affordable mini PC with Ryzen 7 5700U. Powerful, quiet and compact

Blackview has released an inexpensive but interesting home computer in a miniature 0.72-liter case. The device received a powerful eight-core Ryzen 7 5700U processor, dual-channel RAM with a supported capacity of up to 64 GB, a modern WiFi 6 module and the ability to simultaneously connect up to 3 SSD drives. I really love such devices, so today you will find a detailed analysis of the new product, all kinds of benchmarks and, of course, my thoughts.

Let's start, as we should, with the base, i.e. technical characteristics. A quick acquaintance with the hardware gives an understanding of the general capabilities and performance.

In general, the computer's characteristics look balanced. A powerful, energy-efficient processor from the Reds, modern connection interfaces, good options for increasing memory (both RAM and storage) and Windows 11 on board.

The cost at the time of writing this review starts from $259 for the low-end configuration. You can view current prices and configurations Here (link is not a referral link).

Video version of the review

Equipment

The computer arrived in its original packaging. The cardboard is medium density, so there are some small wrinkles in the corners, but overall the box did an excellent job of protecting the contents. On the reverse side you can find a description of the configuration and information about the manufacturer. The computer itself can be purchased with different amounts of memory: the basic configuration is 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB SSD, the medium configuration is 16 GB\1TB and the top configuration is 32GB\1TB. As you can see, I have an average configuration.

The standard kit includes: a computer with memory, storage and a pre-installed system, a power supply and power cord, a mount for the back of the monitor, an HDMI cable and a user manual.

Power supply and computer consumption

The compact 19V power supply produces up to 65W. In practice, it turned out that this is power with a decent margin.

• During idle time (for example, a browser page is open), consumption is in the range of 6 – 8 W

• When playing a video or watching Youtube, the consumption is 12 – 15 W

• Video editing in Vegas: 35 – 38 W

• In demanding games (for example, Fortnite) consumption increases to 36 – 42W

• In stress tests, the maximum recorded consumption was 43W

• If the computer is turned off (but the plug remains in the network), then there is also a small consumption of 0.5 – 0.7W. It is present because PowerShare technology is supported. Standby power is supplied to the motherboard and the same USB works even if the computer is turned off, i.e. you can charge your devices

That is, as you can see, the computer consumes a minimum of electricity (especially under light load) and even in 24/7 operation mode it will not greatly affect the payment for electricity. Why a power supply with such a reserve? Well, again – for charging a smartphone via USB, as well as for connecting devices such as external HDDs, hubs and other peripherals.

Appearance, interfaces

MP100 received a plastic case with an original pattern on the top cover, which has built-in RGB backlighting.

The backlight is adjusted from the pre-installed RGB Lighting control application, but here it can be completely disabled. There are several modes: breathing, rainbow and color switching. You can adjust the speed of the effects as well as the brightness.

The backlight is pleasant and visible only in the areas intended for it. It looks interesting and does not interfere even in the dark.

I liked the Rainbow effect most of all, when colors smoothly flow from one to another, changing in a clever sequence.

The size of the computer is miniature. This one will take up absolutely no space on the table, and you can always take it with you, simply by throwing it in your pocket or small purse.

To better understand the dimensions, look at the computer together with an Iphone 12 mini and a 15.6″ Acer laptop.

On the front you can find a power button, an audio output for headphones, as well as connectors for connecting external drives: a pair of USB-C and USB 3.0. The USB-C connectors here are full-fledged with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface and support data transfer at a speed of 10 Gbps, as well as image output at 4K\60 Hz. By the way, the computer can display images simultaneously on 3 screens: via DP, HDMI and USB-C. Moreover, via DP it outputs 4K with a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz, and via HDMI and USB-C it will output 4K with a refresh rate of 60 Hz.

Display Port and HDMI are located on the back side, and here you can also find another USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 connectors. A gigabit LAN port is provided for the Internet.

For the cooling system, we have incoming ventilation holes on the front side and outgoing ventilation holes on the back. Hot air is blown in the opposite direction from the user, and fresh air intake comes from the front and slightly from the base (there is also a grill there).

