Maxtang FP750 review | TechRadar

30-second review

Maxtang is a well-known brand for embedded PC solutions but has now become more active in producing Mini PCs. Its Maxtang FP750 uses recent AMD mobile silicon to offer a compact yet powerful system in a classic NUC form factory.

Available in Space Gray and Pearl White, and with a selection of processors, memory and storage configurations, the entry-level cost is low, and even the high-end models are affordable.

The expected trade-off here is that this is unashamedly a device built for a price, so don’t expect anything fancy like a metal enclosure. The FP750 is entirely plastic on the outside.

Thankfully, the inside is full of genuinely useful parts that elevate the FP750 into a powerful desktop PC replacement and a real workhorse.

My review system had an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, a twelve-core processor with an integrated GPU designed originally for laptops. Therefore, it can run for long periods without generating excessive fan noise while providing more than enough punch for typical Office tasks.

Does it have the feature set to be one of our best mini PCs?

Possibly. The Mini PC market is becoming an increasingly active sector, and buyers are often looking for something unique or unusual. The FP750 fits neither of those criteria, but it offers a good option for a person or business wanting to provide work-from-home systems affordably.

Where it isn’t ideal is the availability of some variants, like the review model, which seems challenging to source now.

Maxtang FP750: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? From $250/£204
• When is it out? Out now
• Where can you get it? Aliexpress, Amazon and direct from the makers

I appreciate that following the cost information for this product is a challenge. It’s confusing even for me, the writer of this review.

On the Maxtang website, there are multiple models of the FP750, using the Ryzen 9 6900HX, Ryzen 7 8845HS, 7850HS, and the Ryzen 5 6600H.

As you can expect, the Ryzen 5 6600H machines are the cheapest, and the Ryzen 9 6900HX is the most expensive.

Except when you find these on the official Maxtang store on AliExpress, only the Ryzen 5 6600H and Ryzen 9 6900HX models are listed.

Both processor options, in two available colours, come as barebones with no memory or storage and with different memory sizes and storage capacities.

The cheapest barebones Ryzen 5 6600H is only $250, and one supplied with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage costs $396. The cheapest barebones Ryzen 9 option is $299, and one with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage costs $460.

UK pricing has the Ryzen 5 for only £204 barebones and £321 fully populated, and the Ryzen 9 is £244 for the unpopulated model and £374 for the maxed-out option.

The cheapest populated models with 16GB of RAM and 512GB for each machine are about £100/$100 more than a barebones machine and come with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed.

On the Maxtang website, the Ryzen 7 8845HS is listed as costing from $619 to $649, but those are populated systems with no barebones option.

The only place we found the review specification processor was on Amazon.com, where a barebones machine with no memory or storage costs $499.

Maxtang FP750: Specs

Maxtang FP750: Design

• Plastic construction
• Relatively easy access inside
• Dual M.2 2280

There are complicated ways to make Mini PCs, and then there is Maxtang’s approach with the FP750. This is a simple plastic box in which air is drawn from underneath via perforations in a hexagonal layout. After cooling the internal parts, it’s expelled from the top through slots around the lid and from the rear above the I/O area.

The lack of any metal is a little disconcerting, and how the appearance of this equipment might suffer once in an office environment is a concern.

Access to the internal technology is by removing the underside, which is held in place by four screws hidden under the rubber feet. Adhesive for the feet is never the same after removal, so you should plan to do this only once if you can.

Why the screws couldn’t go through feet that remain in place or just not be hidden by the feet is a mystery. But, we wish Mini PC makers would stop this practice.

However, once the feet are off and the screws are out, you have full access to the internals, including the DDR5 memory and M.2 slots.

In my review machine, two Crucial-branded 16GB DDR5 modules were present, giving 32GB. Should you need more RAM, these can be removed and replaced with larger SODIMMs.

Matang quotes the maximum memory as being 64GB, but the Ryzen 7 8845HS will address up to 256GB even if 128GB modules are not widely available. Sadly, I didn’t have any 48GB DDR5 modules handy to see if 96GB was possible in the two slots, but it might be.

For me, easily the best aspect of the inside is that the NUC has two 2280 NVMe M.2 slots, with one already occupied by the 1TB boot drive. With two slots, it’s much easier to put new SSDs in place and clone the contents from the original module.

