Empowered PC Envision S13 SFF Desktop Black 2024

A tiny office workhorse with a big RAM budget and zero gaming ambitions. Great for spreadsheets, terrible for frame rates.

The 5700G is a known quantity at this point, and it's still a solid mid-pack performer. 8 cores and 16 threads at up to 4.6GHz will chew through spreadsheets, browser tabs, and light photo editing without breaking a sweat. The 32GB of DDR4 is more than most people need, and the 1TB Gen4 NVMe drive means boot times and file transfers feel instant. What surprised us is how well this little box handles multi-monitor setups. DisplayPort, HDMI, and even a D-Sub VGA port mean you can hook up basically any monitor made in the last 15 years. The Wi-Fi 6E is a nice touch too, though the spec sheet says Wi-Fi 6 in one place and 6E in another, so don't quote us on the E.

The Envision S13 sits in an awkward spot. The Lenovo Legion Tower 5a and HP OMEN GT16 are proper gaming desktops with dedicated GPUs that will absolutely destroy this thing in any graphics workload, but they're also bigger, louder, and more expensive. The Apple Mac Studio M4 Max is in a completely different league for creative work, but it costs several times more and locks you into macOS. For pure office productivity in a small package, the Envision S13 actually holds its own. The Dell Aurora is the closest competitor in spirit, but Dell's SFF offerings tend to be more expensive for similar specs. If you want a tiny Windows box for work, this is a reasonable pick. If you want to game or do heavy video editing, buy literally any of the other competitors.

At $920 USD, this is a fair deal for a business-focused SFF desktop with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB NVMe drive. You're paying for the compact form factor, the Windows 11 Pro license, and the 3-year warranty. But if you don't need the small size, you can get more raw performance for the same money in a standard tower. The value proposition hinges entirely on whether you actually need a small PC. If you do, this is a solid buy. If you don't, keep looking.

The Empowered PC Envision S13 is a small form factor desktop that punches way above its weight for office work and creative tasks. You're getting a Ryzen 7 5700G with 8 cores, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD in a compact chassis that won't eat your desk. The integrated Radeon graphics sit at the 96th percentile in our database, which sounds impressive until you realize that's mostly because integrated graphics have gotten shockingly good, not because this thing is a gaming rig. It isn't. But for everything else, it's a quiet little workhorse.

If you're looking for a gaming PC, this isn't it. Go get a Lenovo Legion Tower 5a or HP OMEN GT16 instead. If you need to upgrade your graphics card later, the SFF case will fight you every step of the way. And if you're doing serious video editing or 3D rendering, the integrated graphics will have you waiting around. This is a business machine, full stop.

The Empowered PC Envision S13 is a niche product that nails its niche. It's a compact, quiet, capable office machine with a generous RAM and storage config, backed by genuinely good customer support. The integrated graphics are the obvious weak point, and the case design means you can't fix that later with a GPU upgrade. If you need a small, reliable Windows 11 Pro desktop for work and don't care about gaming, this is a solid choice. If you have any gaming ambitions at all, this isn't the PC for you.