Vapor Chamber Cooling Meets Intel Ultra 9 Efficiency

Fitting a high-wattage mobile workstation processor into a palm-sized aluminum enclosure measuring 5.31 x 5.19 x 2.27 inches (135 x 131.8 x 57.7 mm) and weighing 1.71 lb (777.5 g on the scale) is easy on a specification sheet, but thermal dissipation and electrical regulation determine whether a compact rig delivers sustained throughput or throttles into noise. Over the past week, I put the VZMORE iX9 Max through synthetic full-system torture tests, processor compute benchmarks, graphics compute workloads, and continuous high-speed storage transfers.
Built around Intel's "Meteor Lake-H" Core Ultra 9 185H processor, integrated Intel Arc Graphics, and an Intel AI Boost NPU (up to 11 TOPS), the system relies on VZMORE's V-Cooling architecture, which combines a full-coverage vapor chamber plate with an active blower fan and a 360-degree bottom air intake. Across two comprehensive HWiNFO64 hardware logging sessions (a 900-sample benchmark capture spanning 30 minutes and 2.6 seconds at 2-second polling intervals, plus a 325-second combined full-system burn-in test), the machine recorded zero Windows Hardware Errors (WHEA) and zero sustained all-core thermal throttling.

System Configuration and Hardware Specifications

The review unit arrived with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed and was tested under the 65 W Performance Mode (alongside the available 40 W Balanced Mode and 20 W Silent Mode), powered by the included 120 W (19 V DC, 6.32 A) power adapter.

Out of the installed memory capacity, 23.53 GB is usable by the operating system at a 2,793 MHz clock, and the processor carries a rated thermal junction maximum (TjMAX) of 110 C. Physical connectivity covers both multi-monitor productivity desks and homelab deployments:

• Quad-Display Output: Dual rear HDMI 2.0 ports and dual rear 40Gbps USB4 ports with DisplayPort 2.0 Alt Mode allow the system to drive four monitors natively without external hubs. Both rear USB4 ports support 15 W Power Delivery output, while one rear USB4 port also accepts 100 W (20 V, 5 A) Power Delivery input.

• Workstation Networking: High-speed wired and wireless connections are handled by dual Realtek 2.5GbE RJ45 Ethernet jacks, an M.2 2230 Wi-Fi 7 EB600 wireless card (built on the MediaTek MT7925 controller), and Bluetooth 5.4.

• Peripheral Expansion: The front and rear panels provide six USB Type-A ports (four front 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports including one with S5 Power Delivery support, plus one rear 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port and one rear USB 2.0 Type-A port) alongside a front 3.5 mm stereo headset jack and a side-mounted SD 4.0 card slot.

V-Cooling Vapor Chamber and Full-System Torture Telemetry

Instead of relying on narrow copper heat pipes that can saturate when the processor cores and integrated graphics pull heavy current simultaneously, the V-Cooling module uses a wide vapor chamber plate that covers both the processor die and the motherboard voltage regulator circuitry.
To evaluate worst-case thermal saturation under the 65 W Performance Mode, I subjected the system to a 265-second simultaneous torture load where every primary subsystem was pushed at once: 100% continuous processor utilization across all cores and threads, full 3D engine utilization on the integrated graphics core, and 78.0% continuous storage activity reading 393.62 GB of data at a 1,549.4 MB/s average (peaking at 1,923.6 MB/s).

Several hardware management behaviors stand out in the full-load stress telemetry:

• ICCmax Current Clamping: Rather than waiting for delayed watt-based RAPL or thermal throttling to intervene, VZMORE regulates the processor at the voltage regulator level. After an initial 51.56 A electrical burst, the VRM clamps sustained package power inside a tight 50.92 W to 52.91 W window with a tiny 0.40 W standard deviation, completely avoiding high-temperature initial boost spikes and maintaining 25 C to 40 C of safety headroom below the processor's thermal limit.

• CPU-First Power Split: When the processor and graphics engine are pinned simultaneously, the power controller prioritizes compute by routing 38.64 W (74.0%) to the IA cores and 7.22 W (13.8%) to the System Agent, while capping the integrated GPU at 4.18 W (8.1%) with a 1,200 MHz median clock (1,150 to 1,250 MHz range). Under this artificial worst-case load, Windows desktop manager animations drop to roughly 5.9 FPS until the synthetic graphics stress is released.

