GMKtec Mini PC Computers N95(Turbo 3.4GHz) 16GB DDR4 512GB SSD Desktop Computer 4K Dual HDMI Display/3x USB3.2/WiFi 5 BT5.0/RJ45 Ethernet Nucbox G3S

This is a great little computer. Its about as basic as it gets, but that's what I was in the market for. As I age, I've found I barely even use a computer at home for personal stuff at all any more. I have a work laptop that docks to a couple monitors for work from home stuff. I have an extensive steam game library from the old days, but i just don't really have a place in my life for gaming anymore, and i have a Nintendo switch for what little gaming i do. So, I sold my personal laptop and old gaming PC and replaced it with this... Its attached to the back of one of my work monitors, and runs 24/7 as a plex server and network storage computer. I can switch the monitor over to it if i want to, but i will probably just remote into it from my phone for most quick media and file management tasks. It serves up full 4k over wifi no problem. During setup and configuration, it seemed speedy, and responsive enough, and would probably be just fine for a daily use computer for just about everything. It came with Windows 11 pro pre-installed with no bloatware, and setup was super easy. I'm honestly amazed what you can get for so little money, and in a package not much bigger than a deck of cards. I heavily considered getting a "better" mini PC with better graphics, more RAM, etc... but i tried to be honest with myself on my use case, and this is probably better, as it is so efficient for 24/7 mini-server type use. At some point i may try running some basic 3d modeling software of it, as this is about the most demanding thing i can think of that i may still want to do in my personal life, but bottom line, this is a lot of computer for a little money and no space at all. Pretty cool. Note that i was considering using it with my USB-C laptop dock to switch in and out with my work laptop,and the user manual confirmed that the usb-c port is only for power, and its not a thunderbolt port, so that wouldnt work. If you want USB4/thunderbolt, you may need to upgrade a bit more.

Basically, I tried to do everything I could to test this unit and see if it stumbled in any way. I have not been able to make it stumble so I am very pleased with this purchase. I love the small size and because of it I may just keep components in several places and just transport the small box as my portable computer. It has plenty of power for the type of work I do, which is normal homeowner type of uses. It has all the ports I could use or anticipate needing. It has a DP Port (Display Port) which is used to string multiple monitors together. I haven’t considered this in the past, but may in the future and it will be nice to have the option with this machine. Some of the USB ports I’m using could be freed up by using Bluetooth components. I would recommend this computer for people looking for an alternative to laptops or towers and the price is right considering what you get. It also appears to me that upgrading to larger RAM and Storage may not be necessary as the cloud appears to be taking over. I upgraded my other mini to larger RAM and a 1 terabit drive. But after using this unit I’m not sure it is necessary. All in all I can’t say anything negative about the unit. I’m very pleased! Keep reading for additional detailed description. This is my second minicomputer from GMKtec. I purchased one about 1 year ago. It worked well but the SSD crashed. The company worked with me, and I was able to replace the SSD, and rebuild the software and it has been working ever since. So, they have been responsive and stand behind their products. I had a need for a second computer so spotted this and decided to give it a chance. The unit came nicely packaged and intact. All the items listed were in the package as advertised. The difference with the minicomputer is that all the peripherals are not included. I have many of the peripherals so it is not an issue for me but be aware that if you don’t you need a monitor (I’m using a small TV I had), a keyboard (I bought a $13 USB one) and a mouse (I already had one). After acquiring the components, you literally just plug the components in and turn it on. The first thing you notice is how fast the screen comes up. Remember when you would turn your computer on then go get some coffee and hope it was up and running? Not so here it is a fast boot up. It went through some introductory screens and askes you some questions. The only one that gave me hesitation was the password one. It turns out this is to log into the computer every time you turn it on. So, make that a simple one to remember. I didn’t but went in to change it later. It comes loaded with Microsoft Windows 11 After that I started downloading software and Apps, all the ones that I use. I had no difficulty or problems with any of them. I connected it wirelessly through my home router with no difficulty. It comes with the latest wifi-6. I’m connected with 2.4 GHz channel and get 55 Mbps download and 33.42 Mbps upload. I know this depends on your systems but shows that there is plenty of speed. The minicomputer unit is 1.5 inches high and 3 3/8 inches square (see picture). Plenty of USB ports and if necessary, you can put a USB expander in one port. I used the headphones jack to listen to some music and connected my Bluetooth ear buds also both worked with a hitch and there is no lag or distortion. The package also comes with an angle support so you can hang it on the back of the monitor. This cleans up the area and make the monitor appear to be an all in one. I loaded Microsoft 365, a mechanical drawing program, iTunes and quicken and used them thinking that they may put the unit to a test for speed and any potential problems. There were none and it performed flawlessly. I have some “sleep” issues with the other unit, but this unit goes to sleep and wakes up with no issues even if left for a long period and with the monitor disconnected. Another improvement I noticed was that they have changed the way they screw the cover on. On my previous unit you had to remove the rubber feet to access the screws, and this will eventually cause problems with them coming off. This newer unit has the screws accessible trough the feet. This is much better for those looking to do any upgrading.

