AOOSTAR is one of the great Chinese compact machine specialists and like other better known ones like Minisforum which has recently updated its catalogue, it is well regarded by SFF/Mini fans. The latest model announced is from the AOOSTAR GEM 12 series and it’s small, fast and has some interesting additional details.

The machine uses a chassis made of CNC aluminum alloy with metal sandblasting and anodizing treatment. Its format is typical, with the size of a square Dimensions 13 x 13 x 6 cm and includes a screen on the front which is customizable and offers user-selected backgrounds, time display and other device tracking. Another one of those details we talked about is a fingerprint reader compatible with Windows Hello.

Your hardware base is responsible for a Ryzen 7 8845HS APU AMD “Hawk Point” series. It has 8 cores and 16 threads with a maximum frequency of 5.1 GHz and a TDP of 75 W. The maximum capacity of the RAM increases to 64 GB, enough storage space with two slots to accommodate M SSD disks .2 2280 up to PCIe 4.0.

As for the iGPU, it is a Radeon 780M integrated in the processor. However, to improve the graphics part, it has an OCuLink connector, which proves to be the best solution for mounting discrete graphics. It’s a good way to improve this section, which is essential for tasks like games.

The rest of the components connectivity it gets the job done with two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, two Ethernet 2.5G ports, two USB4 Type-C ports and outputs for connecting to monitors, HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4. There is also a wireless connection, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.

The new AOOSTAR GEM 12 is available in various configurations. The basic version costs 2299 yuan (about $316 to change). We see a version with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD for $420, and another with 32GB of RAM for $470. A higher configuration with 64 GB + 2 TB SSD will be available later. Like other devices from this manufacturer, it can be purchased on the international market from sellers such as Aliexpress.