very simple and we'll give it to you early which is that we don't trust minnie's form at this point to do just about anything competently because they had two chances to do something right and they had many weeks to correct themselves in both instances before we ever got to filming if they can't do it right for us we don't think they can do it right for you this is kind of like this it's kind of the main thing for your product is making sure the top thing on your page is as advertised and that you don't make it so that it's capable of self-destructing actually it's a feature with some products but of that let's get into some of the thermal tests and at least look at that aspect to see how they did with it with thermal paste and maybe we'll look at some games i don't know it's we'll look at some charts and then we'll tell you in the conclusion again not to buy it here's the spec sheet the minis form elite mini hx90 is a 750 people pc when bare bones minimally anyway for the price meaning that you would provide the ram and the ssd pricing goes up to a thousand dollars for the 32 gigabyte ram and 512 gigabyte ssd variant the fact that the company's website says orders from september 1st are already being processed makes us curious as to whether they fixed the liquid metal issue in time for those customers and if they didn't you should at least return it because it's false advertising in the most literal sense it's that simple the chassis is mostly easy to disassemble except for maladroit handling of some points mini's forum markets this as user serviceable and upgradable that's somewhat true it's a mini itx form factor board despite having a soldered cpu and needing a barrel plug for the power but it's technically somewhat replaceable it's also sold as a bare bones kit so clearly they intend for you to install your own ssd and ram unfortunately they are also using tamper resistant security torx screws the ones with a little bump in the middle which companies only use when they want to keep someone out of a device sure torx itself is arguably better than maybe phillips in some instances but security torques adds actually zero value to the integrity of the screw and only stands to make it one step more annoying to open this is an odd dichotomy of worlds the hx90 is based around an amd r9 5900 hx an 8 core 16 thread laptop apu with eight core vega graphics on board these specs are equivalent to a 360 socketed r750 700g apu only in the spec sheet in writing only but they don't actually match in performance we'll look at that both parts have a listed max of 4.6 gigahertz but the 5900hx has a base clock of 3.3 gigahertz and a default tdp of 45 watts which dictates how much power it's pulling when it's boosting the 5700g has a base clock of 3.8 and a tdp of 65 watts when left default the unit that was sent to us included 16 gigabytes or 2x8 gigabytes of dual channel kinston 3200 cl22 ddr4 memory and a kinston 512 gigabyte pcie nvme ssd that particular configuration is 830 dollars for a pre-order and it's more if it's not pre-ordered here are some fun quotes from the hx90 product page just in case the other marketing wasn't enough to sell you on it quote the pc body is made from carbon fiber materials with grain designs on the surface the main structural parts of the hx90 and the black part of the fuselage are injection molded with carbon fiber composite materials as a high performance and recyclable new material wait wait a minute new anyway mini's form continues carbon fiber is not only rich in texture and delicate in hand gross but also very high strength uh have good thermal conductivity and corrosion resistance which will be your sturdy gaming hardware i don't know which where where is it we can't tell you whether or not plastic technically contains carbon fibers maybe you can let us know in the comments but we can tell you that the woven texture is just molded in and that the patented ave hot soldering iron test melts a hole right through it if there is some sort of carbon fiber reinforcing the plastic it was a waste of money you'd be better off with dbrand and at least when they insult you it's part of the experience frequency validation has the cpu core at about 3 600 megahertz over the course of testing with a few spikes to 4 300 megahertz before load ramps sustained this 3.6 gigahertz number is what limits performance so heavily in applications and in the gaming tests coming up the first thermal plot quickly looks at horizontal versus vertical orientation we did this since the vertical stand theoretically could block some of the ventilation and we wanted to see if it affected it the end difference was basically zero we saw maximally a three percent increase in fan rpm when left to auto control but the thermal difference in auto or manual configurations was negligible it just didn't matter the system was generally at about 77 degrees celsius for cpu temperature or 64 for gpu assuming we can trust that diode we haven't worked with the apu gfx diode before but that's what it gave us this was under a combined cpu plus gpu workload so it's fine it's not special but it's okay the initial load period is governed by the cpu edc limit hitting 100 which is directly replaced later by the apu stapm limit or the skin temperature aware power management probe this is a limit designed around laptops so hitting 100 of this for the duration of test but ends up backing down the frequency this supplies a hard 45 watt package power limit and none of the thermal throttling flags monitored by hardware info ever activated during this test the only throttle flags that were activated were gpu power limits and that went into effect when the stapm element hit 100 this limit is useless for this kind of device it is designed for laptops where you have as the name would indicate a skin temperature limitation if the laptop is literally on someone's lap or if it's pushing any amount of heat into