I am using one of these for my job. It works great. I dual boot to Chrome Flex on a USB drive. I need to try to dual boot to Linux Mint on another USB drive one day. I don’t expect any issues.
It's great for third world businesses. It would be awesome if GMKTEC expose two sata ssd ports to make a NAS(i need that for truenas), and i would use it for learning web programming too
Sounds like a fun toy for email, emulation, media watching but nothing for serious work or actual big 3D games at a reasonable resolutuon. I will say for $150 its 100x better than a chromebook. They should slap this hardware into a notebook chassis with a screen and make chromebooks go away forever. I wonder how hard it would choke on modded minecraft
These are very basic machines and work as long as nothing and I mean nothing else is going on. Even windows trying to update makes the mouse have visible latency. At this price point you might as well spend twice as much and get something better. While I like my mini PCs the biggest problem with them is a lack of support. As soon as there is a security problem that requires an update outside of the operating system the machine is never again going to be secure for anything that requires sensitive information like debit cards. And I never hear any one who talks about these focus on security. Why would they when most peoples solution is to ignore it and hope it doesn’t become a problem, worse that is not as bad a strategy as you would think given all the data breaches. I just switched from a beelink s12 pro to a minisfourm UN1265. Much better processor but the build quality of the minisfourm case is way worse than the beelink. And the beelink used windows default drivers. Getting the network card to work on the minisfourm was a little work where the beelink just worked on a fresh install of window. Also while the n97 doesn’t support dual channel ram or more than 16gb of ram that is not going to hold back the level of performance you are going to get out of a chip like this. Also the PCIE standard is only gen 3 so don’t buy a higher priced NVME SSD for one of these either. While you can argue the price difference between a good NVME SSD and a cheap one isn’t enough to go for the cheap on I would say if you are buying a $150 mini you are exactly the kind of person who should be cheeping out on an SSD.
I think this is related to the fact that most of these companies are rather small yet. And I also see that issue. You are right about that. I know for a fact that some of them DO deliver Bios updates. For some you can even download them on the website and for some you might need to contact the support. The growing popularity will also put some pressure on the companies regarding updates. While I still think the main security issue is the OS.
The nerfing these N mini PCs get from Intel with the limited amount of RAM allowed plus single channel, is just insane. Why allow dual channel support and allow more than 12GB of RAM, which might let you actually use these machines for more than the simplest tasks? Well the joke is on Intel as it is the main reason (out of 3) I will never get one. Otherwise it looks like a fun system. Especially since you found the solution to the thermal throttling. And it is not very small. It's about average. Besides, it's not the size that counts, but how you use it!
I think it's dual channel soldered. Also it's ddr5 so it's not that important actually ;) About the size... You dirty dirty man! As for a windows Mini PC I thought it was pretty small compared to the average Mini PC 😬
@@Hubwood Hmm, I thought the N100 and N95 are all single channel by design. Is this one different, or was I wrong? Interesting either way. Regardless though, I assume the 12GB RAM limit remains for this. As for the rest, :p
@@Hubwood I don't believe in magic, how for example Apple says that X amount of RAM is magical and is not an issue to have 8GB on their M computers. But yes, what you say is the right thing. Research and testing would be the only way to handle this appropriately. Then again, I also like to complain.
The info that Intel gives out on Ark etc is actually wrong. The Alder Lake N processors run with 32 or 48 GB of RAM (well, if a SO-DIMM is available) without a problem. BTW I'm always puzzled about why the tech reviewers quote the SSD storage limit (most often "up to 2 TB") verbatim. There is no such limit in any hardware and there cannot be, other than drive availability.
![This Intel N97 Mini PC Is the New Budget King! 😱 [GMKtec NucBox G5 REVIEW]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9-JK0-oR1M0/mqdefault.jpg)
I bought one a week ago. It kicks ass all over my Asus laptop! Great little PC.
I am using one of these for my job. It works great. I dual boot to Chrome Flex on a USB drive. I need to try to dual boot to Linux Mint on another USB drive one day. I don’t expect any issues.
The N97/N100 are awesome CPUs, so little power usage but is so responsive. Flies on Mint Linux.
changing thermal paste on this device is a must, first thing to do is to change thermal paste, believe me, now I have a quiet device
Same. Helped a lot as mentioned in the video. They added to much paste...
