GEEKOM IT13 2025 Edition Mini PC GBAtemp review
Hardware
Product Information:
- Official Store: https://www.geekom.co.uk/geekom-mini-it13-mini-pc
Review Approach:
When it comes to a Mini PC, what exactly should you be looking for? Should you chase power at all cost? Are you searching for the smallest system to hide away on your desk? Or do you just want to cram as much random media as possible into the pint-sized form factor as you can? Today we’ve got Geekom’s latest iteration of their Intel-powered IT series, acting as something of an all-rounder in accessibility, expandability, and power!
A Familiar Design
If you’ve been following the Mini PC space for any length of time, the IT13’s design is something that should be familiar. Geekom have made use of this shell or very similar ones for other PCs in the IT series, as well as others like their Air12. It’s boxy and a little less stylish than their GT series with their hexagonal vents or the A series with a more Apple-like aesthetic, but that boxiness is usually put to good use.
In terms of ports it’s a very familiar sight, with that really being no bad thing in this case. The front panel features two USB A 3.2s alongside the power button and a 3.5mm combo jack. On the left side we see a full-sized SD card reader and on the right a slot for a Kensington lock. The back is where most of the good stuff lives, with two USB As, one 3.2 and one 2.0, two HDMI 2.0 ports, two USB C 4.0 ports, a 2.5G Ethernet port, and a place to plug in the barrel plug. As always it’s a solid offering that’ll let you connect to more monitors than you’re likely to need, as well as having those coveted USB C 4.0s.
Inside you’re met with the i9 13900HK, which supposedly sports a 10% boost in performance when compared with the 13900H that was in the original IT13 model. I unfortunately don’t have the original IT13 device to hand to compare numbers with, but I can at least compare it to the GT13 Pro I previously reviewed as a device that shares its CPU, albeit in a different form factor. Alongside the CPU you get 32GB of DDR4 RAM and a 1TB M.2 2280 SSD. It is worth noting there is a slightly more expensive model that features a bump up to a 2TB SSD. That’s not all the system has going for it though.
Where this boxy design really excels is in being incredibly easy to open up, and Geekom do give you some solid reasons to want to do so. Outside of just upgrading your RAM or primary SSD, the IT13 has space for not just a 2.5 inch SATA SSD, but also a second M.2 SSD, albeit a slightly shorter 2242 one. There’s no risk of catching wireless antennae when exploring the internals unlike the A series Mini PCs; the only thing that gets even remotely in the way is the ribbon cable that connects to the bay for the 2.5 inch SATA drive. If you’re after a compact system with a ton of storage potential, this is undoubtedly a solid pick.
Pretty Darn Powerful
I feel like it does generally go without saying that a modern Mini PC with any kind of modern i9 CPU is going to be powerful enough for day to day use. The 2025 revision of the IT13 certainly doesn’t disappoint. To start with my few standard benchmarks, with the percentage difference to my GT13 Pro benchmarks alongside them:
- Geekbench 6.2.2
- Multi-Core: 10462 (-4%)
- Single-Core: 2705 (+16%)
- Cinebench 2024.1.0
- Multi-Core: 662 (+1%)
- Single-Core: 109 (+0%)
These are solid numbers, even if they don’t all quite meet the 10% boost Geekom had in mind, with the multi-core Geekbench result actually being lower even on retesting. You’ll have no issues here pushing the included Windows 11 Pro with 4K video viewing and multi-tasking to your heart’s content. The crux of these machines is, to little surprise, their gaming potential. AMD’s integrated GPUs tend to perform better than Intel’s counterparts, with this even more evident with the Xe Graphics here. It is worth noting that Intel’s Ultra series CPUs and their integrated Arc graphics are a little more in line with what we see from AMD, but what we have here can still perform if you temper expectations.
30% vs 50% render resolution... I've played games that looked and ran worse than this.
