Beelink GTR7 mini-PC Review: A Complete AMD Phoenix Package at 65W
by Ganesh T S on August 24, 2023 8:00 AM ESTSetup Notes and Platform Analysis
Our review sample of the Beelink GTR7 7840HS came with all necessary components pre-installed - including the OS. Prior to setting up the OS on first boot, we took some time to look into the BIOS interface. While the interface is fairly basic (navigable only via keyboard), a lot of options are exposed for end users to play around with. The video below presents an overview of the BIOS interface.
The main screen provides a quick overview of the system configuration with the memory capacity and speed being the most important from a system configuration viewpoint. The BIOS version is also available in this screen. The system is equipped with both firmware and discrete TPMs, with the firmware TPM enabled by default. Various TPM aspects can be configured in the 'Advanced > TPM/DTPM Computing' sub-section. ACPI settings in the same section allows for configuration of hibernation and suspend states.
The UMA Frame buffer size (VRAM) is set to 4GB by default under 'AMD CBS > NBIO Common Options > GFX Configuration', but it can be as high as 16GB (with 32GB of DRAM installed). Other iGPU configurations such as GPU host cache settings can also be configured in this sub-section. Other northbridge options such as audio output paths and PCIe loopback mode can also be configured in this section. AMD CBS also allows configuration of behavior on AC power loss and restoration, and various system management unit options such as thermal and power parameters (sustained power limit, package power tracking, skin-temperature aware power management, etc.). Beelink sets all power numbers under SmartShift control to 65000 (mW) by default. The other configuration sub-sections under AMD CBS also allows control over aspects like CPU virtualization support, resizable BAR, SR-IOV, and PCIe hot-plug support, USB hardware parameters like timeouts, NVMe device tests, UEFI network stack configuration for the I225-V LAN controllers, etc.
USB ports can be selectively locked from 'Chipset > South Bridge > SB USB Configuration'. The 'North Bridge' subsection is informative in nature and provides the size and speed of the memory modules attached. The BIOS password and secure boot state can be modified in the 'Security' section. This section also includes the TCG Pyrite 2.0 configuration for the NVMe SSD (if it is supported by the installed drive). The 'Boot' section allows configuration of the NumLock state during the boot process, and the fast boot setting. The boot order for various boot devices can also be set up. The 'Save & Exit' section allows users to either save and reset, or reset without saving, override all settings with the factory defaults, or save a particular configuration as user defaults. Most importantly, it also includes a boot override that allows the selection of a particular boot device for the next boot alone.
The block diagram below presents the overall high-speed I/O distribution.
Except for the two rear USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-A ports enabled by an ASMedia ASM3142 controller chip (detected as ASM2142 in the kernel), all the other USB ports (including the two USB4 ports denoted as PCIe USB4 Bridge in the diagram above) are natively from the controller hub on the Phoenix die. There are twenty usable PCIe Gen4 lanes, and the break-up is as below:
- PCIe 3.0 x2: ASMedia ASM3142
- PCIe 4.0 x4: M.2 2280 SSD Slot #0
- PCIe 4.0 x4: M.2 2280 SSD Slot #1
- PCIe 2.0 x1: Intel I225-V #0
- PCIe 2.0 x1: Intel I225-V #1
- PCIe 2.0 x1: Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6
While the USB4 ports support PCIe tunneling with full Thunderbolt 3 compatibility (including external GPU enclosures), they do not have support for USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) clients. Those operate at 10 Gbps speeds in both USB4 ports of the GTR7 7840HS.
In today's review, we compare the Beelink GTR7 against a host of other systems configured with similarly high TDPs. Since the GTR7 claims to operate at 65W, we also included the ASRock DeskMeet B660 in the mix - even though it is configured with a 65W budget for the CPU alone, and the discrete GPU having its own envelop.
| Comparative PC Configurations | ||
| Aspect | Beelink GTR7 | |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS Zen 4 (Phoenix) 8C/16T, 3.8 - 5.1 GHz TSMC 4nm, 16MB L3, 35-54W Target TDP : 65W |
AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS Zen 4 (Phoenix) 8C/16T, 3.8 - 5.1 GHz TSMC 4nm, 16MB L3, 35-54W Target TDP : 65W |
| GPU | AMD Radeon 780M (RDNA3 / Phoenix) - Integrated (12 CUs @ 2.7 GHz) |
AMD Radeon 780M (RDNA3 / Phoenix) - Integrated (12 CUs @ 2.7 GHz) |
| RAM | Crucial CT16G56C46S5.M8G1 DDR5-5600 SODIMM 46-45-45-90 @ 5600 MHz 2x16 GB |
Crucial CT16G56C46S5.M8G1 DDR5-5600 SODIMM 46-45-45-90 @ 5600 MHz 2x16 GB |
| Storage | Crucial P3 Plus CT1000P3PSSD8 (1 TB; M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe;) (Micron 176L 3D QLC (N48R); Phison E21T Controller) |
Crucial P3 Plus CT1000P3PSSD8 (1 TB; M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe;) (Micron 176L 3D QLC (N48R); Phison E21T Controller) |
| Wi-Fi | 2x 2.5 GbE RJ-45 (Intel I225-V) Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2x2 802.11ax - 2.4 Gbps) |
2x 2.5 GbE RJ-45 (Intel I225-V) Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2x2 802.11ax - 2.4 Gbps) |
| Price (in USD, when built) | (Street Pricing on Aug 19th, 2023) US $709 (as configured, with OS) |
(Street Pricing on Aug 19th, 2023) US $709 (as configured, with OS) |
Benchmarks were processed afresh on all of the above systems with the latest BIOS for each. The next few sections will deal with comparative benchmarks for the above systems.
