Six-Month Follow-Up: MINISFORUM 795S7 — Still a Tiny Monster, But Now With a Limp

(Read our original deep-dive first if you missed it — it lays out the hardware and build details in full: Deep Dive: MINISFORUM MS795S7 – A Powerhouse for Under $1100) SeraphimGate Systems

Quick Recap

• Spec we tested: Ryzen 9 7945HX, 32 GB DDR5, Samsung 990 EVO 1 TB, GeForce RTX 4060 Low-Profile in the half-height PCIe 5.0 slot.

• Primary role: 1080 p gaming & Jellyfin/Plex transcoding box living in the den for the past 26 weeks.

The raw performance still impresses: HEVC 4 K → 1080 p transcodes scream, and every esports title we tried lands well north of 240 FPS. Thermals peak below 82 °C, and the whole rig coasts at ~18 W idle.

The Gremlins We Can’t Ignore

Symptom	Frequency	Notes
Blue screens during video playback	1–2 / week	Similar complaints on the UM790/795S7 family › Reddit threads mention BSOD loops under light GPU load Reddit
Primary NVMe sometimes “missing” at POST → drops into UEFI	~1 / 20 cold boots	Mirrors user reports of Minisforum boards failing to enumerate one/both M.2 drives until a power-cycle RedditServeTheHome Forums

We’re already on Minisforum’s latest public BIOS (v0.91, May 2025) and chipset/GPU drivers are current. Toggling “NVMe Hot Plug” in setup cut the drive-loss incidents roughly in half but hasn’t cured them.

What It Means for Different Buyers

If you are…	Our Take	What we’d pick instead
Budget-minded gamer / HTPC tinkerer	Still OK (with caveats). Keep backups and be ready for the occasional hard reset.	n/a
Business-grade desktop user who hates surprises	Look elsewhere.	MINISFORUM UM690 Slim — rock-solid, no PCIe slot but far fewer quirks.
DIYer who wants more expandability	Skip it.	SeraphimGate Evo Series — full-size GPUs, standard ATX parts, same Ryzen class CPU.
Lab / homelab builder needing cluster nodes	Buy the cheaper Intel NAB9s instead.	See why we used a pair of them in our Proxmox setup: Lab Hardware Evolution.

Mitigations We Tested

1. BSODs – Updating AMD GPU drivers & disabling hardware acceleration in MPC-HC reduces, but doesn’t eliminate, crashes.

2. Missing NVMe – Moving the boot SSD to the “inner” slot, enabling Hot-Plug, and lengthening POST time all help slightly.

3. Firmware hunt – No beta BIOSes are posted on Minisforum’s support portal as of 26 May 2025.

Verdict After Six Months

The 795S7 is still the cheapest path to 16 Zen 4 cores in a lunch-box footprint, and when it runs, it flies. Unfortunately, random blue screens and the occasional “where’s my SSD?” scare mean we now tag it “enthusiast-only.” If your workflow can’t tolerate unexpected reboots, grab the quieter (and cheaper) UM690 Slim or spec an Evo tower and move on. We are still intregued by the price and form factor and may order a new x3d version of the board for additional testing in the future.

Need help choosing the right mini PC or building something more bullet-proof?Reach out any time — SeraphimGate contact page — and we’ll steer you to hardware that won’t keep you up at night.