Ninkear M7 Mini PC - A Silent Computer Device

<<This article was prepared specifically for Radozhiva by Rodion Eshmakov>>.

Ninkear M7 Mini-PC is positioned as a performant, but very quiet small-sized computer device for home and office use. The model presented in this article is equipped with an AMD hexa-core processor with an integrated video chip and 16 GB of RAM, and therefore, in general, there is no doubt that this device will cope with office work. However, there are certain specifics of technical requirements when using a computer for processing multimedia files (photos, videos). In this article, we analyze the performance of Ninkear M7 Mini-PC compared to the Dell Precision 7540 (2019) laptop, and also shows how it can be improved compared to the factory version.

Specifications

1. Type of design – small-sized PC;

1. Dimensions – 116×107×36 mm;

1. Weight – 478 g;

1. CPU – AMD Ryzen 5 7430U (15W TDP, 6 cores/12 threads, base frequency – 2.3 GHz, maximum frequency – 4.3 GHz, L1-L2-L3 cache 0.375-3-16 MB, critical T 95°C, TSMC 7 nm process, release year – 2023);

1. GPU (integrated) – AMD Vega 7 (GCN 5.1 architecture, 448 pipelines, up to 15 watts, 7 nm process, 2023);

1. RAM – 2 DDR4 slots, up to 64GB total (2×32GB), in 1×16GB DDR4 3200MHz configuration CL: 22-22-22-52 Faspeed) – single-channel mode;

1. Drives – 1×M.2 2280 and 1×M.2 2242 slots for NVMe SSD (PCI-E 3.0), in Faspeed M.2 2280 NVMe SSD 512GB configuration;

1. I/O Ports – 1×USB Type C (with 4K/30Hz video output), 2×USB 2.0 (back), 2×USB 3.2 (front), 2×HDMI (4K/60Hz), 1×3.5 mm Audio Jack, 1×LAN 2.5G Jack, 1×DC-in Jack.

1. Wireless – Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, the network adapter is under the M.2 2280 SSD;

1. Cooling – active, fan (2.5 W, 60 mm, 4 pins, 30 CFM/25 dBA) with copper heatsink and heat pipe;

1. Power Supply – 19V/3.42A adapter (65W);

1. Operating system – Windows 11 Pro;

1. Manufactured in China, Shenzhen Ninkear Technology Co., Ltd;

1. Price (2025.11.18) – 320€. Also available on marketplaces (Ozon, etc.).

Packaging And Design

Ninkear M7 Mini-PC comes in a small box that includes the device, a power adapter, a metal plate for attaching the device to a monitor with 6 screws, an HDMI cable, a quick start user's manual, and a warranty card. The M7 device is light and compact, a little more than the standard 65 W power adapter. The case is made of metal and has ventilation holes on the back and sides. The plastic front panel houses a power button and two USB 3.2 ports, while the back houses all other connectors. The metal bottom panel is equipped with two holes for the mounting plate and four plastic legs.

The Ninkear M7 can be easily disassembled to install new RAM module or replace the SSD. To do this, you only need to unscrew 4 legs with an ordinary Phillips screwdriver, then pry and remove the bottom cover, which may stick a little due to the presence of a symbolic thermal pad between the cover and the SSD drive. By the way, it does not cover the entire disk and will not hurt to replace it with a proportional one after purchase. By removing the bottom cover, we access the both the RAM and the M.2 slots. The "stuffing", as you can see, is located quite densely - the network adapter, for example, is located directly under the SSD disk of the M.2 2280 format.

To replace the CPU thermal interface and clean the computer's cooling system, you need to unscrew the four hex bolts that secure the motherboard to the case, after which it can be removed, taking care not to tear the antennas of the wireless communication module. These antennas are brought out very poorly - directly to the metal wall of the case, so you should not expect good reception of a weak Wi-Fi or Bluetooth signal.

The active cooling system of the Ryzen 7430U CPU consists of an easily accessible laptop fan rated at 2.5W and 60mm in diameter and two heat pipes leading to a heatsink the width of the entire motherboard. The solution is actually similar to compact low-power office laptops, it is quite adequate to the installed processor.

Some questions arise about SSD cooling: they are designed to operate at lower temperatures than the processor (the critical temperature is 80°C) and are located on the other side of the motherboard from the processor, which is potentially dangerous for the drive. If you are using this Mini-PC, you should install the thermal pads to dissipate heat from the drives to the bottom cover yourself. Otherwise, the internal structure rather does not have any obvious negative features.

System Performance and Stability. Compare to Dell Precision 7540

The Ninkear M7 operating system with all drivers installed without additional running applications consumes 4.7 GB of RAM out of the available 15.4 GB. A fresh launch gives a busy 3.5 GB. It's safe to say that in the old days, operating systems had much more modest appetites.

