GMKtec Mini PC, G11 AMD Ryzen Embedded R2514 (Beats 4300U/N150), 16GB DDR4 RAM 512GB PCIe M.2 SSD, Business Office Personal Desktop Computer Dual NIC 2.5GbE USB-C HDMI Triple Display

It's been exactly 1 year since I received and started using this PC. It's currently unavailable to purchase, but in the event it's ever available again or you come across one on the secondhand market, I thought I'd leave a review and talk about my experience with it. This little nugget (which I will refer to hereafter as "the Cube," though no it's not exactly a cube if you want to get pedantic about it) has been in use almost daily, and I've got a lot of positive things to say about it. I'm going to put a little bit of technical stuff in this review, but if just you want the simple version: I wish I'd bought three of these. I want one in every room. Especially considering its size and power consumption, it's a surprisingly capable computer. For the price, it was an absolute steal. My lil Cube is connected to the TV in my bedroom. I wanted a device for streaming video and music, but with a complete desktop operating system and web browser for watching content without ads. The Intel N97 processor, 12G of RAM, and 256G SSD are more than competent enough for basic desktop applications. For bonus points, this N97 supports hardware-accelerated decoding of basically every video codec in use on the modern web, so it has no trouble playing content from YouTube, Twitch, etc. It's fully capable of 4K output at 60 Hz/FPS, but the desktop experience in Windows 11 was ever-so-slightly smoother for me at 1080p. Not much of an issue, since the difference in image quality on a 55" display from across the room is negligible, but maybe worth considering if you plan to use this in a more "traditional" desktop configuration. Out of the box, Windows 11 was installed and fully licensed. For the price I paid, I was a little concerned about the validity of the product key, but I never had any activation issues or trouble receiving updates. At the time of this writing, my Cube is running Fedora Linux 44 KDE Plasma Edition. I won't turn this into a diatribe about Windows, but my experience with desktop Linux on this PC has been about as good as one could hope for. With the manual installation of a few packages from the RPMFusion repos, the integrated graphics (and specifically hardware decoding) are working flawlessly even at 4K60. I ultimately had to replace the internal WLAN adapter after switching to Fedora—the stock CDW-C9821CE-00 card is based on the Realtek RTL8821CE, a chipset with known Linux driver issues. That said, I was able to find a compatible Intel AX210-based M.2 card for a mere $20, and this little computer was surprisingly simple to disassemble. GMKtec are probably not expecting the "average user" to be replacing internal parts or installing a different OS on this thing, so I really appreciate how easy they made it to open the case for repairs or upgrades. As for the thermals? I've never had any reason to investigate them. While in use, the case is only slightly warm to the touch, and I don't think I've ever heard the internal fan once. Even up close it's completely silent, so it won't be a nuisance sitting on your desk or tucked away in your home theater cabinet. I don't have any grand conclusion here. I just wish I had bought several of these while they were available. Over the past year, I've encountered several scenarios and projects where one of these liltte N97 cubes would have been the perfect device to use. It's so small and silent it's hard to believe how smoothly it runs a full x86_64 desktop environment. I'd get another one in a heartbeat!

