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GMKtec NucBox G10: 30-second review
I’m beginning to conclude that Intel’s leaving the NUC market was probably the best thing that could have happened to this form factor.
The explosion of options available has brought us ultra-powerful machines, mini NAS, and highly affordable options like the GMKtec NucBox G10.
Just added to the GMKtec Mini PC page, this hardware is another to take advantage of the AMD Ryzen 3000 mobile platform, which first launched in early 2019.
While that might seem a long time ago, for inclusion in a small NUC, they deliver enough performance for typical office applications.
What they’re not ideal for is external storage, as they only have USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports. However, internally, the G10 can accommodate two M.2 2280 Gen 3×4 modules.
Using a USB-C port, along with the included HDMI and DisplayPort, it is possible to connect the G10 to three monitors. Additionally, it can be mounted to one of them using the provided VESA bracket.
The performance of the G10 isn’t going to break any records or be the best mini PC, but for a budget offering, it’s better than a low-end Intel machine.
What helps mitigate its limitations is the remarkably low asking price for this hardware, as well as the flexibility of this product series. For those looking to quickly deploy systems for low-impact tasks, the G10 is ideally positioned to maximise the investment.
GMKtec NucBox G10: Price and availability
- How much does it cost? From $190/£184
- When is it out? Out now
- Where can you get it? Aliexpress, Amazon and direct from the makers
This diminutive system comes only in a silver case and is available in two SKUs that differ only in the amount of storage included. Both models feature 16GB of RAM (expandable to 64GB), with the cheaper option equipped with 512GB of M.2 storage, and the more expensive one comes with 1TB.
Direct from the maker, the 512GB option costs $189.99, and the 1TB model is $215.99. An extra 512GB of space for only $25 seems like a good deal.
European pricing is €179,99 and €209,99, but the official shop doesn’t price in pound sterling for UK customers.
I’m also seeing it on Amazon.com for $200 when using the coupon discount and for £270 at Amazon.co.uk.
Those looking to purchase this hardware at a lower price can find it on AliExpress, where the UK price is only £160.59 from one outlet. Aside from the price, another advantage of AliExpress is that it offers a wider range of SKUs with more RAM and storage options. For instance, it is possible to find models with 64GB of RAM and 2TB of storage through this channel.
Given that this is a fully deployable system that comes with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed, which costs more from Microsoft than this computer does.
It’s hard to argue with this price point unless you are expecting things for free.
GMKtec NucBox G10: Specs
|
Item |
Spec |
|---|---|
|
CPU: |
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U(4 cores, 8 Threads) |
|
GPU: |
Radeon Vega 8 (8 cores) |
|
RAM: |
16GB DDR4-3200 (8GB x 2) Expandable to 64GB |
|
Storage: |
1TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 3 |
|
Expansion: |
1x M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 3 |
|
Ports: |
1x Type-C (DP/DATA), 1x Type-C PD only, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1x USB 2.0, 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x 3.5mm CTIA |
|
Networking: |
1x 2.5GbE LAN, WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.0 |
|
OS: |
Windows 11 Pro (pre-installed) |
|
Base Power: |
25W-35W (configurable) |
|
PSU: |
19V 3.42A 64.98W |
|
Dimensions: |
103 x 98 x 32 (mm) |
GMKtec NucBox G10: Design
- Plastic construction
- Easy access inside
- Dual M.2 2280
Typically, with GMKtec, I recognise the enclosure from some other NUC model in its range, but the G10 is so small it might be exclusive to this design.
It’s worth noting that the original Intel NUC spec was for a mainboard designed for a system with a 10cm square motherboard, and this machine is smaller than that in one direction on the outside. At only 32mm high, this is the definition of a modern NUC, occupying little desk space, or none if you mount it on a monitor.
Where some small system makers don’t encourage customers to go inside, GMKtec positively encourages it with a layer-cake design that enables the easiest access.
The first layer is the base, where air is drawn in, and above that is a cooling fan attached to a heatsink covering the CPU and support chips on the underside of the mainboard.
On the upper face of the mainboard are the memory and storage slots, and these can be accessed by prising off the top lid. There are no screws or disassembly to make this more challenging, and extra storage or larger memory modules can be added within a couple of minutes.
The G10 supports two full-length 2280 M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 modules, allowing for a potential 8TB of onboard storage with two 4TB drives. What’s good about having two slots is that it makes cloning the existing installation to a larger drive remarkably easy and quick.
As a side note, the WiFi module also uses M.2, and this allows the system to be upgraded to WiFi 6, 6e or even 7 by replacing this module. Alternatively, if you do not need WiFi, you can opt for small M.2 drives that fit into the 2230 slot for additional storage.
