GEEKOM A7 Mini PC (Hardware)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
- Official Store: https://www.geekom.co.uk/geekom-a7-mini-pc
Review Approach:
Oh boy we’ve got a beast on our hands this time. In the past few months I’ve looked at a bunch of Mini PCs across the vast spectrum of price and power. I’ve found great amusement in playing Wii U games on a £250 N-Series CPU, and usually find myself impressed at the options on offer for these tiny machines. Today we look at Geekom’s latest and greatest in the A7, a sleek Mini PC packing AMD’s Ryzen 7 7940HS, a 2TB SSD, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. For the £799 they’re asking, does it do enough?
Ports, Ports, Ports!
Aesthetically speaking the A7 is slightly removed from the designs we’ve seen from Geekom in the past. A shorter package, we see much more rounded edges and large grills on the left and right sides of the unit. Despite the smaller form factor, you’re not missing out on any ports either. The front holds two SuperSpeed USB As, as well as a 3.5mm combo jack and a power button. On the left you get a full-sized SD card slot, and on the back you get a barrel connector for power, one USB 4 type C port, one USB 3.2 type C port, two HDMI 2.0 ports, a further SuperSpeed USB A port, a USB 2.0 type A port, and a 2.5G Ethernet port. It’s a good bit, and between your HDMIs and DP functionality of both USB C ports, you’re able to connect up to four monitors to this thing. There was a single casualty in this slimmer design, that being the lack of Kensington security lock for those that rely on those. I’ve never met somebody who does, but it could yet be a dealbreaker for you. Amusingly the spec sheet does say it features one, so if you’re able to spot it on the body please do point it out to me. I really don’t think I’ve missed it though.
In terms of upgradability, the slimmer case also does indicate slimmer options, notable here being the lack of space for a 2.5inch SATA drive. Opening the A7 up as a whole is slightly more annoying than I’m used to as well, with you needing to pry away the four rubber feet to get to the screws underneath. I’m not sure why they took this approach when they already had such a nice system on their other PCs; it does look a little more sleek, but usability is king for me in this department. If you do open it up, you’ll be able to swap out the 32GB of RAM and stick in up to 64GB, and also replace the SSD. Assuming you pick up the configuration I have on hand though, I don’t really see a reason to be poking around. The jump from 32GB to 64GB of RAM really won’t see much of a performance boost for the vast majority of people, and a 2TB SSD is going to be ample for most.
I’ve included the full spec sheet below if you want to peruse it for yourself:
Size: 112.4* 112.4* 37 mm
CPU:
- Ryzen™ 7000 (R9-7940HS & R7-7840HS)
- AMD FP7r2(Phoenix) TDP up to 45W
Video Engine Processor: AMD Radeon™ Graphics 780M
Memory: Dual channel DDR5 5600MHz SODIMM, up to 64GB
Audio: HDA CODEC
Storage: 1 x M.2 2280 SSD Slot, support PCIe Gen4*4, up to 2TB, or SATAIII SSD, up to 1TB
I/O Ports:
- 1 x Rear USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
- 1 x Rear USB 2.0 Type-A
- 1 x Front USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A support Power Delivery
- 1 x Front USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
- 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C support Power Delivery (back panel)
- 1 x USB 4 Gen3 Type-C support Power Delivery (back panel)
- 1 x 3.5mm front stereo headset jack
- 1 x RJ45 (back panel) RTL8125BG-CG
- 2 x HDMI 2.0 (back panel)
- 1 x DC in (back panel)
- 1 x CIR
- 1 x Power Button
- 1 x Kensington Lock
- 1 x SD Card
- 1 x Fingerprint, top side (HW design reserve)
Internal Connectors:
- 1 x M.2 key-M slot for PCIe x4 Gen 4 NVMe or SATA SSD (SATA only for Rembrandt)
- 1 x M.2 key-B slot (SATA) (SATA only for Rembrandt)
- 1 x M.2 2230 for WIFI PCIe card only
- 1 x FAN
- 2 x USB 2.0
- Speaker Header (HW design reserve)
- 1 x 5.5mm x 2.5mm barrel plug power connector
- 1 x Front Panel Header 2*6 pin
- 1 x 16-pin FPC SATA connector to connect an FFC SATA cable to a 7mm 2.5" SATA
LEDs:
- 2 x POWER LED (Power On: White)
- 1 x Multi LED (M.2 R/W: White, SATA R/W: White, Bluetooth: White)
Ethernet: Intel 10/100/1000/2500 Mbps RJ45 RTL8125BG-CG
Wireless LAN:
- M.2 Wi-Fi 6E AW-XB560NF, Bluetooth 5.2, 22mm*30mm*2.25mm or
- M.2 Wi-Fi 6 AW-XB547NF, Blutetooth 5.2, 22mm*30mm*2.25mm or
- M.2 Wi-Fi 6 AW-XB468NF, Blutetooth 5.2, 22mm*30mm*2.25mm
Kensington Lock: Yes
DTPM 2.0: Support DTPM 2.0
Battery: RTC coin battery
Adapter: 19V power supply adapter (120W) with geo-specific AC cord (IEC C5)
PCBA Dimension: 105.75*102.9*1.6mm
Certification: CE, FCC, CB, CCC, SRRC, RoHS
Operating System: Microsoft Windows*11(64-bit) support Modern Standby
When I’m Cleaning Windows
Powering the PC on for the first time you get what appears to be an entirely stock Windows 11 Pro experience. Setup is as smooth as you’d expect from any Windows install, and the PC is up and running within a few minutes. Expect to throw a further ten or so minutes at cleaning away the standard Windows junk though; it doesn’t take much effort, but it’s an annoyance all the same. Having had a minor issue in the past with Geekom PCs, the first thing I rushed to check was whether Paint still had a Japanese UI when saving and loading images. I still have no idea what causes this to happen when the rest of the UI is English, but it does appear to still be an issue here. A fresh install of Windows 11 might just be the answer, but that is an annoyance that shouldn’t be expected of a buyer. It doesn’t really affect much to me though, so I’ve just left it as it is.
