I purchased the https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9F6PKZ5 in the early morning right after Prime Days started for $373. The “normal price” for this is $407. It is identical to the Bosgame M4 with the same AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0F5PGXYLF which is $417. If I hadn’t got the sale price of $373 I would have chosen the identical Bosgame unit because they are the 2nd largest mini-PC distributor and have very good customer support.
These are expensive compared to the cheaper units with earlier generation Ryzen processors. I have two of them which I spent approximately $120 for a piece. I would recommend them as well because they are very capable machines for the money. The Ryzen 7 7840HS is in a different league altogether and is more powerful than many Ryzen processors in the 8th generation.
In the mini-PC form factor it has some advantages over the Intel Core i7-13700HX in my gaming Laptop although it is limited in the maximum wattage that it can consume. The iGPU is far more capable than the one in the intel processor. This machine actually will run MSFS 2024 with acceptable performance at medium settings without a powerful GPU. This is quite amazing to me but might be overkill for your wife. I may attach an Nvidia RTX 3060 12
GB to it through its oculink port and then it will be about as capable as my gaming laptop for flight simulators and more capable for advanced AI apps and serving.
Ah, very cool. My daughter would love that machine you bought!*
And, oh, yeah, one of your $120 machines with 16 GB of RAM would probably be overkill for my wife, if they can run Win 11 Pro. Wanna sell one? (Even 8 GB would likely suffice, except that she, like a lot of us, does tend to leave a lot of windows and tabs open.) Right now I’m looking at Optiplex 3060 and 3070, i3 and i5 machines, with Gen 8 or higher processors, as I’m just not that familiar with the Ryzens, but, if you can recommend a Ryzen processor model or two, I’m listening. Right now, I seem to be in the ~$130 range, w/ free shipping, on eBay. Another option might be something similar to a Dell 3440 with a NVMe drive for me. I’d pick up USB3.2 capability with a 3440, and my wife would get this 3430 I’m working on, but great deals on 3440’s are scarce. I thought I found one, but, the listing was in error on multiple points: Just one was that the machine is actually a 3430. Listings with multiple errors — No go there, Paul R.... !
*I’m the most “ungamer” of the family (I’m just too busy for it), but, my daughter is a gamer, so I do take note of your comments in that direction. ;-)