In the review machine, there were two 8GB DDR4-3200 SODIMM GMKtec-branded sticks, and these could be replaced with 16GB or even 32GB modules. It might work with sticks of different sizes, but that would invariably turn off dual-channel mode, so don’t do that. Two 16GB DDR4 modules, totalling 32GB of RAM, typically cost around $80 each ($40), and you could offset some of that cost by selling the 8GB modules.
The memory and storage side of the G10 is excellent, but it’s not without some weaknesses.
When you compare this NUC to a more expensive GMKtec design, there are two significant differences. The first point is that this uses DDR4, not DDR5, which reduces the available bandwidth for the CPU. Additionally, since the GPU shares main memory, it is also impacted by the use of DDR4. That caps performance somewhat, as does the Vega 8 GPU.
GMKtec NucBox G10: Features
- AMD Ryzen 5 3500U (4 cores, 8 Threads)
- 12 PCIe Lanes
- Radeon Vega 8 Graphics
AMD has come a long way since the launch of the Picasso generation Ryzen 5 3500U in 2019. This Ryzen is a 12nm chip from the Zen+ era, offering only four cores, although it can handle eight threads using hyperthreading.
What makes it superior to Intel’s N100 is the addition of hyperthreading functionality. The TDP range is 25W-35W, making it more suitable for desktop and laptop use than for an embedded role.
The base clock is only 2.1 GHz, but it will boost to 3.7 GHz before thermal generation limits that activity.
Where this architecture is slightly undermined is with its PCIe lanes, having twelve PCIe 3.0 pathways. That might sound great, but in a desktop system with a PCIe slot for discrete graphics, eight lanes are allocated to that purpose.
Thankfully, this isn’t an issue with integrated graphics, and the system has enough lanes to support both 2280 M.2 slots with 4 lanes each. Probably, another two lanes are used for the WiFi M.2 slot, and the last two are used for the 2.5GbE LAN port and USB.
As these numbers seem to add up, I’d assume that no PCIe switch was required to make all these devices work to their full capability on this system.
The last piece of this puzzle is the Radeon Vega 8 GPU, which harks back to a time when AMD offered the top integrated GPU solution. Although this GPU has been outperformed by the Radeon 680M and 780M, other architectural changes contribute to the Vega 8 appearing less spritely than more recent AMD designs.
The evolution of the Vega series into the newer designs was incremental, but the Radeon 680M utilises a newer RDNA2 architecture, offering higher clock speeds and more shading units.
A significant portion of its advantage, and we’re talking double the framerate of the Vega 8, is due to it being paired with systems that utilise DDR5. And, systems with the 780M are marginally better again, if they use DDR5.
So is the Vega 8 junk? That entirely depends on what you intend to use the system for. It’s more than acceptable for playing video and surfing, but it’s not a gaming platform or anything you would want to use from a designer’s perspective.
It’s worth considering that this is a low-cost system, and that it’s not sold on its performance.
GMKtec NucBox G10: Performance
|
Mini PC |
Header Cell – Column 1 |
GMKTec NucBox G10 |
Minisforum UN100D |
|---|---|---|---|
|
CPU |
Row 0 – Cell 1 |
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U |
Intel N100 |
|
Cores/Threads |
Row 1 – Cell 1 |
4C/8T |
4C/4T |
|
RAM |
Row 2 – Cell 1 |
16GB DDR4 (2x8GB) |
8GB DDR5 (4x 2GB) |
|
Storage |
Row 3 – Cell 1 |
TWSC 512GB SSD |
256GB GOFATOO P110N NVMe SSD |
|
Graphics |
Row 4 – Cell 1 |
Radeon Vega 8 |
UHD Graphics (EU32) |
|
3DMark |
WildLife |
4209 |
2903 |
| Row 6 – Cell 0 |
FireStrike |
1980 |
1140 |
| Row 7 – Cell 0 |
TimeSpy |
763 |
367 |
| Row 8 – Cell 0 |
Steel Nom Lt. |
661 |
N/A |
|
CineBench24 |
Single |
57 |
60 |
| Row 10 – Cell 0 |
Multi |
191 |
195 |
| Row 11 – Cell 0 |
Ratio |
3.34 |
3.25 |
|
GeekBench 6 |
Single |
1133 |
1223 |
| Row 13 – Cell 0 |
Multi |
3049 |
3109 |
| Row 14 – Cell 0 |
OpenCL |
10130 |
3322 |
| Row 15 – Cell 0 |
Vulkan |
7473 |
3734 |
|
CrystalDisk |
Read MB/s |
2667 |
1779 |
| Row 17 – Cell 0 |
Write MB/s |
1512 |
1698 |
|
PCMark 10 |
Office |
3901 |
2949 |
|
WEI |
Row 19 – Cell 1 |
8 |
8 |
Before I delve into the performance details, it’s worth noting that this is the slowest AMD Ryzen mini PC I’ve ever tested. However, that statement requires the context that all the others had either six cores with twelve threads or typically eight cores with sixteen threads.
