I Visited the Minisforum HQ in Shenzhen, China – Here is Everything I Saw

Last updated on 15 Apr 2025 📧 Subscribe

Visiting Minisforum’s China Office – What Did I See and Are Minisforum Legit?

As part of an extended trip to Shenzhen to explore the operations of Chinese hardware manufacturers, I had the opportunity to tour the headquarters and production facilities of Minisforum.

Known primarily for their compact desktop PCs, Minisforum has grown into a recognizable name in the mini PC sector, especially among users seeking unique form factors and high-spec internals.

My visit was independently arranged—not funded or sponsored by Minisforum—and I was given broad access to their facilities, with the only restriction being a small section of their R&D operation involving future product development. This level of transparency allowed for a thorough, hands-on look at their operations, from production lines to internal workflows.

The visit came about through direct outreach. After arriving in China, I contacted several companies I regularly report on and review. Minisforum was among the few who responded affirmatively, agreeing to host a tour with very little advance notice. On the morning of the visit, I was picked up by three Minisforum team members, including their livestream and media lead, who also served as my translator for the day.

The visit took place across several floors of their Shenzhen headquarters, located in a commercial building they moved into in 2021, having launched the brand in 2018. They estimated they had around 300 staff globally, and based on what I saw, 150 to 170 people were active onsite, spread across administration, production, and support.

The headquarters occupied a full floor of the building, and it was apparent that expansion had been part of their strategy when they relocated in 2021. Though some office spaces were unoccupied, most of the floors were operational, with logistics and packaging activities ongoing. I observed pallets and packaging materials prepared for distribution, and a fair amount of sitting stock awaiting shipping. The layout was structured but busy, and of all the factory and office environments I toured during my trip, this one was arguably the cleanest and most organized. That said, I fully acknowledge that all facilities likely prepared for my visit to some extent.

The core office space was divided into five main sections: regional (domestic) sales, international sales (including platforms like Amazon), marketing and communications, product development, and web/app support. One notable area was their in-house video production studio used for livestreams and YouTube content.

It was professionally equipped and a far cry from many DIY setups I’ve seen elsewhere. The R&D section, while smaller in headcount, was well-defined, with product managers assigned to own specific hardware designs. Their approach appeared to give individual developers significant autonomy, from concept to execution.

Minisforum’s production line blended automation with human-led processes. Compared to other factories I toured in Shenzhen, theirs leaned more heavily toward manual labor, with an approximate 70/30 split in favor of human involvement. Tasks such as component placement, assembly, and basic testing were handled by line workers, while machines were used for stress tests and basic automation.

Staff wore ESD-safe gear like anti-static wrist straps, and their stations showed signs of regular use, such as floor wear and desktop clutter. There was no visible use of airlock or dust-control chambers, unlike in some other facilities, which may reflect a different internal standard or assessment of risk.

Minisforum included several test-specific environments within their production pipeline, which were not present in other factories I visited.

These included an aging room, where products were stress-tested under load over extended periods; a mute room, used to measure noise output under different system conditions.

Aand a shock testing room, used to simulate shipping and logistical handling stress.

These rooms provided an additional layer of quality control and indicated a focus on post-assembly validation. It is unclear how many units are tested this way—it may be based on statistical sampling—but the presence of these facilities in-house suggests a desire to validate performance prior to distribution.

The R&D tour provided insight into how Minisforum develops their hardware. While I could not film certain prototype designs, I was shown internal presentations, CAD models, and development slides covering current and future projects. Minisforum stated that all design IP is developed in-house and not resold or licensed out.

This was consistent with what I saw: unique PCB layouts, chassis concepts, and airflow strategies not commonly replicated by other brands. According to staff, each product is led by a dedicated product manager responsible for feature planning, design iterations, and incorporating customer feedback from forums and surveys. While I will cover this in more depth in a dedicated piece, one highlight was a preview of their upcoming NAS product line. Minisforum’s modular approach includes optional upgrades like M.2 to NVMe expansion cards and vertical mounting kits designed for optimal cooling. The design team emphasized airflow challenges when scaling NVMe bays and showed plans for vertical chassis configurations to help with thermal dissipation. Their willingness to walk through product iterations, including some early failures, was appreciated. I was also shown how they collect and incorporate customer usage data into next-generation revisions—a refreshing level of engagement with the post-sales cycle.

