Review cover GEEKOM GT1 Mega Mini PC GBAtemp review
Hardware

Product Information:

Review Approach:

Product provided by GEEKOM for the purpose of review.
Mini just got bigger, with GEEKOM's newest system offering more IO than ever!

attachFull467032

Another day, another Mini PC in the world of GEEKOM. It’s been a short while since I’ve had a look at something of theirs personally, with much of their offerings being incremental upgrades lurking in similar shells to the previous models. This works well, giving them a solid range across a variety of price points. Despite some thermal issues when pushed to their limits, I’ve had a good time using them. The latest wave of systems tries something slightly different. Putting a new range of CPUs in one of three larger shells, are these Mega systems worth looking at?

The Spec Sheet

If you’ve been following GEEKOM and their Mini PCs for a while, the first thing that’ll catch your eye here is the size of the system. Despite its “Mega” moniker, the GT1 is still a decidedly small system. Putting the GT13 Pro on top of it should give you a reasonable idea of the size difference, with the new system coming in at 13cm by 13cm. You can still mount it to the back of a monitor, and it’s still got a relatively compact footprint on your desk. For the extra size you’re really gaining two things: better cooling and more IO.

Review imageReview imageReview imageReview image

Now the IO increase isn’t anything drastic. For all the trouble you’re basically just getting two more USB A ports on the front, totalling four, plus the power button and 3.5mm headphone jack. On the left side you get the same full-sized SD card slot, and on the right we find support for security locks. The back should be a relatively familiar sight, with two USB 4.0s, two HDMIs, two USB As (one of which being USB 3.2 and the other being 2.0), and not one, but two 2.5G Ethernet ports. As always it’s a really solid showing, and this kind of expansive IO is really one of the big draws of a Mini PC versus something like a similarly priced laptop in my mind.

The design of the GT1 has me a little conflicted, basically being a scaled up version of what we’ve seen on previous GT models, as well as others like the A7 and A8. It’s one of GEEKOM’s sleeker designs, but in terms of opening it up nothing has really improved. On paper it’s a case of prying off the feet, that are attached by both clips and adhesive, which is nice for more easily being able to put them back on after. From there it’s four screws, and the bottom pops right off. It’s the next part that annoys me, with the wire for the antenna being really quite tight to the case. I wouldn’t be able to fully open the system without disconnecting it, which is something I personally find quite frustrating. GEEKOM have had better designs in this respect, with their XT series being an absolute joy to open up. With the ability to readily swap out your SSD and RAM, I would want this to be just as easy. Though not available now, I do believe there are plans from GEEKOM to release a Mega XT1 with the same Intel Ultra CPU inside. If you do see yourself wanting to open up the system a lot to tinker, it might be a better choice to wait for that added bit of simplicity to the process.

Review imageReview image

As for the internals we’re looking at something relatively new from Intel in the Ultra 9 185H. This isn’t actually my first experience with this CPU, with it also being used in ASUS’ most recent Zenbook Duo that I picked up at the start of the year. This new Ultra range is supposed to run cooler than Intel’s Core line, while also featuring an improved Arc integrated GPU. I’ve had good experiences with it in the Duo, but with better cooling behind it and not having to worry about a display sat on top of it, I was hoping to see some stronger results from the Mega GT1. It was more of a mixed bag than I was expecting!

Before diving into that though, feel free to check out the full specs list straight from GEEKOM:

Dimensions: 135*132*44.35 mm
CPU:

  • Intel® Core™  Ultra 9 185H processors(16 Cores, 22 Threads, L3 Cache: 24 MB, Frequency: 2.3 - 5.1 GHz, TDP: 45 W)
  • Intel® Core™  Ultra 5 125H processors(14 Cores, 18 Threads, L3 Cache: 24 MB, Frequency: 3.3 - 4.5 GHz, TDP: 28 W)

Graphics: Intel® Arc™ Graphics
Memory: Dual-channel DDR5 5600 MT/s, up to 64 GB
Audio: HDA CODEC
Storage: 1 × PCIe SSD NVMe Gen 4, up to 2 TB
I/O Ports:

  • 1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (back panel)
  • 1 × USB 2.0 Type-A (back panel)
  • 4 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (front panel), one port support Always On
  • 2 × USB 4.0 (back panel), one port support Type-C Power on (adapter in)
  • 1 × 3.5 mm stereo headset jack (front panel)
  • 2 × RJ45 (back panel), 2.5 Gbps
  • 2 × HDMI 2.0 (back panel)
  • 1 × DC in (back panel) 
  • 1 × Power Button
  • 1 × Kensington Lock
  • 1 × SD Card 4.0

Internal Connector:

  • 1 × M.2 key-M slot for PCIe 4.0 ×4 NVMe SSD, 2280
  • 1 × M.2 key-M slot PCIe ×4 or SATA, 2242 (BOM option)
  • 1 × M.2 key-E slot for CNVi/PCIe WIFI, 2230 
  • 1 × Fan
  • 2 × USB 2.0 pin header
  • 1 × RS485 header
  • 1 × RS232 header
  • 1 × 16-pin FPC SATA connector to connect an FFC SATA cable to a 7mm 2.5" SATA 
  • 1 × 5 pin header for SATA/HDD LED
  • 1 × 9V ~36V Power Connector header
  • Wireless Charging power (option)
  • Speaker Header (option)

LED:

  • 2 × Power LED
  • (LED color: Power On:White, Always on, MS: White, Flash)

Ethernet:

  • 10/100/1000/2500 Mbps RJ45 × 2
  • LED color (10/100 Mbps: Off, 1000 Mbps: Yellow, 2500 Mbps: Green)

Wireless LAN: Intel M.2 Wi-Fi 7, BE200, Bluteooth 5.4
Kensington Lock: Yes
DTPM2.0: Support DTPM 2.0
Battery: RTC coin battery
Adapter: 19V power supply adapter (120W) with geo-specific AC cord (IEC C5)
PCBA Dimension: 127.6*126.1*1.6mm
Certification: CE, FCC, CB, CCC, RoHS
Operating System: Microsoft Windows*11 23H2, Support Moden Standby
Accessory: VESA Mount (option)

Simple Synthetics

Getting Cinebench (2024.1.0) and Geekbench (6.2.2) out of the way, the single core performances were on par with the Zenbook Duo, and not far off the other relatively high end Mini PCs I’ve looked at previously. For Geekbench we’re hitting 2357 and Cinebench is a solid 110. On the multi-core side of things we start seeing some odd divergence, with Geekbench’s score of 12696 being just 1% higher than the Zenbook Duo, while Cinebench shows a huge 63% increase at 845 points. That Cinebench score puts it on par with the A7’s Ryzen 9 7940HS, and that’s no small feat. Of course, the A7 wasn’t able to perform at its best for long stretches of time, so diving into some more informal testing will be handy here.

We can get everything pre-GameCube out of the way. That stuff will run on a fridge, and it should come as no surprise that it runs here. Starting with GameCube emulation via Dolphin, everything I tried worked out of the box with no tinkering. Graphics were set to x3 internal resolution for 1080p with 2x MSAA anti-aliasing, with Wind Waker and Mario Party 4 having no troubles. F-Zero GX did have moments of stuttering when loading into a race, but once it got up to speed, did manage to stay there fine. Looking to the Wii with the same setup, all of The Last Story, Super Smash Bros Brawl, and New Super Mario Bros Wii ran fairly well. The Last Story did run into some slowdowns when holding a button to fast-forward through cutscenes, but beyond that ran as it should. Brawl had no issues at all, and New Super Mario Bros Wii only saw a small stutter in the opening cutscene before playing flawlessly.

attachFull467029

Jumping straight in at the deep end with Wii U, I figured there was no better stress test than the console’s swan song Breath of the Wild, and boy does it push the Ultra 9. With FPS++ enabled and the game targeting 60fps at 720p, you’ll find yourself hitting that framerate more often than not. The catch here is that while shaders are compiling, you’ll see regular drops to around 40fps. It’s certainly playable, but if you value consistency, a solid 30fps is well within reach here. Even during shader compilation the game manages to hold strong, with only minor stutters being noticed around cutscenes triggering. With all the perks and cheats Cemu offers with this game, it’s a genuinely compelling way to play. I wouldn’t expect to be able to push the graphics much beyond what the Wii U was originally capable of, but without a dedicated GPU such things shouldn’t really be expected.