To evaluate the performance, synthetic tests were first used: Cinebench R23, Furmark v. 2.10.2.0 (and its built-in components) and CrystalMark v. 8.0.6 - downloaded from official resources. Paired tests compared to Dell Precision 7540 laptop (i9-9980HK 2.4-5GHz, 8 cores in non-hyperthread mode, TDP 45W, 64GB RAM, Intel UHD 630 graphics and Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000, TDP 75W, SSD 512GB skHynix).

With the help of Cinebench, with a test time of at least 10 minutes, we evaluated the performance of the processor in single-threaded mode without additional load. At the same time, it is shown that the limiting frequency fluctuates around the limit for this processor - 4.3 GHz, and the final estimate is close to the Intel i7-1165G7 processor, which has a similar process technology (Intel 10 nm ~ TSMC 7 nm) and a heat package, but a different architecture. Performance is slightly higher than that of processors with older architectures (Intel Haswell 22 nm, Coffee Lake 14 nm), which is expected. During testing, the noise level of the cooling system remained very low compared to the noise used by several online users in high-end laptops.

The Dell Precision 7540 laptop with the older i9-9980HK processor scored ~10% lower at 4.75GHz, which is an expected result.

There are not so many scenarios when a single processor core is used anymore – this mainly concerns old programs running in single-threaded mode. A more representative evaluation is a multi-core test performed in Cinebench with the same conditions. The "cold" Ninkear M7 starts the test cheerfully, but not from the maximum frequency, but only from 3.1 GHz. During testing, the frequency is gradually reduced to the base 2.3 GHz, and the fan does not make much noise, despite the absence of restrictions on power and cooling policies from the OS. On the first pass of the test (from the "cold" state), the score scored is 20% higher than on the second and third passes (the "warmed-up" system unit), which reflects the shortcomings of the mini PC's cooling management policy. In fact, the performance of the processor in this mode is similar to the "hot" desktop Intel 7700K (4 cores/8 threads, Kaby Lake, 14 nm), the performance of which is generally difficult to complain about, so for the energy-efficient AMD 7430U this is a good result.

The processor of the Dell 7540 laptop received a similar score in the test, operating at frequencies of 3.6-3.2 GHz (i.e. always above the base frequency of 2.4 GHz). It is important to note that at the same time, the cooling system emitted a lot of fan noise - the i9-9980HK is made using an older process technology and has much lower power efficiency compared to the AMD 7430U.

The graphics system was tested with Furmark with control of CPU frequency, temperature and power consumption of the GPU. When the GPU is fully loaded, its power consumption reaches 14 watts at a frequency of up to 1370 MHz, up to 352 MB of memory is allocated from RAM, and the GPU temperature does not exceed 70 ° C. The graphics chip experiences throttling as it passes the test: the video core frequency drops from 1800 MHz at the start to 1370 MHz within 10 minutes. At a resolution of 1920×1080, Furmark eventually reaches 8-9 frames per second, which corresponds to the performance level of very old (2012) discrete laptop graphics cards such as Nvidia Quadro K2100M, AMD HD 8790M. From our experience, we can say that this is enough for many work tasks, but definitely not enough for modern games, for example.

The Dell 7540 laptop, equipped with a powerful discrete graphics card, copes with the test as expected, but the cooling system is very noisy, and the case heats up significantly.

Curious during the GPU tests, it turned out to be that the Ninkear M7 loses its responsiveness and starts to slow down very much, which is not observed at all in the case of the Dell 7540 laptop. As it turned out, this is due to the fact that when the GPU is fully loaded, the frequency of the CPU cores is greatly reduced - to 1.9 GHz at the start of the test and to 1.4 GHz by the end of the test.

Taking into account the fact that the overall temperature of the AMD 7430U SoC does not rise above 70°C, and the fan absolutely does not work at full power and continues to rustle quietly, the problem is purely software and related to the BIOS settings of this mini PC. To illustrate the extent of performance degradation, we will repeat Cinebench tests, but this time with Furmark applying the load to the GPU.

In single-threaded mode, we have a stable core frequency at 1.4 GHz, and the test result degrades by 3 times! Now the core performance is on par with the ancient Intel Westmere architecture processors which is an older model (32nm, 2010).

The Dell 7540 laptop also has a performance drop, but it does not exceed 20% and corresponds to a drop in core frequency to 4 GHz.

In similar multi-threaded testing, surprisingly, the core frequencies turn out to be higher and hold at 1.8 GHz. At the same time, the GPU core frequency drops to 600 MHz, and the final Cinebench score deteriorates by 1.5 times: the processor is equivalent in performance to the old Intel laptop on the Haswell architecture (22 nm, 2014).

Similar results are demonstrated by the general stress test in Furmark.

The Dell 7540 laptop loses only ~10% of performance in the Cinebench test with a simultaneous load on the CPU and a discrete GPU and remains at the level of the Intel 7700K.

The load on the CPU and GPU also degrades the I/O performance of the Ninkear M7, which can be due to both disk heating and limitations related to single-channel RAM operation. By the way, the standard SSD does not have a temperature sensor and always shows 40 ° C, which can lead to data loss due to overheating if handled carelessly.