Throughout the tour, there were signs of an internal culture focused on autonomy and personalization. Employee desks in the sales and marketing areas included personal decorations, small toys, and hobby-related items—a contrast to the uniform, sterile environments in some tech companies. Staff I interacted with expressed general satisfaction, though naturally, any factory visit is likely to showcase a best-case scenario. That said, the absence of NDAs or filming restrictions during the majority of the tour does suggest a level of confidence in how operations are run. Meetings were conducted openly, and even during informal interviews with staff, the tone remained consistent: proud but not overly rehearsed.

Minisforum presented a distinctly integrated model of hardware development. Based on what I observed, they appear to retain full ownership of their hardware IP, from motherboard schematics to chassis design. Their hardware does not seem to be rebranded or redistributed through external labels, which distinguishes them from companies that act more as OEM aggregators or rely on ODMs. While their mini PCs are priced slightly higher than some competitors, that premium may reflect the additional effort in R&D, custom design, and modular flexibility.

Furthermore, Minisforum seems to focus on a smaller product catalog with longer development cycles, suggesting a strategy that prioritizes refinement over market saturation. In contrast to other manufacturers that may sell their designs through multiple storefronts or aliases (such as Beelink or Geekom), Minisforum appears to retain control over both design and distribution, offering a more vertically integrated approach. While no factory visit can fully capture day-to-day operations, this visit offered a grounded, independent view into how one of the more visible Chinese mini PC brands functions behind the scenes.

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      129 thoughts on “I Visited the Minisforum HQ in Shenzhen, China – Here is Everything I Saw”

      4. Great idea, love it when companies think how can we make this great thing better. Do you think they could build an extension to the mini pc, i.e. a replacement panel with some space to allow for the fan and/or just use heat spreaders to connect the M2s to the panel to help dissipate the heat?
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      12. Will this SSD fitt inn the U2 slot of the Minisforum MS-01 aand function withoutt any issues? It’s a Western Digittall Ultrastar DC SN650, U.3, 15MM, 15,360GB, 2.5-inch, PCIe.
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      15. @NASCompares.

        I had contact with Minisforum about the NAS card and they don’t know when or if they going to market it.
        Could you maybe advise them to market it as I have interest in it?
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      20. I am not convinced because of m.2 speed reduction. Spliting / converting existing one M.2 x4 gen 4 into two m.2 x4 gen 3 with raid function seems to me more resonable. Another interesting option would be a m.2 card with raid function for two NVMe disk gen4 placed into PCIe gen 4 x16 wired x8 of the computer… And additional external graphic card dock like in MS-A1 makes it a great workstation.
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      24. Interesting unit but heat is going to be a massive issue. Nice modular idea though with the addition card!
        If I install unraid on my pc, is it a partition or does it replace windows? I really like the look of it 🙂
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      25. I’d rather have 2x PCIe/4 or 4x PCIe4/2 M.2 devices in the PCI slot. An extra 2x pair of PCIe4/4 devices would be excellent. That would provide 1x PCIe3/2, 1x PCIe3/4 and 3x PCIe4/4 all up. I think there are some cards available, but it would be excellent if Minisforum sold or at least sanctioned a particular brand(s).
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      30. would be interesting if they could make it “standard” with proper cooling and keeping the noise down… and ditch the U.2 thing which isn’t useful for most
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      31. I could see an alternate side case panel with thermal pads as a cooling solution for the 6 drive prototype.

        Maybe some sort of larger passive heat sync panel.
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      32. Amazon has some laptop copper plates for laptop nvme drives that come with very thin thermal pads. I have used them with good results in my sff/laptop upgrade.
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      33. Is the Intel 13900H CPU (used in this device) subject to the same oxidation, stability, and degradation problems of the 13th and 14th Gen desktop counterparts?

