Morefine Launches MNAS-X1 AI Workstation Featuring Top-Mounted Drive Bays

Hardware manufacturer Morefine has introduced a new artificial intelligence workstation and network-attached storage hybrid designated the MNAS-X1. As first reported by TechRadar Pro, the chassis features an atypical internal structure that places a four-bay hard drive array directly above the motherboard rather than alongside the primary processing components, utilizing thermal convection to prevent heat build-up around the storage drives.

The device is built inside a 15.6-liter enclosure measuring 218mm by 193mm by 372mm. The exterior consists of a white aluminum alloy shell over a steel chassis frame, accented by a glossy purple front panel. Passive ventilation grilles are located across the top, rear, left, and right side panels. Each of the four 3.5-inch drive bays features a toolless spring-latch release mechanism that disengages via a dedicated side button.

Physical I/O options on the system include a single USB4 port, multiple USB-A ports, two 10-Gigabit RJ45 Ethernet network jacks, an SD card slot, and an HDMI 2.0 video output capable of displaying 4K resolution at 60Hz.

Underneath the storage array, the machine is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 8845HS processor featuring an 8-core, 16-thread Zen4 architecture with a base clock speed of 3.8GHz and a boost frequency of 5.1GHz. The chip integrates a Radeon 780M graphics processor running at 2700MHz alongside an onboard XDNA neural processing unit. The integrated NPU provides 16 TOPS of performance independently and reaches up to 38 TOPS when functioning in tandem with the CPU and integrated graphics engine.

System memory expandable up to 96GB is supported across two DDR5 SO-DIMM slots. For internal solid-state storage, the board houses three M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 slots accepting modules up to 4TB each, while the four external SATA drive bays support up to 30TB per drive for a maximum total storage capacity of nearly 132TB. Dedicated expansion is accommodated by a three-slot PCIe 4.0 x16 interface designed to accept expansion cards up to 330mm long and 66mm thick, powered by an internal 800W CRPS 2.0 power supply rated at 80 PLUS Platinum efficiency.

In baseline performance testing recorded on a unit configured with 64GB of RAM, a 500GB M.2 SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card running in x8 mode with 12GB of VRAM, the system achieved a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 16,271 points and a single-core score of 1,794 points. The machine also logged a total score of 9,966 points in PCMark 10. Local language model performance evaluated through the ONNX Runtime yielded scores of 3,511 on Phi 3.5, 3,714 on Mistral, 3,163 on Llama 3.1, and 3,408 on Llama 2.

During a 21-minute full-load thermal stress test, the processor maintained a power draw of 54W with an average die temperature of 86 degrees Celsius, while the discrete graphics card drew 250W and averaged 80 degrees Celsius. Morefine has not publicly disclosed standard commercial pricing for the MNAS-X1, which remains available strictly on an inquiry basis through regional distributors.