Other Wii U games naturally ran really well too. Mario Kart 8 does see a lot of graphical weirdness as shaders are loaded in, but thanks to the preview you get before each race, everything is loaded in and ready before you start. On subsequent plays of that track, everything works out of the gate. Wind Waker HD sees a few stutters on loading shaders in for the first time, but all in all the game feels great. This would be a pretty great way to get into the HD randomizer, since subsequent playthroughs of the game would avoid those initial shader blips.

Moving onto Switch, I was pretty pleasantly surprised. Having not had great luck with Yuzu’s various forks and never finding the time to setup Ryujinx, I’m still rocking the final EA release of Yuzu. And it still works pretty damn great. Though not as demanding as its predecessor Three Houses, it was great to see Fire Emblem Engage running with very little in the way of problems. Continuing the trend there are some dips into the high 20s, with the game targeting 30fps, as you zoom into an area for the first time to initialise combat. It’s not something I really felt beyond a small stutter though, with the game being updated to 2.0.0 and the DLC having been installed.

For the remake of Link’s Awakening, asynchronous shader building is an absolute must, with the game being genuinely unplayable otherwise. With that setting though, a solid 60fps at native resolution is maintained better than on a Switch. You will need to pick up a separate mod to disable the blur effect on-screen, with it being a little over the top here, but that aside I’d have no issues playing through the entire game on the GT1. The last game I want to mention here is Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, since Capcom clearly have no intentions on releasing it on anything other than the Switch. It’s actually a far easier game to run than you might think, even being playable on Android devices with weaker chipsets such as the G99. If you joined the series in the New World and would be interested in what is the most accessible Old World experience, give this a shot on whatever PC you might have.

Beyond Emulation

Looking past emulation, there are two other areas I wanted to look at. PC gaming is obviously top of the list, but one cool thing on show here that you might not have known about is the AV1 video encoding capabilities of the Arc iGPU. I won’t go into huge detail on AV1 and why it’s so cool, because frankly my understanding is surface level, and there are better places you can learn about it. The short version though is that it’s a great codec for high quality video streaming at lower bandwidth; this’ll do a great job handling OBS if you wanted a compact streaming box. I will note here that you would only be able to make use of this for YouTube live streaming as it stands now though, with Twitch AV1 support arbitrarily limited to Nvidia GPUs. I’ve used my Ultra 9 laptop for this very purpose, and had no issues streaming to YouTube. At the moment I am without WiFi so it’s not something I’ve been able to try with the GT1, though using HandBrake to convert some overly large game recordings into AV1 MP4s was absolutely painless, with the 60fps footage being processed between 250fps and 300fps, and pretty much halving in file size. No complaints from me!

attachFull467028

PC gaming is solid here too, as long as you keep your expectations in check. The Arc iGPU is definitely a step up from the Iris Xe graphics before it, but it’s still trailing what AMD have to offer in their strongest hardware. Starting with my usual duo of Hitman 3 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p at their lowest settings with no frame generation, both games would be decidedly playable. And frankly both games still look pretty good, even if the imperfections become more apparent when playing on larger 4K displays. Hitman 3’s Dartmoor benchmark averaged a respectable 72fps with a low of 33fps. Tomb Raider did similarly well with an average of 65fps. The real triumph here compared to previous generations is just how well the thermals held out. One core peaked at 88C, but even on running the Tomb Raider benchmark a few times, temperatures generally sat between 60C and 70C, which is more than reasonable for what’s happening on screen. The bigger shell of the GT1 is clearly being used for something positive, and it’s great to see an improvement from GEEKOM in this department.

A Solid System

The GT1 Mega is a great pick if you’re somebody in search of a solid system with great IO and performance. Though larger than those that came before it, we see this space being utilised well to deliver on a cooling system that works, and throwing in a few extra USB ports for good measure. At £989 at the time of writing, this system is definitely not going to be for everybody, but if you are in that niche and are happy to pay the piper, this is a system that will do you well.