        So many people are having problems with those CPUs, and I really can’t afford to risk having an unstable or degrading system (not to mention all the hassle of struggling to get an RMA).
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      37. Wouldn’t it make more sense to release a separate version that’s designed for the additional M.2 slots and larger case to fit adequate cooling? They already have all the main components working, so it’s just a matter of putting it all in a slightly larger case.
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      39. I don’t think it would hurt if they sold it with an alternative cover that’s raised a bit and can accomodate the active cooler and the heatsinks for the drives themselves. It would still remain pretty small.
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      46. I love that Minisforum is experimenting in the consumer space like this.
        If the cooling is critical, I wouldn’t mind his as like an add-on hump to the case, or a small extension to the case.
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      47. Does it use cpu-based bifurcation? Do you need special bios for that to work?
        If it is on a stock bios – I’m sure even if they’ll not sell it I’ll be able to trace something similar
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      48. What i’d love to see someone do is make a reasonable priced PCIE card that has a PLX chip to take 8 PCIE 4.0 lanes, and turns them into 16×3.0 lanes, then have 8 slots, 4 on the front, 4 on the back with an old school blower GPU like fan and heatsinks that cools both sides, automatically bifurcate between 8 SSDS getting 2x, and 4 SSDs getting 4x
        To be clear, i dont want it to be a hardware raid card, but rather more like a USB-hub for PCIe
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      49. Currently designing my own NAS, and here’s what I would love. Icy Dock has 12 x m.2 SATA, and pairing it with a low profile Raid Expander card, gives me 24 drives. I’d love to see a similar product, that is 12 x m.2 sata with a 12 port pcie switch. Then you could put 12 drives, no drivers, and a m.2 slot gives you 12 drives. There is also dual mode expanders that could support it.
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      50. I love the idea, but the lane layout is a killer for me. Sure, for a NAS with 2x10GbE this is ok, but I also use a faster nic, as you do. The original configuration with 3.0×2 for OS, 3.0×4 for M.2 and the big slot for heavy duty seems to be the sweet spot for this machine. Splitting the 3.0×4 in half for same speed redundant os drives would have been nice though.
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      51. I am in for one for my MS-01 if they also offer a better cooling to go along.. Or even a way to increase the height of the basis with a standup. I don’t mind few extra cm of height
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      54. This would be fucking incredible. I just got my first and second MS-01 a few days ago. I am planning on buying more, and turning one of them into a NAS is very appealing.
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      56. Maybe they should make a MS-02 specifically designed for this use case. Although I see potential in this approach, it will always be sub optimal, I think.
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      58. Firstly…. what is that table mat with all the writing on… and where did you get it.

        Second….. interesting idea, but i wonder if they would be better off designing a card for the PCIe slot that had more than 4 m.2 connectors.
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      59. Just print a fan bracket on it and put a large fan on it and connect it with USB? We should just get more PCIe lanes without needing to resort to large expensive servers.
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      60. Nice one MinisForum! Nice to know that there are companies out there that are paying attention to their customers and willing to try and innovate. Now this as pointed out may never become a purchasable product, but I’ll bet dollars to donuts that MinisForum will probably use what’s learn here for some future product that fits the bill.
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      61. The card is good, but you know what would be better?
        That’s right, a design of mini PC that is dedicated for micro NAS or micro hyperconverged machine.
        It could be a bit bigger than the MS-01 in height, but with the following improvement:
        proper ventilation for stuff inside as the ms-01 can overheat
        More m.2 ports (let’s say 6+)
        space for sata drives 2.5″ (or u2)
        good ventilation for drives too.
        2x10GB sfp + just like on current ms-01
        usb 4 + thunderbolt.
        at least 13900HX or 7945HX
        4 sodimm ports (yeah we could finally have 192GB of RAM).
        SAS 8088 or newer for external expandability.

