With the AS 5, GEEKOM offers an extremely exciting mini PC. This relies on the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX and a collaboration with ASUS.
The PC is super space-saving, energy-saving and has a great variety of connections!
At first glance, this has the potential to be the best mini PC I’ve had my hands on so far.
But how does it look in practice? Is the GEEKOM AS 5 really that good and great here? Let’s find out in the test!
At this point many thanks to GEEKOM for making the AS 5 available for this test.
The GEEKOM AS 5 in the test
The GEEKOM AS 5 is a mini PC in the “Intel NUC” style. It measures 130 x 120 x 58 mm (including rubber feet).
This makes it very space-saving! However, the port equipment is still an absolute highlight of the AS 5.
Front:
3,5mm Headset Anschluss
1x USB C 3.0 5Gbit
2x USB A 3.0 5Gbit
Back:
2x HDMI 2.1
1x Displayport 1.4
1x USB C 3.1 10Gbit
1x USB A 3.1 10Gbit
2x USB A 3.0 5Gbit
1x 2,5Gbit LAN
For an AMD Mini PC, this is fantastic IO! Maybe a card reader would have been nice, but the space would be really tight.
We also have the connection for the power pack (20V/6A 120W) on the back and the power switch on the front.
Fortunately, the on switch is very easy to operate, so you can turn on the mini PC without moving it.
Lots of slots inside
Inside the GEEKOM AS 5 we find the following slots:
2x M.2 PCIe 3.0 Slots 2280
1x 2,5 Zoll SATA
2x SO-DIMM DDR4 RAM Slots
1x M.2 WLAN Karten Slot
Excellent! Again, it hardly gets much better. 2x NVME SSDs + SATA slot allows you to accommodate a lot of memory in the small PC. In addition, the RAM is socketed as usual and even the WLAN module can be replaced.
Mit Windows 11 Pro
Windows 11 Pro is pre-installed and activated on the GEEKOM AS 5. This seems to be an absolutely “clean” installation.
Apart from Windows 11’s own programs, there are no other preinstalled programs or other changes.
Performance of the GEEKOM AS 5
GEEKOM AS 5
AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX
AMD Radeon RX Vega 8
32GB RAM
1TB NVME SSD
The GEEKOM AS 5 relies on the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX. The AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX is an 8-core CPU with 16 threads and a clock speed of up to 4.6 GHz.
Accordingly, this is quite a powerful CPU, which is the flagship of the AMD Ryzen 5000 series. Flagship of the notebook series, because the AS 5 uses notebook hardware like all mini PCs, which makes perfect sense.
Let’s look at a few benchmarks.
The performance of the AS 5 looks really good! This is the fastest mini PC I’ve had my hands on for breaking so far! Due to the two additional cores, this can beat the Beelink SER6 with the actually one generation newer Ryzen 5 6600H.
Powerlimits des GEEKOM AS 5
PowerLimits can have a massive impact on CPU performance. PowerLimits describe the maximum power consumption of a CPU, which manufacturers can limit, for example to relieve voltage converters or the cooling.
Excitingly, the power consumption of the CPU first jumps to 42W and then drops to 35W.
In theory, however, the PC could keep the 42/45W constant, because purely from a temperature point of view this is not a big problem.
At first the temperature rises to just over 80 degrees, which is ok. The AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX has a maximum temperature of 105 degrees.
Later the temperature drops to 70-80 degrees.
SSD
The AS 5 relies on the Kingston NV2 NVME SSD.
This is a simple NVME SSD that achieves 3040 MB/s reading and 2625 MB/s writing. Nothing special, but sufficient in practice!
2.5Gbit LAN and WLAN 6E
The AS 5 has a 2.5Gbit LAN port. This relies on a Realtek chipset, which has done a good job for me.
When it comes to WiFi, we have the MediaTek MT7922 (RZ616) chipset. In addition to the 2.4Ghz and 5GHz band, it also supports the 6Ghz band and the WLAN 6E standard.
volume
Most mini PCs are very quiet. Unfortunately, the GEEKOM AS 5 is one of the louder mini PCs.
In normal idle, the PC is of course completely quiet. However, the fan is quite nervous. Windows update starts in the background? The fan starts up. Loading a big website? The fan can start.
The fan is also a bit louder. This is my biggest criticism of the mini pc, the fan.
power consumption
The power consumption is always a very important point for mini PCs. Due to the high performance of the GEEKOM AS 5, I had almost expected somewhat weaker results, but this was not the case!
When idling, the GEEKOM AS 5 needs just 8.6W. This is an absolutely appropriate value for a mini PC, which puts it in the middle of the field.
Under load I could observe up to 62W, which is quite a lot. However, this is not surprising given the high performance.
Test result for the GEEKOM AS 5
I’m a big fan of mini PCs, especially when they’re powerful enough to make you want to work on them.
This also applies to the GEEKOM AS 5! Thanks to the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, this is the fastest mini PC I’ve gotten my hands on so far. It has more than enough power for the usual office applications, but is also good for photo or video editing.
Of course, as with most mini PCs, the graphics card is a bit weaker here because it is integrated in the CPU, but if you don’t want to play on the PC, this is fine.
In addition, there is a very good I/O including 2.5Gbit LAN, as well as the possibility to install up to 3 SSDs inside. Excellent!
The GEEKOM AS 5 still needs very little energy, especially when idling, which is more important than ever! The power consumption increases a bit under load due to the powerful CPU, but that is normal and ok.
Is there anything to criticize about the GEEKOM AS 5? The fan can spin up quickly and is louder than average when it does so. But apart from the perhaps somewhat aggressive fan curve, there is nothing to complain about!
The GEEKOM AS 5 is a great little workhorse with good features, including Windows 11.
POSITIVE
Outstanding CPU performance
Outstanding port equipment
2x NVME SSDs + 1x SATA
Very low power consumption
Compact design
NEGATIVE
Loud fan
35W TDP