Minisforum has announced the MS-03, a compact desktop workstation designed for enterprise edge computing and local AI inference, built around Intel’s Panther Lake Core Ultra 9 386H processor.
The MS-03 is a 196 x 189 x 48 mm chassis, roughly the size of a thin ITX build, that houses a 16-core, 16-thread Core Ultra 9 386H with a 4.9 GHz maximum turbo frequency and an 80-watt TDP in balanced mode. The processor’s integrated NPU delivers 50 TOPS of AI acceleration, with the integrated GPU adding another 40 TOPS for a combined 90 TOPS of on-device AI performance. Minisforum states the system can run the Gemma 4-26B large language model at 22.05 tokens per second.
Memory and storage are a major differentiator. The MS-03 supports up to 128 GB of DDR5-7200 MT/s memory across two SO-DIMM slots. Storage is handled by three M.2 NVMe slots, two PCIe 5.0 and one PCIe 4.0, plus an M.2-to-U.2 adapter supporting 7 mm U.2 SSDs up to 15 TB.
Connectivity is enterprise-grade. The system includes dual 10GbE SFP+ ports powered by an Intel X710 controller, a 10GbE RJ-45 port, a 2.5GbE RJ-45 port, and Wi-Fi 7 with Bluetooth 6 via an Intel BE211 module. I/O includes two USB4 Type-C ports with DisplayPort 2.1 Alt Mode, one HDMI 2.1 port, and four USB-A ports distributed across the front and rear panels.
A PCIe x16 slot, wired for PCIe 4.0 x4, supports half-height, low-profile discrete GPUs up to 75 watts, enabling workloads that benefit from dedicated graphics processing without requiring a full tower chassis. Intel vPro support provides IT administrators with out-of-band remote management for monitoring, repairs and power cycling.
The cooling system uses a three-heatpipe heatsink with a single fan rated at approximately 38 dB under full load.
Pre-orders open globally on July 23, 2026. Pricing has not yet been announced.
The MS-03 positions Minisforum against a growing segment of compact AI workstations designed for organizations that want to run large language models on-premises rather than through cloud APIs. Its combination of 128 GB memory capacity, 90 TOPS of AI acceleration, dual 10GbE networking and discrete GPU support in a sub-two-liter chassis targets a gap between consumer mini PCs and full-size workstation towers.
Sources: Minisforum launches MS-03 Mini PC with Intel Core Ultra 9 386H (Gizmochina, Jul 12, 2026)