Develop Bugs

Beelink GTR5 mini PC review: the best there is!

AMD's very powerful Ryzen 9-5900HX flagship notebook CPU is making its way to small form factor desktop PCs. The recently released Beelink GTR5 is not the first mini PC to feature this SoC., but it might just be the best one yet!
Beelink GTR5 Main Specs
OS: Windows 11 Pro
Processor: AMD Ryzen9-5900HX
CPU: 8 cores, 16 threads @3.3-4.6GHz, 7nm process
GPU: Radeon RX Vega 8 @2100MHz
RAM: up to 64GB DDR4 RAM (32GB in my review unit)
Storage: up to 2TB m.2 NVMe SSD (500GB in my review unit)
Wireless: WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Ports: USB-A 3.0 *3, USB-A 2.0*2, USB-C*1, HDMI 2.0*1, DP 1.2*1, 3.5mm Audio Jack*1, 2.5Gbps Ethernet * 2, DC-in*1, m2. SATA slot*1, 2.5-inch HDD connector*1
Special features: Fingerprint unlock
Dimensions: 165*119*39mm
Weight: 678g
Retail packaging
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
The GTR5 comes with very cool packaging, the dragon on the front side of the box perfectly illustrates the amount of power packed inside.
Besides the GTR5 mini PC, you will also find a relatively bulky 90W power adapter, a user manual, two HDMI cables (0.2m & 1m), a mounting bracket, as well as a bag of screws after unboxing.
Design: simply stunning
Until last year’s SER, I hadn’t really been that impressed with Beelink’s design, but the Chinese brand seems to have finally outdone itself! The GTR5 simply looks stunning, in fact it is one of the best-looking mini PCs in the market right now. The carved finish on the top side gives it an extremely stylish and premium look. With its sturdy metal chassis, it should also be able to take a fair amount of reasonable office abuse you throw at it.
Besides the relatively subtle branding, the top side also sports a fingerprint scanner, which has decent size and makes logging into the operating system a lot easier than any type of passwords. The recognition success rate is also quite high, I haven’t had any failed attempts in my two weeks with this device.
The AMD logo and “Let’s Start” catchphrase on the top side will light up after booting up, giving the device a more interesting look.
The chassis has ventilation holes on 4 sides (top, left, right, rear) for heat dissipation. There are dual cooling fans and dual copper pipes under the hood to make sure that the system never gets overheated.
Beelink products have always been quite generous with I/O, and the GTR5 is no exception. On the front side you will find a USB 3.0 port, a multi-function type-C port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack with mic support. There are also two buttons: a power button which has status LED built in, and a green button for clearing the CMOS.
More I/O are packed on the rear side, including two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, 2 RJ45 2.5GB/s ethernet jacks, 1 HDMI port, 1 DisplayPort and a DC-in port. Some features are missing, namely a storage card slot, but since you have as many as 6 USB ports, mounting a card reader shouldn’t be that much of an effort. As with other systems powered by AMD, there’s no thunderbolt port, either. The multi-function USB-C port does support fast USB 3.2 Gen1 data transmission and [email protected] video output, but it still pales in comparison with a Thunderbolt 3/4.
The expandability does not stop here. After removing the four screws on the underlying base, you can easily lift the bottom panel and get access to the internals. There are two SO-DIMM DDR4 memory slots, two m2. slots (1 NVMe and 1 SATA3), as well as a 1 SATA3 port on GTR5’s very compact motherboard. If dual-channel memory is somewhat a must-have to ensure solid performance, having the option to install as many as 3 hard drives in such a small computer is simply amazing. All internal hardware and components are neatly arranged, the unit in my hands comes with two 16GB-3200MHz Crucial memory sticks and a 500GB Kingston NVme drive, but Beelink offers other configurations for consumers to choose from.
The GTR5 measures 165*119*39mm, and weighs only 678g. It’s so small that it easily fits on any kind of desk, or under a monitor stand if you have one. It can also seamlessly attach to the back of a display with the included bracket, but please bear in mind that mounting the GTR5 on to the back of a monitor could make fingerprint unlock less convenient than it should be.
System & Apps
Most mini PCs and laptops run on the Home Edition of Windows OS, but the Beelink GTR5 ships with licensed Windows 11 Pro, Average consumers will probably see no difference, but for power users, Windows 11 Pro offers some extra features, the most important of which is being able to join a domain, including Azure Active Directory for single sign-on to cloud services (and have group policy applied as part of that).
You also get Hyper-V for virtualization, BitLocker whole disk encryption, enterprise mode Internet Explorer, Remote Desktop, a version of the Windows Store for your own business, Enterprise Data Protection containers (a feature that comes later in the year) and assigned access (which locks a PC to running only one modern application, to use like a kiosk). Pro users can get updates from Windows Update for Business, which includes options for scheduling updates, so they don't reboot PCs at important business times.
Fortunately, the Windows 11 Pro here is a completely clean version, with no pre-installed 3rd party applications or bloatware. I don’t feel like digging into the main features Windows 11 offers. For those who just switch from MAC OS or Linux to Windows, I highly recommend that you watch some tutorial videos on YouTube.