• Unload Voltage Spike: Sustained full-load throttling stayed at 0.0% across all 132 active stress samples. At the split-second the workload ended (between 288.8 s and 290.8 s) and processor utilization dropped to 30.9%, the all-core current clamp (which held core voltages at 0.83 V to 0.85 V) released and triggered a single-core turbo burst to 4,788 MHz at 1.115 V (55.31 W) on heat-soaked silicon, latching the thermal event flag for 4 polling ticks (8 seconds) as the chip was already cooling down.

• Rapid Cooldown Recovery: Once the torture load stopped, the vapor chamber shed 20 C from the 89 C unload peak in just 2 seconds (dropping to 69 C, and down to 61 C shortly after) before settling back to 51 C within 34 seconds.

The "Inverse Hotspot" Phenomenon in Benchmark Telemetry

Capturing hardware telemetry across the Geekbench 7.1.0 benchmark suite in Performance Mode revealed an inverse relationship between total package power and peak package temperature when comparing lightly threaded tasks against heavy all-core workloads.

• Single-Core Favored Hotspots: During lightly threaded runs, Windows schedules single threads onto the two favored performance cores, driving them to 1.245 V and 1.252 V on a tiny section of the compute tile. Because local heat flux briefly exceeds lateral silicon heat transfer before saturating the vapor chamber, those two favored cores touch 101.0 C and 102.0 C (104.0 C on the Enhanced IA sensor) and record micro-throttling in 13.56% and 15.22% of session rows, while the standard performance cores peak at 4,789.2 MHz (1.132 V max) and the efficiency clusters peak at 3,791.0 MHz with zero throttling.

• Distributed Multi-Core Efficiency: When all cores engage past 91.4% total load under the 65 W Performance Mode (sustaining 64.45 W mean and peaking at 67.41 W package power and 61.86 W IA core power), average core voltage drops to 0.887 V to 0.894 V (0.916 V max) as the VRM delivers 53.0 A to 55.0 A mean current (60.5 A peak) and synchronizes effective clocks between 3,355 MHz and 3,371 MHz (3,527 MHz max). Spreading the thermal load evenly across the die allows the vapor chamber to cap peak multi-core package temperature at 87.0 C (83.1 C mean) and peak core average temperature at 71.0 C.

• Fast Post-Burst Recovery: Right after the multi-core peak finished, the cooler dropped the package sensor from 86 C down to 46 C in 14 seconds, while the NVMe drive averaged 35.4 C (35.0 C median, 30.0 C min, 43.0 C max) and the chipset averaged 38.8 C across the session.

CPU Compute Performance

Across the validated Geekbench CPU benchmark run, the three-tier hybrid core layout delivered strong multi-threaded scaling.

• Cache-Driven Multi-Core Scaling: The processor's shared L3 cache helps parallel workloads scale efficiently across all performance and efficiency cores, including multi-threaded File Compression, which reaches a score of 10,693 for a 4.77x scaling ratio.

• Responsive Single-Thread Bursts: In single-core subtests that benefit from fast favored-core turbo clocks and branch prediction, the system posts solid scores in Structure from Motion (2,592), PDF Viewer (2,439), Navigation (2,438), Video Player (2,347), Game Physics (2,295), Video Encoder (2,278), Audio Encoder (2,200), and HTML5 Browser (2,116).

Intel Arc Graphics Compute: OpenCL and Vulkan

To evaluate integrated graphics compute across different APIs, I benchmarked the integrated GPU in both OpenCL and Vulkan modes.

• OpenCL Power and Driver Advantage: OpenCL outperforms Vulkan overall because the graphics driver sustains higher mean GT power draw in OpenCL (17.06 W mean, 31.23 W peak) than in Vulkan (13.49 W mean, 29.17 W peak), delivering lower shader dispatch overhead in creator workloads like Video Filter, Face Tracking, and Photo Filter while matching Vulkan in hardware-accelerated ray tracing and particle simulations.

• Network and Wireless Telemetry Notes: During the initial benchmark run (12:49:49 to 12:54:26), HWiNFO64 network monitoring on the wireless adapter captured a 66 MB background download burst peaking at 10,093.0 KB/s (9.86 MB/s) right as the multi-core test finished, which spiked package power to 39.96 W and interrupted the result upload handshake, confirming that the upload failure was caused by network traffic contention rather than hardware instability. 