As always GEEKOM have provided codes for a small discount if you happen to be shopping on the UK or US sites, and as always I will mention that we don't get any kind of kickback from you using them, so do so at your own discretion.

Verdict

What We Liked ...
  • Even better IO offering than usual
  • Surprisingly capable cooling
  • Very capable CPU
  • AV1 hardware encoding
What We Didn't Like ...
  • Somewhat annoying to open up
  • Prohibitively expensive for all but a relatively niche market
9
out of 10

Overall

The GT1 Mega is a great system that manages to stay cool under load. With solid IO and some fantastic internals, it's a system I have no issues recommending.
  • Like
Reactions: console
Welcome to our Community
Wanting to join the rest of our members? Feel free to sign up today.
Sign up
Welcome to our Community
Wanting to join the rest of our members? Feel free to sign up today.
Sign up
Review cover
Product Information:

Reviews

  1. A decade later, BioWare is back with a new Dragon Age game. Has the wait for Dragon Age: The Veilguard been worth it?

  2. Yaber’s latest projector series, the K3, just launched on Amazon. Let's see how it fares in this review!

  3. A popular name in the budget space, we check out Maono's entry level PD200XS microphone!

  4. Four years after their previous paper-like tablet, the we take a look at the latest leap from the reMarkable team.

  5. Xiaomi has recently launched its first folding device on the global market, the Xiaomi MIX Flip. Let’s flip it open and see what it holds!

Site & Scene News

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • Xdqwerty @ Xdqwerty:
    @NinStar, I can't remember what I learnt of HTML, c++ nor python
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    it initially was only difficult for me because I'm also a designer, but I got used to the alternatives so now it is fine
  • kijetesantakalu042 @ kijetesantakalu042:
    Linux furry is so cool
  • Izanagi_No_Okami @ Izanagi_No_Okami:
    I use Windows for peace of mind, a lot of niche programs I use aren't supported on Linux, same thing for

    games
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    I only started using inkscape because of linux, and it is extremely good
  • kijetesantakalu042 @ kijetesantakalu042:
    The reason why is want to use linux is first of all penguin. Second of all windows is broken in an unfixable way for me. Linux should be broken in a fixable way
  • Izanagi_No_Okami @ Izanagi_No_Okami:
    @Xdqwerty Thanks, tried to use it but qol is still far from Windows unfortunately for the kind of stuff I do
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    funny thing about linux, is that while it lacks some of the major commercial programs windows supports, I would say it has a lot more of niche apps than windows
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    just take a look at flathub.org
  • Izanagi_No_Okami @ Izanagi_No_Okami:
    @NinStar Thanks, I'll check that out
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    it has so many small and very specific tools, I sometimes uses some of them
  • Izanagi_No_Okami @ Izanagi_No_Okami:
    Anyway W11 LTSC IoT
    isn't bad, still not linux but it's way better than normal Windows
  • Izanagi_No_Okami @ Izanagi_No_Okami:
    Updates for way more years, group policies and no bloatware
  • Xdqwerty @ Xdqwerty:
    See ya later, gotta charge this
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    this one may look useless but I actually use it all the time: https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.design.Lorem
  • kijetesantakalu042 @ kijetesantakalu042:
    Bye forever
  • Izanagi_No_Okami @ Izanagi_No_Okami:
    I'll definitely check out Linux more in the future though, I've heard a lot of times it's better for programmers than Windows and it'd be cool to try
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Track pads already picking up finger oils lol oh well
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    one thing I like about linux is the customization, even though it has some problems with consistency (there are a lot of UI frameworks for different desktop environments) they still give you a lot of options to make up for it
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    I used to customize windows a lot, but it was so hacky
  • linuxares @ linuxares:
    I still wait for System76 are gonna be done with Cosmic DE. Want to take it for a spin
    +1
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    @K3Nv2 mine is peeling off because of my nails
  • Izanagi_No_Okami @ Izanagi_No_Okami:
    Yeah customization is probably my favorite thing about Linux, my Windows is pretty customized but there are way more customization options on Linux
    Izanagi_No_Okami @ Izanagi_No_Okami: Yeah customization is probably my favorite thing about Linux, my Windows is pretty customized...