This New Mini PC Is Tiny, AFFORDABLE & FAST, Gaming & EMU Hands On Testing

what's going on everybody it's ETA Prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at an ultra tiny Windows 11 Pro Mini PC from a company known as gmk tag on the channel we've taken a look at a lot of their offerings but nothing quite as small as this one here because this is coming in at 1.4 in by 1.4 in and as you can see I mean this thing is absolutely tiny fits in the palm of your hand and it's a full-fledged Windows 11 PC it's actually running Windows 11 Pro right out of the box and you can upgrade the m.2 SSD and this up to 2 terabytes but one of the most exciting things about this Mini PC is the price coming in at only around $150 with a coupon over on Amazon and their website and just to give you an idea of how small this thing really is I've got an Xbox controller here it's just the Starfield branded controller and of course one of the most popular mini PCS on the market is the Raspberry Pi 5 so I did want to give you a quick comparison here Raspberry Pi 5 next to that G5 and obviously the G5 is a lot larger but it's not much given what we can do with this PC inside of the Box along with the G5 Mini PC you're going to get a user manual and you'll also get your power adapter this is actually a 12vt 3 amp USB type-c power adapter and that's about it that's all we're getting with this unit when it comes to I/O up front here we've got two fullsize USB 3.2 ports over here on the right hand side we've got a Micro SD card slot and around back we've got USB type-c and this is only for power in unfortunately it doesn't do video out or data kind of wish it did that way we could use this in single cable operation mode but we've also got a 3.5 mm audio jack two full-size HDMI ports another USB 3.2 port and gigabit Ethernet even though we're working with such a small form factor unit we do have a little bit of upgradeability here actually surprised to see this but it does utilize a 2242 m.2 SSD we can go up to 2 terab with this and it comes pre-installed with a Wi-Fi 5 card but you could get in here and upgrade to a Wi-Fi 6 card if you needed it usually with mini PCS this small we don't have any way to upgrade anything so I'm really glad that we can do the storage and that Wi-Fi card taking a look at the overall specs here for the G5 we've got the Intel n97 CPU and this is one that we haven't tested on the channel and it does outperform the n100 even though it's coming in at a lower number so I guess Intel really doesn't care four cores four threads up to 3.6 GHz we've got built-in UHD graphics with 24 execution units and this will boost up to 1.2 GHz as opposed to the n100 750 12 GB of LP ddr5 at 4,800 MHz we've also got that 2242 m.2 SSD we can add up to a 2 TB drive here and out of the box this is running Windows 11 Pro another big difference between the n97 and the n100 is that this actually is rated at a 12 wat TDP instead of six like that n100 which means we can get those clocks up where we need them to be so far it's actually working out pretty well here with Windows 11 Pro we've got that n97 12 gigs of 4800 MHz LP ddr5 RAM and the built-in UHD Graphics now recently we took a look at an n200 CPU which does outperform the n100 and the n97 because we've got a better GPU over there 32 execution units instead of 24 like we have with the n97 but this thing still handles older titles Indie titles and even emulation way better than I thought it would now I was really interested to see how they have this thing running it's not a totally silent PC we've actually got a built-in fan but it's super quiet even maxed out here I haven't messed around with the BIOS or anything and it looks like we're getting a TDP of around 11 Watts on the CPU but we can also stress out this igpu and that's also going to need a little power so luckily they've actually got this set up with about a 15 to 16 watt boost and we're getting close to the maximum clock on that igpu so Allin between the CPU and the igpu we've got a maximum TDP here of around 16 Watts now remember this does come with Wi-Fi 5 built in but you've also got that ethernet we're going to be messing around on Wi-Fi right now and it would have been nice to have Wi-Fi 6 from the factory but we can always swap that card out web browsing here is still really quick heading over to gmk teex website we'll go right to the G5 section here and you can see on their website $159.99 9 with their coupon and I think it's a little cheaper over on Amazon but everything loads up really quickly on this little setup here now I want to test out some 4K video playback from YouTube so we'll head over there we'll find something we'll do 4K 60 HDR usually like testing one of these demos but yeah I mean it's loading up this page just fine and of course we are using the edge browser if you wanted to install Firefox or Chrome you could always do it we'll go with the Sony Sizzle reel here and I actually just swapped over to Chrome because I'm seeing better performance here in Chrome with 4K video playback from YouTube and it looks like in Chrome here 4K 60 we've got zero drop frames with this video which is really awesome and I've always had really good luck with these neries chips even in the edge browser but for some reason by the end of this I was having around 25 drop frames on the n97 so swapping over to Chrome is definitely the way to go so far not too bad for everyday tasks like web browsing email checking document editing and even 4K video playbag and of course a micro PC like this was never intended to be a gaming machine but we will be testing out some gaming and emulation on this system but first thing I wanted to look at were some benchmarks and with this I'm seeing some pretty interesting results on the G5 with that Intel n97 I got a single core of 1,371 multicore 3524 now if we move down the list