GEEKOM GT13 Pro review: 13th gen i9-13900H power inside a tiny aluminum frame

GEEKOM is back with another Mini PC, this time we have the GT13 Pro, which is the Intel version of the "A" series (A7, A8) AMD Mini PCs that we reviewed recently.

As you will see below, the GT13 Pro Mini PC even looks rather like the "A" series, the A standing for AMD. GEEKOM sent me a handy guide that explains the different series of Mini PC they have on offer. The GT series stands for

The GT series is positioned as a Mini PC with high aesthetic appeal and professional sports car—level performance on the Intel platform, designed to fully satisfy all scenarios including home, office, and gaming.

Fancy!

The GEEKOM GT13 Pro comes in two different configurations (listed below). Our configuration is powered by the Intel Core i9-13900H, which came out at the start of 2023, and despite its TDP of just 45W, has a base clock of 4.10 GHz and a Turbo Boost of 5.4 GHz, invoking up to a max TDP of 115W.

Below are its full specifications, and bold indicates our configuration.

GEEKOM has two configurations of the GT13 Pro, with the only difference being a slightly less-powerful i7-13620H CPU (with Intel UHD graphics) with half the storage (1TB). This knocks a significant $250 off the price compared to the $899 i9-13900H configuration. In both instances, a Windows 11 Pro license is also pre-loaded.

As I said previously, this appears to be an update on the A7 with the only difference being the newer CPU.

Aside from the use of dark colors, the packaging is the same as we saw with the A8. Once you open the box, you are greeted with the GT13 Pro sitting in a cardboard mould, above a small envelope that contains a Thank you card and booklet that has guidance on all of the controls, how to access the GT13 Pro to swap out, or add a 2242 M.2 SSD or memory, and safety information in several European languages. Upon removing the cardboard mould, you can find another cardboard compartment that contains the power lead, HDMI cable, VESA plate, and a bag of screws.

What’s In The Box

• 1 x GT13 Pro Mini PC
• 1 x Power Adapter
• 1 x HDMI Cable
• 1 x VESA plate and bag of screws
• 1 x Envelope with booklet and Thank you card

In short, you have everything you need to get started.

Design

The exterior, aside from the darker looking titanium color is exactly the same as the A8, so my description of it does not change much, but as a reminder I still think it looks pretty cool. It is made from, what GEEKOM calls a "full metal exterior", it essentially encases the entire PC so that there is no detachable lid. The top is completely flat, with the GEEKOM logo slightly indented and in reflective silver, centered on the top of the Mini PC. The color is almost identicle to my Logitech MX Keys mini.

All of the edges are rounded off, so there are no sharp edges, and it definitely has a premium feel to it. The GT13 Pro is light as well; it's just 450 grams with a volume of just under a half liter at 0.47L, so it won't weigh you down when carrying it from place to place.

The front of the GT13 Pro includes two USB 3.2 Gen 2 type A ports, and again, I would have liked to have seen at least one Type C port, more and more devices are shipping with Type C connectors and come with cables that are Type C end-to-end. It's also not possible to connect a screen on the front, which is a bit of an inconvenience.

GEEKOM also claims on the product page that the GT13 Pro series underwent the following tests prior to production:

• Vibration Test
• Drop Test (unspecified height)
• High-Temperature Test
• Cold Temperature Test
• Humidity Test
• Altitude Test

Again it's disappointing that there is no more information about the above tests, I have again asked my contact if GEEKOM plan to clarify any data points that customers can look in on, and will update when if I hear back on this.

The IceBlast 1.5 Cooling System is also included here, as with the A8:

GEEKOM's self-developed cooling system "IceBlast 1.5" brings a brand-new experience with low noise and high airflow to dissipate heat faster, maintain high performance and say goodbye to hot panels.

I can confirm the GT13 Pro generally did not get hot to the touch beyond a bit of warmth on the top of the Mini PC during the Cinebench 2024 test, and barely made any noise that I could hear.

As far as looks go, it is completely silver, and thanks to the shell being made from one piece of aluminum, there are no joints to be seen on the sides or up top where you would normally find a "lid" that can be removed to access the internals. It goes without saying, thanks to the aluminum finish, it isn't a fingerprint magnet. The top GEEKOM logo is a nice touch too, it looks and feels like premium hardware.

Accessing the GT13 Pro is exactly the same as the A8. First of all you have to remove the four rubber feet which are glued on, a small flat head screwdriver is enough for the job. Under that you will find four of the smallest screws that are used in computers, they are essentially the same ones used to hold down a NVMe M.2 SSD drive. Upon removing the four screws, you can then (carefully) detach the plastic cover, which exposes another metal cover that is also fastened with four of the same screws. In total, eight screws.

Again, as I discovered with the A7, and A8, the Wi-Fi antenna is taped to the bottom plastic cover and routed through the metal plate, and with only about 1 centimeter left at the corner screw hole, which caused it to detach from the PCIe Wi-Fi card that is located under the NVMe M.2 SSD. However I was able to detach the WiFi card from it's slot and carefully remove the plastic shield above the wire connections, reattach the cable and then reattach the plastic shield.

I emailed my contact about this and got a bit of a vague response about the "limited space" in the Mini PC. I fully agree, it is limited in the A7, A8, and GT13, they are the smallest Mini PCs I've reviewed, but the wire is long enough if it isn't taped down to the metal plate.

I challenge anyone to remove the bottom covers without causing the Wi-Fi antenna to detach. It simply is not possible with only around 1cm between the metal cover and the Mini PC. On a positive note, the four rubber feet also have "flaps" or "wings" that can be inserted into tiny slots as you reattach then, meaning the rubber feet do not rely entirely on the less sticky glue to stay in place.

In addition, SSD storage expanision is possible here too, you can add a 2242 (key B) M.2 SSD to this system, and if you plan to swap the DDR4 memory for DDR5, or expand from 32GB to 64GB, you'll need to be really careful with that Wi-Fi antenna wire.

Usage

BIOS

The GT13 Pro uses an Aptio BIOS, which is customized, and affords a less locked down AMIBIOS similar to what HP, Dell and other PC manufacturers use to lock down customization of the machine's values, like CPU or memory over/underclocking as well as power management. However under the "Advanced" tab it's possible to manage the LAN, WiFi, Bluetooth, Memory, Virtualization, and Power here along with the standard settings like the time and date, some security related settings (like Secure Boot and so forth) and the Boot order of devices.

WINDOWS

On first boot, you are prompted to complete the setup of Windows 11 Pro, meaning you do not have to fork out for a license. After the setup was completed, I discovered I was on build 22631.3447, which is the April Patch Tuesday update (KB5036893) and only had to install a few updates that included the May 2024 Patch Tuesday update (KB5037771) and, the KB4023057: Update Health Tools update. In addition, GEEKOM does not include any bloatware in their PCs, so that is always a bonus.

Following on from my malware test of AceMagic, Beelink, and Geekom Mini PCs, I felt it was only right to at least ensure Microsoft Defender was updated and then run a Full Scan and after that an "Offline scan", which restarts the computer and scans the entire computer for rootkits or persistent malware before Windows loads. I am pleased to say that our A8 came back clean. But don't take my word for it, always check your newly bought pre-loaded PCs for malware.

The GT13 Pro supports up to 4 screens at 8K @ 30Hz through dual USB 4 ports or 4K @ 60Hz over the two HDMI 2.0b ports. However, I also used my ZSCMalls 17.3" FullHD 144Hz portable screen, which was also powered by one of the rear USB Type C ports.

Regarding connectivity, there are two HDMI 2.0b, a USB 3.2 Gen 2, one USB 2.0 port, and two USB 4 Gen 3 Type C ports, an RJ45 2.5 GbE Ethernet port, along with a barrel port for power on the back. Around the front, there are two more USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports and a port for a 3.5mm headphone jack. Unfortunately, there is no Type C on the front. For audio output, I linked my Edifier 360DB over Bluetooth, and I did not experience any noticeable audio delays.

As you can see from the above images, there's no Kensington lock option here, which is a shame. The entire top and sides are one piece of aluminum with ample venting on the sides for air cooling.

The above image should show a bit more clearly how small this thing is, it is even smaller than the slim and lightweight Mini Air12, which also can't be expanded with a 2.5-inch SSD, and it pales in comparison in size to the AceMagic F2A.

Benchmarks

Before I started running benchmarks, I ensured that Windows 11 and drivers were up to date. At the time of testing, the A8 was running Windows 11 Professional 23H2 build 22631.3593, and I also upgraded to the latest available Intel Arc & Iris Xe Graphics WHQL certified drivers (May 2024).

With that out of the way, and because people like that sort of thing, I ran some benchmarks and compared it to my main PC that I built last year.

The reference PC consists of the following:

• AMD 7950X3D (1.30 BIOS)
• ASRock X670E Steel Legend
• 64GB DDR5 Kingston Fury Beast RGB 6000MT/s
• WD_Black SN850X 1TB NVMe
• ASUS ProArt GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER 16GB OC Edition (Nvidia driver 551.52)
• Windows 10 22H2 build 19045.4046

For our benchmarks, UL Solutions provided us with Professional (commercial use) licenses for 3DMark, PCMark 10, and Procyon. In addition, we used a licensed version of Geekbench 5 and Cinebench 2024.

3DMark Time Spy tests gaming capability with DX12 graphics performance and 7-Zip for compression and decompression speeds. PCMark tests are a mix of CPU and real-world productivity tests, such as using an office suite, web browsing, light photo/video editing, and making conference calls.

Cinebench 2024 stresses the entire CPU as it is a multi-threaded rendering test. Finally, Geekbench 5 is a synthetic benchmark that is great for a quick look at the potential performance across a wide range of workloads.

We were also interested to see what happens in UL's Procyon, which is an Inferencing benchmark meant to test AI and ML performance.

The highest temperature recorded during benchmarking was in Time Spy at 95.9C, which incidentally came out only 113 points higher than its predecessor. I ran the Time Spy test three times and recorded the highest score.

As you might see from the Time Spy and Compute scores, don't think you can replace your gaming desktop with this, you'd still need a dedicated GPU if you intended to do much of any gaming on it. Regardless it must be pointed out once again that the newer Core Ultra 5 125H is much faster, up to 80%-84%, as is the 7940HS thanks to its more powerful Radeon 780M integrated graphics with 8.12 TFLOPS vs the i9-13900H older Iris Xe with just 1.69 TFLOPS.

The Cinebench 2024 test yields some interesting results. While all three chips, the 12900H, the 125H, and the 7940HS, put up similar scores in the single thread test, mainly thanks to the six extra cores, and higher Turbo Boost frequency (5.4 GHz vs 5.2 GHz) in the Intel chip, the 13900H falls far behind the other two in multi-threaded (MT), and this is despite that fact that the 13th Gen part has more threads at its disposal than the 14th Gen 125H.

Cinebench 2024 is a tough test on processors and it helps showcase the architectural improvements Intel has made in regards to efficiency as the MT scores indicate the newer CPU was likely able to hold its boost for longer which led to the higher performance, which is what you'd expect from this incremental update over the 12th gen CPU.

I also tested the SSD's capability using AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark 8.0.5.

There's a better Acer Shadow Knight N7000 2TB here that outperforms the N5000CN that we tested in the A7 and A8.

Despite running all of the above benchmark tests, the A8 did not get hot to the touch, more like warm, and there were no annoying noises coming from the single fan that cooled the unit.

Conclusion

As with all the Mini PCs I've reviewed in the past couple of years, the GT13 isn't a gaming PC. You will not be able to enjoy graphically intensive games on it. Still, it is suited as something like an office workstation with a mixture of light gaming, or perhaps a good solution for a student or office worker without a permanent desk, affording the ability to pack this away after every use. This thing also doesn't take up much room in your bag if you need to move it from place to place.

When it comes to Mini PCs, the market is saturated with cheaper options, but you'll be quickly disappointed to find they might not include USB 3.2 Gen 2, USB 4, dual channel memory, and more. Some manufacturers are also still selling "new" Mini PCs with 8th gen Intel Core mobile CPUs, so you really have to be on the lookout.

When you're spending hundreds of dollars to replace the job of a full-sized PC, you're going to want it to replicate as much of the capability as possible, aside from the obvious lack of GPU prowess.

I asked my contact why they went with DDR4 instead of DDR5 memory and got the following response:

The reason we use DDR4 is it will be more stable with higher adaptability, DDR5 is not used much at present, and there are not enough DDR5 on the market, and customers cannot replace it at will

I guess it's relatively cheap to swap out for DDR5 memory if you want, but it does add to the cost.

As I said earlier, the decision ultimately comes down to what you're willing to pay for the options you need. This Mini PC will let you connect up to four displays, all operating at 4K @ 60Hz, whereas cheaper solutions might be limited to just two screens.

Coupon Code

It's available right now for $899 on the official website, however for a limited time you can get it at 5% ($44.95) off at the official website in the U.S., and U.K., by using the code NEOGT13 while checking out; or on Amazon U.S. using the coupon code NEOGT135.

For me, this loses a point for the weird design choice with the Wi-Fi antenna, making it almost impossible to access without the cable detaching from the Wi-Fi PCIe card, which cannot be removed to reattach the wire, and another point for not having a USB Type C port on the front, a USB 2.0 port, and for sticking with HDMI 2.0b and DDR4.

This is a solid upgrade from the 12th gen i9-12900H as you will have seen in the benchmarks, if you're not too fussed about having an AI-capable Mini PC, and let's be honest... none of the included NPUs we've reviewed in Mini PCs so far even have the minimum TOPS that Microsoft and Intel recommend, so we will probably be waiting another generation before those become available and mainstream.

This is a solid office or study Mini PC that will also let you do some light gaming with.

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