Performance: incredible horsepower
At the very core of the Beelink GTR5 is an AMD Ryzen9-5900HX processor, which ranks only behind the Ryzen9-5980HS and Ryzen9-5980HX in terms of performance in the world of mobile computer SoC., and it is also the fastest chip to ever power a mini PC. My unit comes with 32GB dual-channel DDR4 memory and 512GB NVMe SSD, but you can have as much as 64GB memory and 5TB of internal storage at most.
In the Maxon Cinebench R23 and Cinebench R20 test, the GTR5 simply has no competition in the world of Windows-based mini PCs, and even gives the Apple M1 powered Mac Mini a run for its money. Until models featuring the next-gen processors come out, the GTR5 will probably stay on top of the chart.
Geekbench 5 provides further evidence of the GTR5’s strength, even though the gap here is a little bit smaller between it and the Apple Mac Mini. Still, the CPU single core and multi-core scores are impressive.
PCMark 10 is a holistic performance suite developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark), it simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We often use this benchmark to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and video conferencing. The GTR5 notched an incredible score of 6345 points in the standard PCMark 10 test, ranking above the ASUS Mini PC PN50 and the i7-1165G7 powered Intel NUC 11 Pro.
Even though there’s no discrete graphics on board, you can still expect a fair amount of performance out of the Radeon Vega 8 GPU, which is clocked at 2.1GHz. In the 3DMark Sky Diver, Fire Strike, and Time Spy tests, the GTR5 scored 15097, 4019, 1615 points respectively.
The NVMe drive inside this computer is not the fastest we’ve seen, but it is a lot faster than cheaper SATA SSDs. The GTR5 scored 2545 in the AS SSD benchmark and got decent numbers in CrystalDiskMark.
There are two memory slots on the SER’s motherboard for dual-channel setup, which guarantees high overall bandwidth and throughput speed. The performance of the GPU also benefits immensely from dual-channel memory, as the GTR5 was returned very decent scores in the AIDA64 memory&cache, and GPU benchmarks.
In the real-world use, the GTR5 is a do-it-all kind of PC. You can open 20 or extra image-heavy webpages in Microsoft Edge and run a few other big apps side by side without seeing the system slow down.
In terms of media playback, the GTR5 has no problem decoding any video formats I played on it, including a few [email protected] and [email protected] clips. Streaming 8K YouTube Videos in Chrome, this mini PC does not skip a bit, either.
This machine could take care of all my creative projects as well. Rendering complex 3D images in photoshop, or editing 4K videos in Power Director, the GTR5 has been consistently fast.
No mini PC this size is designed for intense gaming, yet still people asked me questions about gaming all the time. The Radeon RX Vega 8, with a high 2.1GHz clock speed, is one of the most powerful integrated GPUs. As a result, the GTR5 can run most AAA titles in moderate settings.
Non-resource intensive games were smooth in 1080P and high graphics settings. In “League of Legend”, the average frame rate was 162 FPS. Even after I switched to 4K, the GTR still delivered an average frame rate of 75FPS, which is quite amazing.
More graphics-intense titles such as “Spell Break” and “Genshin Impact” were also smooth in 1080P and medium settings. The former stayed at 60FPS consistently during the 30 minutes’ session, while the latter recorded an average frame rate of 46 FPS.
Some of the most demanding titles were also playable on the GTR5. Conqueror’s Blade was generally smooth with an average frame rate of 32FPS in 1080P and medium settings, even though the frame rate could drop to 28 FPS in intense battle scenes.
As powerful as the AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 might be, there is still a fairly large gap between it and top PCle GPUs. If you want to game in the highest settings possible and still get the upper hand in competition against other players on the internet, you will need a more traditional gaming setup than the GTR5.
The system is also quite stable, thanks to the efficient cooling. In the 3DMark Time Spy stress test, the GTR5 scored 99.99%, which is the best number I have ever seen.

Power Consumption and noise
With such a beefy processor inside, the GTR5 is not technically a low-power system. Still, it should be more energy-conservative than a full-sized desktop PC. In terms of power consumption, we saw some fairly solid figures.
The system stays fairly quiet under light loads, but if you run heavy CPU/ GPU workloads the fans spin up and it certainly gets louder. However, the noise is never too much of an issue, and easily gets drown out by other sound in your surroundings.
Connectivity
The GTR5 supports the latest WiFi 6E technology, also known as WiFi 6 Extended. It allows the PC to use the 6GHz band, which in return brings more bandwidth, faster speeds, and lower latency, opening up resources for future innovations like AR/VR, 8K streaming, and more. In additon, you also have two 2.5Gbps ethernet jacks, which offer all kinds of internet possibilities.
The HDMI, DP and Type-C ports all support video output up to [email protected], so you can connect the GTR5 to as many as 3 displays at the same time. This can be very helpful if you have some complex productivity tasks at hand.
Verdict
The Beelink GTR5 is a powerhouse in a tiny package. It has a beefy processor, packs a slew of I/O, and offers a broad range of features such as fingerprint unlock and superb networking. The tiny case is beautiful and rock-solid, the vast array of designs improves value and versatility.
However, it is not cheap. The 32GB/500GB model retails for $799, while the 64GB/1TB version will cost you even more. In the same price range, you can get a base model of the Apple M1 powered MAC mini, or a complete Intel NUC 11 system with memory, storage, and an OS. The GTR5 is obviously more feature-packed than the other two, but you cannot overlook Apple and Intel’s brand power.
If size doesn’t matter that much to you, a large DIY system of similar performance can save you quite a fortune yet give you more expansion room for later upgrades. But if you want the tiniest computer possible for all the computing you may need, there aren’t many SFF PCs more qualified than the Beelink GTR5 out there.
You can check the screenshots of those benchmarks here:

Hey, nice review, but what about the constant stuttering while doing nothing on the pc ?