I have spent the last few days putting this device through tests working on making sure it can actually do the jobs I got it for. So far, this appears to be a really solid choice for a home server network hub / main box for anything that doesn't require mass storage. I have replaced the internal m.2 card with a Transcend 2TB drive: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092W8G8C6?th=1 My system is running ProxMox VE as the base operating system, then I deployed Docker and Docker Compose natively on the host system and used handy ProxMox helper scripts to setup and spin up VM and containerized versions of Opnsense, Adguard, and Home Assistant. Via Docker Compose I deployed Traefik, sabnzbd, Audiobookshelf, Lidarr, Navidrome, VaultWarden, Bookstack, Baikal, DocMost, Joplin, prowlarr, and a WebDAV sync server for RetroArch. Using even "just" an SSD style m.2 to host everything, I'm finding the 12GB of RAM version to be just about perfect as a spot to put those services and then I'm using the rest of the bulk storage for a music collection, audiobook collection, and podcast storage. Audiobookshelf runs nice and responsively with this as a host. I ran my unit through like 8 hours of memtest86, no errors at all (woo!). Then I installed the OS as documented above. Then I felt like it would make sense to run some download tests. Sabnzbd++ running in a container on this system ran (I'm pretty sure) faster than it has for me before on this connection. So this system is outperforming a router while also deliverying Opnsense's enterprise class control and firewall. 69.6 GB - downloaded in 15m 37s, average 76.2 MB/s, unpacked in 28m 50s 90.9 GB - downloaded in 22m 37s, average 68.6 MB/s, unpacked in 20m 49s 91.1 GB - downloaded in 18m 39s, average 84.1 MB/s, unpacked directly 15.2 GB - downloaded in 3m 6s, average 83.5 MB/s, direct unpack Obviously, my MUCH bigger and more electrically inefficient AMD AM4 system would unpack these jobs faster, but these are basically the most difficult jobs I could think of for the sabnzbd++ chain, a couple of untouched full size ISOs where the system has to download and handle 10s of GBs at a time. No hiccups or problems encountered, this tiny guy crunched that data out like a champ. Basically, the Intel N150 really is that good! Downsides & Notes: I didn't touch the WiFi / BlueTooth unit on mine at all and can't speak to its usefulness. Also, with only one m.2 2242 slot and the stated max capacity of 2TB means, unless you slap some USB3-based storage on, this guy will be limited by its data storage in terms of workloads it can do. Overall: I was shocked at how tiny and cute this device is, and the BIOS lets you change the LED ring light at the bottom to a bunch of different colors, so it seriously overdelivered for me in terms of asthetics and build quality. It's priced competitively with a good router, but running Opnsense on real hardware with multiple GB of RAM to throw at the problem, you are going to outperform any router that costs the same price this does. Just add a wireless access point and go :) A dual NIC mini PC as gateway and main home services host is going to be my go-to solution going forward, it's great!

I'm honestly quite shocked at the value this thing has packed into it. I originally wanted to just convert this into a Linux-only machine and set up emulation there but I quickly found that there were some issues with display and processing. What I thought was going to be a fairly light load, turned out to be more than it could handle. It was not even running a sega Genesis game well. I also found that there's something with the display/graphics that I couldn't even get dual screens to work in Ubuntu Linux. Nor could I send audio out via HDMI. GMKTec had a build of Ubuntu but when I tried to install it, the computer did not seem to like it. I never was able to get their build of Ubuntu working. I feel like their build could have solved some of the Linux issues. I don't think it was inherently that the machine couldn't handle the graphics processing. So after wiping the machine a few times through trial and error I was able to get both Linux and Windows installed and either selectable during the boot menu. Having reinstalled Windows again I needed to download the drivers from GMKTec's website and run the install script. This was necessarily to ensure that the graphics and sound worked properly. This time attempting to run emulation (on windows) I was been pleasantly surprised. This machine, currently being under $200, has been able to handle a wide variety of retro gaming from original NES to Wii U. The Wii and Wii U emulation has some stuttering during assets loading or busy environments, but when the games are running things are generally smooth and appropriately 30 or 60 fps. Switching to Steam, I was able to run Ori and the will of the wisps, but only after turning down the graphic settings to Low. Running normal day to day web browsing works fine and it has a great amount of storage 1TB. This is a perfect day to day machine for probably 70-80% of users. This is also a perfect solution for travel or hooking up to a TV where the small form factor is preferred over a big tower or laptop. I think for more serious PC gamers this is not going to be enough processing power to run any powerful modern games. For the price, this is also a perfect machine to try out configurations that might break your normal computer, like trying to install multiple OS's and accidentally wiping the machine. For me this is going to be a perfect machine for learning different technologies on where I don't want to clutter my main machine. What's crazy is that a machine like this would have been completely sufficient to do all of my college homework on, though I think a laptop is better for that job (especially taking notes). PC's have come extremely far since the late 90s and early 00s. From that perspective it is mind blowing what this thing can do. From the perspective of today, this is adequate to handle almost any task, but intensive gaming, number crunching, video editing, or 3d rendering this is probably going to fall short. That being said the price to value ratio is still extremely high.