Pros, Cons, and Final Verdict

The Good:

• Steady Vapor Chamber Cooling: The V-Cooling thermal plate and VRM current clamp maintain flat power delivery under simultaneous processor, graphics, and storage torture in 65 W Performance Mode with zero sustained thermal throttling and rapid post-load heat dissipation.

• Cool Secondary Components: Both the integrated Arc graphics engine and the PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD stay well below their thermal limits during extended compute and high-throughput disk reads.

• Strong Multi-Core Scaling: The hybrid core architecture and generous shared L3 cache deliver impressive multi-threaded scaling for compilation, asset compression, rendering, and photo editing.

• Capable Creator GPU Compute: The integrated Xe-core graphics architecture provides strong OpenCL and Vulkan acceleration, including hardware-accelerated path tracing and image filtering.

• Workstation Connectivity: Native quad-display output (dual HDMI 2.0 and dual 40Gbps USB4 with DP 2.0 Alt Mode), dual high-speed 2.5GbE Ethernet, Wi-Fi 7, an SD 4.0 card reader, and dual M.2 PCIe Gen4 x4 slots fit into a compact aluminum footprint.

The Trade-Offs:

• Single-Core Favored Hotspots: Aggressive single-thread turbo boosting concentrates voltage on two favored performance cores, causing brief hotspot spikes before heat spreads laterally into the vapor chamber.

• CPU-Biased Combined Power Split: Pinning both the processor and integrated graphics to maximum synthetic load simultaneously caps graphics power to protect processor clock stability, which can briefly slow desktop animations during artificial torture runs.

• Soldered Memory Timings and Secondary M.2 2242 Size: Because the 24 GB of onboard LPDDR5 memory is soldered, capacity cannot be upgraded later, and Gear 4 memory latency leaves a bit of performance on the table in memory-sensitive tasks. Additionally, expanding internal storage in the secondary bay requires a compact M.2 2242 PCIe Gen4 x4 drive (up to 1 TB) rather than a full-length 2280 module.

For developers, photo editors, homelab builders, and heavy multitaskers who want a compact workstation that prioritizes predictable all-core power regulation, cool subsystem thermals, and rich physical connectivity, the VZMORE iX9 Max is a remarkably well-engineered mini PC.
Price to performance on this unit is extremely reasonable, and easily something that I would recommend to friends or family.

If you have spent any time testing high-powered mini PCs over the last couple of years, you already know the biggest catch with cramming 54W to 65W mobile workstation silicon into a tiny box: heat. Plenty of compact rigs look great on a spec sheet, only to hit a thermal wall two minutes into a heavy workload.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been putting the VZMORE AX9 Max through a full suite of synthetic benchmarks, AI workloads, storage stress tests, and 30 hours of real-world gaming. This system packs AMD's "Gorgon Point" Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 (12 cores / 24 threads), the Radeon 890M integrated GPU, and a 55 TOPS Ryzen AI NPU into a 135 x 131.8 x 57.7 mm (777.5 g) aluminum chassis. To keep those components under control, VZMORE built the system around its V-Cooling thermal design, which pairs a full-coverage VC Vapor Chamber with active fan cooling to support up to 65W (V-Boost Pro).

Across 73.22 minutes (2,197 telemetry samples) of HWiNFO64 hardware logging and 30 hours of gaming, the cooling setup did not record a single thermal throttling event (PROCHOT or HTC) or Windows Hardware Error (WHEA). We did, however, uncover a quirk with wireless input stability when the system is pinned at 100% load, which VZMORE's engineering team is already addressing via an upcoming BIOS update.

Quick Specs & Test Unit Configuration

Our review unit arrived pre-configured with Windows 11 Pro (64-bit), 32 GB of dual-channel DDR5-5600 RAM, and a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. Below is the full breakdown of the official specs alongside what HWiNFO64 and Geekbench detected inside our test machine:

Ports & Connectivity Highlights

• Quad-Monitor Support Out of the Box: Between the dual rear HDMI 2.1 ports (rated up to 8K at 60Hz) and two rear 40Gbps USB4 ports supporting DisplayPort 2.0 Alt Mode, you can run four monitors without a dock. One of the rear USB4 ports also accepts Power Delivery (PD) input if you want to power the PC over USB-C.

