Beelink GTR5 review: the best mini PC ever

[jupiter2012]

AMD's very powerful Ryzen 9-5900HX flagship notebook CPU is making its way to small form factor desktop PCs. The recently released Beelink GTR5 is not the first mini PC to feature this SoC., but it might just be the best one yet!

Beelink GTR5 Main Specs
OS: Windows 11 Pro
Processor: AMD Ryzen9-5900HX
CPU: 8 cores, 16 threads @3.3-4.6GHz, 7nm process
GPU: Radeon RX Vega 8 @2100MHz
RAM: up to 64GB DDR4 RAM (32GB in my review unit)
Storage: up to 2TB m.2 NVMe SSD (500GB in my review unit)
Wireless: WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Ports: USB-A 3.0 *3, USB-A 2.0*2, USB-C*1, HDMI 2.0*1, DP 1.2*1, 3.5mm Audio Jack*1, 2.5Gbps Ethernet * 2, DC-in*1, m2. SATA slot*1, 2.5-inch HDD connector*1
Special features: Fingerprint unlock
Dimensions: 165*119*39mm
Weight: 678g


Retail packaging





The GTR5 comes with very cool packaging, the dragon on the front side of the box perfectly illustrates the amount of power packed inside.

Besides the GTR5 mini PC, you will also find a relatively bulky 90W power adapter, a user manual, two HDMI cables (0.2m & 1m), a mounting bracket, as well as a bag of screws after unboxing.


Design: simply stunning



Until last year’s SER, I hadn’t really been that impressed with Beelink’s design, but the Chinese brand seems to have finally outdone itself! The GTR5 simply looks stunning, in fact it is one of the best-looking mini PCs in the market right now. The carved finish on the top side gives it an extremely stylish and premium look. With its sturdy metal chassis, it should also be able to take a fair amount of reasonable office abuse you throw at it.

Besides the relatively subtle branding, the top side also sports a fingerprint scanner, which has decent size and makes logging into the operating system a lot easier than any type of passwords. The recognition success rate is also quite high, I haven’t had any failed attempts in my two weeks with this device.



The AMD logo and “Let’s Start” catchphrase on the top side will light up after booting up, giving the device a more interesting look.

The chassis has ventilation holes on 4 sides (top, left, right, rear) for heat dissipation. There are dual cooling fans and dual copper pipes under the hood to make sure that the system never gets overheated.

Beelink products have always been quite generous with I/O, and the GTR5 is no exception. On the front side you will find a USB 3.0 port, a multi-function type-C port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack with mic support. There are also two buttons: a power button which has status LED built in, and a green button for clearing the CMOS.



More I/O are packed on the rear side, including two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, 2 RJ45 2.5GB/s ethernet jacks, 1 HDMI port, 1 DisplayPort and a DC-in port. Some features are missing, namely a storage card slot, but since you have as many as 6 USB ports, mounting a card reader shouldn’t be that much of an effort. As with other systems powered by AMD, there’s no thunderbolt port, either. The multi-function USB-C port does support fast USB 3.2 Gen1 data transmission and 4K@60Hz video output, but it still pales in comparison with a Thunderbolt 3/4.



The expandability does not stop here. After removing the four screws on the underlying base, you can easily lift the bottom panel and get access to the internals. There are two SO-DIMM DDR4 memory slots, two m2. slots (1 NVMe and 1 SATA3), as well as a 1 SATA3 port on GTR5’s very compact motherboard. If dual-channel memory is somewhat a must-have to ensure solid performance, having the option to install as many as 3 hard drives in such a small computer is simply amazing. All internal hardware and components are neatly arranged, the unit in my hands comes with two 16GB-3200MHz Crucial memory sticks and a 500GB Kingston NVme drive, but Beelink offers other configurations for consumers to choose from.



The GTR5 measures 165*119*39mm, and weighs only 678g. It’s so small that it easily fits on any kind of desk, or under a monitor stand if you have one. It can also seamlessly attach to the back of a display with the included bracket, but please bear in mind that mounting the GTR5 on to the back of a monitor could make fingerprint unlock less convenient than it should be.


System & Apps



Most mini PCs and laptops run on the Home Edition of Windows OS, but the Beelink GTR5 ships with licensed Windows 11 Pro, Average consumers will probably see no difference, but for power users, Windows 11 Pro offers some extra features, the most important of which is being able to join a domain, including Azure Active Directory for single sign-on to cloud services (and have group policy applied as part of that).

You also get Hyper-V for virtualization, BitLocker whole disk encryption, enterprise mode Internet Explorer, Remote Desktop, a version of the Windows Store for your own business, Enterprise Data Protection containers (a feature that comes later in the year) and assigned access (which locks a PC to running only one modern application, to use like a kiosk). Pro users can get updates from Windows Update for Business, which includes options for scheduling updates, so they don't reboot PCs at important business times.

Fortunately, the Windows 11 Pro here is a completely clean version, with no pre-installed 3rd party applications or bloatware. I don’t feel like digging into the main features Windows 11 offers. For those who just switch from MAC OS or Linux to Windows, I highly recommend that you watch some tutorial videos on YouTube.

[jupiter2012]

Performance: incredible horsepower



At the very core of the Beelink GTR5 is an AMD Ryzen9-5900HX processor, which ranks only behind the Ryzen9-5980HS and Ryzen9-5980HX in terms of performance in the world of mobile computer SoC., and it is also the fastest chip to ever power a mini PC. My unit comes with 32GB dual-channel DDR4 memory and 512GB NVMe SSD, but you can have as much as 64GB memory and 5TB of internal storage at most.





