Loongson's current generation 3A6000 processor, one of the fastest designed and manufactured in China for consumers, is now available in a range of mini PCs.
Hands on with China's Loongson 3A6000 PC: It works!
The computers are made by Morefine, which names its Loongson-powered small desktop offering the M700S. It has pretty standard specs befitting the ¥2,799 (just under $400) price tag: 16GB DDR4-3200, a 256GB PCIe 3.0 SSD, Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5. The computer runs Loongson's Loongnix operating system, which is based on Linux .
The real draw for this computer, however, is the processor, which is Loongson's 3A6000 that debuted last year. The 3A6000's LoongArch architecture takes cues from RISC-V and MIPS, which Loongson used for its previous processors. But LoongArch may be more MIPS-based than Loongson lets on, as one developer calls the Linux kernel code for LoongArch processors "a blind copy of the MIPS code."
With a modest four cores and eight threads running at clock speeds between 2.0 and 2.5 GHz, the 3A6000 doesn't set the world on fire. The limited number of reviews of the 3A6000 indicate that it is only about as good as Intel's Core i3-10100 and AMD's Ryzen 3 3100, both of which launched in 2020 and have four cores and eight threads. The latest entry-level chips from the two American companies would undoubtedly outclass the 3A6000 significantly.