One slightly odd thing with the G10 is that it comes with a label covering the LAN port. This label warns you against connecting the machine to the LAN before its first run, so that the Windows update doesn’t kick in immediately and reduce the user experience dramatically. To enable this, GMKtec disabled the requirement for a Microsoft account on this Windows 11 Pro installation, which was a pleasant surprise.
It doesn’t avoid the evil day when updates must be run, but it enables customers to enjoy their purchase briefly before Microsoft stomps all over it like a software Godzilla attacking Tokyo.
That label might seem like a minor point, but on a system with limited cores and performance, it takes on a much greater significance. During my testing, I was forced to turn off the Windows update service, as Microsoft intended to launch patches. However, it then remembered that it had not tested them, removed them, and issued new patches. Initially, this screwed up my benchmarking gloriously.
You’d think that after this much time and resources, Microsoft would understand software development and deployment, but it appears it’s all new to them.
I also ran into a couple of other snags that GMKtec created. One was that the M.2 module has too much horizontal play in its retaining screw, and while in transit, the drive moved slightly. This meant it was only connected as a single lane drive, capping read speed at about 900MB/s.
By default, the machine is BIOS configured to run with 3GB of memory allocated to the Vega 8 GPU, and performance set to ‘Balanced’. I changed memory allocation to ‘Auto’ and mode to ‘Performance’. Once the drive was reseated and the BIOS was tweaked, I repeated the benchmarks and got substantially better results.
The system I chose for comparison was the Minisforum UN100D, a system that costs roughly the same and uses the Intel N100 processor.
Admittedly, in this test, the UN100D had only half the memory of the G10, although it featured DDR5, not DDR4, which provided the CPU and GPU with a bandwidth advantage.
Across the results as a whole, the N100 tries to keep pace with the Ryzen 5 3500U, and it does achieve parity on some scores, but on others, it’s massively outgunned.
Compared to later AMD GPUs, the Vega 8 is in the slow lane, but compared to the Intel UHD Graphics, it’s a whirlwind of pixels. On the GeekBench Vulkan tests, it achieves twice the speed, and on OpenGL, it delivers three times the performance.
Neither of these machines has especially quick NVMe drives, and to ensure that the M.2 slots were assigned all the PCIe lanes they needed, I ran a Kingston KC3000 drive in the second slot. It achieved a read speed of 3,750MB/s, demonstrating that the slot has four lanes allocated to it.
Overall, the computing platform in the G10 is comparable to the Minisforum UN100D, but only because it features DDR5 memory to compensate for its lack of hyperthreading. If the Ryzen 5 3500U had DDR5 bandwidth, this would have been a complete rout.
Luckily for the Intel N100, AMD only equipped this APU with a DDR4 memory controller.
GMKtec NucBox G10: Final verdict
The G10 is all about expectations, because if this machine cost $250, I’d be giving it a harder time. At the asking price, this is a terrific little system that can easily be upgraded to handle larger tasks with more memory and storage.
However, I’d take the upgrade budget and use it to get a system with a more modern processor than the one in the G10.
What this system isn’t ideal for is truly demanding applications, as it doesn’t have the memory bandwidth or graphics capabilities for those jobs. However, for light tasks and internet access, it’s perfectly fine. The caveat to the G10 is that you need to control system updates that trample the performance.
I wonder if this system might perform much better if it ran Linux or even ChromeOS, rather than the bloatware behemoth that is Windows 11.
When someone is purchasing systems for office use, they might want to take a moment to consider the G10, especially if the project is time-limited and budget-constrained. Because the G10 is relatively low-powered, it doesn’t have the same flexibility for repurposing that something with more USB ports and performance does.
That’s probably the most important caveat of the G10, because all systems based on older technology are the ones that suffer the most from the churn of technology.
Should you buy a GMKtec NucBox G10?
|
Value |
Affordable entry-level PC |
4 / 5 |
|
Design |
Small and easy to get inside for upgrades |
4 / 5 |
|
Features |
Dual M.2 slots, dual 2.5GbE LAN, but only USB 3.2 Gen 1 |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Performance |
Better than Intel N100, especially with graphics |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Overall |
Cheap but workable office PC |
4 / 5 |
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
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