Didn't waste time setting it up since it is Windows 11. Took a while but finally had all the updates installed. The first test was 4k video on YouTube - no issues. Network speed on fiber was almost 400mbs. The green color plastic case is nice, and wife thinks it's cute. Pretty snappy for what it is - paid $137 and it is well worth it. Basically, as much as a Raspberry Pi but $37 dollars more for memory and a hard drive. Loaded some GIS software to test performance and didn't see any issues there either. Loaded a fancontrol program for more refined control. Will test more but am very satisfied👍 FEW DAYS LATER I bought this little PC ($135) for streaming TV and web browsing from a hotel. In the past I purchased a travel router and a streaming TV dongle, and it worked OK. This G3 is substantially better, is a great deal with all the hardware and Windows 11. The TVs picture is substantially better than the Chromecast while running the same YouTube TV app on the same TV. There were a number of settings I had to figure out but it's well worth it. First I like using a Bluetooth mouse with Windows accessibility virtual keyboard. The fan was a little loud but go to GetFanControl and read what their software does. The bios is very functional also with many settings but didn't change any yet. Had to change settings on my Samsung TV for the way the TV monitors USB connections. Turned it all off to work properly. It's a PC so it has all the same issues - updates, power settings, etc. but WOW! Connect to TV, log into Wi-Fi and you're up and running. Purchased an air mouse with keyboard and track pad but a regular mouse works well and less complicated. I didn't know my TV could look this good. You will need to figure out how to use the power button to hibernate and turn on. Once I turn it on I have to move the mouse to get a picture but as I mentioned - ITS A NICE NUC👍 for a TV streaming and web browsing from a hotel. In the past I purchased a travel router and a streaming TV dongle, and it worked OK. This G3 is substantially better, is a great deal with all the hardware and Windows 11. The picture is substantially better than the ChromeCast and running the same YouTube TV app on the same TV. There were a number of settings I had to figure out but it's well worth it. First, I like using a Bluetooth mouse with Windows accessibility virtual keyboard. The fan was a little loud but go to GetFanControl and read what their software does. The bios is very functional also with many settings but didn't change any yet. Had to change settings on my Samsung TV for the way the TV monitors USB connections. Turned it all off to work properly. It's a PC so it has all the same issues - updates, power settings, etc. but WOW! Connect to TV, log into Wi-Fi and you're up and running. Purchased an air mouse with keyboard and track pad but a regular mouse works well and less complicated. I didn't know my TV could look this good. You will need to figure out how to use the power button to hibernate and turn on. Once I turn it on, I have to move the mouse to get a picture but as I mentioned - ITS A NICE NUC👍 It has computer graphics and the latest Wi-Fi chip too...

For the first 24 hours, I was really impressed. Really snappy performance, 8 GB of RAM was plenty for simple tasks, and the SSD was capacious at 256 GB, considering the price. The inclusion of Windows Pro made the box almost free! However, after updating to Windows 11 Build 22H3, during the process of applying updates, the computer locked up. After 60 minutes with the computer no longer visible on the network and the keyboard and mouse non-responsive, pulled the power cord. Upon restoring power and turning on the computer, the PC was stuck for hours at the spinning circle during boot. Two more power-cycles and Windows repair interface appeared. Selected Windows Reset, Local Source (wouldn't work with cloud source), Windows began resetting. However, after a restart, computer back to the infinitely spinning circle. :-( If this had proved reliable, I'd have bought a dozen or more as remote monitoring PCs for client networks. But given that I've had good luck with the similarly priced AWOW models, I will not be investing any more money or time in the GMKTek offerings. Update 01-07-2024 ----------------------- Fortunately, GMKTek provides a download for a Windows 11 re-installation ISO. With this and leveraging a fair amount of knowledge of Windows installation options, was able to re-image the SSD. Unfortunately, the product key is invalidated and I had to use a spare Windows 10 product key to re-activate Windows. Unfortunate the GMKTek hasn't worked out the same relationship with Microsoft that Dell has, whereby any Windows 11 ISO used to load Windows onto a Dell OptiPlex results in an automatically activated Windows 11 installation. Bottom line is that after recreating and updating all apsects of the re-installed Windows 11 OS, the PC is back to running normally. I know to steer clear now of some driver updates. The PC has been running for about 36 hours and I'll post an update if that changes in the near future. When this PC works, it represents a great value for the money in terms of hardware specs and a Windows 11 license. However, taking into account the time issue remediation takes and the expertise required, the TCO (total cost of ownership) rises significantly. If I never have to do brain surgery on this device again, I'll still feel the cost was justified based on the performance of this sub-$200 device. P.S. I now make a complete image backup before running/installing ANY updates so I can simply restore the image backup rather than running into yet another Windows 11 re-installation process and the requirement to use/purchase another Windows product key. P.P.S. The WIndows 11 re-installation ISO download was 11 GB and was not a standard Windows 11 installation ISO. This had to be burned to a flash drive (I used a 16 GB USB3 model; I used Rufus to create the bootable UEFI flash drive) and then the GMKTek PC booted with it. Upon boot, I was faced with a terminal window and a couple of choices. The one I chose led to an image/sysprep process that fortunately got the PC bootable once again with Windows 11 Pro. P.P.P.S. Highly recommended --> As soon as you boot the device for the first time, find a tool such as ProduKey by NirSoft and extract and save the Windows 11 product key. Ideally (although I didn't have a chance to test), this key would work if a re-install was ever required. The other option, that I was waiting for until the PC was fully updated, is to create an image backup using any number of tools, including the image backup tool in Windows. Thus, if any of your update processes results in a non-bootable PC, you can simply re-image from the backup and avoid having a non-activated instance of Windows 11. Update 01-12-2024 ----------------------- Vendor reached out proactively and offered some assistance, although I'd resolved the corrupt Windows 11 issue independently. However, that level of customer support is remarkable considering the price of this product and the lack of such support from other vendors with much pricier offerings. Due to this, upgrading the rating to four stars. Update 01-13-2024 ----------------------- Customer support proactively reached out and provided a product key so I could activate Windows 11 and free up my personal product key. GMKtec's proactive reaching out to a customer with issues is almost unparalleled in my experience over 40 years, so despite the issues I encountered, I'm raising my review to five stars. For a product this inexpensive but with excellent performance, providing this level of customer support is laudable.