Why did you pick this product vs others?: With the end of support for W10 I found myself scrambling to replace my old i5 that does not support Windows 11. I used it primarily as a file server at home and even considered replacing the OS with Linux to continue supporting up-to-date file sharing services such as SMB. However, all that research led me towards a nice new, designed-for-multi-boot NucBox G9 from GMK. BIOS and boot options can be accessed upon power up with ESC or DEL, which takes out the guesswork which button to push. With almost all NUCs only having one M.2 2280 slot, I had considered an external M.2 2280 USB case in order to transfer or clone between M.2 2280 drives. That became no longer necessary and the GMK NucBox G9 met my needs with four M.2 2280 slots for PCIex2 NVMe SSD drives! The fourth M.2 2280 slot even supports both PCIex2 NVMe and SATA. Now I can easily multi boot from multiple M.2 drives, and even clone/copy between multiple M.2 drives. This is flexibility I never imagined having, without having to use bulky external M.2 USB cases. Ease of setup: I always reinstall Windows fresh from Microsoft just because of my default paranoia as a cybersecurity professional. For this NucBox G9 however it probably was not necessary since it did not come with any bloatware. After completing setup of the preinstalled Windows 11 Pro distribution and connecting to the Internet results in proper activation with a digital license. Then I ran dism /online /export-driver /destination:"D:\NucBoxG9" to extract the device drivers for the unit to a USB stick before installing fresh from Windows 11 media creation. However that was probably not necessary either because the GMK support website provides downloads for the specific G9 model drivers. Such options and support is always welcome for DIYers and for me clean re-installs is an absolute habit hard to break. Noise level: Windows 11 Pro fresh installation was fast within an hour, and upon Internet connection detects the digital license and activates Windows 11 Pro properly. Windows Updates were slow as typical during which time the machine did seem to get a little hot. However the unit has 3 visible but quiet fans so I felt reassured the heat would be properly dissipated. Lately it's been 95°F(35°C) weather, and the unit has been running at 105°F(41°C) measured through CrystalDiskInfo on the internal SSD. Ease of use: Another subtle design aspect I really appreciated was the power supply not being a brick on the plug side so it was easy to plug into power strips. There is only a small compact square in the middle between the power plug and the NucBox G9. It has 3 USB 3.0 ports which I've used to reliably attach 2 external USB drives. Apparently the RAM and eMMC are built-in thus not expandable or easily swapped out. But the four M.2 2280 slots are easily accessible with a well designed cover and only 2 screws to remove. NAS software is not included but you can experiment with Linux options, or just use Windows Disk Manager. Overall, it is a great affordable and reliable choice for flexible multi-booting from multiple SSDs, file serving from multiple SSDs, or even a great tool for cloning / transferring between SSD drives. Beyond the four M.2 2280 slots, the NucBox G9 even has an additional 64GB eMMC built-in for convenient lightweight multi booting of Linux without taking up a valuable M.2 2280 slot. It comes with Ubuntu preinstalled, but I may try installing Kali or another Linux distro in that space. This is perfect for a DIYer! Another feature I plan to experiment with is using the dual 2.5G Intel I226-V Ethernet with pfSense or OPNsense for a custom firewall device for my entire home network.

Having purchased a GMKTec product almost a year ago (MiniPC Gaming specs) which I now use as my main machine, I thought of trying to find a suitable one to replace my current Plex server (already on non-supported Windows 10). I came across this configuration with a reasonable price tag, and already pre-loaded with Windows 11. The small footprint is always ideal, and out of the box, setting up was nice and easy, and has enough ports and HDMI. Considering I came from Windows 3.1 486 machines, its always amazing to have everything done quickly now. I don't plan to use this machine for anything heavy - as mentioned, it would only be replacing my Plex media streamer. The specs are not high end (given the price) but it suit my needs at this point. I installed the Plex app, and video and sound are decent, no slowdown or lag. The real test when Plex streams over the home network, but I'm confident it would be sufficient. It would eventually be wired to the router, but over wifi, its still very good (it may also be due to my competent internet service provider). At this price point, this machine would cover most needs like casual personal computer use, or student work. Highly recommended if you're looking for a budget mini-PC that is fast and reliable enough for everyday use. GMKTec has a very good product again and should ensure all units are of consistent quality.

It really does well for what I use it for. I have a second monitor and a KVM switch set up and I run Linux Mint on this box and it is basically a glorified media streaming box for watching YouTube while I am doing something else on my larger desktop machine. The RAM is very generous, the 1TB drive is ample and fast, combine that with the CPU and the desktop is fairly snappy and a pleasure to use. It isn't a workhorse machine, but it is more than ample for browsing, streaming, or running light application. I haven't had any issues with Linux when installing. Very happy with the price and power.

The GMKtec Mini PC with Intel N150 delivers impressive performance for its size, handling web browsing, office work, and light multitasking with ease. Boot times are fast, and the system runs quietly and stays cool even after hours of use. I really like how compact and clean it looks on my desk, making it perfect for a home office or media setup. The only downside is that it’s not ideal for heavy gaming or demanding creative workloads. Overall, it’s an excellent value mini PC for everyday computing needs.