where the wrists might be on the keyboard so here it's just limiting us in a way that's not necessary and our testing of various knucks and igps earlier this year we established a limited set of game tests suitable for lower end hardware the results on these charts apply to full systems not individual components so for example we paired the 5700g with our standard cpu test bench hardware including 3200 cl 14 ram while the hx90 was tested with the included 3200 tl22 ram the chart subtitles will list the normal memory spec for the other parts but obviously it's different for the hx90 we'll start off with fortnite at 1080p with dx11 low settings the hx90 ran at 81 fps average in our combat free test area enough performance headroom that firefights would mostly remain playable however we did experience some extreme hitches generally when turning the corner and aiming the camera at a new model and texture but they were infrequent enough that even the 0.1 low is averaged out to 37 fps this puts the hx 90 just above the phantom canyon nux 1165 g7 on the chart which is a somewhat disappointing start compared to the 5700 g that one averaged 102 fps in this test about a 27 uplift the 5600g wasn't far behind at 94 fps average and so the hx 90 is obviously not really that close to those switching to fortnite's experimental performance mode next we see the hx90s performance boost up to 131 fps average but the 5700g was 29 the head at 169 fps average and the more cost-effective and lower power 5600g manage 155 fps the rainbow six siege benchmark is a test borrowed from our cpu suite we run it at 1080p with very high settings which is a tall order for most of the igps we've tested thus far despite being perhaps the least demanding cpu and gpu benchmark we run the hx90 averaged 45 fps with a 37 fps one percent low below what we'd consider playable for a fast paced game dropping settings or render resolution would be a good idea here to support the frame rate and the 5200g average 29 to head at 58 fps and the 1165 g7 pulled ahead as well at 50 fps counter strike global offensive we're moving back to playable settings with cs go at 1080p medium with the hx90 averaging 102 fps in this test the 5700g maintains approximately the same advantage 25 percent in this instance at 126 fps average while the 5600g averaged 119 fps the hx90 maintains an acceptable average of 67 fps in rocket league but with poor frame time consistency leading to a 16 fps 0.1 low the hitching here is problematic in a game that's this competitive and requires such a high frame rate you're going to feel that hitch most of the systems we've tested had some frame time issues including the 5600g and 5700g with their tied and relatively high average frame rate of 83. so that's it for the hx90 just like we said earlier at this point the main reason to not buy it is because the company has demonstrated to us that uh it's not to be trusted with liquid metal and that's the key marketing point so it's not even about how the company's behaving otherwise it really just comes it's product level it sounds like it's maybe company ethos level or something but it's really not a reason for not feeling comfortable getting behind this product in any way as a consumer it comes down to a product level decision which is the stuff we talked about earlier don't need to go through it again if you skip that part go watch the beginning because it's basically the conclusion so there's some tests for you if you do want to buy it you've got numbers the chassis seems okay for what it is honestly it's just the rest of this thing the execution was extremely poor the assembly is odd and at odds with the upgradeable and serviceable marketing where they're using security screws as a tamper resistant screw that it just it doesn't make any sense it seems like they picked something that other people used without really thinking about maybe why and what minis forum would want to do instead so we're very confused by the company the product is kind of okay if you can look past the major issues we talked about in the beginning of this video uh it is however too expensive for the performance you get and the motherboard is still itx like in size so really it you could build this it's a mini itx pc other people make them if you don't want to build it you can buy one pre-built that's totally fine but it's many itx pc with the power brick external so that it appears smaller than it is in reality uh the only maybe upside there is that since the power brick is external you can mount this to the back of a monitor that's kind of cool but you can do that with other boxes too so this one is not one for us that's sort of the short version of it thanks for watching subscribe for more as always you can go to store.cameratexas.net or patreon.comgamersnexus if you'd like to help us out directly and we'll see you all next timethis company shouldn't be allowed within a mile of liquid metal it's all over the interior of the chassis of their mini pre-built computer and the best part is that there's not even liquid metal on the cpu it's just all over everything else it's on the motherboard it's on the chassis it's on the fan it's perfect for eventually causing a short circuit somewhere liquid metal is a fantastic conductor it's really good at conducting it's also good at conducting electricity that is and all it takes is one drop of it to lodge itself between the ball grid array of the soc to blow up the whole system especially because the parts soldered so you're never going to be able to fix it but that's not even the best part mini's forum which on its website claims that it quote provides people with big fun and much convenience and offers unparalled reliability along with listening to constructive suggest jones actually sent us two units and said that it would have liquid metal between the cpu and the heatsink and neither one of them did and by the way the one that