GMKtec AMD Ryzen 7 Mini PC Windows 11 5825U(beat Ryzen 7 5850U)(8C/16T 4.50Ghz) M5 Plus Dual LAN 2.5G Micro PC, 32G DDR4 RAM 1TB PCle SSD, WiFi 6, USB3.2, USB-C, BT 5.2, DP, HDMI,Mini Computer

This PC turned out to be the perfect replacement for my old 4 year old water cooled gaming PC. After some shopping around and searching (there are lots to choose from on Amazon!) the gmktek K8 Plus one caught my eye due to the price point, specs and the fact it had an oculink port. I was so impressed with the build quality, speed and performance from the get go. I didn't detect any bloatware on the default Windows 11 install (apart from the normal apps Microsoft like to install....Office etc), however I always perform a fresh install of Windows for any device with Windows pre installed - after a fresh install Windows 11 Pro activated without an issue. I installed Steam and tested a few games such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Counter strike 2 and GTA 5 and I was blown away with how such a Small form factor mini PC can play these games to the level of my older gaming PC! It was on par if not slightly better with than older gaming PC with a dedicated graphics card!. Other area's that stood out for me was the Power it consumed - Under load it was around 60-75 Watts and at Idle it was on 14 watts. The fan is quiet but does increase slightly during high CPU - Nothing in comparison to my older gaming PC. What I do like about the K8 plus is the fact that if at some point I do want to have an external GPU I can use the oculink port - I can't yet justify the expense of an external GPU when all the games I play on this mini PC work fine as they are - But still nice to know that the option is possible. I like the fact there is another NVME slot so I can add more space - some of the games on steam are hungry for space. The RAM also at some point can be upgraded which again is nice to have. The BIOS has plenty of config settings for tweaking and optimizing.Hopefully this review helps other who were in the same position as me where there is so much choice out there :)To summarize so far impressed with the performance of this mini PC - I cant get over how well the integrated graphics perform. Excellent performance and power consumption with the ability in the long run to add an external GPU, more NVME drives and more RAM.

This MiniPC (GMKtec Desktop PC Computer 5825U M5 Plus) came with really nice packaging like the last two GMKtec mini PCs I bought.Easy access to the internals, just 4 screws to remove after taking the lid off.2 x M.2 slots so plenty of room for expansion. Great to have twin 2.5Gb network adapters if you wanted to use it as a router also. They are both Realtek NICs but you can’t have everything I guess! 😊Comes with Windows 11 Pro, preinstalled, not bloatware at all – other than some of the crap that Microsoft includes these days! 😊It has three performance profiles accessible in the BIOS. Performance, Balanced and Quite. It’s quite noisy in performance mode, for perhaps 12% more speed. Peak power draw in that mode seemed to be about 48W (25W TDP for the CPU).Balanced is a good compromise, not too noisy and decent performance. Quiet reduces the power available to the CPU (I think max 15W TDP) and definitely stays quiet. In PC Mark 10 I didn’t see it go above 24W draw from the plug in Balanced mode. In terms of results, I got 6145 in performance, 5231 in balanced and 4714 in quiet.If you wanted to use this as a server which is something I’m seriously considering, then it does seem to be a good candidate in terms of the idle power draw. In Windows 11 when Idle it sits at about 6W in the Balanced profile from the BIOS. I got similar results when testing out Unraid 7 on it. Obviously if you are running background services you are going to get spikes in power draw. I haven’t tested it with two NVMe SSD’s yet, but that loadout may increase it a little. I suppose the only drawback there would be the limited storage capacity, but 4TB NVMe drives are getting cheaper, and I guess you could even go for an 8TB drive, but they are still quite pricey. A shame there wasn’t a way of putting a 2.5” Sata caddy in there as well I guess.Not really a prime candidate for gaming, but still a decent iGPU (Radeon Vega 8). Certainly capable of playing less demanding games, just not at 4K! 1080p is fine though. I just tried out Mechanicus (A Warhammer 40K strategy game) and I believe that uses the unreal engine. A few years old now but it played great on here. That was at 1080p resolution. I’m sure it would play Minecraft at 1080p quite well also. My son now wants it for his bedroom as it’s definitely faster than is old Ryzen 3 laptop which is about 4 years old now.The good thing is, it’s quite flexible in what you can do with it, and can be had much cheaper if you already have some ram and an SSD to put in it, going for the barebones option. Especially good if you don’t need Windows and would rather put something like Ubuntu or Mint on it.The only negative I can think of really is the fact that GMKtec don’t make new BIOS updates available to download any more.I went for this after the good experience with the last two GMKtec mini PCs I bought (one was an Intel N100 unit) and the other was a Ryzen 3 based unit. I think the N100 NucBoxG3 definitely ran more quietly than the two Ryzen based units, but it’s quite limited in terms of RAM (single channel and only one slot) and also quite limited in terms of the PCIe lanes it has, so the storage was quite slow in comparison to these Ryzen based models. Plenty of models and options to pick from though.I’m seriously considering replacing my main PC with one of the newer high end offerings with the very good integrated RDNA 3 GPU’s though. Tiny footprint, but a hell of a lot of power! In conclusion though, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a GMKtec Mini PC in the future.

Brilliantly fast, great spec for the money

I find myself shockingly surprised having only experienced console gaming before. This is my first venture into the gaming side of PC use and this Ryzen 7 chip is comparably 4 times the speed of my current laptop and twice the power of a PS5. I'm running Fortnite better on this and it's performance is quite unbelievable.

I bought the GMKtec NUC Box K8 Plus to replace an aging tower and it is excellent. It is basically an expandable laptop without the screen. All solid state so almost silent and all in a 5 inch square box. The only slight noise comes from the cooling fans. I wanted an AMD processor, this for two reasons. To avoid the instability problems which the 13th and 14th Intel generation seem to have (although Intel say this is now fixed) but also because AMD generally seem to be more efficient in terms of heat generated (and therefore power consumed). It is well built with a metal case, has good onboard Radeon 780M graphics, has dual SSD slots (so I added an additional SSD - the case comes apart easily - just 4 screws) and Windows 11Pro. It has great connectivity including an Oculink port. I don't use it for gaming, just heavy duty admin and it is perfect. It is outstanding value for money and I have no hesitation in recommending it.

Very easy to set up. Neat, very small so great if you have limited space. Silent. Plenty of ports etc. Very pleased all round.