The tiny Next SBC is an affordable gaming PC with decent performance that fits in the palm of your hand

Cal Jeffrey

Cal Jeffrey

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Bottom line: Gaming enthusiasts with a penchant for compact tech might find their next obsession in the unannounced Next SBC. The compact device is small enough to fit your pocket, powerful enough to play PC games decently, and has plenty of connectivity options.

YouTuber ETA Prime got a review model even though the company has yet to post its Indiegogo page (review above). The Next SBC specifications are anything but modest. This tiny marvel sports a Ryzen 7 7840HS processor and a Radeon 780M integrated GPU. The Phoenix Point APU combines an RDNA 3 iGPU with LPDDR5 RAM, available in 16 GB and 32 GB variants.

While the RAM is soldered to the board, this design keeps the build compact and cost-effective. Despite its diminutive size, it boasts gaming performance that rivals some of today's full-sized gaming laptops. Its performance is impressive for its size, particularly in well-optimized games.

ETA Prime's testing showcased its capabilities across several popular titles. In Doom Eternal, the SBC delivered a smooth average of 79 fps at 1080p medium settings. Overwatch 2 managed to stay in the 80 – 100 fps range, while Spiderman Remastered and God of War performed admirably with the help of frame generation. These results highlight the potential of the Radeon 780M, which leverages modern upscaling techniques to deliver decent frame rates.

The board offers three M.2 slots for storage expansion, each supporting drives up to 4TB, outshining many larger systems. It also has plenty of connectivity options, including 3.5mm audio, four USB 3.2 ports, one USB 4, 12-19V power input (adapter sold separately), two 2.5G Ethernet, and two full-size HDMI ports.

However, the mini device comes with some trade-offs. First, the Phoenix Point APU is not the latest Strix Point chip, a decision the company likely made to keep costs low. Additionally, it sports a caseless design. This feature, or lack thereof, isn't a game breaker, but those who prefer a proper chassis for protection might have to invest in a custom 3D-printed case.

Although the Next SBC has yet to debut on Indiegogo, ETA Prime says the company is shooting for a base model price point of $329, offering an incredible value/performance ratio. For context, that's less than the cost of an RTX 4060 Ti GPU alone. Early adopters might snag an even better deal, but final pricing and availability remain uncertain – such is the way with crowdfunding campaigns.

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The tiny Next SBC is an affordable gaming PC with decent performance that fits in the palm of your hand

 
I seriously doubt this is suitable for serious gamers. These mini PCs need a port for an external graphics card. They'd become s huge factor if people could add on the GPU of their choice when they're ready to upgrade.
 
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seeprime said:
I seriously doubt this is suitable for serious gamers. These mini PCs need a port for an external graphics card. They'd become s huge factor if people could add on the GPU of their choice when they're ready to upgrade.
Click to expand...
That's what desktops are for.
 
Three M.2 slots in a board this small? It’s like they built a Swiss Army knife for gamers. Also, $329 for a gaming rig that rivals laptops is the ultimate 'ballin’ on a budget' move.
 
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We kinda already have powerful PC that fit in our hand capable of console quality gaming. They're called "smartphones".

Why nobody makes a smartphone that can simply plug into an HDMI port for 4K output with a bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth mouse and built in WiFi/5G I will never know.
 
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AnilD said:
Imagine telling someone in 1999 that one day you could run Doom Eternal on something the size of a Pop-Tart. We've come a long way from 'Can it run Crysis?'
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Crysis isn't as difficult to run on hardware of the time as people think it was. Crysis could be scaled down to not include all the lauded effects. The problem with Crysis was getting all the effects and then being able to run at 1080p. when it released 1440p was nearly impossible to run at playable framerates.

In retrospect, Doom Eternal is way less demanding on the hardware at the time of its release than Crysis was on the hardware at the time of its release.

The developers don't want to push the limits. Building "tech demonstrators" that only a small segment of the market can play is bad for sales.

Doom Eternal runs on an i7 6700 with 8GB RAM and a 1060 just fine.
 
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"Despite its diminutive size, it boasts gaming performance that rivals some of today's full-sized gaming laptops."

Wow, let's see how it ran games in the benchmarks. Oh no benchmarks.

"Although the Next SBC has yet to debut on Indiegogo, " So it's pure propaganda. If this company has released and delivered before there is a higher chance they will actually deliver. If not, probably not.
 