        That should be barely more expensive than the ms-01 to build but give a lot more options and can be an all in one mini server for a lot of people.
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      62. Could you also test Networking over Thunderbolt please? The MS-01 has two TB Ports that can be used for Thunderbolt networking (each with abbout 25Gbit/s performance).
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      66. Found this by YT randomly suggesting it to me, and I’m kinda surprised they went with the splitting of the M.2 slots the way they did.
        I was expecting something like going from 3.0 x4 + 3.0 x4 + 4.0 x4 to 3.0 x2/x2 + 3.0 x2/x2 + 4.0 x2/x2, instead of 3.0 x4 + 3.0 x1/x1/x1/x1 + 4.0 x4. But I guess they might be a bit limited in how they can handle the multiplexing of lanes so went with using a multiplexer for just the one mobo slot’s lanes instead of trying to multiplex all 3 slots.
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      67. Will it work with the MS A1 I’m really getting rid of all Intel items and do not want or trust any of them after all the issues I’ve had with my 13900K 4090 Gaming rig ????
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      68. I would pay for a chassis extension/exoansion to make it larger overall, slot the unit into but allows you to add more to the additional area. Unsure if that would make it taller, or wider.
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      69. Hope Minisforum keeps up with this to compete with the Asustor unit. Maybe, model MS-02N, balance the PCIe lane distribution and make it 6x PCIe4x2. I’ll be waiting in that line.
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      70. Thank you. I’m only an enthusiastic amateur, who plays round with stuff like this for mental exercise. Your videos really help me, both with awareness of the hardware out there, and with ideas.. All the disclaimers with this board are noted … but it’s so interesting!
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      74. This is so funny. I literally mailed them July 25th that was looking forward if they developed a NAS bare one system and I have a MS-01 13900h barebone and ordered a MS-A1 barebone.

        I really hope they will produce and sell it.
        The MS-01 would be my NAS then and the MS-A1 will be my new Home lab mini PC.

        Don’t know if you have the Lexar NM790 4TB SSD in house.
        If so is it possible to benchmark and test real life data transfer on it.
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      76. I still say they should have made the chassis taller (and maybe even longer), cooling would have been so much easier if was 2U sized and they maybe could have stuck a fan on the expansion card (and 2210 drives could have been an option). Still really neat to see they are working on something like this, guess we’ll have to wait and see.
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      79. Funny realization. Manufacturers moving to the right direction. My way is am5 mobo with bifurcation card (+4 full speed nvme up to pcie5). And there is not very expensive card – Sabrent PC-P3X4 based on ASMedia ASM2812X – with cards like that you only need 1 pcie x4 slot for 4 drives, not very fast, but simple way to expand nvme storage
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      81. The perfect system:
        1.A small form factor system …maybe a bit bigger(for cooling) and the amazing bit of Tech inside????????????????????????????????????????

        2.An upgradable processor….highly unlikely-but one can wish(AMD…as Intel CPU’s are “going up in flames”????????????)….or something that will have enough PCIe lanes for:

        3. 1 -2 * 100GbE QSFP ports…for fiber or DAC.

        4. ⁠Out-of-band management port &

        5. ⁠a 10GbE Ethernet port….because not everyone will be using a MikroTic CRS504-4XQ-IN(4*100GbE) or CRS520-4XS-16XQ-RM(16*100GbE) switches.

        6. 8 to 16 * M.2 NVMe cards 2280….(Microchip Switchtec PCIe Gen5/Gen4 switch)….please don’t use Broadcom????????????????…..(an optional model…will make the device even larger/longer: have it where the front of the machine has removable trays, if a drive is failing, you don’t have to open the unit).

        7. And the ability to add 1-2 Intel Flex 170 Subscription Free GPU Accelerated VDI (1*Flex 170 And 1* Nvidia RTX 4000 SFF ADA)????????????….because…Why Not.????????????

