GMKtec G3S Mini PC, 16GB RAM 512GB M.2 SSD Intel N95 (Beats N100, 3.4GHz) Mini Desktop Computer with VESA Mount for Office Home Business HTPC Proxmox, Dual 4K Display, WiFi 5, Gigabit Ethernet

This is a pretty amazing little computer! Although it's tiny and therefore very portable, you obviously need a monitor and keyboard/mouse to go with it. We thought we'd try this as a replacement for the little Lenovo laptop that we've had anchored to a desk for most of it's life anyway, as that laptop isn't upgradable to Win11. This one comes with Win11 Pro, so it should be good for the foreseeable future. It is surprisingly much faster than our little laptop, and has been flawless so far. Getting it up and running was easy, and for routine web browsing and light duty work it barely gets even warm. It easily handles Office Pro applications, and I've even successfully run an architectural CAD program on it. It takes a few seconds or so to render and while I prefer running this software on a computer with a little more horsepower, it's certainly doable. It has also easily handled some photographic image editing. I have not tried video editing or gaming, and my guess is it'll struggle more with these, but assuming you have reasonable expectations it's definitely worth the price paid. Hopefully it holds up as long as the several older laptops I have that are about to be retired with Win10. Two of those started life with Win7 and have been going for years. Time will tell.

Great little PC! Super easy to setup and get running. I have it running all day as a personal server. Sometimes I can hear the fan, which is expected (especially since I have it actively running all day), and it's tucked in my office. Plugged in a 2tb external hardrive and a 1tb microsd (will upgrade these as I fill). I download any content to these storage locations and the computer runs great on the rest of the memory. Definitely use the power cord provided for consistent power.

I'm slowly down-sizing the machines I have. This replaced a big-box HP desktop. It's smaller, faster, lower power consumption and quieter. Now I have more room on my desk; the system boots and runs much faster than the old one, and I just got a USB adapter and connected the old HDD to this machine to retrieve all my data from the old system. Smooth and easy, and I don't need to cool the computer room any more! It's great.

First the good - There are several product reviews here and elsewhere so this will come as no surprise but this thing is TINY. My old NUC 7i5 seems like Goliath in comparison, and I used to think that it was David. The PC booted right up and the seller provided detailed instructions on initial setup without connecting to the internet, followed by restart and connecting to the internet to get updates. Setup went without a hitch. A full virus scan showed that it was clean and free of threats. The BIOS is the newer one (dated 5/21/2024) and allows setting the fan to its highest 5000+ rpm (was at "adaptive" out of the box - the fan is very quiet even at full), setting the GPU to its highest at 1200MHz (was at 900MHz out of the box), and setting the power draw at 15W (was at 12W out of the box). Works quite well and handles word documents, powerpoint presentations, excel spreadsheets, youtube videos and browsing with ease. The temps on the CPU and GPU are quite reasonable (~39C idle and ~50C with multiple browser windows open and streaming a 4K UHD movie. I'm not a gamer, so I can't attest to that aspect, but I suspect it will handle older games just fine. Now the bad - Packing left a lot to be desired. No bubble wrap around the box - just the GMKtec miniPC product box in a brown envelope. The carrier (UPS) was not gentle with the package but thankfully the mini pc was unharmed during transit to me. Also, this appears to a documented issue, but on this particular machine, one (the one on the front further away from the power button) of the USB ports just does not work. It does not recognize anything plugged into it (wired or wireless keyboards, mice, flash drives etc.). This despite setting the power draw to 15W. The other two USB ports work fine. Given that there are only three USB ports on this mini pc, if you use a wired keyboard and a wired mouse, you won't have any available USB ports to plug in flash drives or other devices. You will be forced to buy a USB hub. It isn't a major issue for me, particularly given the price, but I wish GMKtec would address this recurring issue on this particular model once and for all. As a home PC for everyday tasks this is a good bargain and if GMKtec would address the lack of better (bubble wrap around the box) packaging during shipping and the non-functional USB port, it would be a GREAT bargain. Four stars because of these two issues.

Upon first opening the box, you will most likely be shocked how small this computer really is. Man how far things have come since my Apple II days. The packaging is quite nice, and the quality seems good right out of the box. I appreciated that it was setup to let you create a local user account, which gets you going a little faster than the sign-in/wait for updates/give it more information /wait for updates routine that a Windows machine usually comes with. Two virus scans came back clean, and I didn't see any bloatware installed. As others have notices, the fan will run on this thing as it heats up, and while I wouldn't consider it loud, it definitely is more noticeable than a few other mini pcs I've used. If you don't expect it to run AAA games, this little guy will do most everything you need a Windows computer to do. It's been running happily in my setup now for weeks 24/7 without any issues.

Perfect alternative to Raspberry PI at a better deal. The Windows11 install it had was a bit broken in that after the multiple rounds of update, restart, update restart, it finally got to some update that just wouldn't work. It didn't matter much to me as I was planning on running Linux and a few docker containers to run OpenHAB and it works very well for that. The power usage is very tiny ~12 watts.

Easily the best power for the price among mini-PCs (might be close to the lowest price, even, yet a more powerful CPU than most in the same range). Surprisingly little bloat pre-installed, too (so set-up was pretty quick). I've been running a few home media servers off it, and it's worked great. The small desk-footprint is a bonus, given I have it set up behind our living room TV. One thing I will note, the internal WIFI antenna isn't great (although it's fine if you're just surfing the internet). If you plan on using it for heavier tasks like I have, I recommend hooking it up to ethernet if you can (and if you can't, like me, a good USB antenna worked wonders (something with 2 antennas . Those little single-antenna entry level ones I tried weren't any better than the internal one)).

The device was easy to setup and works well. I used it to create a duel boot using batocera installed on a micro SD and haven't had any issues with it after a good bit of use. Recently i've been using the device to stream games from my pc to my television in the living room and haven't experienced any lag or latency issues. Great device.