I was able to purchase one of these with a coupon for about $100. At that price I would buy more! I’m hoping to see the coupon again. At the current price it’s still a good deal, but you might do better elsewhere. I can confirm the initial windows install was clean and the BIOS is up to date. I didn’t find any bloatware or malware. I encountered a couple of small issues that result in the 4 star rating based upon the current price. As you will see in my photos, the initial hard drive write speeds weren’t quite up to par. I ran through some basic troubleshooting without any luck, so I decided to reinstall windows. The Gmktec site that hosts their windows images and drivers had reached its daily capacity, so the next day I downloaded the windows image but it would repeatedly fail when trying to install. I decided to use Rufus and an image downloaded from Microsoft which installed cleanly after a full format, but needed some drivers. Some were found using windows update. The other drivers are readily available from Gmktec. This solved my hard drive speed issue as shown in my photos. The other odd thing is the nucbox g5 does not recognize the native 2560x1440 resolution of my BenQ 27” monitor. Every other computer I have recognizes it. The nucbox g5 does recognize my 2560x1440 Samsung monitor resolution. I am using this in a small office environment for web based applications and it works well. It is quiet, stays cool and has plenty of storage capacity for my use case. I can confirm the WiFi work and I have read of people upgrading the WiFi card with a newer intel card successfully; but I use it with an Ethernet cable and have the WiFi disabled. If you need more storage capacity or speed you can upgrade the hard drive and it does support NVME, but the 512gb version from Gmktec regularly has a coupon placing it just a few dollars more than this unit. I have not tried any gaming with it I can’t speak to its gaming capability. But it works well for office productivity. I was able to power it with a small PD charger for those that think the included power supply is too big, but I am using the included power supply. If I see the coupon again, I’ll be replacing several more i5-6500t mini pcs in our office. I don’t think you will be disappointed in this unit and if you can score a coupon you’ll be very happy with your purchase. This item is regularly 10% off and occasionally more. EDIT: After about two months, the unit has started to thermal throttle and occasionally my streaming video will stutter. Using HW Monitor and CPU-Z I was able to find the CPU was quickly reaching 85-86c and confirm thermal throttling. A little searching online led me to decide to repaste the CPU. Search for a video on how to change the battery to see the easy way to disassemble the unit. After repasting, operating temps had dropped 10-15c and stress testing for an hour on CPU-Z never saw above 79c.

This adorable little computer is *tiny*. The power supply that comes with it feels heavier. It packs a lot of power in a small package, though. I didn't test gaming performance because on-chip GPUs can't handle high end games, but based on on the video tests, it should probably play games like Minecraft, League of Legends, and other games which are highly optimized to play on just about everything. The wifi out of the box is decent. With it connected to a Wifi 6E router about 18 feet away in the same room, it got 314 Mbit/s download on Speedtest, both in the Edge browser and with the app from the Microsoft store. With it plugged into a 2.5 gigabit ethernet switch (note it only has a 1 gigabit port), it got a 820 Mbit/s speed test. For reference, my main PC gets 750-800 Mbit/s with the same wifi router and a 1060 Mbit/s speed test with a wired 2.5 Gbit/s connection on a 1 Gbit broadband cable internet connection. So wifi is a respectable for browsing and watching videos, and wired, it is able to use about 80% of the available bandwidth. Video is good too with some caveats. 4k video on Youtube on a 4K HDR monitor is smooth with no jitters, stalls, or buffering. Same with Disney+ with 4k ultraHD with HDR. The caveat is for uncompressed 4k video. I installed Jellyfin media player and watched the same movie which played well on Disney+. The difference is that the media was not compressed, so it is running at about 80 Mbit/s for video. Even using ethernet, there were frame drops and low frames per second. For reference, AppleTV and Roku Ultra both play that movie smoothly from my Jellyfin server. 1080p content plays flawlessly from the Jellyfin server on everything I tried. It's just 4k HDR content where it struggles, and I think that HDR might be the reason. So wifi and network speeds are good, and video from a streaming web site plays perfectly in a browser. Windows Professional costs $200 by itself. I will try Teams on a meeting next week and update the review if needed, but I expect video conferencing to work just fine. There is nothing else this size on the market as far as I can tell, and I am completely satisfied with this little, inexpensive, powerful PC.

