Hardware notes: boards, BIOS, memory and thermals

Per-machine quirks the spec sheets don’t tell you. One section per vendor/board — extend yours.

The universal ones

  • UMA / GTT split: decode throughput lives and dies on memory config. Check the BIOS’s dedicated iGPU allocation before blaming software.
  • Thermals: sustained inference is a different duty cycle than gaming. A box that benches fine for 2 minutes can throttle at minute 10 — report sustained numbers.
  • Power limits: several mini-PC vendors ship conservative PL defaults; raising them changes results materially. Note the setting when you post benchmarks.

Per-vendor sections

(wiki — add your board: Framework Desktop, GMKtec, Beelink, Minisforum, …)