Beelink SER 4 mini PC review: with an older CPU, it still beats the new NUC

{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Small form-factor (SFF) machines have been one of the major drivers in the resurgence of the PC market. The trend was kickstarted by Intel's NUCs in the early 2010s. These PCs have usually relied on low-power processors with compelling performance per watt metrics. AMD was largely absent in this market till the introduction of its Ryzen processors. While mini-PCs based on Ryzen embedded processors are still outnumbered by those powered by Intel, more and more OEMs are beginning to utilize AMD Ryzen CPUs in their own high-performance mini-PC lineups.
The Beelink GTR5 released last year arguably represents the best of AMD powered mini PCs, but the Ryzen9-5900HX processor was way too much of an overkill for average consumers. For those who have less CPU-intensive tasks to deal with in their everyday computing, the newly released SER4, which comes with a less power-hungry Ryzen7-4800U SoC. and a slightly lower price tag, could be a better offer.
Specifications
OS: Windows 11 Pro
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7-4800U, 7nm process, 15W TDP
CPU: 8 cores, 16 threads @1.8-4.2GHz
GPU: Radeon RX Vega 8 @1750MHz
RAM: 16/32GB DDR4 3200MHz (dual-channel)
Storage: 500GB/1TB m.2 NVMe SSD
Wireless: WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Ports: USB Type-A 3.0*3, USB Type-A 2.0*1, USB-C*1, HDMI*2, 3.5mm Audio Jack*1, 1000M Ethernet*1, DC-in*1
Dimensions: 126*113*42mm
Weight: 455g
What’s in the box
Beelink SER4 Mini PC * 1
57W Power Adapter * 1
User Guide * 1
VESA Mount Bracket * 1
HDMI Cable * 2 (1m and 0.2m)
Design: she’s quite a beauty
The SER4 is a gorgeous piece of tech. It has a much more attractive design than the likes of the uninspiring ASUS PN50 and Intel NUC 11 Pro. The panel on the top is perforated, which not only allows more efficient air flow, but also gives the machine an extremely classy and premium look. There’s quite a lot of branding here, besides the AMD and Beelink logo, you will also find the Ryzen7 and Radeon Graphics stickers, but I personally don’t really hate them, cause they just make the machine look more professional.
The ventilation grilles on the two side panels are coated in red, but whether you like it or not will come down to personal preference. The chassis has a metallic build, which means it will be able to take a fair amount of reasonable office abuse. The build quality is excellent, as there are no ugly mold lines on the case, and none of the panels tend to flex, even when I impose some serious force on them.
Measuring only 5 inches wide, 4.4 inches deep, and just 1 and a half inches in height, the SER4 is less than 1/6 of the size of the new Apple MAC Studio. It easily fits on any desk or even under a monitor stand if you have one, without taking up too much space with its small footprint. If you literally have no room on your desk, the VESA mount included in the retail box can help you attach the mini PC onto the back of the monitor, making it completely disappear from the surroundings.
Despite its trim dimensions, the SER4 is very well endowed with connectors. On the front, alongside the power button, you‘ll find a 3.5mm audio jack, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port that also supports DisplayPort 1.2.
Around the back you’ll find one more USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one USB2.0 port, two HDMI 2.0 ports, an RJ45 1000M Ethernet LAN connector and a DC-in. As the keen-eyed have noticed, that gives the SER4 the potential to drive three 4K displays at once. Running multiple screens in a retail, commercial or corporate environment is one of the SER4’s raison d’etres. Unsurprisingly, given the absence of an Intel chipset, there's no support for Thunderbolt protocols, but if you don’t need an eGPU, it won’t make much difference.
Getting inside the PC couldn't be easier. There's a panel underneath the chassis that can be removed once four screws have been extracted. This reveals the two DDR4 3200MHz memory slots, 2.5-inch mounting area, as well as access to the m.2 slot. The m2.2230 wireless card on the other side of the motherboard is also replaceable, but you wouldn’t have much reason for replacing it any time soon, since it already supports the latest WiFi6E and Bluetooth 5.2.
This computer weighs only 455g, moving it around the house or taking it on a business trip won’t be much of an effort. If you have monitors in both your office and your apartment, this thing should be far less of a carry than, say, an average notebook computer.
Software: licensed Windows 11 Pro, and it’s clean
Most mini PCs run on the Home Edition of Windows OS, but the Beelink SER4 ships with licensed Windows 11 Pro, Average consumers will probably see no difference, but for power users, Windows 11 Pro offers a few extra features, the most important of which is being able to join a domain, including Azure Active Directory for single sign-on to cloud services (and have group policy applied as part of that).
You also get Hyper-V for virtualization, BitLocker whole disk encryption, enterprise mode Internet Explorer, Remote Desktop, a version of the Windows Store for your own business, Enterprise Data Protection containers (a feature that comes later in the year) and assigned access (which locks a PC to running only one modern application, to use like a kiosk). Pro users can get updates from Windows Update for Business, which includes options for scheduling updates, so they don't reboot PCs at important business times.
The Windows 11 Pro here is also a completely clean version, with no pre-installed 3rd party applications or bloatware that you need to uninstall.

Performance: old processor that still rocks
The unit I have on hand features an AMD Ryzen7-4800processor, which is a 7nm Zen2-based APU that has 8 CPU cores, 16 threads, as well as integrated Radeon Graphics GPU. There’s also 32GB DDR4 3200MHz dual-channel memory and a 500GB m.2 NVMe SSD in my unit. Although the Ryzen7-4800U is a mobile chip released more than 2 years ago, it is still mighty impressive, and benchmark scores told the story.
These are the models I use for comparison, including some of the most popular machines out there.
First, I ran Maxon's latest CPU-crunching Cinebench R23 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. The SER4 got a solid score in CPU multi-core, beating the M1 powered Apple MAC mini and both variants of the Intel NUC 11 Pro, but it fell a little short in terms of single core performance.
In the older Cinebench R20 test, the SER4 easily outpaced the Intel NUC 11 Pros again in multi-core CPU performance.
Comparing the SER4 to the Intel NUC 11 Pros using GeekBench 5 tells a similar story. Intel has AMD beaten in single-core performance but in multi-core performance, the AMD chip simply stomps the i7 into the dirt.
PCMark 10 simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. we use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and video conferencing. The SER4 notched 5177 in the standard PCMark 10 test, ranking above both variants of the Intel NUC 11 Pro.
In everyday use, the difference in single-core performance will go largely unnoticed, but if you decide to edit some high-resolution images or 4K videos, then the multi-core ability of the AMD chip will shine through.
The m.2 NVMe SSD is not the fastest we’ve seen, but at nearly 2,000MB/s for reading data off the drive, this is still more than ideal for booting Windows and all your favorite productivity apps.
The unit I received comes with two Crucial 16GB DDR4-3200MHz memory sticks. This dual-channel memory setup guarantees high overall bandwidth and throughput speed. In the AIDA64 cache & memory benchmark, the read, write and copy speeds of the 32GB memory are decent, the 95.6ns latency is not the best we’ve seen, but still solid. The performance of the integrated GPU also benefits greatly from dual-channel memory, as most of the numbers in the GPGPU test result look lovely.
The AMD are known to offer better integrated GPUs than Intel, that’s why you often see Intel powered laptops relying heavily on GeForce MX series discrete GPU for gaming, while AMD chips can take care of gaming all on their own. The integrated Radeon Graphics GPU here isn’t powerful enough to make the SER4 a proper gaming or VR machine, but it is still reasonably capable. In 3DMark, the SER4 was returned 1,420 in Time Spy, 3,573 in Fire Strike, and 13,036 in Sky Diver.
Running “Genshin Impact” at 1920 x 1080 and medium settings saw an average of 44fps, not great, but still generally smooth the whole time. “Spell Break” returned very similar results. Less graphics-intensive games such as LOL can run smoothly even at 4K and high settings.
“Conqueror’s Blade” tells a different story, though. At 1080P and medium settings, the average frame rate recorded by GamePP was only 22fps. It is still playable, but you probably will want to turn down the resolution, or settings, or both for better smoothness. Because when I switched to 720 and low graphics settings, the average frame rate was improved to 42fps.
Those results mean the SER4 should be able to deal with reasonably intense graphic workloads without grinding to a halt. With that said, please bear in mind that the SER4 will not be enough if you want to game in the highest possible settings and still get a fair chance against other players.
The SER4 can also be a solid HTPC if you want it to. It has no problem decoding any video formats I played on it, including a few [email protected] and [email protected] clips. Streaming 4K YouTube Videos in Chrome, this machine does not skip a bit, either.
However, the SER4 did struggle a lit bit with 8K online streaming, as you can see in the screenshot that the CPU usage reached 100%, and I did notice some frame skip.
The SER4’s performance hasn’t come at the expense of heat or economy. The power draw is only 5W at idle over the course of two hours. When running the AIDA64 stress test, the SER4 drew an indicated maximum of 38W. Even under stress the casing never became more than slightly warm to the touch and the fans were impressively quiet. The quoted noise levels 21.9dB at idle and 37.7dB with the fans at full chat tallied with the results from our sound monitor.
Thanks to the efficient cooling, the SER4 is also extremely stable, it passed the 3DMark Time Spy Stress test with a very high mark.

