Price When Reviewed

$429

Best Prices Today: Asus Expertcenter PN53-S7103AD

It’s not well-known, as nearly all of Asus merchandise are geared toward house customers, particular person media professionals, and avid gamers, however Asus additionally makes workplace computer systems primarily for companies, though anybody should purchase them. These encompass laptops underneath the title Expertbook and desktop computer systems underneath the title Expertcenter. They vary from giant customary towers to all-in-one fashions to essentially compact mini PCs. An instance of the latter is the Expertcenter PN53.

It’s a very compact little field, just a bit over 5 inches huge and simply as deep, however then a bit of taller than, say, the Mac Mini or HP Pro Mini 400. The outer shell is all black matte plastic with sharp edges and corners, and huge cooling grids on the edges and crowded ports on the again, so it doesn’t look significantly glamorous. But it’s discreet sufficient to face subsequent to a monitor in your desk and never appeal to consideration.

Mattias Inghe

Full-speed or half-speed community

On the entrance is a quick USB 4 port of Type C with DisplayPort help, two common USB 3 of Type A, and a headphone port. The reverse aspect is filled with ports. An equally quick USB-C, additionally with DisplayPort, three USB-A with USB 3 velocity, an extra-fast Ethernet port with 2.5Gbit velocity and three further display screen outputs: two HDMI 2.1 and a big DisplayPort. That’s greater than most giant laptops, and greater than many giant desktop PCs.

Wireless is just not as quick. It’s Wi-Fi 6 customary, however the reception is just not excellent and I get weaker sign power the place I place the pc than with different mobiles and laptops, so although in concept it must be doable to recover from gigabit velocity, I don’t actually land on these ranges. It’s nonetheless steady and quick sufficient for many issues, so it’s onerous to complain.

With the 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS, the pc has constantly excessive efficiency for the whole lot from browsing and workplace work to productiveness and even easy video games. The inbuilt Radeon 680M graphics chip is highly effective sufficient to run much less grueling video games at 1080p decision. At least so long as you’re not strict about 60fps necessities. I run Witcher 3 on it, and may get 40fps with excessive stability.

A really loud hiss

But not peace and quiet. The pc has energetic fan cooling from the primary boot up, and it by no means settles down, leaving you with a relentless and intrusive noise within the background. It additionally rapidly ramps as much as much more noise when the processor or graphics get loaded and the slightest bit scorching. I’ve examined many compact laptops, some with nearly as good efficiency as this pc, and sadly this one is a notch extra noisy than most.

The aggressive cooling does hold the {hardware} on the proper temperature stage even throughout heavy work, so a video export or a processor-intensive recreation gained’t gradual you down. But is it actually value it? Doubtful. Asus may have used a extra subdued fan mode for low-performance use, and extra subdued fan mechanics basically.

Mattias Inghe

Usually in Asus computer systems I can go into the My Asus app and set the fan mode, however that’s not obtainable right here. The solely factor My Asus incorporates is settings for sound and microphone. Something the pc doesn’t have, except you plug in analog ones your self by way of the headset port on the entrance. If there’s any approach to management the cooling, I can’t discover it. Maybe you’ll be able to go searching within the BIOS for it, however it’s not one thing that extraordinary folks ought to need to take care of.

The Expert Center PN53 is bought in lots of shops to customers after which with Windows 11 Home, although it’s primarily a enterprise pc. Apart from a trial model of McAfee Livesafe, it’s free from pointless third-party packages. The solely factor put in is Asus’ personal help program and some small packages from AMD and Realtek for {hardware} settings.

Room for extra storage

With 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD, I don’t really feel a direct have to improve, however in fact I raise the lid to see if it’s doable. And sure, it’s not that troublesome. With 4 screws, the pc opens from the underside and splits in two, with components of the motherboard in every half, related by a large information cable. You need to watch out to not loosen it, however the storage and reminiscence are then simple to entry.

Mattias Inghe

Both SO-DIMM slots for RAM reminiscence are occupied, so you must improve by changing them. For storage you’ve got a PCIe M.2 slot obtainable and straightforward to achieve, and a slot the place you’ll be able to insert a 2.5-inch SATA SSD. It’s tougher to get to, and also you’ll have to fastidiously unscrew different parts after which simply as fastidiously reassemble them. But it may be executed.

The Expert Center PN53 is obtainable in different configurations than this one, some a bit cheaper, others a bit extra highly effective and costly. But it’s the similar sort of processor, albeit not all the time as highly effective, and the identical cooling mechanics in them. So I’m uncertain that selecting a much less highly effective mannequin will assist a lot with the noise downside.

Specifications

Product title: Asus Expertcenter PN53
Tested: January 2024
Manufacturer: Asus
Tested mannequin: PN53-S7103AD
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS, 8 cores 3.2-4.75GHz
Graphics: AMD Radeon 680M
Memory: 16GB DDR5
Storage: 512GB SSD
Expansion slots: 1st M.2, 1st 2.5 inch SATA
Connections: 2x USB4 40Gbps (1 with DisplayPort), 5x USB-A 5Gbps, 2.5Gbit LAN, DisplayPort 1.4, 2x HDMI 2.1, headset
Wireless: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2
Operating system: Windows 11 Home
Other: 2-year guarantee
Noise stage: 33- 38dBa
Size: 13 x 13 x 5.7cm

Performance

Cinebench R23, cpu all cores: 12,812 factors
Cinebench R23, cpu single core: 1,558 factors
Geekbench 6, cpu all cores: 10,042 factors
Geekbench 6, cpu single core: 2,129 factors
Geekbench 6, graphics: 29,406 factors
Disk learn: 3,604.06 MB/s
Disk write: 3,372.77 MB/s

This article, which initially appeared on PC för Alla, has been translated from Swedish to English.