This little i3 system is small enough to fit into the palm of my hand (which always amazes me how small these systems are getting considering how powerful they are). On top of being small, the power efficiency is fantastic. While on idle it was drawing around 6-7 Watts total. While running a Youtube video and a second window for browsing it only came up to about 8-9 Watts. When I tested it around max load it went up to 22 Watts. As this is an i3 CPU and not an AMD APU don't expect to be able to do much gaming on this. I tested out the Final Fantasy 1 Remaster and it mostly ran at 60FPS 1080p, but that game is not going to have very high requirements at all. I also tested out Super Tux Kart, which ran well enough at 1080p. Much older games or very basic games should run fine. I didn't test any other games, because honestly, I don't plan to use this system for gaming. Eventually I plan to put Debian Linux on it and use it for containerized applications, which this system will happily handle. This system would also be a great candidate for Batocera Linux. The default OS on this system is Windows 11 PRO. Take note of this being the PRO version, as it comes out of the box as a much cleaner experience and the ability to run a local only account without workarounds. It also came without any OEM bloat and the advertisements seem to be turned off by default. This is a much better Windows 11 experience than I am accustomed to. The internals are VERY easy to get to. Just pop the top off (no screws) and you are able to access the RAM and SSD. Two HDMI Ports and plenty of USB ports as well. I am a very big fan of the ease of access. Overall I am happy with this product. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a decent system for basic desktop tasks or for small container workloads.

When I decided to install samba on my Debian 12 server, the N3060 cpu in the cheap laptop I was using started to show its age. Some searching online lead me to look into N100 mini PC’s as a low power yet capable upgrade. I enjoyed using a laptop for the moments I wanted to login locally, as well as the built in battery, but there aren’t many good options atm. The cost of everything is currently inflated. When I finally shopped around, it became apparent the N150 was now the most available chip inside Mini PC’s. The N100 is hard to find, and the port specs on those machines seemed less capable. The Asus NUC 14 essential has more high spec ports, yet many reports stated overheating issues. The pricing was also much greater given the lack of an included SSD or RAM. Even with my spare SN850X, the cost to add RAM placed the NUC 14 way above the G3 Plus. I attempted to buy the “good” stuff, an M4 Mac Mini, but that failed spectacularly-Slow transfer speeds, unstable speed, and a buggy setup process. Reading online seems to imply Apple doesn’t care to fix the SMB implementation, and it has been a problem for years apparently. G3 Plus it is… After installing Debian 13 and configuring all my stuff, I’m getting a solid and stable network transfer speeds of around 280MB’s, excellent. I have my SN850X connected through a Nvme-to-USB port enclosure, making the included storage more than adequate for my use. The included 16GB of RAM is also great under Linux. I'm hitting the upper limits of my 2.5Gb gear for transfers, very happy! Negatives -SSD: The Nvme port seems to place the Nvme drive board very close to the back USB 3.2 port cover. When attempting to install my SN850X internally, the pre-installed heatsink made contact with this cover, causing it to heat up a good amount. I had to remove it and use the provided SSD inside, bummer. -RAM: It seems the N150 supports DDR5 RAM, making the included single DDR4 stick another bummer.