jay's two cents got from mini's form also didn't have liquid metal between the cpu and the heatsink so this is clearly a problem the systems they sent out to press don't match the marketing don't match what they even told press if they can't get it right for us we have no reason to believe they can get it right for you for everybody else so it was all for marketing and removing the heatsink proves this simply and easily enough but considering that it was spattered all over the walls and the interior shell of the chassis it's probably best they stay off the syringe unless they want to make like remake terminator with the liquid metal terminator in which case it's it's a great gruesome murder scene for one of those before that this video is brought to you by evga's new keyboard evga's new z20 and z15 rgb optical mechanical gaming keyboards have abundant rgb leds and programmable macro keys on the left side of the keyboard they also have a sensor to detect and turn on the leds when you're in front of the keyboard and turn them off when distant offering a unique feature for keywords the keyboard claims a 0.5 millisecond response time and 100 million keystroke lifespan learn more at the link in the description below the worst part of this whole thing is that we actually had a neutral to positive review lined up for the hx90 but the company worked its absolute hardest to slowly chisel it away piece by piece until all that was left was this the bug bear of incompetence somnambulently meandering through the most basic requirement of making sure the chief marketing point is actually somewhere in the product we had filmed everything but we've scrapped it all because as we got further into the device we learned it was getting worse and worse in our first tear down we discovered liquid metal all over the chassis with dots scattered around the motherboard as if liquid metal was sprayed out of the rear end of a hippo at the chassis for this case and that was before we knew it was supposed to have liquid metal again it didn't at least not under the cpu like technically because it had liquid metal just not how it's normally used we stopped though and we requested another sample we also asked the company why as in why is there liquid metal an electrically conductive material all over the pcb for this motherboard waiting to drip into two contacts or pads somewhere and the company said oops and that was pretty much the recap of it so they sent out a second one the company apologized for wasting an enormous amount of our time this is probably the most time we've ever had wasted by a company on any singular review and it gets worse we'll get into that uh because we had already spent 40 hours of staff time testing it at this point poor went out for patrick who unfortunately sharpies but same idea had to deal with the testing process not once but twice for this device and both times we found out that it wasn't as marketed and the problem is this with liquid metal it's not so simple as just taking it apart to verify that it's there because once you've done that all the testing is going to be basically invalid we could reapply the liquid metal ourselves it would be no problem if all we wanted to do was test the thermals but the application of liquid metal is special it takes a an extreme amount of care it takes a lot of experience to do it right and that's part of the test so we need it to be completely assembled never taken apart before especially by us where we'll fix their problems by accident even apparently because they're that bad we need it to be assembled because otherwise we don't know if their liquid metal application is horrible all it takes is a microscopic dot uh well either one to short something which they're working on they're trying their best or two to have an extreme hot spot on the silicon so we've done a lot of work with liquid metal in the past and you need to apply it to both sides of one the heatsink and the soc i imagine that what i'm saying is new information from mini's form at this point because i can't trust them to express any level of competence in their product from what we've seen in the past week so perhaps they're taking notes but you need to apply it to both sides i'm sorry if this is repeat information for the rest of you and it needs to be evenly spread on both surfaces it shouldn't be a pool of liquid it should be an extremely thin film on both sides because the surface tension of them will bring them together and form that good bond if it's not done exactly as i've just described it will not work you'll have at least one core at 100 degrees celsius while the rest are maybe fine and you can end up with delta's core decor of upwards of 40 50 degrees this is obviously terrible and is exactly why it takes a lot of care to apply liquid metal to something anyway all that aside we were willing to give minis form a second chance and in fact we did we didn't get on camera right away and start talking about how much they screwed up the first one because the company expressed its mistakes apologized and said it would send a second one this time with liquid metal and said by the way sorry we don't know how to use the reply all button and emails but we fixed it our apologies so we said okay we'll start working on testing it we'll work on the second one mention it but it won't be the crux of the review and then we tested the second one for a week and then they emailed us after we said hey we would encourage you to be honest is there liquid metal on this one not telling them that the thermals look basically the same something seems fishy and they replied and said yes and then they replied a few days later and said no our bad anyway it's clear at this point that liquid metal should not be on the marketing sheet for this product even if they work towards putting it on here properly for consumers our concern is that it's going to end up killing parts because they're