        8. Dual power supplies(this will increase the physical foot-print)….so 1 * 800-1,800 Watt power supply(CPU, Dual 100GbE QSFP ports, 1GbE management port, 10GbE Ethernet port, 16*M.2 2280 NVMe ports, Dual 200watt Max GPUs)

        9. The hardware option of having an M.2*2230 to have ISOs(so the Out of band management can have access and load whatever it needs), I know someone will say “why not add a MicroSD card as well”.
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      82. The first (and much deserved) Rob pcb add-on. Wheres the seagull logo? That monster of a cpu will take anything you throw at it. MinisForum can go crazy in that box.
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      84. I wish they’d give it ECC memory (or at the very least, inband ECC), and more space for taller U.2 drives. Bonus points if they’d allow *two* U.2 drives.
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      87. I do hope this ends up getting released as this finally pushed me to buy an MS-01! Have been looking for a small home server that can do 10gbe, 5+ NVME SSDs, and was more flexible than the Flashstor.
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      91. I’m glad they are working on things like this. This is what customers want. As long as the lane can saturate 10Gb, I’m all for it although PCIE4 x1 would have been nice. Please make this with large slim fan on top. And please don’t get rid of 12600 option as that is more than enough for NAS storage machine and runs a lot cooler than that 13900.
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      93. I would love to see a version of this with the pci-e 4 m.2 slot split out instead, or even better split both the pci-e 3 (split to 2 X -> pci-e 3 by 2) and pci-e 4 (split to 4 pci-e 4×1) m.2 slots, that would give a nice even 2G per nvme on the card and give you a bonus pci-3 3×1 m.2
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      95. Yes please, I want one ????

        Edit: actually that layout seems to work; use the one leveraging the u.2 as the os drive, and the other for a raidz1 array. Thinking truenas scale with containers.
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      96. I know some will complain about the PCI arrangement but it makes a lot of sense for Truenas or Unraid. You can buy a superfast NVME and put it in the PCIE4x4 slot and make it a cache drive
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      97. Even this doesn’t pan out : they can still use that knowledge to make one works for the next model.
        Any brand that try to innovate for their customer is good.
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      98. you could 3d print a one inch gasket/spacer to allow for the fan and cover. I hope it makes it to market, since it will give asustore some competition.
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      99. and why would we want to ruin our $1600 CAD computer???? the reason i say ruin is because to turn it onto a nas you need to change the os and still buy 6 drives…….and the lil board you are reviewing…….so that makes it into $3k at least by the time its finished………you can buy a nas from one the popular nas makers for way less and you get more functionality
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      101. Very cool card! 🙂 Nothing for me personally but still very cool! The by faaaar most disliked part of the MS-01 is the I226-LM and the bugs with DHCP/vPro and how it blocks one for using that port for DHCP server like in a software firewall.. :'( But if i understood it correctly it’s not Minisforum’s fault.
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      103. Personally, id just invest in a large enterprise u.2 drive over this card with a bunch of NVMe drives, but it’s a really cool solution nonetheless.
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      104. My guess is that this really is a prototype and we’ll most likely see an actual product like this in the next version of the MS-01 (perhaps an MS-02 that doesn’t use a Raptor Lake processor?). Who knows what processor that will use, maybe the Core Ultra 9 285K? Ummm… if Arrow Lake doesn’t turn out to have the same degradation problems as Raptor Lake. The MS-01 is an I/O monster, it’s too bad that the MS-A1 isn’t.

        There’s a bunch of reasons for this, not the least of them being that once they start adding this many M.2 NVME slots, they really need either more PCIE lanes or faster gen5 lanes or both (the Ultra 9 285 has 20x PCIE5 lanes). Plus, by designing an MS-02 with this sort of daughter card in mind from the beginning, they can also upgrade the 2x SFP+ ports to a single QSFP port (100Gbps!), the NICs to 10GiB, and they can take more creative license in squeezing cooling into the case. A slightly taller case that accommodates the extra cooling, might also allow us to fit a double width PCIE card inside a well, so added bonus?

        Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the idea of an expansion option for SSD storage, it’s really encouraging to see a company build a thing like this at all! Minisforum likes to push the envelope and that’s great for us.

