PELADN HO4 Mini PC Ryzen 9 7940HS: The King of Compact Performance and RDNA 3 Gaming?

The PELADN Mini PC Ryzen 9 7940HS,  also known as the PELADN HO4,  is a performance powerhouse packed into a mere 1.3 liters. Thanks to its integrated Radeon 780M GPU and 40Gbps USB4 port, it ranks among the most versatile mini PCs on the market, handling both demanding productivity tasks and 1080p gaming without a dedicated graphics card.

• The best features: Excellent CPU/iGPU performance, great expandability (up to 64GB RAM and 2x M.2 NVMe) and full connectivity with dual LAN ports (2.5G + 1G) and USB4.

• The worst part: The fans become noticeable under maximum continuous stress load and require monitoring temperatures if long rendering periods are demanded.

• Conclusion: An unbeatable option in terms of power/price ratio for those looking for a compact machine for heavy multitasking, light content creation, and eSports/AAA gaming at 1080p.

👉 See prices for the PELADN Mini PC Ryzen 9 7940HS on AliExpress

👉 Find deals on the PELADN Mini PC on Amazon

👉 Find deals on the PELADN Mini PC on Amazon UK

📦 Unboxing and Box Contents

The packaging is austere but functional, designed to protect the equipment during international shipments from their European warehouses.

Inside the box we found:

• 💻 Mini PC PELADN (silver aluminum/ABS chassis).

• 🔌 External power adapter with power cable.

• 🖥️ High-speed HDMI cable .

• 🛠️ VESA mounting bracket with screw set to anchor it behind the monitor.

• 📖 User manual with quick installation guide.

📊 Key Technical Specifications Table

🎨 Design and Construction Quality

The PELADN features a clean-lined chassis with a metallic silver finish. Measuring 133 x 128 x 52 mm, it takes up negligible space on the desk.

The tactile feel combines polished edges with optimized side and rear ventilation grilles for airflow. Rubber feet on the bottom absorb vibrations from the desk and conceal the screws that provide access to the interior for maintenance or upgrades. A distinctive detail on the front panel is the dedicated Reset/Clear CMOS button , very useful for enthusiasts who experiment with memory profiles or BIOS settings.

📺 Screen and Multimedia

Although the mini PC does not include a screen, its video outputs allow for an advanced multi-monitor setup:

• Triple 4K Video Output: You can connect up to 3 simultaneous displays using the HDMI 2.0 port , DisplayPort 1.4 and USB4 port on the back.

• Audio: The integrated front panel 3.5 mm combo jack provides clean, static-free audio for headsets. The HDMI/DP output transmits multichannel audio to monitors or AV receivers.

⚙️ Performance and Software

The heart of this machine is the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS based on the Zen 4 architecture (4nm). Web browsing with dozens of tabs open, advanced office suites, heavy photo editing in Lightroom, and 4K video editing all run with absolute fluidity.

• Operating System: Comes with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed and activated.

• Bloatware: Cleans up junk software or annoying trial applications.

• Storage Speed: The included 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD delivers read speeds exceeding 4800MB/s, reducing system boot times to less than 8 seconds.

🔋 Energy Consumption, Temperature and Noise

Consumption

At idle , the mini PC consumes between 9W and 13W. During demanding rendering tasks or intensive gaming sessions, the total system consumption ranges between 55W and 75W, making it drastically more efficient than a traditional desktop tower.

Actual Thermal and Noise

• Daily Use / Office: Virtually inaudible (below 30 dB).

• Heavy Load (Gaming/Rendering): The processor temperature stabilizes around 82°C–88°C under prolonged stress testing. The fan speed increases, generating a constant noise level (~42 dB), so headphones are recommended during gameplay.

🔌 Connectivity and Extras

The connectivity section is one of the strongest points of this unit:

• USB4 port (40 Gbps): Supports ultra-fast data transfer, DisplayPort video output and connection of external graphics cards (eGPU) via Thunderbolt/USB4 enclosures.

• USB Type-C port up to 100 Gbps.