Technically, the WiFi module occupies a third M2. If you are prepared to give up WiFi, that’s another M.2 2230 that could take a small SSD drive.

The pre-installed drive had a heatsink, and given the relatively small amount of space and the limited cooling, we’d recommend only using NVMe drives that come with a heatsink.

Overall, other than the hidden screws under the feet, the layout and internal design of the FP750 are fine, and the pearlescent white ours was coloured is undoubtedly a divergence from the normal colours these computers are typically finished.

Maxtang FP750: Features

• AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (8 cores, 16 Threads)
• 20 PCIe Lanes
• Radeon 780M

The AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS features eight cores and sixteen threads, with a configurable power range from 35W to 54W, tailored to the specific application demands. In contrast to laptops, which focus on battery conservation, power adjustments in this context are more about heat management.

This Zen 4 architecture leverages the efficient 4nm FinFET manufacturing process, enabling it to operate quietly or deliver impressive performance.

While Intel has transitioned to using three different core types within its Ultra processors, AMD maintains its established approach of eight cores, all equipped with hyperthreading capabilities. The advancement lies not in the overall architecture but in maximising the potential of each core. The 8845HS is equipped with sufficient cache and clock variability to perform a wide range of tasks, along with twenty PCIe 4.0 lanes available for connecting external I/O without running head-on into bandwidth issues.

Often, Mini PCs lack the physical space to accommodate all the ports this system could potentially support, but that’s not an issue in this system. There are unused I/O locations, and it only supports a single LAN port, whereas many alternatives have two.

It also lacks the OCuLink port that we saw on the GMKtec NucBox K7 and K7 Pro, but it does have a single USB 4.0 that could be used for an external GPU connection.

However, a notable shortcoming of this platform lies in the Radeon 780M, which restricts the FP750s suitability as a gaming system. For an integrated GPU, the 780M isn’t terrible, but Intel has overtaken AMD with its ARC series GPUs, and the switch from the 680M to the 780M was massively underwhelming.

Overall, the performance of this system exceeds that required by a typical home or office user, aligning more closely with desktop-level capabilities. That makes it more suitable for a small server role or for power users who want an easily transportable desktop system.

Included in the box is a mounting plate for attaching the FP750 to the rear of a monitor, which, if you don’t need regular access to the ports, is a good way to run this system discretely.

Maxtang FP750: Performance

The FP750 benchmarks gave me a fascinating insight into how much better the Ryzen 8000 series was over the 6000 series. Because for the majority of tests, the FP750 and its Ryzen 7 8845HS are superior to the Ryzen 9 6950H used in the GMKTec NucBox M7 Pro.

The difference is typically around 10%, demonstrating that at each stage of the Ryzen mobile processor evolution, AMD has managed to find some significant improvements.

The only real disappointment to find in these numbers is that neither Maxtang nor GMKtec put an NVMe drive in these systems that could use the Gen 4 M.2 slot bandwidth properly.

While the Kingston SNV2S used in my review machine is a PCIe 4.0 specification drive, an alternative like the WD SN850X can double these speeds in reading and writing.

Maxtang might argue that the heat generated by a high-performance drive might be too much in an NUC enclosure, but I suspect that the Kingston SNV2S was chosen based primarily on price.

Maxtang FP750: Verdict

There are a few drawbacks to the Maxtang FP750, such as if you need different ports, such as Thunderbolt or OCuLink, but none make it unusable. I’ve seen plenty of metal cases recently, and this one is plastic, but unless colleagues in your office throw systems at each other, it will probably survive long enough to justify its investment.

I found the screws-hidden-under-feet scenario annoying, but most Mini PCs aren’t upgraded more than once in a lifetime, and glue is readily available.

The only genuine issue with the Maxtang FP750 is the availability of the review model, the one with the highly effective Ryzen 7 8845HS inside. The other, less impressive models are easier to find, and the Ryzen 5 barebones are great value for those with M.2 drives and some DDR5 SODIMMs spare.

In short, there isn’t anything outstanding about this Mini PC, but equally, Maxtang didn’t make any horrendous mistakes with it either.

Should you buy a Maxtang FP750

Buy it if…

Don’t Buy it if…

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