        There’s also the small issue of seeing how well their NVME-to-Oculink adapter holds up to real world usage, we won’t be privy to failure rates on that, but it will surely color whether we see similar daughter card designs in the future. I hope we do see a multi-SSD daughter card soon, but I wouldn’t pin too much hope on seeing many upgrade products made for systems that use 13/14th gen processors.
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      105. Maybe they’d be better off making a product from the ground up designed to have multiple drives. Kinda like the ssd nas from ugreen/asus/qnap but without the OS.
        That would work much better than kludging this card to an existing device.
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      106. Hey, that would be great. I love my little MS-01. Mine is a Blue Iris Server, and with my limited cameras, Reolink 8k Its doing ok without a GPU.
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      108. this card is dumb

        It reduces bandwidth to the SSD’s, can’t use it with the cover on, no cooling for the SSD’s

        You’re better off just getting a PCIE card with a PCIE switch and two M.2 slots on it and just using the existing M.2 slots from the factory
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      111. The coolest thing is that Minisforum shows interest in the desires of its customers, this is very commendable. Previously, I don’t remember such responsiveness from large brands.
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      112. That’s awesome, I hope that it does make it down to retail, or if they don’t, just be real bros to the tinkering community and release the schematics and BIOS changes for it. I do think the cooling is a problem that’ll be hard to overcome in this gen, but hope, at the very least, the next generation of the design is comfortable with this kind of expansion and giving just a little bit larger dimensions for compatibility and cooling.
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      114. YES, more of this. Even if this prototype does not pan out (and I have my doubts about cooling), making a mini PC with a ton of m.2 slots (with proper cooling) is 1000% something we want
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      116. They should make a motherboard version out of the ms01 configuration
        This in a jonsbo n5 would allow a full lenght gpu on top of hdd with a m.2 to sata adapter would be great
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      117. Just keep the speed of the card to pcie 3.0 they need way less cooling and is fast enough for any LAN connection.Even SATA M.2 are fast enough.
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      118. When Dr. Frankenstein’s creature was bolted together, things did not turn out especially well. Maybe Minisforum should rethink this addition to/conversion of the MS-01 and start building the MS-02. The same size box — more or less — in width and depth, but a bit thicker, to take a wider PCIe card in its internal slot, and with an OCuLink interface, like their AMD-based macine has.

        Since the MS-01 is already thicker that one rack unit, a 2U sized machine wouldn’t be a major mounting hindrance. Indeed, I think Minisforum should offer a side-by-side 2U 2-unit rack mount kit for the machine.
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      123. I’ve seen it before on another YT channel.
        Kudos for Minisforum for designing something quite creatively.
        Eventhough it might have some limitations and perhaps issues that still need to be overcome.
        Minisforum is really trying to move mountains (in a positive way!).
        If they can get the cooling solved in a solid way (thicker cooling pads stacked on top of all the M.2’s?) it could be a desirable solution for some.
        As for the BDOD, you’re sure you have removed the CrowdStruck drivers? (joke!)
        Looking forward to part 2!
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      124. I don’t think anybody needs 40Gb, I”m having enough trouble trying to 2.5Gb running, as well as a bit of 10Gb. I have several mini pcs running Windows Server, but most USB adapters for 2.5Gb use Realtek chips, and don’t work fantastic with Windows 10/11, let alone server OS. 40Gb is a different connector, different switch, pretty expensive cables, and complete overkill for home use. SFP fibre or DAC, and cards (770 intel) are just affordable and readily available. No laptop and no desktop come with 10Gb, ,let alone 40Gb.
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      125. Was literally a few days away from pulling the trigger on i5 13500 for one of those cwwk bords, then the hole intel meltdown got eposed. So not touching intel woth a red hot firepoker even if the transcoding is better on intel then on amd. So not interested in ANY intel cpu products
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      127. since they’ll need extra cooling anyway they should make this as a whole module that extends the case vertically. maybe with some extra ports or other functionality if that fits alongside a nice big fan and the nvme expansion.
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