• Dual Ethernet Port: It has a 2.5G LAN port (ideal for high-speed networks or NAS) and a secondary 1G LAN port , perfect for setting up an advanced router or firewall.

• Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2: Low latency wireless connection suitable for downloading large files or playing games without cables.

🛠️ Expansion and Upgrades

The PELADN stands out for its ease of upgrade by removing the screws from the base:

1. RAM Memory: It has 2 SO-DIMM DDR5 slots (supports up to 64 GB DDR5 at 5600 MHz in Dual Channel).

2. SSD Storage: Features 2 M.2 NVMe slots with combined support for up to 4 TB:

   • Slot 1: M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4

   • Slot 2: M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4

🛒 Recommended expansion kits:

• Buy DDR5 SO-DIMM RAM on AliExpress

• Buy M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs on AliExpress

🥊 Comparison with Direct Competitors

💬 User Reviews in Communities and Stores

Analyzing buyer reviews on platforms like Amazon and specialized forums:

• Positive Reviews: Users unanimously highlight the raw CPU power for code compilation, virtual machines, and photo/video editing. The dual network card (2.5G + 1G) is highly praised by those setting up home servers or virtualization environments (Proxmox/Unraid).

• Improvement Points: Some users point out that the base configuration with 16 GB of RAM is somewhat limited if you allocate 4 GB or more of dedicated VRAM to the Radeon 780M, so they recommend upgrading to 32 GB or 64 GB from day one.

🧪 Technical Tests and Synthetic Performance

In standard benchmarks, the Ryzen 9 7940HS demonstrates why it ranks among the top mobile processors:

1. Cinebench R23 (Raw Processor Performance)

This benchmark measures raw processing power by rendering a photorealistic 3D image using the Cinema 4D engine. It's an intensive, continuous-load test that evaluates both raw power and thermal stability.

• Single-Core (1,820 points):

  • What it measures: The power of a single core working at its maximum boost frequency (5.1 GHz).

  • Real impact: This is the key metric for overall system agility, responsiveness when opening heavy applications, speed when browsing the web, and smoothness in games where the CPU carries the main load.

  • Context: It outperforms established desktop processors like the Intel Core i9-11900K or the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X in single-threaded tasks.

• Multi-Core (16,250 points):

  • What it measures: The combined work of the 8 cores and 16 threads processing data in parallel at maximum load.

  • Real impact: Shows the mini PC's ability to handle heavy professional productivity tasks: 4K video export in Premiere/DaVinci, complex code compilation, 3D rendering, and virtualization.

  • Context: Performance similar to an Intel Core i5-13400 or AMD Ryzen 7 5700X tower processor, with the difference that the Ryzen 9 7940HS achieves this while consuming only between 45W and 54W.

2. Geekbench 6 (System Performance in Modern Tasks)

Unlike Cinebench, Geekbench simulates real-world, everyday workloads (file compression, machine learning, image processing, Python script execution, and PDF processing).

• CPU Single-Core (2,610 points) / Multi-Core (11,950 points):

  • What it measures: Efficiency of the Zen 4 architecture performing heterogeneous tasks for everyday and industrial use.

  • Real impact: Ensures that the device maintains absolute fluidity in extreme multitasking, such as having dozens of documents open, playing 4K/8K video in the background, and holding video conference calls without frame drops or delays.

• OpenCL GPU - Radeon 780M (32,400 points):

  • What it measures: The computing power of the integrated graphics card when used to accelerate computational tasks that are not strictly 3D rendering.

  • Real impact: It influences the speed at which artificial intelligence filters (Photoshop, Lightroom), hardware acceleration in browsers and encoding/decoding of video codecs (such as AV1 or HEVC) are processed by the 12 Compute Units (CUs) of the RDNA 3 architecture.

3. 3DMark Time Spy (Gaming Graphics Performance)

It is the industry standard for measuring a team's ability to play games under the DirectX 12 API at 1440p resolution.

• Graphics Score (3,150 points):

  • What it measures: The raw power of the Radeon 780M iGPU in 3D rendering, shading, and geometry processing.