Internet Connection
The SER4 supports the latest WiFi 6E technology, also known as WiFi 6 Extended. It allows the PC to use the 6GHz band, which in return brings more bandwidth, faster speeds, and lower latency, opening up resources for future innovations like AR/VR, 8K streaming, and more.
There’s also a 1000M Ethernet jack for wired internet access. Although it’s not as fancy as the 2.5Gbps ethernet found on the Intel NUC 11 or Beelink’s very own GT series mini PCs, it won’t make much difference for average users, not for now.
Competition
Price at $699 (16GB+500GB), the Beelink SER4 is well positioned in the mini PC market. The choice of a Ryzen 7 CPU (from the 4000 series) is a good step when going against Intel powered mini PCs that often don't go beyond an Intel Core i5. While it is not as powerful as its Ryzen9-5900HX powered brother, it is slightly more affordable and power-efficient than the latter.
Probably the closest competitor to the SER4 is the i5-1135G7 powered Intel NUC 11 Pro. As you can get the latter with 8GB memory and 500GB SSD on the same budget. The NUC comes with more versatile Thunderbolt 3 ports, which is a must for some users. However, in terms of horsepower, very few Intel powered models can really match the SER4.
Verdict
Beelink has squeezed plenty of performance and features into a tiny box. The Ryzen 7-4800U chipset delivers terrific performance while the abundance of upgrade options and connectors makes it supremely versatile. That it runs cool, quiet and economically should further endear it to business and corporate users and guarantee it a home in many an office, boardroom and customer-facing environment.
My video review of the SER4 will also be available in a week, please subscribe to my YouTube channel and get notified if you are interested in more content about the SER4. Thanks for reading, hope to see you next time.
Some of the benchmark screenshots here:

Hey Folks,
This is my first post here. I hope I will get the resolution I need from you guys. As I have two pc and I want to connect ethernet adapter with them. but I am not able to connect them.
I think it is not working. looking for the new one. I tried to find out from https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/acce...dapters/cables-&-adapters_adapters/4x90s91831, https://www.walmart.com/c/kp/usb-ethernet-adapter but looking for more.
Can someone suggest one?

Beelink Mini S review: a budget mini PC that does everything

{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
The good:
Neat and compact design.
Licensed Windows 11 Pro.
Upgradable memory and storage.
Decent performance.
Excellent power efficiency.
The bad:
The M.2 interface is only compatible with SATA3 SSDs.
Single-channel memory.
No SD card reader.
As mobile chips evolve, some form factor PCs are getting so good that they can even rival mainstream desktop PCs in terms of performance. However, only a small fraction of PC costumers are content creators or passionate gamers who need that much horsepower, most people’s daily computing only consists of a variety of simpler tasks, and that’s where budget mini PCs come in.
With an Intel Celeron N5095 quad-core processor, upgradable memory and storage, alongside the ability to drive three 4K displays, the Beelink U59 released last year is one of the best budget mini PCs I have ever tested, and now it has a younger brother: the Beelink Mini S. This new small computer packs identical specs in an even smaller chassis. It is bound to be a strong contender in the market.
Main specs of the Beelink Mini S
Processor: Intel Jasper Lake Celeron N5095
CPU: 4 cores, 4 threads, 2.0-2.9GHz
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics
Process technique: 10nm
OS: Windows 11 Pro 64bit
RAM: 8GB/16GB DDR4 2400MHz
Storage: 256GB/512GB
Network: WiFi5 + BT 4.0 / Ethernet Gigabit
Ports: 4x USB 3.0 / 2x HDMI 2.0 / 3.5mm audio jack
Accessories: 12V-3A DC adapter/ 2x HDMI Cable (1m & 0.25m) / User Manual
Size: 115 mm x 102 mm x 41 mm
Weight: 280g
Retail Package
The packaging of the Mini S is nice and simple. Inside the box you will find a mini PC, a VESA Mount bracket, a 36-watt power adapter, two HDMI cables, a bag of screws, and a user manual.
Design
The Beelink Mini S employs a well-ventilated plastic chassis measuring 115 mm x 102 mm x 41 mm to house the Intel Celeron N5095 SoC. and other internal components. The matte dark blue finish on top isn’t anything new or refreshing, but it does give the machine a fairly professional look. You can find the “Beelink” branding in the center of the top panel, and an “Intel Inside” logo on the lower-right corner.
The front panel sports a Clear CMOS pinhole, two USB 3.0 ports, a 3.5mm audio jack with mic support, a power button, and a status LED. The rear side plays host to two more USB 3.0 ports, a full-size Ethernet, two HDMI 2.0 ports, and a DC-in port. Compared to the U59, the only difference here is the absence of a multi-function Type-C port. As a result, the Mini S won’t drive three 4K displays like the U59 does. But for most people, having two 4K displays for multi-tasking is good enough.
After removing the four screws on the bottom panel, you can get access to the internals of this mini PC. The good news is that the DDR4-2400 memory stick is not soldered on the motherboard, so it is upgradable, but the bad news is that there’s only one memory slot, so you won’t have dual-channel memory to boost the performance of this mini PC. You can find an M.2 2280 interface, as well as a 2.5-inch HDD/SSD interface on the motherboard, both support drives of up to 2TB, so you can have a maximum of 4TB internal storage under the hood. Unfortunately, the M.2 2280 interface is only compatible with SATA3 standard SSDs, faster NVMe SSDs won’t work here.
The Mini S weighs only 280g, lighter than an Apple iPad mini (293g), the inlcuded power adapter won't add much weight to your carry, either. Moving it around in the house or taking it on your daily commute shouldn’t be much of an effort. The Mini PC feels robust and sturdy in the hands, and looks like it will survive a fair amount of office abuse, and maybe even some occasional falls.
System & Apps
Most SFF PCs and laptops run on the Home Edition of Windows OS, but the Beelink Mini S ships with licensed Windows 11 Pro, which offers quite a few extra features for professionals. The Windows 11 here is completely clean, with no bloatware or 3rd-party applications. Besides Windows, you can also install any X86 compatible operating systems on the Mini S, including Ubuntu, Debian, Android and CentOS. You might even find ways to run MAC OS on it, although I would not encourage anyone to do so.