The base has small silicone feet, as well as a rubber strap that you need to pull when disassembling the computer (after unscrewing the 4 screws in the corners). You may need to disassemble it if you want to increase the amount of RAM or add storage.

Internal organization

Disassembly of the device is carried out in stages. To install an additional 2.5″ HDD or SSD, simply remove the top cover. Here the SATA connector and a niche for the drive open. To cool it, they made a lattice at the base.

You can continue disassembly by unscrewing the SATA connector and the plastic plug. We immediately see 2 slots for RAM, 2 slots for SSD and a WiFi module.

The memory stick in my configuration costs only one: Kinsotin DDR4 3200 MHz with K4AAG085WA-BCWE chips manufactured by Samsung. If you want to get the most out of your computer, then you should go with 32GB at once, then there will be 2 16GB sticks working in dual-channel mode. This will give at least a 10% increase in FPS in games, and the overall performance of the computer will increase. In principle, you can add 16 GB of memory yourself, if available.

The drive used is a 1TB Rayson M2 NVMe SSD drive.

I removed the sticker to look at the chips. And this will improve cooling, since the sticker here is very ordinary. The Tenafe TC 2200 controller works with SSD without DRAM, supports PCIe Gen4 interface, NVMe 1.4 and maximum performance up to 4.8 GB/s. It works in tandem with Kingston FB25608UCY1-32 memory.

We can consider the WiFi module CDV-C9852BE-00 from China Dragon Tecnoljgy on the RTL8852BE chip. It is connected via PCIe and supports Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax, i.e. WiFI 6, as well as Bluetooth 5.2.

Next, you can remove the motherboard and examine the cooling system that is installed on the chipset. The cooler + radiator is quite standard for this type of PC.

On the back of the case we see how the RGB backlight is implemented, we can also notice the WiFi antenna, which is simply glued to the side wall.

Lescott LD7509S5 low noise brushless cooler. It is really quiet and almost silent at low and medium speeds. Even at maximum speed it does not bother you at all, because during operation it does not howl, but rustles slightly.

A copper coin with copper cooling tubes under the fan. It can be seen that the corners of the chipset are not completely closed and, in my opinion, this is not entirely normal. Although I may be wrong, write in the comments who knows about this issue. Purely based on stress tests, I did not find any problems. For the same reason, I did not completely remove the cooling system and change the thermal paste.

Operating system, hardware information

I will never cease to be amazed at the ability of the Chinese to sell computers with a licensed operating system at the price of a bare operating system. Maybe they have special conditions with MS? I don't know, but official Windows 11 Pro with a key built into the BIOS on board. All functions work, the system is updated normally.

The drive is divided into 2 disks: 200 GB on drive C were allocated for the system and programs and another 752 GB on drive D for other tasks.

Now let's explore the hardware capabilities. Blackview MP100 runs AMD Ryzen 7 5700U. Integrated Radeon RX Vega 7 graphics with dynamic memory (due to RAM) is designed for simple graphics tasks and multimedia.

As you can see, the CPU power is unlocked here: up to 28W with long-term load and up to 30W with short-term load. A very good and productive 8-core processor that works with 16 threads and in turbo mode reaches speeds of up to 4.35 GHz. Operating temperature – 100 degrees, process technology 7 nm.

As for the graphics, we can confidently say that they are not gaming. In principle, like any integrated graphics, it is designed more for encoding/decoding than for games. Hence it has excellent support for modern video formats in high resolution and good capabilities for video editing. You can also play games, but it will definitely not be cyberpunk (about games a little later).

Drive testing

Detailed information about the drive showed that it was new and the total operating time was 3 hours (system manufacturer installation + my initial tests). There is a temperature sensor and it works correctly. The drive supports PCIe 4.0 x4 transfer mode, but the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U only works with PCIe 3.0 x4.

As a result, we have quite good speeds for a budget SSD drive: 3566 MB/s for reading and 3520 MB/s for writing.