  • Real impact: This integrated graphics card confirms that it breaks the historical barrier of traditional iGPUs. It allows for smooth gameplay of competitive titles (CS2, Valorant, Overwatch 2) at over 100 FPS in 1080p, and the ability to run demanding AAA games (Forza Horizon 5, Shadow of the Tomb Raider) at over 50-60 FPS with medium settings.

  • Market Equivalence: Easily surpasses the performance of dedicated desktop graphics cards such as the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (~2,300 points) or the GTX 1650 Max-Q for laptops, approaching the levels of a desktop NVIDIA GTX 1650, all without requiring a separate graphics card or high power consumption.

🎮 Gaming and Real Emulation

The AMD Radeon 780M (RDNA 3) transforms this mini PC into a very capable 1080p gaming console/PC:

Gaming Performance (1080p)

• ⚽ EA Sports FC 24: 60 FPS (Medium Settings)

• 🔫 Counter-Strike 2: 90 - 120 FPS (Competitive / Low Settings)

• 🏎️ Forza Horizon 5: 65 FPS (Medium Settings / FSR on Quality)

• 🧟 Cyberpunk 2077: 45 - 55 FPS (1080p Low + FSR 2.1 in Performance Mode)

• ⚔️ The Witcher 3 (Next Gen): 50 FPS (Medium Settings)

Emulation

It's an extraordinary machine for retro and modern emulation: it smoothly runs consoles like PS2, GameCube, Wii U, Nintendo Switch and PS3 (RPCS3) at resolutions upscaled to 1080p or 2K.

⚽ External Graphics Cards Supported

The front USB4 port of the Peladn mini PC (check model) has a bandwidth of 40 Gbps, which uses the PCIe protocol to communicate directly with the graphics card, identically to Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 technology.

To connect an external graphics card, you need two things: the graphics card itself (GPU) and an eGPU enclosure or dock to power it and connect it to the USB4 port. The device supports the two main systems on the market:

1. Traditional eGPU enclosures (USB4 / Thunderbolt connection)

These are closed enclosures that include their own power supply. You simply insert the desktop graphics card inside and connect the USB4 cable to the Mini PC. Popular models that work perfectly with this device include:

• Razer Core X: One of the most stable and highly recommended cases on the market due to its compatibility with large graphics cards. → See Prices
• Sonnet eGPU Breakaway Box: An excellent alternative with very good thermal management. → View Prices

→ Search for eGPU Enclosures on AliExpress

2. Portable and compact docks (Specially for AMD)

Since this Mini PC has an AMD processor, there are ultraportable graphics workstations that already come with the card integrated and are optimized for the brand's technology:

• GPD G1 eGPU: A tiny dock that integrates an AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT graphics card . It connects via USB4 and transforms your Mini PC into a portable gaming machine. → Search on AliExpress
• OneXPlayer ONEXGPU: A concept similar to the GPD G1, very compact and with integrated extra SSD storage. → See Prices

⚠️ Important limitations and advice

• Performance bottleneck: Although the USB4 port is very fast (40 Gbps), it's still slower than connecting a card directly to a tower's motherboard (PCIe x16). You'll experience a performance loss of between 10% and 20% compared to the same card installed in a traditional desktop PC.
• Make better use of the power: The eGPU's performance is noticeably higher if you connect the monitor directly to the external graphics card's video outputs, instead of sending the signal back to the Mini PC's screen.
• Driver Compatibility: If you purchase an AMD Radeon card for the eGPU, the installation will be extremely clean, as it will share the same official AMD drivers (Adrenalin) already used by the Ryzen 9 7940HS processor in your computer.

🏁 Final Conclusion

The PELADN Mini PC Ryzen 9 7940HS offers an outstanding balance of small size, efficiency, and power. It's the ideal mini PC for professionals who need synthetic power, content creators, and gamers looking for a compact machine capable of running today's PC games at 1080p.

🛒 Where to buy at the best price?

• 👉 See prices for the PELADN Mini PC Ryzen 9 7940HS on AliExpress

• 👉 Find deals on the PELADN Mini PC on Amazon

• 👉 Find deals on the PELADN Mini PC on Amazon UK