Finally we can tell you a little about this interesting product: GEEKOM AS5 elevates Mini PCs to another level and by now the limits of these machines have become very few. Let’s find out our review of GEEKOM AS5 together!
The world of mini PCs is getting more and more interesting. These devices that were previously limited in performance to marginal use, such as TV Boxes for example, are now becoming real PCs to be used every day for study or work. The collaboration between GEEKOM and Asus tries to raise the bar even more with the new GEEKOM AS5, protagonist of this review. Indeed the Taiwanese company has decided to make a leap in quality, going to produce much more powerful Mini PCs than those put on the market up to now. Let’s see all the details.
Technical specifications
- APU: Ryzen 9 5900HX con iGPU Vega 8
- RAM: 32GB DDR4-3200 MHz
- SSD: 1TB M.2 2280
- Bluetooth: v5.2
- Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi 6E
- LAN: 2.5G RJ45
- Front doors: 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen1, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C (supporto DP1.4 60Hz)
- Rear doors: 2 x Porta HDMI 2.1 (4096 x 2160 @60Hz), 1 x Display Port 1.4 (7680 x 4320 @60Hz), 1 x LAN 2,5G RJ45, 1 x Lucchetto, 1 x DC-in
- Dimensions: 120 x 130 x 58 mm, weight 750 g, VESA mount
- Operating system installed: Windows 11 Pro, compatibile con Linux
- Packaging: 120W, 20V 6A power supply, VESA mount, various mounting screws
GEEKOM AS5 review: design and construction
All GEEKOM products more or less followed common design rules, whether they were low, medium or high-end products. With the new GEEKOM AS5, however, the music changes. The design almost tries to mirror the new concept: it is more aggressive with its square lines and much more evident ventilation grilles. It immediately conveys the idea of a product designed to be more performing. Despite this look a little more aggressivethe product does not lose its elegance because the focus is on the design minimalism with a uniform color, buttons and ports arranged in an orderly and functional way.
Small step backwards perhaps on the build quality. We have one full plastic chassis, but good quality after all. It tends to flex a little in the center below the price, but the edges are very solid. Certainly a little less resistant than an aluminum product. As always, the grip on the table that allows you to easily connect the various cables without fear of blowing the mini PC away.
Also on GEEKOM AS5 we really appreciate the company’s choice to leave the possibility to do upgrade al sistema – for example increase RAM or mass memory. Just remove the top cover blocked by simple star screws to access the various expansion slots. Not everyone does it and it’s really an interesting possibility, especially if we are talking about compact products such as mini PCs.
Last important observation: the feeder is no longer negligible in terms of size and weightor. This is a completely legitimate thing given the power it must deliver (120 W) and we are convinced that the company has done everything possible to compact everything.
GEEKOM AS5 Review: Performance Analysis
But the new design is just the tip of the iceberg. Under the body we find a very powerful Ryzen 9 5900HX with 8 cores and 16 threads that can go up to 4.6 GHz. With such a powerful CPU, there’s practically no limit to what you can ask of this GEEKOM AS5. On Cinebench we measured 1493 points in single core and 11371 in multi core, certainly the strong point of Ryzen processors.
Let’s analyze our graphs. The single core test took about 20 minutes where the core frequency has fluctuated very quickly between 4.5 and 3.6 GHz. It is therefore not possible to maintain constant performance at the maximum boost frequency, but the system evidently prefers to modulate so as not to raise the remaining temperature too much always below 75°C.
In the multi core test which took about 10 minutes, we see how the frequencies of all cores work settle down just below 3.5 GHz (slightly above the base frequency) for about 80% of the test, then succumbing to thermal throttling in the last two minutes and falling to the base frequency of 3.3 GHz. We consider the obtained results to be good, even better than the single core. Temperatures hover around 75°C in the first phase and drop to 70°C during the second. Excellent thermal management so for a compact machine like the GEEKOM AS5, though the fan is heard under load it must be said. We can say we are satisfied with this CPU.
For the part of GPU, on the other hand, there was no real leap in quality. We have a Vega 8 GPU available, so theoretically a decent GPU. However we have noticed un bottleneck importante: somehow the GPU VRAM gets limited to 512MB. We have tried, unsuccessfully, to enter the BIOS to raise this limit, but without success. The performance of the integrated GPU therefore did not make us cry out for miracles.
Looking at our benchmarks we realize how well the GPU is able to handle games in FHD with high details, even if with more recent titles it may not be up to par. We also notice sporadic frame rate drops even below 15 fps which actually make it very annoying to play. Certainly a problem can be due to the bottleneck of the memory assigned to the iGPU. In general we expected something more on the GPU side from this product.
The SSD disk is very fast which reach 3000 MB/s sequential reading and 2600 MB/s writing. If we talk about random operations, we stop at .
GEEKOM AS5 review: daily use
We have tried to use this mini PC in different areas. It goes without saying that the CPU power is sufficient to perform most of the workloads we can imagine. For purely home and office use – web browsing, email, office suite, etc. – it is also oversized. Powerful and responsive at any moment, you can open many programs and many files together and, thanks to the ability to handle multiple screens, we will also have a lot of space available. Thanks to the many connection ports available, you can easily use this mini PC in any environment and configuration.
We tried to do some photo editing without much hassle. video editing, on the other hand, is somewhat affected by the limits of the GPU and it is a little more difficult, for example the montage and effects preview tends to drop a few frames at high resolution. However you can work quite well in FHD. A similar argument applies to gaming: you can play, but certainly not at the top. We should be in FHD and with medium details to get high framerates.
Conclusions
Ultimately we can say that GEEKOM AS5 is a mini PC that practically works like a real desktop (from a few years ago) performance-wise, but pocket-sized. The CPU is powerful, the available memory is abundant and fast, we like the design. The only flaw is always the GPU that struggles to keep up with everything else. We would therefore like to recommend this mini PC to all those who don’t have to rely on a graphics card for heavy tasks.
The price at which it is offered is 599 euro, which for such a powerful machine are not that many. That’s all from the hardware section, keep following us!
Plus points
- Redesigned, yet elegant
- CPU power
- Great memories
- Possibility of customization
Points against
- The GPU falls short of the rest
- Sometimes a bit noisy