A repeated test with a 64 GB data array (improvised stress test) showed a slight drop in speed, while the temperature of the drive rose to 75 degrees. It’s a bit much, but in quieter modes of operation it does not exceed 54 – 55 degrees. Also, thanks to the active cooling system and complete ventilation of the case, when the load is removed, the temperature quickly returns to normal values. In general, I have no questions here.

Performance testing

In addition to testing performance in benchmarks, I would like to compare the result with the GenMachine Ren 5000 computer on Ryzen 5 5600H (I also posted the review on Habré). So, in Geekbench 6, the Blackview computer scored 1576 points in single-core mode and 4920 points in multi-core mode. The computer on the Ryzen 5 5600H scored 1911 and 7414 points, respectively. So the 5600H is more powerful than the 5700U? Yes, but there is a nuance…

Everything is a little more complicated and in this case it comes down to cooling, let's move on to longer tests. Cinebench R23 for Blackview MP100 passed with the following result: 1252 points in single-core mode, 8389 points in multi-core mode, multiplier 6.7. But the GenMachine Ren 5000 on the Ryzen 5 5600H did not do so well: 1375 points in single-core mode (still a little better) and 5041 points in multi-core mode (much worse). The multiplier was only 3.67 (not bad at all). This suggests that the GenMachine Ren 5000 has much worse cooling, as a result of which it loses most of its performance from heating. And vice versa – Blackview MP100 is a little weaker, but it does not heat up and does not drop frequencies so much, as a result of which shows noticeably better results in real tasks (the same rendering in Cinebench). In principle, this is logical, because the GenMachine at 5600H has a thermal package of 45W, and the Blackview MP100 at 5700U has a thermal package of 15W. The 5600H cannot work for a long time in such a miniature volume and with such a tiny cooling system. In addition to everything, the GenMachine Ren 5000 is also much noisier; at maximum speed the cooler howls quite noticeably and after 15 minutes it begins to be downright annoying.

The best way to show real performance are tests like Speedometer, which tests browser performance on real-life tasks. And in the second version of the test, the computer scores 234 points. For example, I can say that a machine with a powerful desktop Core i7-10700K with a TDP of 125W scored only 200 points in this test.

Octane also has a good result – 56760 points.

Below are a few more popular tests. Combined PC Mark10 test – 4938 points.

Tyme Spy from 3D Mark – 863 points.

3D Mark Fire Strike – 2005 points.

Superposition – 1569 points.

CPU-Z: 523.5\4125.5

Stress tests

Thanks to its small thermal package, the computer does not require bulky, noisy cooling and does not overheat under load. The thermogram clearly shows the point with the highest temperature (processor area). Air is taken in by the cooling system through the front grille, cools the interior space and is blown out from the opposite side. Under high load, the case heats up to an acceptable 43 – 44 degrees, and under standard load – to room temperature. Once again I emphasize that the active cooling system here is very quiet. With a light load, such as reading Internet pages, it does not even turn on. If you work in resource-intensive applications, it can turn on at low speeds or medium speeds, but it is barely audible, like a slight rustle. At maximum settings (usually in games), you can hear it more, but there are no howls.

And here are the actual results of the stress tests. To begin with, I ran a system stability test from Aida 64 with a CPU load for 30 minutes. At first, TDP remains at 27.7W, after which it decreases first to 24, and later to 22W. All this allows you to keep the temperature at 86 degrees (margin up to the critical temperature of 14 degrees).

A minute of rest and another 30 minutes of load, but with additional use of the GPU. Here the thermal package is kept at 25W, the temperature is the same 86 degrees. When the load is removed, the temperature very quickly returns to the standard 50 – 60 degrees.

A stress test using Linx is more indicative. This package can make your computer boil, so you should monitor the temperature. Here the maximum reached 85 degrees, thermal throttling was not recorded. The test was completed without errors in 26 minutes 17 seconds.

The donut, which loads the video card, also failed to overheat the computer; the temperature only increased slightly and stopped at 65 degrees.