Performance
The Mini S rocks an Intel Celeron N5095 chip, which is built on 10nm process, with typical Thermal Design Power of 15 W. This chipset has 4 CPU cores, 4 processing threads working at 2 GHz (Turbo 2.9 GHz), and an integrated UHD GPU working at 650MHz. The N5095 SoC. is featured in lots of mini PCs and entry-level laptops. It is definitely not a powerhouse, but should be capable enough for most people’s everyday computing duties. My review unit comes with 8GB memory, as well as a 256GB SATA3 SSD, but Beelink does offer other configurations for you to choose from.
Benchmarks
In the cross-platform Geekbench 5, the Mini S scored 645 in CPU single core, 2017 in multi core, and 2117 in OpenCL. Those are typical numbers for the N5095 processor.
In the Cinebench R20 CPU-crunching test, the Mini S got 234 in single core, and 787 in multi-core.
Running it through PCMark10, my review unit got 2,339 points. This is actually on the higher end of the performance rating, compared to other budget mini PCs I’ve tested.
Beelink doesn’t sell the Mini S in barebone, so all units will come with an SSD. The speed of the 256GB SSD in my unit is pretty standard for an M.2 SATA3 SSD, nothing exciting here. Still, it is fast enough to guarantee that booting into Windows 11 takes only a few seconds.
Daily computing
The Mini S was fairly capable for dealing with mainstream daily computing tasks. I could open a dozen content-heavy webpages in Microsoft Edge, play a 4K video, and edit my presentation in PowerPoint at the same time, without noticing any hiccups or delays.
Obviously, there are occasions where the Mini S wouldn’t make sense, like editing 4K footages from your professional DSLR, or designing complex artwork, but for lightweight creativity tasks such as editing photos in Photoshop and making a short video in for your TikTok channel, this would work great.
HTPC
This mini PC could also make a perfect HTPC or media center. According to DXVA checker, the UHD Graphics GPU is able to decode most video formats up to 4K, some even up to 8K. I’ve played many UHD Blu-Ray movies on the Mini S and enjoyed perfectly smooth playback.
Streaming videos online was a similar story. When I was playing an 4K/60FPS YouTube video in Chrome, neither the CPU nor the GPU was stressed too much. Streaming 8K/60FPS videos could be challenging for the Mini S, as I noticed frequent frameskip during the playback, since this mini PC doesn't really support 8K output, there's no point in doing that anyway.
Gaming
One of the areas where the Mini S didn’t do very well was gaming, as the integrated Intel UHD GPU isn’t really designed for graphics-intensive duties, and single-channel memory sort of made things worse. In 3DMark, the Mini S scored 2356 in Sky Diver, 606 in Fire Strike and 206 in Time Spy, falling behind the Beelink’s very own U59, which features the same processor, but has dual-channel memory.
LOL, which was quite smooth on the Beelink U59 at 1080P and medium settings, was just playable on the Mini S. The average frame rate was 44 fps, and I noticed some frameskip in intense battle scenes. Turning the resolution down to 720P could improve the average frame rate to 79 fps, but some of the fine details could become just a little too blurry on a large desktop monitor.
If you only play simpler, more casual games like Angry Birds, Plant vs Zombies, or games installed from Microsoft Store, then you obviously have nothing to worry about.
Power consumption and noise
This mini PC is very energy-efficient, as power consumption is at only 10 watts idle and 24 watts on max load. The Mini S stayed quiet most of the time, I could watch online videos for hours without hearing any noise from it. The cooling fan did spin up when the Mini S was under heavy workloads, but it was neither too loud nor too annoying.
The Mini S was also very stable. In the AIDA64 stability test, the temperature of the four CPU cores stayed below 90 degrees in 1 hour of running at full load.
Verdict
The Beelink Mini S is priced at $199 for the 8GB/256GB configuration on Beelink’s official website. Given the performance and expandability, alongside its very affordable price tag, if you’re looking for a small form factor desktop PC that is adequate for basic home or business computing tasks, you can’t go wrong here. If you want to bring better performance out of the N5095 chipset and don’t mind the slightly larger footprint, then I would still recommend that you go with the Beelink U59 instead.

Benchmark scores here:

If it is booting quick without need to connect any hardware like monitor then its a perfect and cheapest choice for HTPC/PlexMediaServer etc. Much stable and powerfull than Pi4 or any other NAS or Router for the job and cold last 10y easily.

