"FA-EX9" AMD Ryzen AI 2L Mini PC from FEVM Rivals NVIDIA DGX Spark

[AleksandarK]

Today, Chinese PC maker FEVM introduced the FA‑EX9 mini PC, powered by AMD's new Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 "Strix Halo" processor. This compact system measures just 192 × 190 × 55 mm (2 L volume) and packs 16 Zen 5 CPU cores alongside 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units (Radeon 8060S) and a dedicated XDNA 2 neural engine capable of 50 TOPS. FEVM configures the MAX+ 395 to run at up to 120 W sustained power, putting it in the same performance class as a Ryzen 9 9955HX paired with an RTX 4070 Laptop GPU. Memory comes as 128 GB of LPDDR5X on a 256‑bit bus, with up to 96 GB usable as video memory for large‑model inference. Storage is handled by dual M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD slots, supporting up to 2 TB onboard and up to 16 TB total. The FA‑EX9 offers one HDMI 2.1 port, one DisplayPort 1.4, two USB4 Type‑C connectors for up to four 8K displays, and an OCuLink port for external GPU expansion. Inspiration for this mini PC seems to be NVIDIA's DGX Spark, which is Team Green's custom solution for local AI processing in an incredibly compact housing.

In comparison, NVIDIA's DGX Spark brings the GB10 Grace Blackwell superchip to a palm‑sized AI appliance. It combines a 20‑core Arm CPU cluster with a Blackwell GPU featuring next‑gen Tensor and RT cores, delivering up to 1,000 FP4 AI TOPS. The DGX Spark is built around 128 GB of unified LPDDR5X memory at 273 GB/s, up to 4 TB of self‑encrypting NVMe storage, four USB4 ports, one HDMI output, and a ConnectX‑7 SmartNIC providing 200 GbE networking for multi‑node clusters. Its chassis measures 150 × 150 × 50.5 mm (1.24 L volume) and draws approximately 170 W under load, with pricing starting at $2,999 for a 1 TB model or $3,999 for the 4 TB Founder's Edition, now available for preorder. While the FA‑EX9 balances general‑purpose computing, flexible GPU expansion, and high‑speed I/O for edge AI and creative professionals, the DGX Spark focuses on out‑of‑the‑box AI throughput and scale‑out clustering. The FA-EX9 is more of a general-purpose Swiss army knife, which can be used for anything from AI to gaming. Release date and pricing are still unknown.



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[AusWolf]

120 W in a mini PC the size of two credit cards... This is either freakin' awesome, or a burning inferno.

 

[john_]

120 W in a mini PC the size of two credit cards... This is either freakin' awesome, or a burning inferno.

The Nvidia option is 170W in a smaller box. Then a typical laptop with a high end discreet GPU could be going over 120W at a lower volume.
I don't believe 120W in a box of that size is something new.

 

[igormp]

I wonder how pricing will look like.
So far Framework's offering is the cheapest one at $2k. The other chinese one that I saw before was a tad more expensive.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I like the ports and the power, now lets see the price.

 

[Chaitanya]

I wonder how pricing will look like.
So far Framework's offering is the cheapest one at $2k. The other chinese one that I saw before was a tad more expensive.

In case of Framework you dont have to buy the whole PC, you can simply purchase the motherboard and use case+PSU of your choice.

 

[dailing007]

Without TBT5 certification or USB4V2 interface, such an expensive product is considered a failure

 

[Ultron1337]

This is actually more interesting than nVidia DGX Spark. Run all your x86 code without ARM hassle. I wonder if RAM bump from 128 to 256 will be possible in the future with this platform.

 

[Bruno Vieira]

Now I want to see the next Strix Halo with a 2x200GB interface. This requires a 16x PCI 5.0 for full bandwidth per interface, and the current Strix Halo only has three slots of 4x PCI-E 4.0. But Strix Halo pricing is much better, and you can run Windows with full compatibility.

 

[igormp]

This is actually more interesting than nVidia DGX Spark. Run all your x86 code without ARM hassle. I wonder if RAM bump from 128 to 256 will be possible in the future with this platform.

I don't ARM is that much of a hassle, but I get your point, it'd require some changes anyway.
However, having to deal with AMD would be much more a hassle IMO, but it may be worth it given the lower price point.

And a 256GB model would totally make it way more worthwhile than Spark indeed, no matter if you'd have to deal with ROCm or not.