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Geekom AS 6

MINI PC | £699 from Geekom www.snipca.com/48086

Ports aplenty

In Issue 669, the Geekom Mini IT 13 became our new favourite mini PC (see page 32) because it offered a brilliant package of an Intel core i9-13900H processor, 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD – all for £699 (www.snipca.com/47789). Here, we have Geekom’s AS 6 mini PC at the same price, but with a different specification.

The biggest difference is the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX processor. RAM is the same at 32GB, but the storage has been halved at only 1TB. Be aware that if you click the URL above, you need to select the ‘R9-6900HX’ option to see the model we’re reviewing here.

While the Mini IT 13 has one of the latest (13th) generation Intel Core i9 processors, Geekom has opted to put an older Ryzen 9 into the AS 6. We can only assume this is a cost-cutting measure – the Ryzen 9 chip has only eight cores, six fewer than Intel’s. It’s true that many of Intel’s cores are efficiency cores (see Issue 670, page 25), which don’t work as hard as standard (or performance) cores, but they still take some of the strain when your PC is working at its maximum.

We saw the difference this made in our benchmark tests that push the processors to their limits and measure how they perform. In single-core work, the AS 6 ran at around 80 per cent of the speed of the Mini IT 13, while it managed a similar performance in more demanding multi-core testing. A discrepancy of 20 per cent is no deal-breaker, but with both PCs priced the same and with the AS 6 offering half the storage space, it was beginning to look like a less attractive proposition.

It fared better elsewhere, however. Like most mini PCs, this model doesn’t have a standalone graphics card, so uses the graphics hardware built into the processor to provide a boost when gaming, image editing and video editing. In these type of tasks, the tables were turned, with the Mini IT 13 running 25 per cent slower than the AS 6.

The AS 6’s case is slightly taller than most mini PCs, leaving plenty of room for ports. The front has a USB-C port, two USB 3.0 ports and a headphone jack (pictured below left). On the back (pictured below) you’ll find another USB-C port, three more USB 3.0 ports, a 2.5GB Ethernet port and a generous selection of monitor ports: two HDMI and one DisplayPort. The case is easy to access – simply take out four standard screws. There are two memory slots with a 16GB RAM module in each, and t