Beelink SEi12 mini PC review: a better investment than the Intel NUC 12

{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Small form factor PCs are gradually taking over from conventional desktop computers, as their compact size and low power consumption are attractive to lots of consumers. The recently released Beelink SEi12, which rocks an Intel i5-1235U processor, plenty of RAM, a fast PCIe4.0x4 SSD and a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro operating system, may be a perfect choice for consumers looking for a compact personal computer for their everyday computing chores.
The good:
Premium design and compact size
Wi-Fi 6 and plenty of connectivity options
Performance better than higher-priced competitions
Easy to add memory and storage
Works with two 4K displays
Quiet even under heavy workloads
The bad:
No built-in card reader.
The Type-C port is data-only.
Specifications
OS: Windows 11 Pro
Processor: Intel Core i5-1235U
CPU: 10 cores, 12 threads @3.3-4.4GHz, 12MB Intel Smart Cache
GPU: Iris Xe Graphics EU80
RAM: 16 DDR4 3200MHz (dual-channel)
Storage: 1*m.2 2280 PCIe4.0*4 NVMe SSD (up to 2TB)
1* SATA3 2.5-inch HDD/SSD (up to 2TB)
Wireless: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2
Ports: USB 3.0*2, USB 2.0*2, USB-C (data only)*1, HDMI 2.0*2, 3.5mm Audio Jack*1, Gigabit Ethernet*1, DC-in*1
Dimensions: 126*113*42mm
Weight: 455g
What’s in the box
Beelink SEi12 Mini PC * 1
120W Power Adapter * 1
User Guide * 1
VESA Mount Bracket * 1
HDMI Cable * 2 (1m and 0.2m)
The retail packaging of the Beelink SEi12 is more attractive than ever. Along with the mini PC, you get a 19V-6.25A power adapter, two HDMI cables, a user guide, a bunch of screws, and a VESA mount bracket for attaching the mini PC to the back of a monitor.
Design: it’s one of a kind
Beelink continues to work on improving the design of their products. The SEi12 a simply gorgeous. Its plastic chassis is vented on four of its six sides, allowing efficient airflow to keep the mini PC cool and stable. Most of the perforated top panel is covered with high-quality felt cloth, giving it an interesting and premium look.
The fabric material used here is not only waterproof, but also immune to fingerprints. There Beelink branding and the SEi model name on the bottom-right corner are very subtle, blending in extremely well with the rest of the housing.
On the front of the SEi12, you will find the following: a power button with status LED, a 3.5mm audio jack with mic support, a Clear CMOS pinhole, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port, two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports.
The rear side plays host to two HMDI 2.0 ports, two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, and a DC-in port. As keen eyes might have noticed, the SEi12 doesn’t come with an SD card slot, you will need an external card reader if you transfer photos and video footages from your cameras frequently.
Both HDMI 2.0 ports support [email protected] video output, allowing you to connect the SEi12 to two displays simultaneously. Unlike other high-end Beelink mini PCs, the Type-C port on the front of the SEi12 only supports data transmission. It’s a letdown for those who prefer to work with more than two monitors.
The bottom cover has four rubber feet, texts showing how to enter BIOS and boot menu, and the screws that allow you to open the SEi12 and access the insides.
Compared to previous Beelink mini PC models, the SEi12 features an additional 4007 OS fan and an aluminum heat sink to keep the SSD cool. As a result of the improved cooling, the internals are more difficult to access than before. Older Beelink mini PCs only require you to remove four screws on the bottom panel to get to the motherboard, with the SEi12, you will need to unscrew 3 extra screws on the SSD cooling panel, which also serves as the bracket for a 2.5-inch HDD/SSD.
The hardware expansion in the SEi12 consists of an M.2 Type-2280 slot for PCle4.0*4 NVMe SSDs, a traditional 2.5-inch SATA3 drive bay, and two laptop-style SO-DIMM slots for the RAM. The M.2 2230 wireless card is also accessible under the pre-installed M.2 SSD.
Housing two storage drives in a system this compact is rather impressive. Beelink sells this PC as a ready-to-use system, you get either 16GB or 32GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory (in the form of Crucial brand memory sticks), and a super-fast 500GB Kingston PCIe4.0 NVMe SSD, onto which a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro is preinstalled.
To access the CPU, and other components of the PC, you will have to remove even more screws, but there's really no need to do that since nothing else is replaceable or upgradable. In terms of wireless connections, the SEi12 supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.
OS and Software
The Beelink SEi12 ships with a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro which, compared to Windows 10, brings more aesthetically pleasing UI, improved multiple desktops, built-in XBOX gaming, and better security features. Since this is the Pro Edition of Windows OS, you also get a few extra IT and business features.
The Windows 11 Pro here is also very clean, with no pre-installed 3rd party applications or bloatware. Besides regular Windows software, you can also load the Android subsystem on the SEi12 and run Android apps on the SEi12. If you are interested in open-source operating systems, the mini PC is also compatible with Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS and many other Linux distributions.
Performance
The SEi12 comes with the Intel Alder Lake Core i5-1235U processor, which runs at a 3.30 GHz base frequency and can increase its speed to 4.40 GHz in turbo mode. It bundles as many as 10 CPU cores (2 performance cores and 8 efficient cores), 12 threads, 12MB Intel smart cache, and has a TDP of 15 Watts. The SoC handles the graphics part too, you’ll get a very capable Intel Iris Xe EU80 iGPU with a dynamic frequency of up to 1.2GHz. There’s also 16GB/32GB dual-channel memory, and a 500GB PCIe4.0x4 NVMe SSD under the hood.
Benchmarks
In terms of CPU performance, the SEi12 is a huge step up from mini PCs with Intel Tiger Lake quad-core processors. In Cinebench R23, it completely blew the Intel i7-1165G7 NUC 11 Pro out of the water, scoring 11% higher in single-core and 42% higher in multi-core. It also handily beat the Apple Mac mini and the Beelink SER5 Pro in both subtests.
