My gaming tower was a beast. It had all the raw power I needed, but it also completely dominated my tiny apartment. Between the case, tangle of cables, and the space-hogging desk I needed to fit it all, my “battle station” felt more like a storage unit than a living space. I wanted high-end performance, but I also wanted my home back.
That kicked off a long search for something smaller. I flirted with the idea of a gaming laptop, but the price-to-performance ratio felt like a compromise I wasn’t willing to make at home. I tried rearranging my setup, but no matter how I angled it, the tower was still too much. I was stuck between sacrificing power or sacrificing space — until I discovered another option entirely.
Enter this Minisforum mini PC and eGPU dock combo. With a compact system on my desk and an RTX 5060 Ti handling the heavy lifting, I suddenly had a rig that was nearly as powerful as my old tower while taking up a fraction of the footprint. The performance trade-off was surprisingly minimal, and the benefits in space, noise, and flexibility were immediate.
For me, it was a genuine eureka moment, and it made me rethink what a gaming setup could look like in 2025.
My setup and the test
As for how I’ll be testing them, I’ll be comparing this to the numbers I got during my Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti review in the test tower. Of course, this isn’t an exact science, as there are some monster components in the monolith. So surely, that means it should be much better, right? …RIGHT?!
How does it perform?
Well, it's complicated. Of course, if I was to run CPU and SSD loading tests, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and PCIe Gen 5 SSD I have will power ahead. But for graphics card tests, the numbers were basically identical!
PC |
3DMark Average score |
RTX 5060 Ti Gaming PC (AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D) |
11,195 |
Minisforum AI X1 Pro + DEG1 eGPU Dock (RTX 5060 Ti) |
11,052 |
That comes down to the balance of components. To extract every ounce of that performance of the GPU, you need a CPU with enough headroom to not bottleneck it. The 9800X3D is so over the top for a mid-range GPU like the RTX 5060 Ti — kind of like investing in a V10 engine for your car without thinking about buying the wheels.
But as it turns out, the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 laptop chip in the AI X1 Pro is more than enough to not limit its capabilities.
PC |
Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p ray tracing ultra no DLSS) |
Forza Horizon 5 (max settings 1440p) |
RTX 5060 Ti Gaming PC (AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D) |
53.24 FPS |
121 FPS |
Minisforum AI X1 Pro + DEG1 eGPU Dock (RTX 5060 Ti) |
52.99 FPS |
119 FPS |
Zippy frame rates at the highest settings, whether immersed in a single player story or turning down the fidelity to extract as many frames for multiplayer. And on top of that, your creative workloads zip by too with the GPU-intensive side of 4K video edits and animation — even local AI-based creativity.
The ultimate living room setup
So I was thinking that the Oculink cable could cause problems here! Don’t get me wrong, it does effectively double the bandwidth of Thunderbolt GPU docks by connecting directly to the PCIe lanes. But it is still connecting a desktop with a cable, but none of this was felt — even at 4k.
PC |
Cyberpunk 2077 (4k ray tracing ultra DLSS 4 MFG x4) |
Alan Wake 2 (4K Super res ultra DLSS MFG x4 |
RTX 5060 Ti Gaming PC (AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D) |
103.52 FPS |
65 FPS |
Minisforum AI X1 Pro + DEG1 eGPU Dock (RTX 5060 Ti) |
99.26 FPS |
63 FPS |
I don’t need to go into talking about the strengths of DLSS 4, multi-frame generation and all of Nvidia’s neural gaming trickery. You already know how much of a game changer it can be for the mid-range GPU market — a cheat code to extracting more frames while freeing up some of the video memory headroom in less expensive cards.
But while behind a keyboard and mouse, some of that latency can be felt a little bit, with a controller, it’s just as snappy as any games console — in fact snappier. And the games look absolutely gorgeous here with next-to-no artifacting/ghosting around objects you see with neural rendering work.
My recommended gaming PC for tiny apartment dwellers
Not only is this workaround cheaper, it looks better (if I’m spending several hundred bucks on a GPU, I want to show it off), it’s smaller, and you barely lose any of the performance because of that typical laptop CPU you see in mini PCs vs a desktop chip.
To get my desk space back after owning a giant tower has been huge for giving me the room to spread out my notebooks and peripherals, and not feel so cramped. And on top of that, it has revolutionized my living room gaming. DLSS 4 and multi-frame gen when on a controller feels incredible and the games, obviously, look so much better than you could ever get on a console.
Would I recommend this over a desktop PC? This question is relative to your use case, because at the end of the day, the difference in price is not that huge. So let me break it down:
Who should buy a mini PC + eGPU dock?
If you’re living in a small space like a studio apartment, value portability and minimalism, or you’re keen to upgrade on a budget, this is the way to go. Plus, if you do go a little overpowered on the power supply, that gives you headroom to move to more powerful GPUs should you want to upgrade.
Who should buy a gaming tower?
For the performance purists, long-term value hunters and those who want to upgrade every part of their system over time, the larger desktop tower is the best option. It’s hard to look past these details for hardcore gamers and builders.
But it’s good to know that whatever group you fit into, rest assured you’re getting a more than good enough experience. Doubts about the mini PC route are greatly exaggerated — you can get pretty much all of the benefits of that desktop GPU pumped through its notebook components.
If you are in a tight spot (literally in terms of room), this is a shockingly good workaround.
Follow Tom's Guide on Google News to get our up-to-date news, how-tos, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
