ACEMAGICIAN Mini PC,AMD Ryzen 7 5700U (up to 4.3Ghz) 16GB DDR4 512GB M.2 SSD, Zen 3 Ryzen Mini Gaming PC RGB Lights AMR5 Mini Computer WiFi6 4K HDMI DP Type-C Small PC, Auto Power On

It has been 8 months since I bought this model as a temporary replacement of my desktop computer which needed some upgrades. As I was delightfully surprised by its performance I thought I would share my experience and findings.

I rely on my desktop computer for pretty much everything. That includes running engineering, imaging and video editing applications on a daily basis in addition to the usual web browsing, document handling and most importantly short to mid term safe data storage (until everything is eventually dumped into permanent archives on a dedicated in-house file server).

Thus performance and reliability are essential factors in the selection of my daily use system. I also expect it to be able to drive comfortably a 43″ monitor with 4K resolution.

This small unit which is powered by a 6 core, 12 threads AMD Ryzen CPU comes with 16 Gigabytes of RAM and 512 Gigabytes of fast NVME storage. For networking it integrates dual band wifi capability along with two ethernet ports of which one can go as high as 2.5 Gigabit per second while the other one sports 1 Gigabits.

The wired network ports work well and achieve the specified speeds. The wifi feature on the other hand falls short as the internal antenna hardly allow for any meaningful speed or distance. But it’s there and in some circumstances it might be of help.

When it comes to connectivity, this little box comes with 3 USB3 ports on its front panel and 2 USB2 ports on its back. They all work very well and they achieve their respective specified performance levels!

Now the power adapter provided within the original package is something that has troubled me a bit from the start! Why? Because frankly it looked very flimsy!

Indeed, lightweight, made of cheap plastic, simplified electronic components, using inexpensive steel wire instead of good old copper wiring, it really features everything that’s wrong in power supplies incorporated in today’s short-lived consumer electronics!

So early on I bought a better quality power adapter compatible with this unit and set it aside for the day which would come and would require replacement. And as I suspected, that day was not too far out, when indeed it failed after about 3 months of daily use!

Finally a word on the incorporated fan which is relatively quiet most of the time. Over the 5 month period when I used this box most intensively the fan’s acoustic tone has changed quite a bit. Such change usually correlates with wear and tear and much like with laptop computer fans it’s expected to happen sooner or later. It’s not rattling yet, but it seems to be close!

To recap:
– The computer electronics are top-notch! (9/10)
– The computer’s housing is just average and on the fragile side. (6/10)
– The power supply is not good. (2/10)
– Performance for the price is good. (8/10)
– Value for the price is average. (6/10)
– Not really suitable for long term professional use. (4/10)
– Excellent for home/consumer use with the exception of the power adapter. (8/10)

I’ve had for about a month and so far, I’m very impressed with the performance of this mini computer. It is plenty fast for casual/normal usage and can handle some light to moderate gaming too. I doubt you can run most current games in anything near max settings, but I’d assume they should be able to run on lower quality settings. Plenty of RAM and disk space available after installing a no-frills Windows 11 Pro. My only concern is the quality/longevity of the components as the memory and SSD are unknown although the memory appears to have Micron chips (I upgraded the RAM with some G.Skill 64 GB paired sticks with no issues and am planning on upgrading the SSD to a 2 TB PCIe 3.0 M.2 soon). My other concern is that as others mentioned, the CPU does seem to run hot sometimes under load, like close to 200 F. Maybe that is within specs for this processor, but comparing to a full tower gaming rig I have with a large liquid cooler that can keep a 125w TDP CPU at about 110 F under full load and at about room temperature (~70 F) at idle, hitting 180-190 F on a 15w TDP CPU seems high but maybe that is normal and a consequence of the small form factor. Under idle and low loads, it is around 115 F which is not bad. The fan only ever gets loud enough to hear when it is approaching the high temps and so is very quiet under light usage. It really doesn’t use much electricity which is very nice. Overall, I’m very pleased with the performance and low power usage of this mini computer. I’m hoping it will hold up and give me good usage for several years.

I purchased this to run triple monitor (2x1440p, 1x 1080p) and to watch youtube, netflix, etc. Streaming one at a time is fine, however if you have other tabs opened and that too is playing a video, then it begins to stutter. Upgraded to 32GB of RAM, however the issue is with the APU.

Pros:
Small and low energy
Can output 3 displays

Cons:
Can get loud under load
APU is not that strong
Definitely not for gaming

Ended up returning it and building an ASROCK deskmini. Much better experience.

I’ll keep this short and sweet. I’m an IT “expert” with many years of experience in home, small business and enterprise hardware and software solutions. I’m pretty blown away with the value of ACEMAGICIAN Ryzen 5 mini PC. The Windows 11 Pro PC experience is super snappy and much faster than my ~2 year old Windows laptop (valued at ~$1k at the time) that I have docked to one of my desktop monitors. But I didn’t stay with the Win11 configuration for long. My purpose was to use this mini PC as a pfSense router to help increase network utilization and stability, and it delivered in spades. Although I would’ve liked all Intel networking (currently it’s Intel 2.5G and Realtek 1G and Realtek Wi-Fi), I’m still plenty happy. Thanks to a previous user’s suggestion, I installed the latest build of pfSense to get the Realtek Ethernet to work. Offloading the routing functions of my Linksys Velop Mesh routers to this mini PC with pfSense has had dramatic improvements on my network. One of the first things I noticed was that I was able to drop to just one wireless node instead of two, reducing wireless noice and transmissions. With the mini PC router now in place, the Linksys Velop node to just act as wireless transmitter/receiver or “bridge.” Additionally, the unit sips power, and I hardly ever hear the fans turn on. I’m very satisfied with the results. So satisfied that I’m thinking about getting another to replace that laptop PC I mentioned in the beginning.