ASUS Mini PC Pro Art PA90: the review

When we talk about workstations we are often led to think of very powerful desktop PCs but also quite bulky and difficult to place inside our office furniture, both in size and aesthetics. For these reasons we tried to replace our super PC for video editing with the new one ASUS Mini PC Pro Art PA90 (seen for the first time at CES 2019), a product that only has the name of "mini" and that has allowed us to move the previous desktop to the office on the ground floor. In this way we gained a little space under the desk and furnished the same with an object that was however well finished and pleasant to look at.

But it is really possible to replace a powerful desktop like ours with a small tall parallelepiped less than 40 cm? Is the power comparable? Are there any compromises? Read on below because I will answer all these questions.

Among the features that immediately catch the eye by observing this Asus Mini PC there are certainly the dimensions. They are not very contained, there are smaller mini-PCs, but in relation to what we find inside and the performance we can safely say that we are facing a well-calibrated product. But we will talk about this shortly.

Meanwhile I can tell you that the external shell is made entirely of aluminum and for three quarters it is made up of a metal grid specifically designed to improve air flows inside the chassis and make the cooling system more effective. Dissipation that further improves performance, there is talk of a 38% increase in air flow rate, when it comes raised the top cover. Another feature that makes this solution so special is in fact this automatic lid lifting system that rises from the rest of the body by automatically adjusting the opening according to the work load.

The design it is undoubtedly very sober, the satin finish of the surface greatly reduces reflections making this PA90 a solution that can be discreet while remaining interesting mainly for its characteristics and performance. But let's get to the dimensions which are certainly one of the most important data. This mini-PC is 36.5 cm high and it's about 17 cm wide and deep. The weight is not very limited, we are talking about just under 6 kg which, due to their compactness, seem more, while still remaining very portable.

Unfortunately, failing to make everything so hyper-compact, Asus was unable to insert a power supply into the chassis capable of delivering the 410W needed to support the load of the components. Here is the reason for the presence of two external 180W and 230W power supplies: the power is there but it also increases the overall dimensions and the number of cables that "infest" our desk.

I close with a quick evaluation regarding the supply of doors that we could define professional. In the front, under the Asus logo, we find two USB Type A 3.1 Gen 2 flanked by two audio jacks for microphone and headphones but it is on the back that we have the richest panel. Turning the solution we have four DisplayPort 1.4, two USB Type-C with Thunderbolt 3 support, two additional USB Type A 3.1 Gen 2, one Gigabit Ethernet, one additional jack and two connectors for the WiFi antenna. The latter, like the two power supplies, is external to the system and, however small, it remains an additional element to hide; also and above all because of its design, not at all sober.

To better understand the design effort made by Asus to make this mini-PC, however, it is essential that it also tells you what we find inside. In these 36.5 cm of aluminum we have one Intel Core i9 9900K CPU, the same one that we chose for our super PC some time ago, 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, which can be expanded up to 64 and a graphics card Nvidia Quadro P4000, not yet of the RTX series but still able to guarantee excellent performance in all situations where its intervention is required.

Finally, storage consists of a 512 GB Samsung NVMe SSD with read and write speeds of around 3400 MB / s and 1500 MB / s. An undoubtedly fast unit, to which we can add an additional SATA module, thanks to an empty slot above the connection panel and an additional M.2 due to a slot available to the user at the base of the motherboard.

There is therefore room for updating or expansion but access to the components is less simple than you might think. Storage aside, to reach the rest of the hardware you need to disassemble practically the whole PC and, especially for those who have no experience with this type of operation, it can be a very complex process.

Removed the metal cylinder and the bulkheads to protect the motherboard and components, we note the presence of a system of liquid dissipation with one 120 mm radiator used for CPU cooling. RAM slots are hidden under the radiator and just below the water block we have the empty M.2 slot I mentioned above.

The diametrically opposite side then houses the video card which would seem simple to extract but which is actually fixed by some screws accessible only from the inside, completely disassembling the motherboard.

For those who are wondering motherboard and cooling system are obviously made to measure to be inserted into a chassis of such small dimensions and are not sold individually. Aspect to be taken into consideration regarding reparability; in the event of problems with one of these components, it will not be possible to replace them independently.

I have already told you a little above what we find inside this Asus mini-PC and therefore I will not repeat it again. Let's say that these are medium-high end components, on the market there are similar solutions with Extreme series processors that certainly offer better performance in certain situations but which, of course, will also have a higher cost. An example? The Corsair One Pro i180, which has a list price of around 1700 euros higher.

Having said that I anticipate immediately that ours PA90 however defends itself very well in all situations in which we tested it. The performance we have achieved is comparable to that of our super PC and in the past few weeks they have made us absolutely not regret it. The only scenario in which our RTX 2080 Ti really makes a difference compared to the Quadro P4000 is gaming but in the creation of content there are no obvious differences.