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Megalomaniac said:
We kinda already have powerful PC that fit in our hand capable of console quality gaming. They're called "smartphones".

Why nobody makes a smartphone that can simply plug into an HDMI port for 4K output with a bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth mouse and built in WiFi/5G I will never know.
Click to expand...

The Nokia N8 could connect by cable to a television for external display output and could also be connected to mouse and keyboard, although I cannot remember if this was wired or wireless, but it was very slow.

Innovation in smartphones is dead, probably because you only have 2 ecosystems, Google or Apple. Everyone is competing to make the same identical phones. It's a damn shame.
 
AnilD said:
Imagine telling someone in 1999 that one day you could run Doom Eternal on something the size of a Pop-Tart. We've come a long way from 'Can it run Crysis?'
Click to expand...

As someone who was around in 1999 I would have not been that impressed considering that Doom 1 and Doom 2 were pretty old at that point and ran on pretty much anything. "Can it run Crysis?" would have also elicited a "what is Crysis?". What would have boggled people's minds would be telling them that in 25 years we would have computers with a CPU with 8 cores that ran at up to 5.1GHz and 32GB of RAM that was on a PCB the size of a sandwich and that it would have supercomputer levels (of the time) of performance.
 
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seeprime said:
How is m.2 an external graphics port?
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it exposes the pcie lanes, making it very easy to use an m.2 to pcie adapter. There are such adapters available that also take care of the few remaining conveniences: driving the GPU's power from an external power supply and turning it on-off automatically with the PC. Tried to link a photo of what they look like but antispam blocked me, but they are easy to google. I have been happily using one of these (ADT R43SG) with a deskmini for the last 6 years, feeding it from a $10 220W old Dell laptop power brick. Typically the m.2 offer much more bandwidth than thunderbolt (which is most commonly used for pre-made eGPU enclosures) and they are much cheaper too (mine cost about $60), so win-win. For GPUs that need more than 220W someone can feed from a standard ATX PSU, or a more powerful brick -or even multiple bricks in parallel. The only disadvantage is that they might look a bit "messier" than a standard thunderbolt eGPU enclosure, however there are cheap DIY-ish enclosures to house the whole lot (power supply, gpu, adapter) and make it look just as neat, if someone cares. Egpu.io is a good site where people showcase such builds.

[edit] it also means that someone can use this to drive to connect an external GPU to pretty much any laptop these days, with only a few ergonomical concerns (accessibility of the m.2 slot through the case, making sure the adapter is no more than 50cm from it). So some laptops are better suited for this than others, but generally it's doable if someone doesn't mind the hassle of unscrewing the m.2 everytime they want to go portable.
 
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masaaya4 said:
The Nokia N8 could connect by cable to a television for external display output and could also be connected to mouse and keyboard, although I cannot remember if this was wired or wireless, but it was very slow.

Innovation in smartphones is dead, probably because you only have 2 ecosystems, Google or Apple. Everyone is competing to make the same identical phones. It's a damn shame.
Click to expand...


iPhone was a leapfrog product. There's been absolutely NO innovation since then beyond better cameras and better batteries - or other incremental improvements. Android phone makers follow what Apple does because they do it well and corned the market profits. Folding phones ain't it. Short of implants or smart eyeglasses with 4K resolution, I don't see anyone doing anything differently anytime soon.

Imagine a pair of eyeglasses or sunglasses the same size as what we have now with a 30 hour battery life and the capabilities of our smartphones - using AI to help us do things hands free. We're talking TIME TRAX levels of technology.
 
Megalomaniac said:
iPhone was a leapfrog product. There's been absolutely NO innovation since then beyond better cameras and better batteries - or other incremental improvements. Android phone makers follow what Apple does because they do it well and corned the market profits. Folding phones ain't it. Short of implants or smart eyeglasses with 4K resolution, I don't see anyone doing anything differently anytime soon.

Imagine a pair of eyeglasses or sunglasses the same size as what we have now with a 30 hour battery life and the capabilities of our smartphones - using AI to help us do things hands free. We're talking TIME TRAX levels of technology.
Click to expand...
I d think those would be harmful if worn more than 1 hour per day.
Also, having wireless stuff so close to your head, idk. I would not want it to be near my head unless used in small sessions.
 
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