GEEKOM A5 "AMD Ryzen 7 5800H" Mini PC Review

TweakTown's Rating: 90%

The Bottom Line

The A5 from GEEKOM is a solid entry-level Mini PC for a good price, which is perfect as a daily driver that can handle some 1080p indie games too!

Pros

• + 2.5Gbe Ethernet
• + HDMI 2.0b
• + Price/Value

Cons

• - None

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Amazon

Buy at Newegg

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

Alongside the release of the highly anticipated Mini IT13, GEEKOM has quietly added yet another AMD Ryzen-powered Mini PC to its lineup. The A5 is this machine, and it's powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU. It sits between the AS5 and AS6, both of which we reviewed earlier in the year.

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As mentioned above, the A5 is offered in a single SKU powered by the Ryzen 7 5800H. The image above outlines the entire build, but our build includes 32GB of DDR4 3200 MHz memory installed via two SO-DIMM slots. Storage consists of a 512GB NVMe solution, with the A5 supporting Gen 3 solutions. Additional storage connectivity is offered for a 2.5" drive and 2242 for any SATA m.2 drive you may have.

Networking includes a 2.5Gbe LAN port on the rear of the unit and a WiFi6 card installed internally. With this unit using standard M.2 Key E modules, this is likely upgradable as well. Connectivity includes dual HDMI 2.0b ports, allowing for 4K60 support and 8K30. USB support includes two Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 and two USB-C using the same Gen 2 connectivity. The A5 also includes an SD card reader on the side of the unit and a 3.5mm audio jack.

Pricing of the GEEKOM A5 carries an MSRP of $499, though the price has come down to $399 as of this writing. Additionally, our readers can enjoy a further $40 off by using code "tweaktowna540" at GEEKOMPC.com or code "TBTBJ8KV" on Amazon.

GEEKOM A5 "AMD Ryzen 7 5800H" Mini PC

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$449.00	$449.00	$479.00	$449.00	Buy
	-	-	-	$449.99	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 12/1/2023 at 2:39 pm CST - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Overview and BIOS

Overview

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The A5 was delivered in its retail packaging, a rose gold colorway for this unit.

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The backside includes a sticker complete with hardware information.

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The front of the A5 includes two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, the left port offering USB-PD, and further to the right, we have the 3.5mm audio jack and power button.

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The right side offers ventilation for the unit, along with the SD card slot.

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The left houses the Kensington lock for those needing to secure the machine.

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On the rear of the unit, we have, from left to right, the power button, HDMI and USB-C. It's worth noting both USB-C support DisplayPort. In the center, you will find the 2.5Gbe LAN and to the right two USB ports. Far right, we have another set of HDMI and USB-C.

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Internally, we have a single PCIe Gen3 slot, ours populated with a Lexar NVMe, while under it, you will find the M.2 WIFI card. Further toward us, we have the 2242 SATA M.2 slot and, at the very bottom, dual SO-DIMM slots for the DDR4 memory. The system's lid holds the tray for any 2.5" drive you want to connect.

BIOS/UEFI

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The BIOS on the A5 uses the traditional BIOS system. The main page includes hardware information. The advanced menu has many options for tuning the A5, including CPU configuration, NVMe setup, and AMD CBS and PBS configuration. The boot menu allows you to configure the machine's boot order along with features such as quiet boot and fast boot.

System/CPU Benchmarks

Cinebench

Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that has been heavily relied upon by both Intel and AMD to highlight their newest platforms during unveils. The benchmark has two tests: a single-core workload utilizing one thread or 1T. There is also a multi-threaded test that uses all threads or nT of a tested CPU.

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Starting our testing of the A5, R23 gave us a single core of 1345 while multi-core scored 9769.

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Looking at comparisons, the A5 was our lowest-scoring machine in single-thread performance.

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Multi-core performance was middle of the pack, just ahead of the Ace Magic AD15.

BAPCo CrossMark

CrossMark? is an easy-to-run native cross-platform benchmark that measures the overall system performance and system responsiveness using models of real-world applications. CrossMark? supports devices running Windows, iOS, and macOS platforms.

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Crossmark offered solid performance as well; the A5 picked up 1395 overall.

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Comparisons for Crossmark showed it a touch quicker than the AS5 and MiniIT11.

Geekbench 6

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Geekbench CPU showed a single core of 1965 while multi-core touched 9038.

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Charting those results, we see the A5 middle of the pack, just ahead of the AS5.

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Moving to Geekbench GPU, the Radeon Vega 8 Graphics allowed a score of 17646 in OpenCL.

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Vulkan scored 16859.

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A comparison for Geekbench showed the A5 again in the middle of the pack, in front of the Mini IT13 and just behind the AS5.

UL Benchmarks and Final Thoughts

UL Benchmarks

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PCMark kicked off our UL benchmarks. The A5 scored 5363 overall. App startup and spreadsheets are two workloads that did the best.

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Charting the results, the A5 is just quicker than the AMR5 and just under the AS5 once again.

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CPU Profile netted us a sixteen-thread score of 5171 for the A5.

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Charts showed the A5 landing near the bottom for one and two threads.

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With four, eight, and sixteen threads, the A5 moves up quite a bit, middle of the pack under the NUC 13 Pro.

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3DMark Storage scored a bandwidth of 349 MB/s.

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Charts for Storage performance show the A5 near the bottom of the pack with its Lexar NVMe.

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Time Spy scored 1603 for the A5, giving around 30 FPS for Battlefield V.

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For comparison, this puts the A5 a touch faster than the AMR5 and just under the AS5.

Final Thoughts

GEEKOM has done a remarkable job over the last few months, filling out its portfolio and offering a solid Mini PC in every price segment. The A5, which now occupies the $400-$500 market, is the entry-level machine into the GEEKOM AMD side of the Mini PC market.

Adding to this, the A5 does quite well compared to the more expensive AS5 counterpart. In fact, these two machines are nearly identical when it comes to hardware, with the obvious uptick in CPU performance going to the 5900HX in the AS5, but looking at our charts, the 5800H in the A5 was right behind it in nearly every metric.

Overall system performance with CrossMark scored higher on the A5, picking up 1395 compared to the AS5's 1375. This was likely due to thermals and the 5800H holding higher boost clocks over time. This was further pronounced in Geekbench CPU, where the A5 scored higher in multi-core. In GPU performance, the A5 and AS5 share the same Vega 8 solution, with the A5 performing quite well at 17K and 16K for OpenCL and Vulkan, respectively - the AS5 having higher GPU clocks did end up a bit faster in this scenario.

Time Spy was another GPU workload tested. The A5, AS5, and Ace Magicians AMR5 all share the same Vega 8 and have nearly the same scores. Storage is likely one place where this Mini PC could use a slightly better offering from the factory. The included Lexar drive scored just 2041 points with a 349 MB/s bandwidth.

Pricing is quite good, especially at its current $399 price tag. That said, TweakTown readers can knock this down to $359 with our codes at the beginning of the review. This makes the A5 nearly $250 cheaper than the AS5 with almost the same performance - a win in my book for those in the market for a small form factor daily driver.