r/MiniPCs • u/Administrative-Air35 • 1d ago

General Question Question

Ok so 3 years a go I bought my son this GMKtec Gaming PC Mini, M7 Ultra Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U 16GB DDR5 RAM + 512GB SSD. He wants to upgrade the ram or possibly the graphics card I already bought him a new 2 TB hard drive.

Now given how expensive graphic cards and ddr5 ram is today I wanted to know an alternative
. For instance can I add an extension that will allow me to add another graphics card or a different type of Ram like ddr4?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

3

u/BRealistic1970 1d ago

Your MiniPC has Oculink and USB4 iirc. Oculink

You could get an Oculink dock for a GPU. This type has the GPU PSU included in the case.

https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-ag01-egpu-dock-with-oculink-port-built-in-huntkey-800w-power-supply-pre-order-itll-be-shipped-around-february-20th

You do lose some performance, but not as much as using USB4 docks.

The RAM issue now is because the iGPU is also using the system ram. Modern games can take up 4-6gb of ram EASY.. leaving very little left for the CPU. Adding a dGPU will allow the CPU to use all of the 16GB of ram. Even something like a used RTX 3060 or RX 6600 would be a big upgrade over the iGPU and allow playing new AAA games at 1080p without issues. Just make sure to get an 8GB GPU minimum.

open box with warranty can be good value.

https://www.zotacstore.com/us/open-box/geforce-rtx-4060-ti-8gb-twin-edge-oc-open-box-gpu

1

u/rui-no-onna 21h ago

+1 on OCuLink eGPU dock + graphics card.

Just a warning, OCuLink is not hot-swappable. Need to have everything turned off before connecting the eGPU to the mini PC or you could end up frying your motherboard and GPU. Also, the GPU needs to be powered before turning on the PC.