The game I really wanted to try on the IT13 was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. This is one of the hotter new games to have launched this month and does a good job in pushing the 3070 Ti in my desktop machine. Of course, that is in trying to get a solid 60FPS at an ultrawide 1440p. Being a little more conservative in what we’re asking for, the results may surprise you. Or they might not, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. You can actually get a relatively consistent 30FPS out of the IT13, it just comes down to whether you’re happy to be playing the unofficial PS1 port. With everything set to low, the resolution set to 720p with a 50% render resolution, performance is at a point where I could actually see myself enjoying the game. I won’t advocate for this being the ideal way to play by any stretch, but for such an ambitious title to even be remotely playable I have to appreciate just how far this kind of technology has come.
It should be no surprise the Pixel Remasters run well, but it's still always nice to have a reason to boot them up.
Now prior to this writing this review I did reach out to ask what people would be interested in me testing on this system, and I got a grand total of three responses: Final Fantasy games, SEGA Saturn, and MAME with a particular focus on light gun games. To start with the simplest of these, the Final Fantasy series range from perfectly ideal to pretty much what I described with Expedition 33 depending on exactly which game you’re wanting to run. The Pixel Remasters are a flawless experience, having no issues hitting 60FPS on a 4K monitor. It’s in your more graphically intensive 3D titles you’ll start to hit the limitations of the system. To be clear though, you very much can run a game like Final Fantasy 15, or the Final Fantasy 7 Remake titles. Again you just need to be conscious of what you’re running them on. Depending on the game you can expect 30fps on low settings around 720p, though you can sometimes make the push up to 1080. If you’re wanting to use a system like this for gaming you certainly can, but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t better options out there if gaming were going to be your focus. Even just looking at Mini PCs, you will see performance gains with AMD’s 7000 and 8000 series compared to what we have here.
Moving onto the emulation side of things, I’ll be completely open and say I’ve never actually tried to play SEGA Saturn or MAME before. This is a new experience and with that my settings may not be the most ideal or optimised. With that said though, we do again see a performant showing. For the Saturn I decided to keep things simple and use the Beetle core in RetroArch. I can’t claim to have gotten far with them, but for the ten or so minutes I played both Nights into Dreams and Panzer Dragoon Saga ran at a flawless 60FPS. I know Saturn is one of those more difficult systems to emulate for emulation handhelds, but the CPU here seems more than up to the task.
MAME didn’t go quite so well… Though it’s not because of the PC. I won’t beat around the bush too much here, I just couldn’t figure out how to set it up. I do understand there’s a large assortment of games there and that a small system like this is an ideal form factor for them, so if anybody knows of a good guide to get me started, I can at least commit to including the system going forwards.
A Box Worth Buying?
The 2025 reboot of Geekom’s IT13 is a solid Mini PC. And coming in at £649 I don’t believe it’s terribly priced either. Comparing it to others on the market, GMKtec’s K10 is a fairly close match in sporting the same CPU, SSD, and RAM configurations at just $520 (roughly £390). This system also features DDR5 RAM and three NVMe slots as opposed to the odd assortment of storage options we have here. What it lacks however is USB 4.0, and I do understand that can be a big deal for some in giving you both incredibly fast external storage and the option to hook the system up to an external GPU down the line if you did want something of an upgrade path.
Ultimately whether the price is worth paying when compared to the competition is your call to make more than mine, but at the very least I can say that if you did end up getting this latest flavour of the IT13, you’re unlikely to be disappointed with what it can do.
As always Geekom have provided a small discount code for those that want to use it. We don’t get any kind of kickback from this, so use it or not at your own pleasure:
- Official Store UK (6% Off: GBAIT132025)
- Official Store US (6% Off: GBAIT132025)
- Official Store CA (6% Off: GBAIT132025)
- Amazon UK (6% Off: GBAIT132025)
- Amazon US (6% Off: GBAIT132025)
Verdict
- Remarkably simple to open up
- Space for a 2.5 inch SATA SSD and a 2242 M.2 SSD
- Strong i9 13900HK CPU
- Fantastic assortment of IO
- 32GB of RAM included as standard
- Windows 11 Pro also included
- Cheaper machines available if features like USB C 4.0 aren't things you need
- Boxy form factor isn't the most aesthetically pleasing