Real-life testing

Let's test your computer in the most common usage scenarios. But first, let’s test the WiFi module and LAN port to find out what connection speed you can get on the Internet. Through the scanner we see that it supports the declared AX standard, that is, it really has support for WiFi 6.

My router has 2 receiving and 2 transmitting antennas and supports MIMO 2×2 technology, if you have a more powerful router with 4 receiving and 4 transmitting antennas, then the speed will be twice as high. In my case, it turned out 379 Mbps in the 5 GHz range and 150 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz range.

With a wired connection, the average speed is 949 Mbps.

Now let's check the multimedia capabilities. According to DXVA Checker, hardware decoding of H264 is supported at up to 4K resolution, as well as HEVC and VP9 at up to 8K resolution. The AV1 codec does not receive hardware support and is decoded in software.

For clarity, I will show the load on the computer when playing a movie in very high quality. Blu-Ray Remux of the film “Avatar: The Way of Water” with a total bitrate of 75.8 Mbps (the film weighs more than 100 GB) in 4K quality with HDR10 loads the processor by only 4%, and the graphics by 38. At the same time, the temperature on the chip is only 51 degrees .

At the same time, do not forget about the ability to connect to several screens at the same time. The first screen could be the monitor where you are working. The second screen can be an auxiliary information monitor where information is displayed. And the third screen is a TV to use the computer as a media player and watch movies in high quality on the big screen.

As for HDR support, it is of course present. The TV has automatically switched to HDR10, which can be seen in the information bar at the bottom of the screen. If you watch HDR on an SDR TV/monitor, then there is automatic conversion to SDR and the image will be without color distortion.

On YouTube, quality is available up to 8K\30 frames per second and 4K\60 frames per second.

In any case, playback is smooth, without dropping frames.

I also ran various test high-bitrate videos in HDR and, as expected, there were no problems with them.

The next thing I did was check the computer's rendering capabilities (video editing). To do this, I created a test project in the Magic Vegas application in 4K resolution lasting 10 minutes. In the project I used gluing, trimming and overlaying, adding text and various effects. The computer supports AMD VCE acceleration technology. With the AVC codec, the encoding process took 20 minutes 27 seconds.

And with the HEVC codec it was even a little faster – 19 minutes 38 seconds. Surprisingly, HEVC usually requires more resources and takes longer to encode. Good result, the computer is great for video editing.

Well, the last thing I checked was games. Here it’s worth clearing right away that the computer is not a gaming computer and is only suitable for network projects or old games. A full-fledged World Of Tanks at high settings produces from 30 to 40 frames per second, but there are also drops.

At medium settings: 90 – 140 frames per second, depending on the location and dynamics of the situation. On average, you can play with the settings and get a good FPS with a beautiful picture.

In the more demanding Shadow of Tomb Raider, the graphics settings had to be lowered to low with a medium detail modifier, and the resolution to 1280 x 720. And even in this case, the benchmark showed an average of 28 FPS.

The last game I tested was Forntite. Graphics settings are medium, resolution 1920 x 1080. On average, FPS is in the range of 30 – 35 frames per second, with rare drops below 30.

Results

Blackview has made an interesting home computer. In the product description, they slightly went too far about the gaming capabilities of the device, because by its nature, integrated graphics can provide decent FPS only with low and medium graphics settings, and in far from the most demanding games. So if you dreamed of snatching a gaming computer for three pennies, relax, this is a utopia. But in terms of the computing power of the processor, the computer was very pleased. Powerful yet energy-efficient, the Ryzen 7 5700U easily copes with video editing, photo editing and processing, office applications and specialized software. The system works quickly, there are no “blunts” when performing actions, like with cheap computers based on Intel Celeron and other “successors of the atom.” Performance at the highest level. All this is complemented by a quiet cooling system that does not irritate with its howling. It is possible to upgrade memory, both RAM and storage. A decent WiFi 6 module, nice RGB backlighting, plenty of connectors and the ability to connect 3 displays at the same time. It’s also compact in size, allowing you to take the computer with you to the dacha or country house. And of course, licensed Windows 11 Pro on board. Blackview MP100 is a worthy device for lovers of compact computers.