AYANEO’s upcoming gaming handheld is a result of thorough research and development on the AI395 Mini PC and will feature Strix Halo’s flagship chip with a powerful cooler.
AYANEO’s Strix Halo-Based NEXT 2 Will be Big and Will Come With a Large Screen; Prototype Design Revealed in a Livestream by the Founder
AYANEO is a fairly new name in the hardware industry, but has established its popularity by making numerous gaming handhelds such as AYANEO Pocket, Flip DS, and the AYANEO NEXT, which runs on the AMD Ryzen 7 5825U. Looks like AYANEO is straight up skipping the Strix Point to go for the larger SoC. In a recent livestream, the founder of the company, Arthur Zhang, showcased what its next-gen AYANEO PC gaming handheld will look like.
It will be called AYANEO NEXT 2, which will feature the flagship AMD Strix Halo chip, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395. You might already be aware of the chip’s specifications and its prowess, as it is the fastest APU in the mobile segment, offering 16x Zen 5 cores and RDNA 3.5-based Radeon 8060S with 40 Compute Units. Due to being incredibly expensive for gaming handhelds, many handheld makers have hesitated to adopt Strix Halo chips in their new gaming handhelds, and most of them are opting for the custom Ryzen Z2 series.
Nonetheless, GPD and AYANEO are the first two companies to adopt these high-performance chips for their gaming handhelds. However, the AYANEO NEXT 2 appears to be monstrous in front of the GPD Win 5 due to unusual design, which is often seen in gaming laptops. The NEXT 2 won’t rely on a single fan cooler but will deploy a dual-fan cooling solution on a PCB, which is quite large if you compare it against regular PC gaming handhelds. Surely, it could be scaled down, but AYANEO wants to maximize its performance by deploying a large cooler.
2 of 9
Arthur showcased the early prototype of the PCB for the NEXT 2, which shows the components such as the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 SoC, LPDDR5X RAM chips, M.2 slots for SSDs, and many connectivity ports on the top. Initially, this project was reportedly held by thermal and performance challenges, but through thorough R&D on the AI395 mini PC, AYANEO was able to overcome these. NEXT 2 will also be one of the largest PC gaming handhelds with a big screen size, which we speculate should be around 10-inches, but we will wait for further updates.
AYANEO NEXT 2 renders showcase how the console might look like but this isn’t the finalized product. So, expect to see some changes before its release, which is reportedly planned this year.
News Source: Videocardz