• Plenty of High-Speed USB-A & Dual 2.5GbE: You get four USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A ports right on the front panel (one with S5 power-off charging), plus another USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and a USB 2.0 Type-A port on the back. Add in a side-mounted SD 4.0 card reader, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and dual Realtek 2.5GbE RJ45 ports, and the port selection easily covers creator desks and homelab setups alike.

V-Cooling Vapor Chamber & Thermal Performance

The main reason this mini PC performs as consistently as it does comes down to its V-Cooling architecture. Instead of relying solely on narrow copper heatpipes that can saturate when both the Zen 5 cores and the 16-CU Radeon 890M are pulling power simultaneously, VZMORE uses a wide VC Vapor Chamber paired with active fan cooling.

To see if the vapor chamber lives up to the marketing, I logged 2,197 samples (73.22 minutes) of HWiNFO64 sensor data across six distinct torture and benchmark runs
HWiNFO Combined CPU + iGPU + SSD Burn-In (hwinfo burnin.CSV): 389 samples over 13.01 minutes (780.6 seconds) pinning all 12 cores at 100.00% median CPU usage (mean 89.57%), 88.00% median iGPU utilization, and 629.08 MB/s median NVMe read load.
Extended FurMark GPU Burn-In #2 (furmark burnin 2.CSV): 739 samples over 24.65 minutes (1,478.7 seconds) holding the Radeon 890M at 100.00% median utilization and a 3,053.00 MHz median clock.
Baseline FurMark GPU Burn-In #1 (Furmark burnin.CSV): 261 samples over 8.68 minutes (520.7 seconds) at 100.00% median iGPU load.
Geekbench 7 & AI Benchmark Suite (Geekbench 7 tests.CSV): 702 samples over 23.42 minutes (1,405.0 seconds) covering single-core, multi-core, OpenCL GPU, and AI inference runs.
CrystalDiskMark NVMe Stress Log (ssd bench.CSV): 96 samples over 3.17 minutes (190.5 seconds) tracking SSD temperatures during heavy sequential and random read/write passes.
Under-Load Wireless Input Diagnostic Log (HWinfo64 log Wireless input under load.CSV): 10 samples over 18.02 seconds capturing a simultaneous CPU (95.85% median / 100.00% max) and GPU (93.50% median / 97.00% max) spike at 64.43W median / 65.01W max package power.

Complete HWiNFO64 Thermal & Power Breakdown

What Stood Out in the Thermal Logs

• Spot-On Power Management (54W Balanced + 65W V-Boost Pro): With Windows set to the Performance power plan, the AX9 Max immediately lets CPU Package Power boost to 64.92W to 65.01W (CPU Core Power SVI3 TFN peaking at 77.15W), matching VZMORE's V-Boost Pro Up to 65W spec. After roughly 90 seconds of continuous torture load, the APU STAPM controller settles cleanly at a 54.00W median (54.06W max), while Total System Power tops out at 94.69W, leaving plenty of headroom on the included 120W power brick.

• Wide Heat Spreading Across the Die: While the instantaneous CPU (Tctl/Tdie) hotspot sensor briefly touches AMD's 95.00 C boost ceiling during initial 65W bursts, it settles to an 85.00 C median (mean 83.47 C) during the 13-minute combined CPU+GPU+SSD torture test. Even better, the physical CPU Cores (Avg) sensor holds a 71.40 C median (mean 69.62 C, max 78.40 C) and the L3 Cache averages 63.70 C. That 13.6 C to 15.4 C gap between the Tctl/Tdie hotspot and the physical core average shows how effectively the vapor chamber spreads heat away from the cores.

• Rock-Steady 25-Minute FurMark Temps: During the 24.65-minute FurMark Burn-In #2, the Radeon 890M iGPU and CPU (Tctl/Tdie) sit at a flat 73.40 C and 73.80 C median, while physical CPU cores average 58.73 C (median 59.60 C).

• Fast Cooldown & Ice-Cold VRMs: Once the 100% load in the HWiNFO Combined Burn-In ended at second 726.5s (89.90 C), CPU (Tctl/Tdie) dropped to 47.10 C by second 780.6s, shedding 42.80 C in 54.1 seconds (0.79 C/sec). Meanwhile, the motherboard's VDDCR_VDD VRM never exceeded 57.30 C (median 51.90 C to 53.30 C under torture), and the dual DDR5 SO-DIMMs peaked at 59.20 C / 57.00 C.