In terms of day to day usage this thing is more than capable of powering multiple monitors, and doing it without compromise. 4K video playback is smooth, and Windows feels about as good as it can do in use. For those interested in the synthetic benchmarks, I’ve once again had Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23 running. Looking at the CPU benchmarks, we get numbers of 2575 for Geekbench’s single-core score, and 13192 for multi-core. On the Cinebench side of things, we’re looking at 1783 for single-core, and 15120 for multi-core.
A Mini PC for Gaming?
With each of these reviews my testing ideology is improving slightly, and with me being on a quest to get my games backed up locally, I’ve got much more on hand to be able to play with. To really put the 7940HS through its paces I grabbed a small assortment of mostly-modern games with the intention to run them on their various low, medium, and high settings at a baseline resolution of 1080p. I was really surprised by just how well the games ran, especially considering the lack of fine-tuning done, and notably the lack of FSR at play. These numbers can definitely go higher if you’re eager to experience the games at their best, or are just happy to trade a lower resolution for a higher framerate.
The results of my play session are all shown on the table above, but I will just talk through a few standouts. I really wasn’t expecting such a good showing from Baldur’s Gate 3 to begin with. Being able to get a consistent 30fps at 1080p really did impress me, and the game manages to look amazing even on that low setting. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake put out similarly good numbers for those happy to play at 30fps, which again baffles me for just how great the game looks. I will note that for Final Fantasy 7 and Scarlet Nexus in particular these numbers do reflect the first 30 or so minutes of the games with me not having played them prior to this. If there are heavy sections later on, numbers may obviously dip. That said, there is definitely room for improvement if you did get stuck in and found things lacking later on.
In terms of raw numbers, the real standout is Monster Hunter Rise. At low settings, which does admittedly look quite rough, the game managed to maintain a spectacular 185 FPS average. I always knew the game was optimised to be able to run on the Switch, but this was wild to see. Were I to stick with the A7 as a gaming machine, I would definitely settle for the stable 60fps on the more attractive medium settings, but you really can get the most out of a high refresh rate monitor here if the frames do matter to you.
In terms of emulation I picked a bit of a spread of Wii U, 3DS, GameCube, Wii, and Switch, as well as a couple of PS2 and PS3 games. I’d be happy to feature more Sony games in the future if there is interest in them, I frankly just don’t know which PlayStation games to be testing having never really been in Sony’s gaming sphere before. That aside, there really are some decent results here.
Wii U as a whole runs great, with Breath of the Wild just falling short of that 60fps mark at 1080p. It’s more than capable of a stable 1080/30 or 720/60, so you can pick and choose which you’d prefer. The rest of the Wii U was largely uneventful, with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate always bringing a smile to my face when I boot it up on a new platform. 3DS as a whole ran great, even at the 5x internal resolution required for a 1080p-ish image. There did appear to be some small stutters around loading new areas and effects for the first time, but it never dropped to the point where I’d say it put me off. GameCube and Wii via Dolphin seemed solid, with Mario Kart Wii being the surprise disappointment. The inconsistencies do iron themselves out if dropping to 720p, but I’ve never really seen the game as a particularly problematic title in the past.
Shadow of the Colossus ran completely fine upscaled to 1080p with no observable drops at all, while my limited PS3 experience was incredibly shaky. Demon’s Souls did on paper run relatively close to 30fps. Having said that, I don’t think I could say it’s a great experience; the game just feels really choppy.
Finishing up with the Switch, I dipped into some of my recently dumped games with a bit of variety. Captain Toad is a pretty light game and it shouldn’t be surprising to see good numbers here. Fire Emblem Engage did surprise me a little, with the game running with even fewer stutters than Fates did on the 3DS. Tears of the Kingdom was a very mixed bag, with gameplay being genuinely smooth given enough time. The slowdowns when moving into a new area or seeing a new effect however were drastic this time. It’s on the borderline of playable, and you could probably get it to a better state if you’re happy to lower the resolution or mess with the emulator a bit more.
Closing Thoughts
The A7 is an absolute beast of a Mini PC, but it’s a beast with a similarly beastly price tag. £799 is a lot of money, but between the power, ports, storage, included RAM, and three year warranty, I do feel it does a good job in justifying it. This is a PC that could absolutely replace a desktop for folks happy to run modern games on lower settings, and I really do feel that I can recommend it.
As always Geekom have shot across codes to give you a small discount if you do decide this is something you’d be interested in. These aren’t affiliate codes, and we get no kind of kickback if you do decide to use them, so do on your own whim. At the time of writing there is also an Easter sale running offering similar discounts, so if these expire, you might still have some luck with those.
- Official Store UK (£20 Off: gbatempa7)
- Official Store US ($20 Off: gbatempa7)
- Amazon US ($20 Off: GBAtempGA7)
Verdict
- Great port selection
- Powerful CPU
- Surprisingly quiet under load
- Decent PC gaming performance for the form factor
- Able to upgrade SSD and RAM
- No Kensington lock (despite saying there is on the spec sheet)
- Disassembly is slightly more annoying due to rubber feet
- No space for 2.5 inch SATA drive
- Japanese saving dialogues still present in stock Notepad and Paint apps
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