I replaced my desktop tower with the AceMagic F3a mini PC for 7 days — here are my pros and cons

Bored of the standard metallic or plastic box mini PCs adorning your desk? It seems like once the M4 Mac mini came out, every company has been given tacit permission to offer some pretty bog-standard aesthetics.

Enter the AceMagic F3A, and we have an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370-armed mini PC with a touch of flair thanks to that small, cheeky line of RGB lighting that gently pulses around the system like a halo.

This all comes together nicely with the impressively powerful AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 under the hood to make this a great system addition for your day-to-day and even some gaming. Performance-wise, this is pretty zippy, and with that FSR frame generation support that comes from AMD, you can even pull off some 1080p gaming at medium settings!

That’s not to say it comes without problems, though, and these come down to some of the decisions made by AceMagic here. It starts with the choice of RAM sticks, which the F3A opts for SO-DIMM sticks over your more traditional LPDDR5X memory you’d find next to a laptop chip. This is the reason why it's slightly slower than the similarly-specced-but-more-expensive Minisforum EliteMini.

Maybe it was done for cost-cutting purposes? But this does mean some small moments of hitching — given that these cheaper sticks are around 30% slower on average. And the second is the port selection. Given how good the integrated graphics are in this system for doing creative work on Photoshop, I would’ve loved an SD card slot, but no such luck here.

On top of that, compared to some of the more port-generous PCs I’ve dabbled with, this is on the lower end in terms of variety.

So, where does this leave the F3A? For what you get at $809, it’s a great little system that will last you a while, whether as a living room PC or a small addition to the desk (or even sneakily attaching it to the back of your monitor via the VESA mounting plate).

To many, this is a solid shout for one of the best mini PCs you can get.

AceMagic F3A mini PC: Cheat Sheet

• What is it? This compact desktop powerhouse features the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, making it a standout in the wave of Copilot+ Mini PCs.
• Who is it for? Ideal for those who want to skip the bulky tower without sacrificing speed, this sleek system delivers strong performance in a compact form — perfect for a tidy home office or a stylish living room setup.
• What does it cost? Technically, the MSRP is $1,099. But for the entire time it’s been out, the price has stayed rigid at $809. So my assumption is that that’s the actual cost.
• What do we like? The aesthetic breathes some new life into the traditional cubic structures of mini PCs, thanks to that flash of RGB color. On top of that, the latest AMD silicon does make it surprisingly good at both creative pro work and even some 1080p gaming — all without that fan kicking up a storm because of some solid thermal management.
• What don’t we like? The use of SO-DIMM RAM sticks over your more standard LPDDR5X memory does lead to a slight slowdown in some multitasking, and the port selection is a little limited in capability.

AceMagic F3A mini PC: Specs

AceMagic F3A mini PC: The ups

Firing it up and popping it next to my TV for the whole living room PC setup, I started to fall in love with some ot the best qualities of the AceMagic F3A.

An actually stylish mini PC

Like I said, one of the more frustrating elements of mini PCs to me is that they all look the same. Either you’re getting a basic plastic cube or a basic aluminum cube, which is what makes the F3A a breath of fresh air.

Yes, the build quality is plasticky, and if you are to feel it, it does have a little bit of a cheapness to it. But people don’t touch their PCs that much, and this does indeed exude a premium aesthetic that takes pride of place next to your TV or atop your desk.

And if you’re looking to hide it effectively into your setup, you can absolutely do so with the included VESA mounting accessories. But I’d recommend not doing so as the smooth pulse of that subtle RGB lighting gives it a nice playful nature, too! And speaking of playful…

A solid performer

The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chip inside here is a solid performer across CPU and GPU-intensive tasks. Effective thermal management both keeps the fan volume low while ensuring a good sustained speed across the SSD loading speeds and the chipsets power.

When firing up Photoshop and Premiere Pro, it was capable of handling pretty intense RAW photo edits and neural filters, while maintaining strong render speeds during complex 4K edits. Pretty good for the price.

Then when you turn your attention to gaming, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you can pull off.

Of course, without a dedicated GPU, you’re not going to get anything outstandingly special here. But the integrated graphics combined with AMD’s FidelityFX tech (FSR) is able to play AAA games like Cyberpunk 2077 at low-to-medium settings 1080p with over 60 FPS of frame rate speeds.

In fact, this amount of power inside a small box like this gives me serious Steam Box vibes — the tiny Valve console I always wanted… But more to come on that little experiment.

AceMagic F3A mini PC: The downs

But it is a bit of a mixed bag for a couple of reasons here, which namely create a couple of frustrations surrounding the ways you would want to use this system.

Odd port selection

To clarify — this isn’t that there aren't plenty of ports here. Rather, it’s just a strange selection. Most people at home don’t need a second Ethernet port.

It’s ideal for connecting to a local server in a business, but if you’re using this as a home PC, chances are you’ll never touch either of these and use the Wi-Fi 6 connectivity.

So what is actually missing? Well, while I appreciate the two USB4 slots on here, where’s the SD card slot? The AMD chip is great for photo edits and encoding footage, so why aren’t they making it super easy to transfer the footage?

The RAM is wrong

Normally, when you see laptops that use the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, they’ll use LPDDR5X RAM — smaller mobile sticks of the OG RAM you’ll find in desktops that pack plenty of speed.

However, for cost reasons (I assume), AceMagic has opted for SO-DIMM cards — an older standard of RAM that has got a DDR5 upgrade, but is still 30% slower on average than your LPDDR5X variant. The end result is that you can come across some hitches in multitasking performance.

If you have Chrome open with 20+ tabs, Photoshop open and running a Neural filter and try to fire up Apple Music at the same time, you can start to feel it under pressure with some sluggish window transitions.

AceMagic F3A mini PC: Verdict

When I saw the lighting fire up, I wanted this to be phenomenal. What you get instead in the AceMagic F3A is a solid mini PC at a price that provides decent value for money.

The integrated graphics’ gaming performance gives this a good all-purpose proposition, while the CPU speeds and encoding capabilities provide solid strength in most productivity cases.

But just don’t put too much stress on that slower RAM, and make sure you evaluate what ports you need first before buying.