CPU Performance: Geekbench 7.0.0 Single-Core & Multi-Core

The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 pairs 4 full-sized Zen 5 cores (Cluster 1) with 8 dense Zen 5c cores (Cluster 2), backed by 12 MB of L2 cache and 16 MB of shared L3 cache. In our HWiNFO64 logs, Zen 5 Cores 0, 2, and 3 boosted up to 5,240.5 MHz (5,150.7 MHz on Core 1), beating the 5.2 GHz rated boost clock, while all eight Zen 5c cores hit 3,294.1 MHz. Under 100% all-core load in hwinfo burnin.CSV, the chip maintained a 3,585.20 MHz median average clock (3,627.50 MHz median effective clock).
In Geekbench 7.0.0 for Windows AVX2, the AX9 Max posted a Single-Core Score of 2,664 and a Multi-Core Score of 17,051, giving it a 6.40x multi-core scaling ratio:

Heavy multi-threaded tasks scale impressively across all 24 threads: Ray Tracer jumps 13.24x (from 679.7 Ksamples/sec to 9.00 Msamples/sec), Asset Compression scales by 10.74x (from 57.4 MB/sec to 616.9 MB/sec), and Clang compilation speeds up by 8.90x (from 11.9 Klines/sec to 106.1 Klines/sec).

Local AI Performance: Geekbench AI 1.7.0 (CPU ONNX vs. GPU DirectML)

Alongside the dedicated 55 TOPS Ryzen AI NPU (which clocks between 0.2 MHz at idle and 800.0 MHz under load in Geekbench 7 tests.CSV), we benchmarked both the Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 CPU (using ONNX with AVX2/AVX-512) and the Radeon 890M iGPU (using ONNX DirectML) in Geekbench AI 1.7.0.
The results show why having both strong AVX-512 VNNI CPU cores and a 16-CU RDNA 3.5 iGPU in the same box is so useful for local AI workflows:

• Use DirectML on the Radeon 890M for FP16 and FP32: In Half Precision (FP16), the Radeon 890M scores 15,143 vs. 1,937 on the CPU, making it 7.82x faster (+681.8%) overall, with a 16.27x speedup in Pose Estimation (HP) and a 10.00x speedup in Depth Estimation (HP). In Single Precision (FP32), the GPU also leads by 2.04x (8,356 vs. 4,106).

• Use the Zen 5 CPU for Quantized INT8 Inference: Thanks to native AVX512-VNNI and AVX-VNNI support, the CPU scores 7,732 in Quantized (INT8) workloads compared to 6,045 on the GPU (1.28x faster overall), beating the GPU by 3.88x in Object Detection (Q) and 3.46x in Image Classification (Q).

Radeon 890M Graphics: OpenCL & 30-Hour Gaming Test

Equipped with 16 RDNA 3.5 Compute Units (1,024 Stream Processors) and a rated boost clock of 3,100 MHz (observed peaking at 3,096.0 MHz in HWiNFO64), the AMD Radeon 890M (gfx1150) has access to a 4 GB dedicated UMA buffer plus 14.4 GB of shared device memory in OpenCL.

Geekbench 7.0.0 OpenCL GPU Score: 35,031

In Geekbench 7.0.0 OpenCL, the Radeon 890M hit an overall score of 35,031, led by Super Resolution (70,665 / 130.4 Kimages/sec), Particle Physics (55,705 / 9,986.9 FPS), and Background Blur (46,523 / 120.2 images/sec):

30 Hours of Real-World Gaming (1440p & 4K)

With AMD's HYPR-RX global profile enabled in Adrenalin, I logged 30 hours of gameplay across three titles at 1440p and 4K:

Holding 66.6 FPS at 1440p Ultra in The Sims 4 over 16 hours and 93.8 to 108.9 FPS at native 4K in Mewgenics and Cosmoteer makes this a very capable casual, indie, and strategy gaming box without needing a discrete graphics card.

NVMe Storage Speeds & Thermals

The primary M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 x4 slot comes populated with a 1 TB Lexar SSD NQ7A1 (RC1191R001242P2237) running at a full 16.0 GT/s PCIe 4.0 link speed. Tested in CrystalDiskMark 9.0.3 x64 (3 passes, 1 GiB test size, 18% drive fill at 176/953 GiB), it delivered fast Gen4 numbers while staying cool:

During the 190.5-second CrystalDiskMark run (ssd bench.CSV), the drive's composite sensor averaged 50.05 C (median 50.00 C, min 41.00 C, max 59.00 C, SD = 5.25 C), while the ASIC controller sensor (Drive Temperature 3) briefly touched 66.00 C during sequential writes before dropping right back to its baseline. Even during the 24.65-minute FurMark GPU burn-in, the SSD sat at a cool 40.00 C median, showing zero heat soak from the APU.