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ActionJ26 - Friday, August 25, 2023 - link
Go with Minisforum um790 it is $519 barebonedhaplo602 - Monday, August 28, 2023 - link
that and tested as a SteamOS platform as well ...29a - Thursday, August 24, 2023 - link
"One of the interesting aspects of the I/O ports is the presence of an audio jack in both front and rear panels. Beelink has designed this in such a way that the connection of a headset of speakers to the rear jack automatically disables the front one."Does that mean you cant output different audio streams to both, for example game audio through the speakers in the back and chat audio through headphones on the front. Most MB allow this.
ganeshts - Thursday, August 24, 2023 - link
Can you give me some MB examples that allow this? I want to check their hardware audio path.As per Beelink's user manual, the disabling of the front jack is the expected behavior when the rear jack has a connected sink.
UserZ - Thursday, August 24, 2023 - link
Disabling the front jack seems really odd. I would have a pair of speakers connected to the rear jack as the default audio. When I occasionally plug in a headset to the front, I want to use that. I would hope that you could still choose which to use without unplugging anything in case I don't like their default behavior.darkswordsman17 - Friday, August 25, 2023 - link
Yeah I think it'd be preferable for the inverse (i.e. mute the rear when the front is detected), or for it to be able to be configured so it could do mic input from one with audio output from the other. Its probably easier for them to do this though. But then there's options if you use an external audio via USB (or probably Bluetooth as well).darkswordsman17 - Friday, August 25, 2023 - link
PC motherboards use separate audio chips for front and rear ports generally, and thus its easy for Windows/games to then be configured to output different for each one. I think there might be some external gaming audio boxes that could allow this as well (headset plugged in managing just chat whilst outputting game audio to speakers), so it could come down to drivers (or maybe it auto-configures).1_rick - Thursday, August 24, 2023 - link
The Crucial isn't a bad SSD if your needs align with it's capabilities. One place it completely falls down is large writes: I copied a ~60GB game to a Beelink SEI12 from a USB-C connected SSD, rather than let it be downloaded, and the pSLC cache was exhausted pretty quickly. At that point the performance tanked to somewhere around 40MBps, down about 90% from peak speed of about 500MBps.For normal day-to-day usage, you probably won't see much of a speed penalty, though.
NextGen_Gamer - Thursday, August 24, 2023 - link
@AnandTech: Were the 3DMark Port Royal benchmarks rerun on all of the older systems? Because the DeskMeet B660 system seems way off. The Radeon RX 6400 and Radeon 680M iGPU are actually the same in specs: RDNA-2, 12 Ray Accelerators, 32 ROPs, 48 TMUs, 768 Shading Units. It should, in theory, be RX 6400 just ahead of Ryzen 9 6900HX which in turn should be just ahead of Ryzen 7 7735U. And then the latest Ryzen 7 7840HUS, with its newer and higher-clocked RDNA-3 Radeon 780M iGPU, should be on top of the charts still.ganeshts - Thursday, August 24, 2023 - link
Unlike CPU or GPU reviews, for mini-PCs, we do not update the results in every review because most of the mini-PCs are loaner samples and go back to the manufacturer.The numbers presented in the graph for the Deskmeet B660 are from January 2023, using Adrenalin GPU drivers that were the latest in December 2022. FWIW, 3DMark also has online score submissions from different users searchable at www.3dmark.com/search
For RX 6400, Port Royal overall scores range from 126 to 558 (seems to depend on the CPU also), with an average of 252
For 680M, they range from 1081 to 1415 with an average of 1026.
In the above context, the scores we have graphed (427 and 1212) are entirely plausible.
It is also possible that recent driver releases might have improved scores, but our policy for mini-PC reviews is that we carry forward the scores from the time of the original review. Every few years, we purge the database and move to the latest versions of the benchmarks and also update the OS to the latest stable (for example, we are currently using Win 11 21H2 with the latest updates, but not 22H2). At that time, we choose a set of PCs that we still have in hand, re-bench them and use the newly obtained scores with the new benchmark version / OS for comparisons starting from that point onwards.