In the Maxon Cinebench R23 and Cinebench R20 test, the GTR5 simply has no competition in the world of Windows-based mini PCs, and even gives the Apple M1 powered Mac Mini a run for its money. Until models featuring the next-gen processors come out, the GTR5 will probably stay on top of the chart.



Geekbench 5 provides further evidence of the GTR5’s strength, even though the gap here is a little bit smaller between it and the Apple Mac Mini. Still, the CPU single core and multi-core scores are impressive.



PCMark 10 is a holistic performance suite developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark), it simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We often use this benchmark to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and video conferencing. The GTR5 notched an incredible score of 6345 points in the standard PCMark 10 test, ranking above the ASUS Mini PC PN50 and the i7-1165G7 powered Intel NUC 11 Pro.



Even though there’s no discrete graphics on board, you can still expect a fair amount of performance out of the Radeon Vega 8 GPU, which is clocked at 2.1GHz. In the 3DMark Sky Diver, Fire Strike, and Time Spy tests, the GTR5 scored 15097, 4019, 1615 points respectively.



The NVMe drive inside this computer is not the fastest we’ve seen, but it is a lot faster than cheaper SATA SSDs. The GTR5 scored 2545 in the AS SSD benchmark and got decent numbers in CrystalDiskMark.



There are two memory slots on the SER’s motherboard for dual-channel setup, which guarantees high overall bandwidth and throughput speed. The performance of the GPU also benefits immensely from dual-channel memory, as the GTR5 was returned very decent scores in the AIDA64 memory&cache, and GPU benchmarks.



In the real-world use, the GTR5 is a do-it-all kind of PC. You can open 20 or extra image-heavy webpages in Microsoft Edge and run a few other big apps side by side without seeing the system slow down.



In terms of media playback, the GTR5 has no problem decoding any video formats I played on it, including a few 8K@60fps and 4K@120fps clips. Streaming 8K YouTube Videos in Chrome, this mini PC does not skip a bit, either.



This machine could take care of all my creative projects as well. Rendering complex 3D images in photoshop, or editing 4K videos in Power Director, the GTR5 has been consistently fast.





No mini PC this size is designed for intense gaming, yet still people asked me questions about gaming all the time. The Radeon RX Vega 8, with a high 2.1GHz clock speed, is one of the most powerful integrated GPUs. As a result, the GTR5 can run most AAA titles in moderate settings.



Non-resource intensive games were smooth in 1080P and high graphics settings. In “League of Legend”, the average frame rate was 162 FPS. Even after I switched to 4K, the GTR still delivered an average frame rate of 75FPS, which is quite amazing.



More graphics-intense titles such as “Spell Break” and “Genshin Impact” were also smooth in 1080P and medium settings. The former stayed at 60FPS consistently during the 30 minutes’ session, while the latter recorded an average frame rate of 46 FPS.



Some of the most demanding titles were also playable on the GTR5. Conqueror’s Blade was generally smooth with an average frame rate of 32FPS in 1080P and medium settings, even though the frame rate could drop to 28 FPS in intense battle scenes.

As powerful as the AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 might be, there is still a fairly large gap between it and top PCle GPUs. If you want to game in the highest settings possible and still get the upper hand in competition against other players on the internet, you will need a more traditional gaming setup than the GTR5.



The system is also quite stable, thanks to the efficient cooling. In the 3DMark Time Spy stress test, the GTR5 scored 99.99%, which is the best number I have ever seen.

[jupiter2012]

Power Consumption and noise



With such a beefy processor inside, the GTR5 is not technically a low-power system. Still, it should be more energy-conservative than a full-sized desktop PC. In terms of power consumption, we saw some fairly solid figures.

The system stays fairly quiet under light loads, but if you run heavy CPU/ GPU workloads the fans spin up and it certainly gets louder. However, the noise is never too much of an issue, and easily gets drown out by other sound in your surroundings.


Connectivity





The GTR5 supports the latest WiFi 6E technology, also known as WiFi 6 Extended. It allows the PC to use the 6GHz band, which in return brings more bandwidth, faster speeds, and lower latency, opening up resources for future innovations like AR/VR, 8K streaming, and more. In additon, you also have two 2.5Gbps ethernet jacks, which offer all kinds of internet possibilities.

The HDMI, DP and Type-C ports all support video output up to 4K@60Hz, so you can connect the GTR5 to as many as 3 displays at the same time. This can be very helpful if you have some complex productivity tasks at hand.


Verdict

The Beelink GTR5 is a powerhouse in a tiny package. It has a beefy processor, packs a slew of I/O, and offers a broad range of features such as fingerprint unlock and superb networking. The tiny case is beautiful and rock-solid, the vast array of designs improves value and versatility.

However, it is not cheap. The 32GB/500GB model retails for $799, while the 64GB/1TB version will cost you even more. In the same price range, you can get a base model of the Apple M1 powered MAC mini, or a complete Intel NUC 11 system with memory, storage, and an OS. The GTR5 is obviously more feature-packed than the other two, but you cannot overlook Apple and Intel’s brand power.

If size doesn’t matter that much to you, a large DIY system of similar performance can save you quite a fortune yet give you more expansion room for later upgrades. But if you want the tiniest computer possible for all the computing you may need, there aren’t many SFF PCs more qualified than the Beelink GTR5 out there.





You can check the screenshots of those benchmarks here:

[superceleron]

Nice review!

[clarkss12]

Well done............. Fantastic review.

[jupiter2012]

Well done............. Fantastic review.

Thanks for reading it!

[jupiter2012]

Nice review!

Thanks!