Testing Note: Wireless Connections Under Heavy Load (BIOS Fix Incoming)

During our stress testing, we noticed an issue affecting wireless connections (specifically wireless mouse input and receiver stability) when the system is pushed to maximum combined CPU and GPU load (HWinfo64 log Wireless input under load.CSV, where CPU load hits 95.85% median / 100.00% max and GPU load hits 93.50% median / 97.00% max at 64.43W median / 65.01W max package power).
To isolate the behavior, we captured polling intervals in MouseTester across wired and wireless configurations both at idle and under heavy system load:

• What Happens Under Load: With a wired mouse, polling remains rock-solid at both idle (hovering tightly between 7.5 ms and 8.5 ms) and 100% system load (averaging 8.00 ms with a tiny 0.77 ms standard deviation and 0.0% of updates exceeding 12 ms). A wireless mouse at idle also tracks near the 125 Hz target at a 7.87 ms mean (7.54 ms median) with only occasional ~15 ms intervals. However, when the system is hammered by a 100% combined CPU+GPU load, wireless update intervals jump to an average of 10.90 ms in the capture window (11.42 ms across the full log, pulling the effective polling rate down to 90.4 Hz), with 32.4% of updates exceeding 12 ms and latency spikes reaching 33 ms to >41 ms.

• Fix on the Way: We shared our HWiNFO64 and MouseTester telemetry directly with VZMORE's engineering team. The manufacturer's technicians have already reproduced the behavior and are currently building a BIOS update to resolve the under-load wireless resource/interrupt contention, so this issue will be fixed shortly.

Final Verdict: Pros, Cons & Should You Buy It?

The Good:

• Legitimate Vapor Chamber Cooling: The V-Cooling VC Vapor Chamber holds a rock-solid 54.0W sustained STAPM (65.0W V-Boost Pro peak) with zero thermal throttling, keeping physical CPU cores at a 71.4 C median under combined torture, FurMark iGPU temps at a 73.4 C median over 25 minutes, and VRM temps below 57.3 C.

• Strong Zen 5 + Zen 5c Compute: Hits 5,240.5 MHz on Zen 5 cores to post 2,664 Single-Core and 17,051 Multi-Core in Geekbench 7.0.0.

• Flexible Local AI Hardware: Gives you a 55 TOPS Ryzen AI NPU, Radeon 890M DirectML (15,143 FP16 score, 7.82x faster than CPU), and Zen 5 AVX-512 VNNI (7,732 INT8 quantized score, 1.28x faster than GPU).

• Great 1440p & 4K Casual/Strategy Gaming: Scores 35,031 in Geekbench 7 OpenCL and averages 66.6 FPS at 1440p Ultra in The Sims 4 and 93.8 to 108.9 FPS at 4K in Mewgenics and Cosmoteer across 30 hours of play.

• Loaded Port Selection & Fast Gen4 SSD: Dual 40Gbps USB4, dual HDMI 2.1, dual 2.5GbE LAN, Wi-Fi 7, SD 4.0 reader, six USB-A ports, and a 1 TB Lexar Gen4 SSD hitting 4,810.91 MB/s read / 5,099.54 MB/s write.

The Trade-Offs:

• Secondary M.2 Slot is 2230: While the primary M.2 2280 slot takes up to a 4 TB drive, the second PCIe 4.0 x4 slot uses the shorter M.2 2230 form factor (up to 1 TB).

• Wireless Jitter Under 100% Torture Load (Fix Pending): Wireless peripherals currently experience polling spikes when the APU is pinned at 100% load, though wired peripherals are completely unaffected and VZMORE's technicians are rolling out a BIOS update to resolve it soon.

Overall, if you are looking for a compact Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 mini PC that actually has the thermal engineering to sustain its 54W to 65W power budget without cooking its VRMs or SSD, the VZMORE AX9 Max is an impressive piece of hardware, and once that BIOS update lands for under-load wireless stability, it will be firing on all cylinders.