doing it completely carelessly a liquid metal can be done well and it's a fantastic tool especially if used as an end user where you have total control of the process but we can't trust them to use it that leaves the rest of the computer though if they drop the liquid metal marketing and they don't use it then perhaps there's something here that's worth buying it's an overpriced mini itx box that sort of skirts its way to looking a lot smaller than it is in reality because there's an external power brick so you've got two things to carry around and that's why it can look as small as it does but maybe there's still value there if none of that makes you say never mind i actually don't want that and so we'll look at some of that patrick unfortunately did generate something like 20 or 22 charts for this originally when we found out that a significant component of the product was missing and so then he retested it and generated about that many again and we're going to look at some of them but we won't be using them all because our end conclusion is very simple and we'll give it to you early which is that we don't trust minnie's form at this point to do just about anything competently because they had two chances to do something right and they had many weeks to correct themselves in both instances before we ever got to filming if they can't do it right for us we don't think they can do it right for you this is kind of like this it's kind of the main thing for your product is making sure the top thing on your page is as advertised and that you don't make it so that it's capable of self-destructing actually it's a feature with some products but of that let's get into some of the thermal tests and at least look at that aspect to see how they did with it with thermal paste and maybe we'll look at some games i don't know it's we'll look at some charts and then we'll tell you in the conclusion again not to buy it here's the spec sheet the minis form elite mini hx90 is a 750 people pc when bare bones minimally anyway for the price meaning that you would provide the ram and the ssd pricing goes up to a thousand dollars for the 32 gigabyte ram and 512 gigabyte ssd variant the fact that the company's website says orders from september 1st are already being processed makes us curious as to whether they fixed the liquid metal issue in time for those customers and if they didn't you should at least return it because it's false advertising in the most literal sense it's that simple the chassis is mostly easy to disassemble except for maladroit handling of some points mini's forum markets this as user serviceable and upgradable that's somewhat true it's a mini itx form factor board despite having a soldered cpu and needing a barrel plug for the power but it's technically somewhat replaceable it's also sold as a bare bones kit so clearly they intend for you to install your own ssd and ram unfortunately they are also using tamper resistant security torx screws the ones with a little bump in the middle which companies only use when they want to keep someone out of a device sure torx itself is arguably better than maybe phillips in some instances but security torques adds actually zero value to the integrity of the screw and only stands to make it one step more annoying to open this is an odd dichotomy of worlds the hx90 is based around an amd r9 5900 hx an 8 core 16 thread laptop apu with eight core vega graphics on board these specs are equivalent to a 360 socketed r750 700g apu only in the spec sheet in writing only but they don't actually match in performance we'll look at that both parts have a listed max of 4.6 gigahertz but the 5900hx has a base clock of 3.3 gigahertz and a default tdp of 45 watts which dictates how much power it's pulling when it's boosting the 5700g has a base clock of 3.8 and a tdp of 65 watts when left default the unit that was sent to us included 16 gigabytes or 2x8 gigabytes of dual channel kinston 3200 cl22 ddr4 memory and a kinston 512 gigabyte pcie nvme ssd that particular configuration is 830 dollars for a pre-order and it's more if it's not pre-ordered here are some fun quotes from the hx90 product page just in case the other marketing wasn't enough to sell you on it quote the pc body is made from carbon fiber materials with grain designs on the surface the main structural parts of the hx90 and the black part of the fuselage are injection molded with carbon fiber composite materials as a high performance and recyclable new material wait wait a minute new anyway mini's form continues carbon fiber is not only rich in texture and delicate in hand gross but also very high strength uh have good thermal conductivity and corrosion resistance which will be your sturdy gaming hardware i don't know which where where is it we can't tell you whether or not plastic technically contains carbon fibers maybe you can let us know in the comments but we can tell you that the woven texture is just molded in and that the patented ave hot soldering iron test melts a hole right through it if there is some sort of carbon fiber reinforcing the plastic it was a waste of money you'd be better off with dbrand and at least when they insult you it's part of the experience frequency validation has the cpu core at about 3 600 megahertz over the course of testing with a few spikes to 4 300 megahertz before load ramps sustained this 3.6 gigahertz number is what limits performance so heavily in applications and in the gaming tests coming up the first thermal plot quickly looks at horizontal versus vertical orientation we did this since the vertical stand theoretically could block some of the ventilation and we wanted to see if it affected it the end difference was basically zero we saw maximally a three percent increase in fan rpm when left to auto control but the thermal difference in auto or manual configurations was negligible it just didn't matter the system was generally at about 