The demise of traditional x86 PC processors in favour of leaner, more efficient Arm chips has been predicted since, well, it seems like forever. For that notion to gain any traction for PC gaming, however, support for discrete graphics cards is needed. Say hello, then, to the Minisforum MS-R1 (via PC Watch), a compact PC with an Arm chip and a full-sized x16 PCIe graphics slot.
Game over for x86? Not so fast. For starters, the Minisforum MS-R1 runs a Cixin P1 CPU. It’s a Chinese made chip built on 6 nm technology and configured with eight Cortex A720 performance and four Cortex A520 efficiency cores.
As it happens, there’s every reason to think Nvidia will soon release Arm drivers for Windows. Nvidia has publicly stated that it is working on its own Arm chip for PCs, known as the N1, and you’d have to assume it will support Windows on Arm.
In theory, those Arm drivers could be used with any Arm CPU in Windows. Of course, this is Nvidia, so it perhaps wouldn’t be a huge surprise if the company somehow locked their GPUs down to those upcoming Nvidia Arm chips.
For now, it’s all speculation. The Minisforum MS-R1 itself clearly does not have the makings of a gaming PC. But if I’m sitting here in five years or so, fragging away on an Arm PC, this little box will certainly have been a harbinger of things to come.
Pricing and the question of availability outside of Japan is unclear. But if you’re super interested, the Minisforum MS-R1 supports up to 64 GB of RAM and M.2 SSDs, and has two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 connectors, a further two USB 2.0 sockets, dual 10 Gb Ethernet, HDMI 2.0, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth.
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