Nvidia DGX Spark Review the GB10 Machine Is So Freaking Cool

3 weeks ago 1

NVIDIA DGX SPARK NVIDIA Logo 1

Our NVIDIA Spark arrived less than a week ago, but if you thought it looked cool during NVIDIA GTC 2025, it might actually be better, albeit with a few teething challenges. If you want a high-memory, NVIDIA-based mini AI workstation, this is it. Let me go a step further. This is also going to be a must-have (maybe more than one) for many AI developers. I also think it is a tool that is getting dangerously close to something I would recommend to almost every executive tasked with bringing AI into their organization. That is a pretty bold statement, and is something that we will get into in a lot more detail in a future piece, but this little box is one that we keep looking at and thinking, “this is so cool.”

NVIDIA sent us a pre-production box to do this piece. I will note that I pre-ordered/ reserved two of these immediately with the copper DAC bundle when I first saw it, and I still have not received the e-mail to purchase those, so this is what we have. You may have seen yesterday that we have the Dell Pro Max with GB10 as well. We were not allowed to show that system with this one turned on for this review, because it has a different embargo date.

NVIDIA DGX Spark Hardware Overview

Something that has to not just be seen, but be felt to really believe is the size of the Spark. It is 150mm x 150mm x 50.5mm and just looks cool. When Sam was done taking photos he walked over and said to me “this is the COOLEST mini PC.” Just to give you some sense, we were in the middle of filming three AMD Strix Halo PCs, two GB10 systems including this one, an Intel-based system with a PCIe dock, and more. I have to say that I echo his sentiment.

The front has what looks like foam, but it actually is hard and allows airflow.

The bottom has a big vent and a large rubber pad. These systems sit solidly on desks.

On the sides and top, the system is just flat.

They are gold colored sides and metal, but that is about all we can say.

The rear is where the action really happens. This has everything from the power button to the I/O ports.

On the left rear we have the power button, then a USB Type-C port for the USB PD input. We then have three USB ports that are USB 3 20Gbps Type-C with DisplayPort alt mode. The next port is a HDMI port. It might be worth seeing our teething section for some of the display caveats.

On the networking side, we get a Realtek-based 10GbE port. Luckily the driver comes with DGX OS so we did not have to install it. The big feature, is the NVIDIA ConnectX-7 NICs.

We will get into these soon, but these are 200GbE QSFP56 ports which means that that they are running four channels of 56G/ 50Gbps PAM4. We went into this in our QSFP Versus QSFP-DD Here Are the Key Differences but physical connectivity gets to be a challenge at higher speeds. These ports are central to the value proposition of the DGX Spark and GB10 systems in general. Since they are high-speed and support RDMA networking, the idea is that you can take a copper DAC and connect two together to get even more compute and memory.

Next, let us get into how this system works with the GB10, including some of the features of those 200GbE ports.

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