I’ve been intrigued by mini PCs like the Intel NUC 11. I was disappointed when Intel gave up the NUC business to ASUS. When it came time to get an upgrade for my expanding PC needs at home, I surveyed a few Chinese brands and ultimately got the GMKtec K8 Plus.
Before I go on, let me give a quick shoutout to ASUS. They already had their own line of mini PCs before taking on Intel’s NUC business. New additions to the NUC line from ASUS include the gaming oriented NUC ROG 970 which I reviewed last year, as well as NUC 13 Pro and NUC 14 Pro mini PCs. There are several other notable brands in the mini PC market: Minisforum and Beelink come to mind, and of course, GMKtec.
The GMKtec K8 Plus was launched in Q3 last year. It comes with AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS CPU in either a barebones kit or with various combos of RAM and NVMe storage. The chassis measures 125 x 132 x 61 mm, including the feet. This is comparatively larger than the NUC 11 (117 x 112 x 51 mm), though certainly still well within the norms of a mini PC form factor.
On the front, there’s an OCulink port, USB 4.0 Type-C port with PD and DP, two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, a 3.5 mm audio jack, and a power button.
The OCulink port, for those unfamiliar, provides external PCIe 4.0 x4 connectivity for an external GPU. It is considered superior to Thunderbolt because it provides a more direct, higher bandwidth, and lower latency connection to the PCI Express bus. OCulink docks also tend to be cheaper, though more barebones, than Thunderbolt ones. This may be a bonus for you if you plan to connect an external GPU later. My main complaint, though, is about the placement on the front. I thought it is more useful for the OCulink port to be on the back of the chassis.
On the back of the GMKtec K8 Plus, there are two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1, two 2.5 GbE RJ45 LAN ports, USB 4.0 Type-C port with PD and DP, power jack, and finally a Kensington Lock. I do wish that the two USB ports on the back were 3.0 instead of 2.0 so that I could cable up high-speed devices out-of-sight.
You can connect up to four displays to this mini PC using the rear HDMI port, DisplayPort, and USB Type-C port, as well as the front USB Type-C port. The HDMI and DisplayPort can each drive 8K @ 60 Hz. This should be more than enough displays than most people will need.
The dual 2.5 GbE LAN ports will give a significant boost to network speeds, especially if you have a switch that allows you to bundle both ports together into a logical 5 Gbps aggregated channel.
The GMKtec K8 Plus chassis has ample ventilation slots on the sides and back. There are two fans, one below and the other above the motherboard. The one above expels hot air upward into a gap below the twist-open translucent plastic cover on top of the chassis.
The fans are described as silent, though I found them to be comparatively noisier than my Intel NUC 11. The GMKtec K8 Plus does have a much higher thermal load, especially since it uses a CPU with a much higher TDP. The AMD Ryzen 7 8847HS CPU can run with 35 W, 54 W, 65 W, or 70 W profiles. This CPU runs at 3.8 to 5.1 GHz, has 8 cores / 16 threads, and 16 MB cache.
The innards of the GMKtec K8 Plus is easy to access. The translucent plastic top can be twist-opened without tools, and the cover beneath is secured with four screws. All the RAM and NVMe slots are accessible from the top.
The GMKtec K8 Plus has two slots for DDR5 5600 MHz SO-DIMM memory with a total maximum capacity of 96 GB.
There are also two M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 slots. Each slot supports up to 4 TB of NVMe storage.
For my own setup, I opted for a barebones kit, and separately procured 64 GB of Crucial DDR5 RAM (2x 32 GB), and a Crucial P310 2 TB NVMe stick.
Apart from the translucent plastic top, the chassis is made of sturdy metal. The physical design is quite simple. I do prefer how the Intel NUC 11 is so nondescript. While stickers are easily removable, there is a GMKtec logo on the back left of the translucent plastic that is printed on, and if I may nitpick, the green power button is a little jarring for my taste. None of these are serious issues, and you could easily tuck the GMKtec K8 Plus away out of plain sight.
The AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS performs very well. It is, however, still a laptop-class platform, albeit a performance-oriented one, and it is one generation behind the current Ryzen AI 9 processors.
The PCMark 10 Extended scores are as follows:
- Overall: 66331
- Essentials: 10116
- Productivity: 9203
- Digital Content Creation: 9262
- Gaming: 6060
Geekbench 6 scores are as follows:
- Single core: 2622
- Multi core: 13350
- Compute: 32805
In Cinebench R26, the GMKtec K8 Plus scores:
- Single: 103
- Multi: 920
The integrated AMD Radeon 780M does prove to be quite a lot superior than Intel’s integrated ones.
With a barebones kit, you would have to install your own operating system. With RAM and storage, GMKtec does provide a Windows 11 Pro license. While I read from reviews that GMKtech does seem to provide decent RAM and NVMe storage in their combo bundles, I much prefer to pick out my own parts. Note that you will have to download some drivers from GMKtec if you install the OS yourself.
In the box, the GMKtec K8 Plus comes with a power brick, power cord for your chosen region, HDMI cable, and VESA mounting kit.
I’m quite happy with the GMKtec K8 Plus. It is slightly chunkier than my previous Intel NUC 11, but I think the extra space along with two fans provide far superior thermal management for the much more powerful AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS in this mini PC. Having two M.2 slots and OCulink is nice, as well as the dual 2.5 GbE LAN and generous display support options.
If you’re looking for a clean, minimalistic, desk setup, a mini PC like this GMKtec K8 Plus may be just what you need.
The barebones GMKtec K8 Plus sells for around S$470.