As such, the Ninkear M7 has artificially limited performance, and this limitation is not done correctly. Paradoxically, for some reason, the cooling system of this mini PC never works at full capacity under any available settings. The forced "quiet" mode in the Ninkear M7 is configured incorrectly: resetting the CPU and GPU frequencies under load is done unequally in favor of preserving the power of the GPU, and when the GPU and one core are loaded, the frequency of the latter for some reason is less than when the GPU and all CPU cores are loaded, which has no logic at all. At the same time, the system has correctly selected temperature limits for the layout used by about 70°C - taking into account the location of SSD drives.

A representative of Ninkear Brand, in response this issue told to us that in a near future they will deal with BIOS firmware fixes, which will make the choice of system cooling modes available - "quiet" and "performance". The latter promises to be very useful for realizing the potential of the AMD 7430U processor used in the Ninkear M7, because such tasks as photo processing and video rendering rely on both the CPU cores in multi-threaded mode and the GPU.

For example, exporting 545 Sony A7s RAW files from real photography with white balance – exposure and contrast – chromatic removal corrections in Adobe Camera Raw takes 6 minutes 15 seconds for the Dell 7540 laptop, and as much as 11 minutes 50 seconds for the Ninkear M7, which is almost twice as long. This is despite the fact that in Cinebench Multicore alone, the results of these devices were almost equal. In the case of video rendering, where the GPU load is even higher with the right codec, you can expect an even greater discrepancy between these computers.

On the other hand, both during the actual correction of those very RAW files, and during the "ordinary" work (browser, MS Office, Origin Pro, Zemax and other routines) there was no obvious lack of performance, but only a small and quiet computer.

Performance Impact of Changing Factory BIOS Settings

A careful study of sources on the Web showed that in the BIOS of the Ninkear M7, there is still an opportunity to affect the settings of the maximum power consumption of the processor. To do this, you need to make changes to several parameters that determine the maximum heat packet and the actual maximum power consumption of the processor. In addition, you can adjust the fan settings, however, we could not fully understand whether they actually work at all or not. The necessary settings are located at BIOS -> Advanced tab -> AMD CBS -> NBIO Common options -> SMU Common options. The maximum heat package is set by the System Configuration option, where you can select values from 10 to 54 W. We set the value to 35 watts, but in fact, after rebooting, we found that the consumption under load does not exceed 25 watts. Therefore, we also set up AMD Smart Shift Control with numerical parameters of 35000 MW for each. Screenshots of the BIOS with these settings are given below.

Next, we repeated testing the system as we had done before. In single-threaded Cinebench with no GPU load, the result remained unchanged.

But in the case when testing in single-threaded mode was also added the load on the GPU with the help of Furmark, the results were significantly improved compared to the computer in the factory setting. A decrease in the score is now observed only by ~20% of the initial one without a load on the GP, which is quite acceptable. During testing, the cooling system is already much noisier than before at factory setting.

In a multi-threaded test mode in Cinebench with no GPU load, after changing the CPU power limit, the changes are much more noticeable. Now the cores are stable at 3.5 GHz, and this does not even cause the fan to spin at maximum speed. Running the test consistently does not lead to a noticeable deterioration in results. Compared to the result at the factory settings, the increase in the score for the test was ~35%, which almost equaled the AMD 7430U with the i9-9980HK in the hyper-threaded mode of 8 cores / 16 threads.

Even with a parallel load on the GPU with the new settings, performance is only 15% reduced compared to the results without GPU load. And this is still better than the result obtained at the factory settings without loading the GPU.

As for the processing of RAW files, the result with the new settings was 9 minutes 40 seconds. It's no longer the original almost 13 minutes, but still not 6 minutes in the case of the Dell 7540.

It is also important to note that the maximum fan speed was only sporadically turned on during the stress tests, which means there is still potential for increased performance. It is important that the standard power supply has a power of only 65 watts, and therefore with it you should not try to set the limits of processor consumption above the same 35 watts. Perhaps the system will still work with the standard power supply at a TDP of 45 watts, but the stability is already questionable.

Given that many laptops equipped with a similar cooling system (one cooler with a pair of heat pipes and one heatsink) have processors with a TDP of 45-55 watts, if you choose the appropriate power supply, the cooling will be enough for the processor. This is also evidenced by the fact that in the configuration we chose, the fan was almost never used at maximum revs during testing. Questions arise about the temperature of the SSD, which is located in close proximity to hot components: if the computer is operated at extreme temperatures for a long time, it can overheat and fail.

Conclusion

Ninkear M7 is a good option for a small-sized almost silent PC for office work with a fairly modern filling that provides acceptable performance. This Mini-PC also boasts ease of maintenance and a design with separate RAM, ROM, and communication modules instead of soldered ones, which is important for upgradability and improves maintainability...