Just to give you an idea of ​​the level of performance, I can tell you that the 4K rendering of a 66 second video takes one minute to be completed. Time that goes down to just over 20 seconds if we export it to FullHD. Do you want a yardstick? My gaming notebook with Intel Core i7 processor of the H series and GTX1070 exports the same file taking almost double the time, while our PC with Core i9, RTX 2080 Ti and 64 GB of RAM allows us to earn only a couple of seconds.

Same goes for exporting with Adobe After Effects. An animation consisting of a dozen levels takes about 4 minutes to be rendered in 4K and just over half for fullHD. Here, too, my notebook needs about twice the time while our workstation completes the operation more or less with the same timing.

But how do the temperatures with hardware enclosed in such a compact chassis and with so little space available to disperse the heat? I have to say that this was my biggest doubt but that it took me a few days of use to understand that I was worrying about nothing. The cooling system is studied very well and even at full load there are values ​​which allow to maintain excellent performances even for long periods of time.

During the stress test that maximally loads all the CPU cores we have temperatures that they come close to 90 degrees and then go down and settle at about 80/85 degrees for the rest of the stress test, with an operating frequency on all 8 cores that stabilizes between 3.5 and 4 GHz.

In the table above you see i results of some benchmarks, among which I have also included games. Obviously we are not faced with a product designed for gaming, but the presence of a processor of this caliber and a discrete graphics card, however, of a good level allows us to take away some whims even in this scenario. Especially with the latest titles it is better not to go beyond FullHD but staying within this threshold we can play with high detail while maintaining an excellent framerate.

Finally, the fact that even at the maximum rotation speed of the radiator fan, the rustling noise is absolutely acceptable should not be underestimated. The solution remains silent even in the most demanding situations and this allows us to position the Mini PC even in an office context with other people at our side without fear of annoying them in this sense.

A proper content creation workstation obviously needs support to view and work on this content that is at its height in terms of performance. This is why we have placed the PA32UCX monitor which is proposed as a very high level professional solution.

It is a display that, as the name suggests, offers a 32-inch diagonal panel, 4K resolution, HDR1000 technology (with HDR10 support, Dolby Visione and HLG) and Mini LED backlight with 1152 zones. In short, a display that every person who works with videos and photos would like on their desk to edit and compare their content.

The design is sober, fully resuming the Asus style, but the dimensions are certainly not contained. Not so much for the frame that is thin enough on all sides, as for the thickness. However, we understand that to dissipate the heat produced by the backlight without risking overheating and damaging the panel, the thickness is an absolutely acceptable compromise. The pedestal is also very solid and allows you to adjust the position of the display both in height and in the vertical and horizontal angle.

The probe for calibration is supplied inside the package but this monitor obviously comes factory calibrated and in the box we also find the printing of the results obtained by the single panel during this process. So I tried to measure only the sRGB profile to verify that the results were really those shown on the report and actually the difference in defect or excess in the different parameters is not significant.

So do you want me to give you some data? In terms of color space coverage we have 88.7% for Rec. 2020, 99.6% Adobe RGB, 99.1 DCI-P3 and 99.9% sRGB. THE delta E are less than 1 both for the colors and for the grayscale and remain in this same tolerance even if we look at the variations in saturation of the different shades. The maximum brightness of the panel reaches 1000 cd / m2 and the contrast is over 1.000.000.00: 1.

I close by telling you that on the back of the panel we find 3 HDMI 2.0, a Display Port 1.2, audio jack, 3 USB Type A 3.0 and 2 USB Type C with Thunderbolt support. The latter two are an input and an output with support for charging up to 60W.

So let's get to the point and talk about prices for a moment. The PA90 Mini PC it is available in different configurations with a starting price of around 3,000 euros. The configuration available to us is a middle ground that is offered with a price list that is around 3,500 euros. Many? In absolute terms, yes, certainly, but if we think about what we are offered, it is not even a crazy amount.

Making a quick calculation and inserting in the cart of my Amazon account the components necessary to assemble a machine of this type, the result speaks of a disbursement in any case greater than 2,000 euros. If we add to these the assistance and warranty services, the engineering and design work, the compact dimensions and the production of some custom components such as the motherboard you will also understand that the price proposed by Asus is high but not exaggerated.

If you want to add the monitor to the Mini PC PA32UCX here is that the figure increases significantlyon the contrary, it doubles. The display individually also costs around 3,500 euros but is an almost essential tool for some categories of users. There are obviously less expensive solutions with lower characteristics and probably still sufficient for the needs of many users, but those who work at a certain level will surely understand the importance of having a panel of this type in front of their eyes and will be more inclined to spend certain figures to buy it .

If you fall into this category of users, you can afford to spend such amounts and you don't have much space available on the desk, then I recommend you to seriously consider this combination because it could really be for you.