Geekbench 5 measures the computer's single-core and multi-core power, for everything from checking emails to taking pictures to playing music, or all of it at once. The results reveal how close the tested system is to the cutting-edge. What makes the Geekbench special is that it allows us to compare system performance across devices, operating systems, and processor architectures. The SEi12 scored 1619 in single core, 7475 in multi-core, way above systems with the Intel Tiger Lake mobile CPUs.
PCMark 10 is a holistic performance suite developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). We use it to assess overall system performance in different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows like word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score, and higher numbers are better. The 5284-point finish from the SEi12 is well above the 4,000 points we consider excellent, and it's a very respectable showing for a PC this small.
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. Like always, I ran three different 3DMark subtests on the SEi12: Sky Diver, Fire Strike, and Time Spy, which are suited to different types of systems. Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark which tests how well a system can handle DirectX 12 games. The other two are both DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to slim laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The SEi12 scored 1343 in Time Spy, 3686 in Fire Strike, and 12443 in Sky Diver, falling behind the Intel NUC 11 Pro and Beelink’s very own SER5 Pro.
According to CrystalDiskMark, the 500GB PCIe4.0x4 solid-state drive in the mini PC has excellent reading and writing speeds. It allows you to boot into Windows 11 Pro in only a few seconds. Launching big creativity applications and 3D games is also incredibly fast.
Content Creation
With such a beefy processor inside, the SEi12 has absolutely no problem of seeing us through common home and office duties. It is also quite capable when dealing with relatively demanding creativity tasks.
The SEi12 stayed smooth and responsive even when I was adding complex effects and renders to 4K video footages, it almost felt as fast as my desktop PC, which features an AMD Ryzen5-5600G CPU and an Nvidia GeFore GTX1660 Ti GPU. Encoding a 3-minute 1080P/30fps video in Handbrake, the SEi12 took 1 minute, 51 seconds, which was a lot shorter than the 2 minutes, 36 seconds the Intel NUC 11 Pro took to finish the same task.
Gaming
Even though the SEi12 is using an integrated GPU for graphics-intensive tasks, its gaming capability is on par with PCs with entry-level discrete graphics cards. Running League of Legend at 1080P and medium quality setting, the average frame rate was 131 fps, the visuals are extremely smooth on my 144Hz gaming monitor. Even when I switched to 4K and high settings, LOL still averaged 71 fps, good enough for an enjoyable gaming experience.
Genshin Impact was playable at 1080P and medium setting, I saw an average of 41 fps, and didn’t notice any dips even in intense fighting scenes. Switching to lowest quality setting will improve the average frame rate to 56 fps.
Most of the other games ran fine at moderate settings, but somehow, I failed to launch Conqueror’s Blade on the SEi12, as the game constantly got stuck at the animation in the very beginning.
These are the results of all the games I tested on the Beelink SEi12, quite promising for a mini desktop PC with such a small footprint. However, if you want to enjoy the most graphics-intensive titles at higher settings, you will probably be better off with the Beelink GTR6, which rocks an even more powerful AMD Ryzen9-6900HX processor and a 12-core Radeon 680M iGPU.
Video Playback
Intel iGPUs are known to have amazing video codec support. According to Bluesky DXVA checker, the Iris Xe Graphics EU80 iGPU can support most video formats of up to 4K and 8K. When I was playing an 8K video clip, the CPU utilization was only 1%-2%, while the GPU usage also stayed below 50%. Streaming YouTube videos in Chrome was also no problem for the SEi12, including 8K/60fps videos.
Networking
The SEi12 has a Wi-Fi 6 compatible network card that works well with my TP-Link Wi-Fi6 router. However, if you want even higher speeds, you can use the Gigabit Ethernet jack on the back of the mini PC and connect it through a cable to the network.
Stability, power consumption and noise
Although the 12th generation Intel processor inside is extremely fast and can reach high frequencies when necessary, the dual cooling fans, heat sinks and copper pipes under the hood are super effective in keeping the SEi12 cool and stable. In the 3DMark Time Spy stress test, the mini PC scored a solid 99.7%, ranking above most mini PCs I've tested. In the AIDA64 Stability Test, the temperature of the CPU never surpassed 90 degrees in one hour of running in full load.
The SEi12’s higher performance does result in high power consumption, though. The power draw was around 13 watts at idle, and around 73 watts at maximum. In comparison, the Intel NUC 11 Pro draws around 8 watts at idle, while the Beelink SER5 Pro draws only 3.5 watts. Fortunately, the included 120W adapter never needs to work too hard to keep the mini PC going as mighty as it could be.
As long as I did not stress the processor inside the SEi12, the mini PC was perfectly quiet. Even in demanding tasks such as benchmark testing, where the hardware was pushed to its limit, the noise made by the fans was still rather tamed. I used to be bothered by the fan noise picked up by my Creative Live! MIC when dubbing the review videos on the Intel NUC 11 Pro. After switching to the Beelink SEi12, that problem was gone.
Verdict
The Beelink SEi12 is a well-rounded mini desktop PC. Its small footprint allows it to fit almost anywhere. There are plenty of ports for all kinds of external devices. The mini PC also offers solid performance for dealing with common computing duties without lag, as well as efficient cooling to keep it running stably for all day long.
The price of this mini PC starts from $459, which includes 16GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory, 500GB PCIe4.0x4 SSD, and a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro. In comparison, the Intel i7-1165G7 NUC 11 Pro with the same amount of storage will cost you $815.99, even though it is powered by a much weaker processor. The Beelink SEi12 is obviously missing premium features like dual Thunderbolt ports, a built-in SD card reader, and a 2.5Gbps Ethernet jack, but its price will probably compel most of consumers to question the necessity of these features.