@@Hubwoodbtw, mine is N97, not N100
@@kirillkasyanov same for the one in the video.
@@Hubwood but you write that there is N100 🤔
@@kirillkasyanov duuuuh my mistake. Fixed it in the description. Sorry. It's N97 😅
It's great for third world businesses. It would be awesome if GMKTEC expose two sata ssd ports to make a NAS(i need that for truenas), and i would use it for learning web programming too
Soo cheap and Portable power house 👍
Any chance you could run 3dmark again with the updated bios 1.01, which enables the 1200Mhz GPU? You should see an improve in performance
Do I need to change my thermal paste when I get my new one?
Should not be the case. But you know... No guarantee.
Even if the problem exists you do not HAVE To do it. But you could.
@@Hubwood with what software I can check thermal throttling, can you name it please?
@@kirillkasyanov HWinfo
Sounds like a fun toy for email, emulation, media watching but nothing for serious work or actual big 3D games at a reasonable resolutuon. I will say for $150 its 100x better than a chromebook. They should slap this hardware into a notebook chassis with a screen and make chromebooks go away forever. I wonder how hard it would choke on modded minecraft
Well depends on what you consider serious work 😅
These are very basic machines and work as long as nothing and I mean nothing else is going on. Even windows trying to update makes the mouse have visible latency. At this price point you might as well spend twice as much and get something better.
While I like my mini PCs the biggest problem with them is a lack of support. As soon as there is a security problem that requires an update outside of the operating system the machine is never again going to be secure for anything that requires sensitive information like debit cards. And I never hear any one who talks about these focus on security. Why would they when most peoples solution is to ignore it and hope it doesn’t become a problem, worse that is not as bad a strategy as you would think given all the data breaches.
I just switched from a beelink s12 pro to a minisfourm UN1265. Much better processor but the build quality of the minisfourm case is way worse than the beelink. And the beelink used windows default drivers. Getting the network card to work on the minisfourm was a little work where the beelink just worked on a fresh install of window.
Also while the n97 doesn’t support dual channel ram or more than 16gb of ram that is not going to hold back the level of performance you are going to get out of a chip like this. Also the PCIE standard is only gen 3 so don’t buy a higher priced NVME SSD for one of these either. While you can argue the price difference between a good NVME SSD and a cheap one isn’t enough to go for the cheap on I would say if you are buying a $150 mini you are exactly the kind of person who should be cheeping out on an SSD.
I think this is related to the fact that most of these companies are rather small yet. And I also see that issue. You are right about that. I know for a fact that some of them DO deliver Bios updates. For some you can even download them on the website and for some you might need to contact the support. The growing popularity will also put some pressure on the companies regarding updates. While I still think the main security issue is the OS.
The nerfing these N mini PCs get from Intel with the limited amount of RAM allowed plus single channel, is just insane.
Why allow dual channel support and allow more than 12GB of RAM, which might let you actually use these machines for more than the simplest tasks?
Well the joke is on Intel as it is the main reason (out of 3) I will never get one.
Otherwise it looks like a fun system. Especially since you found the solution to the thermal throttling.
And it is not very small. It's about average. Besides, it's not the size that counts, but how you use it!
I think it's dual channel soldered. Also it's ddr5 so it's not that important actually ;)
About the size... You dirty dirty man!
As for a windows Mini PC I thought it was pretty small compared to the average Mini PC 😬
@@Hubwood Hmm, I thought the N100 and N95 are all single channel by design. Is this one different, or was I wrong? Interesting either way.
Regardless though, I assume the 12GB RAM limit remains for this.
As for the rest, :p
@@TrusteftTech yes but tbh I'm not sure if for ddr5 that doesn't matter in this case as ddr5 handles it differently. Would have to do some research
@@Hubwood I don't believe in magic, how for example Apple says that X amount of RAM is magical and is not an issue to have 8GB on their M computers. But yes, what you say is the right thing. Research and testing would be the only way to handle this appropriately. Then again, I also like to complain.
The info that Intel gives out on Ark etc is actually wrong. The Alder Lake N processors run with 32 or 48 GB of RAM (well, if a SO-DIMM is available) without a problem.
BTW I'm always puzzled about why the tech reviewers quote the SSD storage limit (most often "up to 2 TB") verbatim. There is no such limit in any hardware and there cannot be, other than drive availability.