list you can see I've also tested the Intel n200 and the n100 both at 15 watt so we're right there kind of same TDP and the n97 is coming ahead in single and multicore which is a bit odd because the n200 actually has a higher boost clock by 100 MHz 3.7 so I figured the n200 would be ahead but the n97 is winning with these tests so let's go ahead and check out some GPU benchmarks I just ran one here 3D Mark night raid we scored a 5,921 on the G5 with the n97 and again I did run the same test on that n200 and the n100 and even though the n200 igpu has more compute units the n97 came ahead in this test also now we got to see how well this thing can game and we're not going to be doing AAA games on this thing but any games in older titles will run pretty decently at 900p we've got Hades 2 Early Access if you purchase it on Steam you can actually play it right now at the time of making this video 900p medium running at 60 FPS I don't mind playing it like this definitely looks good at 900p going back a bit further Dirt 3 just an easier one to run and I wanted to get a feel for what we could do with this machine 900p medium we're getting an average of around 81 FPS and again I know it's an older one but it's still a lot of fun to play so looking at this I mean stuff like halflife 2 Left for Dead 2 and even OG Skyrim will be playable but with this I did have to take it down to low settings I wanted to do 900p medium we just don't have enough GPU power here but at those low settings we're getting a constant 60fps so going into a little machine like this you just got to understand that it's not going to do AAA games you could always do cloud gaming or even stream from another more powerful PC it's going to handle it just fine but the last thing I wanted to show off here was some emulation because this is some pretty impressive performance starting off here with PSP using PPSSPP 3x resolution direct X11 and this game natively ran at 30 FPS there are mods or hacks that'll allow you to run it at 60 and I'm pretty sure we probably could have went up to 5x but it still looks pretty good at three let's move over to something a bit harder to run with PSP and that's going to be Ghost of Sparta we're still at 3x resolution direct X11 back in and I didn't even swap over to openg or Vulcan because this was working so well and it looks like we're going to be able to play these PSP games no problem at all this is definitely one of the harder ones to run so given that we can do this at 3x easier to run games we'll be able to upscale even more than this I'd probably leave it at Native with most of the stuff and then drop it down when you need it with a game like God of War next up we've got some GameCube using the Dolphin Emulator bloody Roar native res vx11 unfortunately there are some games that are just going to struggle on this no matter what you do like FZ GX on some of the harder to run stages will drop into the 50s and there's really nothing I could have done about it I did try volan and dx11 I just think we don't have enough GPU power here but there are a lot of GameCube games that are going to run really well we've got automot Lista one of my favorites to test and I consider this a harder to run game we're at the native GameCube resolution upscaling with some of the easier to run stuff is possible going up to 2x so around 720p but with this one here we did have to keep it at that native res but it is running at a constant 60 so we're getting some good GameCube performance out of this little machine also and the final thing we tested here was some PS2 emulation PC sx2 2x resolution direct X11 back in with Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 this is an easier one to run so upscaling wasn't hard at all I've got all the information we need up in the top right hand corner here and with the awesome work from the developers of pcsx2 we've been seeing some good performance on lower end systems but there are games we still need to drop that resolution down with like Ratchet and Clank I tried this at 2X and it was struggling a little bit but taking it down to the native PS2 resolution allowed us to play it at 60 FPS another thing I like to monitor with these mini PCS while doing my testing is total system power consumption so I use a kilowatt meter plugged into the wall and at idle this only pulls 4 Watts 4K video I did see it jump up to around 9 Watts average gaming and emulation we're around 13 watts in total and the maximum that I could get the G5 to pull from the wall while maxing out the CPU and GPU was only 19 Watts so this thing basically sips power and I do think it's a really good little PC especially given the price point that gmk Tech has it at if you're looking for something do some web browsing video playback document editing light game and even some light emulation the G5 can handle it as you saw in this video but don't pick one of these up thinking you're going to be able to play cyberpunk 2077 and edit 4K video it's just not going to happen on this chipset but for a lot of other things this is a great little PC and I personally love the form factor here but that's going to wrap it up for this video if you're interested in learning a little more maybe picking one of these up I'll leave some links down below like always thanks for watching e

Channel: ETA PRIME

Views: 496,817

Keywords: etaprime, eta prime, GMKtec G5, Mini PC, Windows 11 Mini PC, Smallest Windows 11 Mini PC, Intel N97 Mini PC, 12GB RAM Mini PC, LPDDR5 RAM Mini PC, Mini PC for Business, Mini PC for School, Mini PC for Office, Mini PC for Gaming, Mini PC for Emulation, PSP Emulation on Mini PC, Dreamcast Emulation on Mini PC, Gamecube Emulation on Mini PC, PS2 Emulation on Mini PC, Budget Mini PC, Cheap Mini PC, Compact Mini PC

Id: vwPqn8LZxLI

Length: 11min 39sec (699 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2024