77 degrees celsius for cpu temperature or 64 for gpu assuming we can trust that diode we haven't worked with the apu gfx diode before but that's what it gave us this was under a combined cpu plus gpu workload so it's fine it's not special but it's okay the initial load period is governed by the cpu edc limit hitting 100 which is directly replaced later by the apu stapm limit or the skin temperature aware power management probe this is a limit designed around laptops so hitting 100 of this for the duration of test but ends up backing down the frequency this supplies a hard 45 watt package power limit and none of the thermal throttling flags monitored by hardware info ever activated during this test the only throttle flags that were activated were gpu power limits and that went into effect when the stapm element hit 100 this limit is useless for this kind of device it is designed for laptops where you have as the name would indicate a skin temperature limitation if the laptop is literally on someone's lap or if it's pushing any amount of heat into where the wrists might be on the keyboard so here it's just limiting us in a way that's not necessary and our testing of various knucks and igps earlier this year we established a limited set of game tests suitable for lower end hardware the results on these charts apply to full systems not individual components so for example we paired the 5700g with our standard cpu test bench hardware including 3200 cl 14 ram while the hx90 was tested with the included 3200 tl22 ram the chart subtitles will list the normal memory spec for the other parts but obviously it's different for the hx90 we'll start off with fortnite at 1080p with dx11 low settings the hx90 ran at 81 fps average in our combat free test area enough performance headroom that firefights would mostly remain playable however we did experience some extreme hitches generally when turning the corner and aiming the camera at a new model and texture but they were infrequent enough that even the 0.1 low is averaged out to 37 fps this puts the hx 90 just above the phantom canyon nux 1165 g7 on the chart which is a somewhat disappointing start compared to the 5700 g that one averaged 102 fps in this test about a 27 uplift the 5600g wasn't far behind at 94 fps average and so the hx 90 is obviously not really that close to those switching to fortnite's experimental performance mode next we see the hx90s performance boost up to 131 fps average but the 5700g was 29 the head at 169 fps average and the more cost-effective and lower power 5600g manage 155 fps the rainbow six siege benchmark is a test borrowed from our cpu suite we run it at 1080p with very high settings which is a tall order for most of the igps we've tested thus far despite being perhaps the least demanding cpu and gpu benchmark we run the hx90 averaged 45 fps with a 37 fps one percent low below what we'd consider playable for a fast paced game dropping settings or render resolution would be a good idea here to support the frame rate and the 5200g average 29 to head at 58 fps and the 1165 g7 pulled ahead as well at 50 fps counter strike global offensive we're moving back to playable settings with cs go at 1080p medium with the hx90 averaging 102 fps in this test the 5700g maintains approximately the same advantage 25 percent in this instance at 126 fps average while the 5600g averaged 119 fps the hx90 maintains an acceptable average of 67 fps in rocket league but with poor frame time consistency leading to a 16 fps 0.1 low the hitching here is problematic in a game that's this competitive and requires such a high frame rate you're going to feel that hitch most of the systems we've tested had some frame time issues including the 5600g and 5700g with their tied and relatively high average frame rate of 83. so that's it for the hx90 just like we said earlier at this point the main reason to not buy it is because the company has demonstrated to us that uh it's not to be trusted with liquid metal and that's the key marketing point so it's not even about how the company's behaving otherwise it really just comes it's product level it sounds like it's maybe company ethos level or something but it's really not a reason for not feeling comfortable getting behind this product in any way as a consumer it comes down to a product level decision which is the stuff we talked about earlier don't need to go through it again if you skip that part go watch the beginning because it's basically the conclusion so there's some tests for you if you do want to buy it you've got numbers the chassis seems okay for what it is honestly it's just the rest of this thing the execution was extremely poor the assembly is odd and at odds with the upgradeable and serviceable marketing where they're using security screws as a tamper resistant screw that it just it doesn't make any sense it seems like they picked something that other people used without really thinking about maybe why and what minis forum would want to do instead so we're very confused by the company the product is kind of okay if you can look past the major issues we talked about in the beginning of this video uh it is however too expensive for the performance you get and the motherboard is still itx like in size so really it you could build this it's a mini itx pc other people make them if you don't want to build it you can buy one pre-built that's totally fine but it's many itx pc with the power brick external so that it appears smaller than it is in reality uh the only maybe upside there is that since the power brick is external you can mount this to the back of a monitor that's kind of cool but you can do that with other boxes too so this one is not one for us that's sort of the short version of it thanks for watching subscribe for more as always you can go to store.cameratexas.net or patreon.comgamersnexus if you'd like to help us out directly and we'll see you all next time\n"