This review is for the GMKtec Mini PC N100, G3 (8GB RAM + 256GB NVME drive) It is generally a good buy taking its sub-$150 price into consideration. Some main points to take into consideration before buying: -There will be no HDMI Audio for this unit. This means that if you connect it to a monitor or a TV using the HDMI cable, there will be video but no audio. For audio you can link it through speakers through Bluetooth. This is for Windows 10/11 with all the audio drivers etc. properly installed. -This mini-PC is good for light to moderate work as long as it does not involve a great deal of CPU or GPU intensive work. For example, if we try to watch Youtube on a 4K screen, it does render the video well but the CPU usage shows a sustained 100% usage on task manager. Playing HD videos locally does not incur such sustained CPU usage though. - Advisable to upgrade the RAM to at least 16GB if you are using it as "regular" PC. As noted above, if your work does not involve HEAVY multimedia usage, it works quite well as a "regular" PC. It is possible to upgrade the RAM to at least 32GB ( I did not go any higher than that). Just get a Timetec RAM stick and you are good to go! - Best to keep the lid open if you live in a hot climate or without Air-conditioning or if you use it for tasks which has sustained CPU/GPU usage. The lid can be flipped open with just your fingernail (carefully)! - Best to install Windows 10 (preferably the "lite editions" if you can get from a reliable "safe" source on the internet). The supplied Windows 11 is too heavy on the CPU. Best to take the help of a tech-savvy friend if you are not experience with Operating System installs since they can be quite tricky for new users. Install of a fresh Windows 10 OS including drivers and set-up with basic software took me around half an hour. - The unit I got showed the MasonSemi NVME drive that it comes installed with, to already have had a 5 Terabyte Write history on it. So it seems to be an used drive that they supply in the unit. I have purchased a few more units, so I will update to reflect what the usage history on those new units is shown as. Bottom-line: This is a good buy given its price tag. If you want it to last for a long time, the main thing you need to do is to keep it COOL (cool ambient temperature). If you are using it for daily email checking/drafting, browsing web sites and stuff like that, watching downloaded movies from your USB drive this is a very good unit.

Super,

A fully loaded pc. Add a monitor, keyboard, mouse and cables and you have an 8/256 gb system for under £200. The G3 nucbox is no powerhouse but it doesn’t need to be, it does everything I want it to. Well recommended..

Aus der Beschreibung geht nicht hervor, dass man ein US-Netzteil bekommt. Das passt hier nicht in die Steckdose.

small size high quality

I received this package from Amazon last Monday, superfast delivery even without Prime. The packaging was sealed and already small, and the box is even smaller, all the content is shown on the photo. The G3 is very light weight and there's a metal clamp, I believe this is to attach and hide it behind a screen, however the box takes so little space that I simply place it even on a really small desk. The box's plastic material feels like good quality and the colour is a nice, maybe dark-olive green, I prefer that over white which often gets yellowish over time, black collects dust and grey looks boring. It is replacing a bulky old Omen gaming PC in the living room area that was 8 time more in height and about the same difference is true for the surface area, the photo gives you an idea. The old PC was used mainly for internet researches, some homework related uses, some attempts in coding and writing emails etc. A Steam client was running on it with quite a collection, but more casual games. One issue was that the old PC was on 24/7 and a gaming PC is drawing a fair bit of power and I don't need the heat it produces now in summer, the Omen must have used at least 10x more energy than this G3. The tiny charger that came with the box says in small font I believe 36W, but I suppose the G3 is running on a lot less on average, so at 20 Watts it costs just about 3 cents a day to run permanently. The box is slightly warm but definitely not hot. The other issue with the Omen was that it didn't allow an upgrade to Windows 11 although the specs on that gaming PC are not bad. The G3 comes with Windows 11 preinstalled and that was very is easy to set-up. I recommend to take a backup with a 16/32 GB USB stick immediately once you've installed your browsers and any additional software. It takes about a night to run a Windows backup but it is just good practice because you don't want to be forced to buy an expensive Windows licence if ever something happens, even if it feels unlikely with a fresh Windows 11, which in my experience is a stabile OS and has become fairly secure, make sure you don't disable the updates. I've been running the G3 now for a week with three different browsers (Edge is preinstalled), countless tabs open. I had no problems connecting the Samsung screen via HDMI, a USB keyboard (even has French has second layout), a USB mouse and a headphone (cinch). My Wifi printer worked without much hassle, very easy to add it in Windows 11. This purchase fully meets my expectation and use case.