AOOSTAR teases the NEX395 — but it’s missing the port that matters

Teaser. AOOSTAR has confirmed the NEX395 is coming but has not published a full specification, price or release date. Details below come from the company’s teaser and renders, reported by VideoCardz.

AOOSTAR has teased a second machine built around AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395, the NEX395, and it looks rather different from the plain black boxes that dominate this category. What we can say with confidence is limited, but there is one omission worth flagging for anyone weighing it against the alternatives.

What is confirmed

AOOSTAR has confirmed the flagship Strix Halo chip — 16 Zen 5 cores and 32 threads reaching 5.1GHz, with Radeon 8060S graphics carrying 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units — and support for 128GB of memory, almost certainly LPDDR5X given the form factor.

That is the same silicon as every other machine in this class, so editing performance should be comparable: capable of Lightroom Classic’s AI Denoise, big Photoshop files and 4K timelines in Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, with a substantial memory pool assignable to the GPU for local AI work.

From the renders, we can identify two Ethernet ports, a dedicated power input indicating an external supply, USB Type-C, four USB Type-A ports and both HDMI and DisplayPort outputs.

The missing port

Here is the detail that matters. The NEX395 does not appear to include OCuLink — which is notable, because AOOSTAR’s existing GEM12 Pro does, and OCuLink is the only way to connect an external graphics card at full PCIe 4.0 x4 bandwidth.

For photographers that may not matter. The integrated Radeon 8060S is genuinely capable, and if your work is stills and mainstream video you will likely never need more. But for anyone doing heavy grading in Resolve, GPU-bound denoising or 3D work, the ability to bolt on a desktop card later is a meaningful piece of future-proofing — and its absence here means external graphics would have to run over USB4 instead.

There is a curious detail in the design too: the NEX395 shares its styling with an AOOSTAR eGPU enclosure built around a desktop Radeon RX 7600 XT. As VideoCardz notes, there is little sense in pairing the two, since the integrated GPU has more compute units on a newer architecture than that card does.

What we do not know

Almost everything else: storage configuration, networking speeds, cooling, dimensions, weight, and whether a card reader is included. Pricing is unannounced, though based on comparable machines a figure between $1,500 and $2,000 looks likely.

We would treat this as one to watch rather than one to wait for. AOOSTAR’s GEM12 Pro is available now at $1,799 with OCuLink, and unless the NEX395 arrives meaningfully cheaper it is not obvious what it adds beyond a more interesting-looking chassis. We will update this story once AOOSTAR publishes full details.

AOOSTAR NEX395: what we know so far

Processor: AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (16 cores / 32 threads, Zen 5, up to 5.1GHz). Graphics: AMD Radeon 8060S, 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units. Memory: support for up to 128GB, most likely LPDDR5X. Ports visible in renders: two Ethernet, USB Type-C, four USB Type-A, HDMI and DisplayPort, dedicated power input suggesting an external adapter. Notable omission: no OCuLink port apparent. Not yet announced: storage, networking speeds, cooling, dimensions, weight, price and release date.