MINIX has introduced the N304-AI mini PC that is targeted for low-end markets, featuring Intel’s new Core Series 3 (codenamed Wildcat Lake) processor in the form of 5-core Intel Core 3 304 processor, with just one P-core and a four-core LPE-core cluster.
MINIX N304-AI Mini PC
The company marketed this machine as one to “make local AI computing accessible to a broader audience,” with its 15 TOPS of dedicated NPU performance, or 24 TOPS in total if you count the GPU and CPU altogether. “AI PC” marketing aside, that’s not much AI performance to do anything beyond basic tasks like webcam effects, in practice – and it is certainly not anywhere close to making LLMs work locally, and it wouldn’t qualify for Microsoft’s arbitrary Copilot+ PC standard either.
Processor aside, the N304-AI ships with 16GB of LPDDR5X-6400 memory and a 512GB PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD storage, while display I/O is claimed to support up to three simultaneous outputs; however, there’s only two native display outputs in HDMI 2.1 TMDS (4K 60Hz) and DisplayPort 1.4. There’s also a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) port, and its networking includes dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.3. It comes with Windows 11 Pro operating system as standard.
MINIX says the N304-AI is targeting “home offices, educational environments, retail applications, digital signage, edge computing, or everyday business operations.” Note that no pricing nor availability information has been given at this time.
Pokdepinion: Has anyone truly cared how many AI TOPS their processor is capable of?
