BOSGAME P6 Mini PC GBAtemp review
Hardware
Product Information:
- Official Store: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FPC1J2L3
Review Approach:
The P6 from BOSGAME offers a surprisingly reasonable deal on the surface. A Ryzen 9 6900HX, 24GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD all for £500? Is it a budget king in this time of spiralling cost, or is there a catch to this affordability?
A New Shell
Having looked at a lot of systems from other companies in the past, it’s somewhat refreshing to have a new case design in front of me. This is a still a fairly common shell, with BOSGAME using it across a pretty hefty number of their systems, but I appreciate the variety all the same. The case features textured plastic along the top, flanking a large grill for ventilation. This grill extends to both sides of the system, with IO limited to just the front and back. In terms of IO, this is actually a little weaker than what we’ve looked at from companies like GEEKOM, though does have a few things that are less common over the fence.
To give a quick breakdown of what's on offer:
Front:
- 2x USB A (3.2)
- 1x USB C (3.2 + DP)
- 1x 3.5mm headphone jack
- 1x Power button
Back:
- 1x Barrel connector
- 2x Ethernet (2.5G)
- 1x DisplayPort
- 1x HDMI (2.0)
- 2x USB A (3.2 + 2.0)
Compared to most of the shells I’ve seen, the area that suffers is USB C availability, with there just being one available on the front of the system. I can see some people not getting on too well with this, especially if they’re wanting to connect more than two displays. Having a cable coming out of the front and then needing to wrap back around to a monitor can be a pain. For losing USB C connectivity on the back of the system though, you do at least gain two Ethernet ports, each capable of up to 2.5G, as well as a HDMI and DisplayPort. Add to this the total of four USB A ports and you will find most situations covered.
This shell design makes disassembly relatively easy, with four accessible screws holding the bottom in place, and a nice tag being built in to make prying the shell away easier. The inner case is a little more challenging, with you needing to go one layer deeper before making it to the only replaceable part in the system: the 1TB SSD. To do this you’ll need to remove a further bit of casing that has the system’s wireless antennae attached to it, which is something I’ve historically blundered. A perfect case in my mind makes the user-replaceable parts as readily accessible as possible, and this one does fall short.
It is a bit of a shame the SSD is the only point of upgrade here too, with the P6 including 24GB of soldered LPDDR5X RAM, as opposed to the somewhat more common SODIMM sticks that you could swap out for yourself. It’s worth noting that previous revisions of the P6 did come with 32GB of RAM, so keep that in mind if looking at other reviews for a system with the same name. I will at least say that 24GB is a good middle ground for the current landscape, and I’d expect we’ll see more systems with this amount of RAM while things remain expensive. To quote the Mean Girls musical, more is always better, but given the current state of the market, it’s a cut corner that does make sense.
An Older CPU
The Ryzen 9 6900HX isn’t exactly a bleeding edge CPU, though it’s not necessarily slacking either. I’ve had some pretty great experiences using the relatively similar 6800H, so even before trying the system out for myself, I had some reasonable expectations. Having daily driven the machine for a week or so, I can say it had no problem meeting them.
I’ll go out of my way to say it again, Mini PCs like this are not gaming systems. They won’t be playing your latest AAA releases (at least without some serious compromises), with the focus instead being on your more general browsing and day to day workloads. Before going any further though, let’s get the benchmarks out of the way.
Cinebench 2026.1.0
- Multi Thread - 2562
- Single Core - 438
- Single Thread - 357
Geekbench 6
- Multi Core - 8574
- Single Core - 1928
PCMark 10
- Overall Score - 6732
- Essentials Score - 8455
- Productivity Score - 11604
- Digital Content Creation Score - 8188
3DMark
- Steel Nomad Light - 1871
- Steel Nomad Light Stress Test - 99.2% (Pass)
In terms of what games the P6 is actually capable of running, it should go without saying that things like Slay the Spire and your particularly low-demand indie titles will fare entirely fine. The small assortment of games I wanted to test on this system were Monster Hunter Rise, Atelier Resleriana, and the Echoes of Aincrad demo. The first of these I expected to run well, the second I expected to run, and the third I really had little in the way of prediction before trying with how new a game it is.
The Medium preset does more than you'd think for Monster Hunter Rise.
Soundly meeting the expectations I had placed on it, Monster Hunter Rise once again proves itself to be a game that can be enjoyed by anybody. Running at the Low preset 1080p is naturally no issue, the game able to hold strongly above 100fps for the entirety of a hunt in the Flooded Forest. This is somewhat on par with what the Switch version looked like, albeit running more than three times better. You can actually push up to 1440p, averaging 90fps on the Low preset, but sadly not managing to come close to 60fps on the much more appealing Medium preset. You’re looking closer to 40fps here, which does at least mean you’d be able to maintain a stable 30fps with the game looking fantastic. 1080p at Medium I feel will be the sweet spot for most, hovering around 65fps for the majority of my play session.
It does go somewhat without saying that Monster Hunter Rise will run on a system mind. Something like Atelier Resleriana is an interesting middle ground. The latest title in the series, it makes use of mostly quite small areas to traverse through, which gave me hope that it wouldn’t overwhelm the GPU here. I’m happy to say a stable 60fps is more than in reach here when running at 1080p, even on the Standard quality preset with the performance settings set to Performance. The game doesn’t look compromised, which is always great to see. There’s not too much headroom here though, with that framerate only just holding above 60. I can imagine in more taxing areas you might see dips.
Moving onto Echoes of Aincrad, the notably long shader compilation didn’t give me huge amounts of hope for what was to come. This game was indeed a step too far. Even roaming around the town area you’re struggling to maintain a solid 30fps at 1080p with everything turned all the way down. Going into the open world that performance drops as low as 10fps. On my monitor I didn’t have the option to go any lower than 1080p. There might be some hope if the game can be run at 720p, but it’s not one I’d hold my breath for.
A step too far, but a solid effort all the same.
I continue to maintain that systems like this are not intended for gaming, and that if you want a gaming PC, you should be looking elsewhere. Regardless of that though, I do remain impressed at just how much you can squeeze out of these things if you try. If you’re buying something like the P6, expect the worst from its gaming capabilities, and then enjoy the surprise of what things it can run. It’s definitely the best approach.
A Solid Budget Pick
At £500 it’s hard to find too many reasons not to recommend the P6. If you want a system that’ll handle your day to day needs through this time of unreasonably high prices, it’s a solid pick that’ll almost certainly do you well.
If you're interested in checking out the P6 for yourself, you can find its Amazon page linked below for both the US and UK:
Verdict
- Very performant for its £500 price point
- Reasonable IO, including two 2.5G Ethernet ports
- 24GB of RAM is ample for day to day usage
- RAM is not upgradeable
- SSD can be frustrating to get to
- Has been downgraded from 32GB of RAM without a name revision