GEEKOM AS 6 mini PC review: the flagship of flagships

{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
There’s a lot to like about small form factor PCs, which often deliver desktop-grade performance and connectivity in enclosures that aren’t much bigger than a TV box – and the GEEKOM AS 6, which comes with a mighty AMD 6000 series CPU, tries to push that trend even further.
The good
Compact, neat, and accessible case.
Impressive CPU and graphics performance.
A wide array of ports.
Superb networking.
Easy to upgrade.
The bad
No SD card reader.
Specifications
OS: Windows 11 Pro
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7-6800H, 6nm process, 35W TDP
CPU: 8 cores, 16 threads @3.2-4.7 GHz
GPU: Radeon 680M @2200MHz, 12 CU
RAM: 16/32GB DDR5 4800MHz (dual-channel)
Storage: 2*M.2 2280 PCIe4.0*4 NVMe SSD (up to 2TB)
1* SATA III 2.5-inch HDD/SSD (up to 2TB)
Wireless: WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2
Ports: USB4*2, USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A*5, HDMI 2.1*2, DisplayPort 1.4*1, 3.5mm Audio Jack*1, 2.5Gbps Ethernet*1, DC-in*1
Dimensions: 120*130*58 mm
Weight: 0.9 kg
What’s in the box
GEEKOM AS 6 Mini PC * 1
150W Power Adapter * 1
User Guide * 1
VESA Mount Bracket * 1
HDMI Cable * 1
The AS 6 is a product of the global partnership of GEEKOM and ASUS, that’s why you will find the branding of both companies on the front of the retail packaging. The mini PC is available with two CPU options: AMD Ryzen 7 6800H or Ryzen 9 6900HX, the unit that I received comes with the former. Along with the AS 6 mini PC, you will also find a 150W (20V-7.5A) power adapter, an HDMI cable, a user guide, a bunch of screws, a VESA mount bracket for attaching the mini PC to the back of a monitor, and a greeting card from GEEKOM.
Design and build
The AS 6 is basically a clone of the ASUS PN53, in fact, you can argue it is literally a rebranded PN53. The mini PC is noticeably larger than the Intel NUC 12 Pro, it measures 120*130*58 mm, and weighs 900g. Fortunately, the larger housing also means more room for cooling, and a wider array of ports.
There are two USB4, five USB3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, two HDMI2.1, one DisplayPort 1.4, one 3.5mm audio jack, as well as a DC-input. USB4 and DisplayPort 1.4 support [email protected] video output, and HDMI2.1 supports [email protected], you can connect the AS 6 to as many as 4 monitors. Each USB4 port supports 40Gbps traffic on its own and is compatible with Thunderbolt 3 protocols, which means you can even connect the AS 6 to an external graphics card.
The hardware expansion in the AS 6 consists of two M.2 Type-2280 slots for PCle4.0*4 NVMe SSDs, a traditional 2.5-inch drive bay, and two laptop-style SO-DIMM slots for the DDR5-4800 RAM. The M.2 2230 wireless card, which supports WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, is also accessible. GEEKOM only sells the AS 6 as preconfigured units, there are no barebones versions available, at least not for now. My review unit features 32GB dual-channel DDR5-4800 RAM (in the form of Crucial brand RAM sticks), and a 1TB Kingston PCIe4.0x4 NVMe SSD, onto which a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro is preinstalled.
The build quality of the GEEKOM AS 6 is simply amazing. It feels extremely robust in my hands, and the internal components are neatly arranged.
OS and Software
The AS 6 ships with a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro operating system which, compared to Windows 10, brings upgrades including a more aesthetically pleasing UI, improved multiple desktops, built-in XBOX gaming, and better security features. Since this is the Pro Edition of Windows OS, you also get a few extra IT and business features such as Hyper-V for virtualization, BitLocker whole disk encryption, enterprise mode Internet Explorer, and Remote Desktop.
The Windows 11 Pro here is a completely clean version, with no pre-installed 3rd party applications or bloatware. Besides regular Windows software, you can also load the Android subsystem and Linux subsystem on the latest Windows 11 build. If open source is more of your thing, the AS 6 is compatible with numerous Linux distributions. You can even choose to triple-boot the mini PC since it supports three storage drives.
Performance
The AS 6 is a beast when it comes to performance. It is powered by the mighty AMD Ryzen7-6800H processor, which runs at a 3.20 GHz base frequency and can increase its speed to 4.70 GHz when necessary. It bundles 8 Zen3+ CPU cores, 16 threads, 16MB L3 Cache, and has a TDP of 35 Watts. This SoC also features an extremely powerful iGPU: the Radeon 680M. Based on the RDNA2 architecture, the Radeon 680M has 12 CUs (=768 shaders) clocked at 2,200 MHz, and offers performance equivalent to entry-level desktop graphics cards.
Benchmarks
As for CPU performance, Zen 3+ has proven to be only a minor upgrade from last year’s Zen3. In the Cinebench R23 CPU-crunching test, the AS 6 scored 1413 in CPU single-core, and 11795 in multi-core. While slightly edging out the 5800H powered Beelink SER5 Pro and i5-1240P version of Intel NUC 12 Wall Street Canyon, it is nowhere near the Beelink GTR7 and Lenovo Xiaoxin mini. The performance still has plenty of room for improvement, as the GEEKOM limits the cTDP of the 6800H CPU to 35W at the moment to keep the noise down, but the CPU can be configured to 45W.
PCMark 10 assesses overall system performance by simulating different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows like word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and video conferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score, and higher numbers are better. The 6743-point finish from the AS 6 is well above the 4,000 points we consider excellent, and it's a very respectable showing for a PC this small.
3DMark measures relative graphics performance of a PC by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. I ran two different 3DMark subtests on the AS 6: Fire Strike and Time Spy. The former is a DirectX 12 benchmark which tests how well a system can handle DirectX 12 games, while the latter is a DirectX 11 benchmark that tests the PC’s capability of running older gaming titles. The Radeon 680M iGPU proves to be a huge leap from Radeon Vega iGPU, as the AS 6 scored 2580 in Time Spy, and 6212 in Fire Strike.
The AS 6 also features dual-channel DDR5-4800MHz RAM. According to AIDA64 memory & cache benchmark, the read, write and copy speeds of the memory were more than decent. The integrated GPU also benefits from DDR5 RAM as shared VRAM, the numbers in GPGPU benchmark look quite good.
The 1TB NVMe solid-state drive used by the mini PC isn’t the fastest PCIe Gen4 SSD I’ve seen, in fact it doesn’t do much better than high-end PCIe Gen3 SSDs in CrystalDiskMark. However, it still offers decent read and write speeds. Booting into Windows 11 only took a few seconds, launching big applications and games was also quite fast.
Productivity
With such impressive hardware, the AS 6 obviously has no problem of seeing us through common home and office chores. It was also perfectly competent when dealing with relatively demanding creativity tasks.
Editing multiple layers of 4K video footages in Power Director 20, the AS 6 stayed fast and responsive the whole time. Producing a 10-minute high-bitrate 4K video via hardware encoding with GPU acceleration, The mini PC took 7 minutes, 25 seconds. Not a bad result, but it is somehow outshined by the 4 minute and 30 seconds time taken by the Beelink GTR7.
Using the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 3min video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution, the AS 6 took 96 seconds.
Gaming
The Radeon 680M is the best iGPU in the world for a reason. Running League of Legend at 1080P and medium quality setting, we saw an average of 156 fps, which looks super smooth on my 144Hz gaming monitor. Even when I switched to 4K and high quality settings, the game still averaged 91 fps.
Genshin Impact was extremely smooth. At 1080P and medium setting, the AS 6 averaged 59 fps. After switching to high quality setting, it still averaged 52 fps.
Playing Witcher 3 on the AS 6 was also a fun and smooth experience, at 1080P and medium quality settings, we saw an average of 47 fps. Even in those intense fighting scenes, there were no noticeable hiccups.
Conqueror’s Blade has proven to be too much of a challenge for Ryzen 5000 mini PCs, but not so much for the AS 6. At 1080P and medium quality setting, the mini PC averaged 43 fps, even though there were noticeable dips in intensive battle scenes, we didn’t see any real delays. Switching to low quality setting could bump up the average frame rate of the game to 49 fps.
Even though the AS 6 is still not going to compete with desktop tower PCs with top-of-the-line graphics cards, but its gaming performance is decent enough for most people.

Video Playback
Video codec support is one of the few areas that AMD Radeon iGPUs lag behind their Intel counterparts, and the new RDNA2-based iGPU still didn’t change the game. According to DXVA checker, the Radeon 680M supports way fewer video formats to 4K and 8K. But for 4K videos of common formats, the AS 6 had no problem playing all of them smoothly.
Streaming YouTube videos in Chrome was also a fun and smooth experience, including all [email protected] and [email protected] videos. Because it was using hardware decoding, the utilization rates of the CPU and GPU were both quite low. But unfortunately, the AS 6 doesn't support AV1 decoding, so streaming 8K60fps videos could result in severe frame skips.
Stability, power consumption and noise
Although the eight CPU cores and the Radeon 680M iGPU inside are extremely fast and can reach high frequencies when necessary, the cooling mechanism inside still managed to keep the mini PC running generally cool and stable. The AS 6 passed the 3DMark Time Spy stress test with a terrific score of 99.9%, one of the best I have ever seen.
The AS 6 wasn’t the greenest computer I have tested, but it is still generally more power-efficient than average desktop towers and gaming laptops. The power draw was around 10 watts at idle, but can reach 94 watts when the processor was running at load.
Fan noise behavior is tied to the power profile setting. At Idle, the system could remain quiet. Light multitasking or video streaming will bump up the noise to a more audible 38 dB(A). Graphics-intensive gaming induces the noise of around 50 dB(A), which is definitely audible against a silent background, but still gentle compared to most mini PCs I have tested.
Verdict
The GEEKOM AS 6 checked lots of boxes. It comes with a beefy processor, rich selection of I/O, and superb networking capabilities. The mini PC also offers performance that peaks above what notebook platforms typically provide with the same hardware, along with being a bit more customizable with upgradeable memory and storage. If you want enough power for all the computing you need in a very small box, the AS 6 is the one to get.

GEEKOM AS 6
Product link: https://bit.ly/GEEKOMAS6-US
$709 after use code: as640a
Test Screenshots here: