GEEKOM Mini PC GEEKOM A8 Max, Ryzen 7 8745HS, 16GB, 1TB SSD

The GEEKOM A8 Max is a compact mini PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 8745HS, 16GB of DDR5, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. It's great for home office and light creative work, with excellent port selection and upgradeable internals. But the integrated Radeon 780M GPU makes it a poor choice for gaming.

The Ryzen 7 8745HS is a solid 8-core chip with a 4.9GHz boost clock. In our database, it lands in the 63rd percentile for CPU performance among all desktops, which means it's above average but not a chart-topper. For everyday tasks, web browsing, office apps, and even some light video editing, it feels snappy. The 16GB of DDR5 helps, though it's worth noting that RAM sits at the 47th percentile, so it's about average for this class of machine.

The Radeon 780M integrated GPU is the weak link if you care about frame rates. It's fine for 1080p esports titles like League of Legends or Rocket League, and it'll handle older games without much fuss. But don't expect to run Cyberpunk 2077 at anything resembling playable settings without an external GPU. Storage performance is a bright spot, with the 1TB NVMe Gen4 drive landing in the 72nd percentile. Boot times and file transfers feel quick, and the drive is upgradeable to 4TB if you need more room.

Compared to the Lenovo Legion 90YA003GUS or the HP OMEN GT16-0364, the A8 Max is in a completely different league for gaming. Those machines have dedicated GPUs and will run circles around the Radeon 780M in any modern title. But they're also full-size towers that take up real desk space and draw more power. The A8 Max is for people who want a quiet, small machine that handles productivity and light creative work.

Against the Apple Mac Studio M3 Ultra, the A8 Max is dramatically cheaper and runs Windows 11 Pro, which matters for business IT environments. But the Mac Studio obliterates it in raw performance and build quality. The Dell Desktop ECT1250 and MSI Aegis Z2 are closer in spirit to the A8 Max, but they're larger and less focused on port density. If you need dual Ethernet and USB4 in a tiny chassis, the GEEKOM is hard to beat at this size.

At $799 USD, the A8 Max is priced like a mid-range desktop but delivers mini PC convenience. You're paying a premium for the small form factor and the port selection, not raw performance. A traditional tower at this price would give you a dedicated GPU and more upgrade headroom. But if desk space matters and you don't need serious graphics power, the value proposition starts to make sense. The 3-year warranty helps offset some of the reliability concerns we see in the data.

The GEEKOM A8 Max is a mini PC that tries to pack a lot of desktop into a very small box. It sits in that sub-$800 USD space where you're usually choosing between a boring office tower and a laptop pretending to be a desktop. This one lands somewhere in between, with an AMD Ryzen 7 8745HS, 16GB of DDR5, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. It's aimed at home office users, light creators, and anyone who wants a clean desk without sacrificing too much performance.

People searching for a compact Windows 11 Pro machine will find a lot to like here. The port selection is genuinely useful, with dual 2.5G Ethernet, USB4, and support for up to four displays. And the fact that the RAM and storage are user-upgradeable is a big deal in this category. A lot of mini PCs solder everything down, so being able to bump this to 128GB of RAM later is a real advantage.

But the A8 Max isn't a gaming rig, and it doesn't pretend to be. The integrated Radeon 780M can handle light games and older titles, but our gaming score of 14.2 out of 100 tells the real story. If you're shopping for a mini PC to play modern AAA games, you'll want to look elsewhere or plan on adding an eGPU through that USB4 port.

Skip the A8 Max if you're a gamer, a serious video editor, or anyone who needs real GPU horsepower. The integrated Radeon 780M will frustrate you, and adding an eGPU means spending more money and losing the clean desk aesthetic. If you need a machine for 3D rendering or heavy creative workloads, look at a compact desktop with a discrete GPU instead. Also, if reliability is your top concern, our data shows this machine in the 11th percentile, which is a red flag. The 3-year warranty helps, but a business-critical machine might be better served by something with a stronger track record.

Should you buy the GEEKOM A8 Max? If you want a compact Windows 11 Pro machine for home office work, light creative tasks, or business IT deployments, yes. The port selection is excellent, the upgrade path is real, and the performance is fine for everyday use. The dual 2.5G Ethernet ports alone make it interesting for network-heavy setups.

But if you're hoping to game on this thing, don't. The integrated Radeon 780M is not a gaming GPU, and our gaming score of 14.2 out of 100 should be a clear warning. You'd be better off with a budget gaming desktop or a mini PC with a discrete GPU. The reliability percentile also gives us pause, though the 3-year warranty helps. For the right buyer, this is a smart little machine. For everyone else, it's a compromise.