Geekom A8 Review – AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS mini PC for work and gaming

This is the first time we have reviewed a Geekom mini PC so we are interested to see how it stacks up against the others. In our Geekom A8 review we cover the unboxing and overview, an in-depth range of system and gaming benchmarks, as well as real life usage for comparison.

Unboxing the Geekom A8

We start our Geekom A8 review with a brief unboxing. Inside the box is the Geekom A8 which we will take a closer look at shortly. Underneath is a quick start guide showing how to set up the mini PC.

Next there is an HDMI cable to connect to your display. There is a power brick and power cable with a localised plug for your country. And last but not least is a VESA mount plate to attach the A8 to the back of your display.

Geekom A8 Overview

Next in our Geekom A8 review we take a closer look at the mini computer itself. The Geekom A8 measures around 4.42 x 4.42 x 1.45 inches (11.24 x 11.24 x 3.7 cm) and weighs 432g. It is made from an aluminium case with metallic finish which looks nice on your desktop.

On the front are two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, a 3.5mm headphone port and the power button.

The left side has a full size SD card slot which is always preferable over a Micro SD card slot.

The back from left to right has the power input, a USB 4 Gen 3 Type-C port and below the first of two HDMI 2.0 ports. This is followed by a 2.5Gbps ethernet port. Next we have a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port and a good old USB 2.0 Type-C port. To the right of those are a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port and the second HDMI 2.0 port.

With the use of the two HDMI and 2 USB Type-C ports you can use up to quad monitors supporting up to 8K resolution which is very impressive.

The USB 4 Gen 3 port supports up to 40Gbps, up to 15W PD 3.0 and external devices including SSDs and eGPUs such as the GPD G1 eGPU docking station. We will check out an eGPU later in the review.

Geekom A8 Technical Specifications

There are two models of Geekom A8. The first with the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS and the second with the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS processors. Both come with the AMD Graphics 780M GPU which we have seen in plenty of mini PCs and handheld gaming PCs such as the GPD WIN MAX 2 2024. We are reviewing the 8945HS model with 32GB RAM and 2TB SSD.

It comes with 32GB 5600 MT/s DDR5 (up to 64GB supported) RAM and options of 1TB or 2TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 SSD. For communications there is fast Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 and the 2.5Gbps ethernet.

In our power usage tests we got an idle usage of around 4.6 W, and while running the Cinebench benchmark on a loop we got a high of 78.4 W.

Also while running Cinebench we tested the fan noise and thermals. We got a highest fan noise of 67 dB, and a highest temperature of 65 °C. The IceBlast 1.5 cooling system does a great job at keeping the internals cool, but the end result is the fan is quite loud and will definitely be noticeable if working with more demanding software in a quiet office for example.

System Benchmarks

As part of our Geekom A8 review we will be comparing the AMD mini PC with the previous generation 7840HS series of CPU. In addition, comparing with the newer 8840U CPU found on gaming handhelds such as the GPD WIN MAX 2 2024. They all feature the 780M GPU so we do not expect a great deal of raw GPU performance difference, but we will see differences in CPU performance.

PassMark

We start the benchmarks with PassMark which performs a series of tests on the CPU, GPU, RAM and Storage. We got a 1st place score of 8327.0 which is very impressive. For the CPU, RAM and SSD we get very high scores. And for 2D and 3D graphics we get middle to high scores, but do remember the 780M is an integrated GPU, and a very respectable score.

PCMark

PCMark tests your average day to day uses of a PC ranging from web browsing, video conferencing, working with office documents through to image editing and rendering.

We got a score of 7,469 which is fairly good. Across the board we see very good results for day to day usage, productivity and digital content creation. The UM780 XTX wins here by a large margin. 

Cinebench R23

Next in our benchmarks is Cinebench R3 which tests the CPU’s single and multi cores performance. We got scores of 1,782 and 15,778 for the Geekom A8 respectively. Around the average for single core and not far off the first place Minisforum UM780 XTX.

3DMARK

Our final system benchmark is 3DMark which tests the CPU and GPU working together. It’s not just for gaming, a strong GPU is ideal for image and video editing for example.

In Time Spy we got 3,242, on Fire Strike 7,715 and Night Raid 27,934. All three scores are around the average especially when compared with other devices using the Radeon 780M GPU.

Gaming benchmarks

If it’s got a good GPU then we can’t resist some gaming benchmarks! We are again comparing the same devices across 720P, 1080P, 1440P and 4K for the Geekom A8 review. 

Forza Horizon 5

For Forza Horizon 5 we are running on the Very Low graphics settings. We get a mix of above and below the average as we go through the four resolutions. We do see the highest frames per second of 159 on the A8 which is great!.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

We are running Shadow of the Tomb Raider on the Lowest graphics settings. We do overall see lower than expected performance compared to the other models. This can be due to differences in graphics drivers versions as we have noticed similar differences in the past on this game. 

Street Fighter VI

To push the Geekom A8 to the limits we are running on the Highest graphics settings. For the most part we see around average performance compared to the Beelink and GPD devices,

EGPU Docking Station Benchmarks

As the Geekom A8 has a USB 4 port we can connect it to an eGPU such as the GPD G1 2024 eGPU docking station. This will give the mini PC a massive boost in graphics performance which is not only great for gaming, but also perfect for tasks such as image and video editing.

We can see that once the AMD Radeon 780M iGPU is out of the picture that the Geekom A8 CPU works great with the eGPU. It has far higher performance than other devices when connected via USB. You will still get the best performance from an OcuLink port, but the A8 unfortunately does not have this.

Gaming Performance

We have run the benchmarks in our Geekom A8 review, but what about actual gaming? What resolutions and graphics settings can you realistically play games at?

Horizon Forbidden West

There are a few different combinations of graphics settings you can play. I went with 720P Medium graphics settings. I limited it to 30 FPS and enabled AMD FSR 2.2 Balanced to provide a solid 30+ FPS even in busier scenes.

Oceanhorn 2

For 60+ FPS I went with 720P on the High graphics settings. This will give you no problems with performance. You could go to 1080P and lower the graphics if you wanted to.

Spider Man

I decided on 720P on the Low graphics settings and limited to 30 frames per second. Normally you can go a bit higher but I think the graphics driver version I was using had some issues with this game.

Goat Simulator 3

I went with 720P on Medium graphics settings and limited to 30 frames per second. You could lower the graphics settings and increase to 60, but there is a noticeable difference in graphics quality between Low and Medium I think is worth staying at Medium for.

Hades II

You can run this great game at 4K on the high graphics settings at 60+ FPS with no issues. Happy days!

Emulation Performance

We know from the 8840U based handheld that we saw excellent performance for emulation right up to more recent generations. All of your 8-bit up to PS2 era are going to work perfectly. In most cases, if the emulator supports it, you can increase the internal rendering from the original console’s resolution up to 1080P and even 4K. In addition you can add a variety of graphics tweaks to improve the visuals to really make them look amazing! Lets see how some of the more demanding systems stand up in our Geekom A8 review.

For PS2 you can increase the rendering to 1080P with 16x Anisotropic Filtering and all games will work great. For less demanding games, you can increase to 4K if you wanted to. For PS3 we tried a bunch of different games, and apart from some occasional shader caching lags, the compatible games all worked amazingly well!

Moving on to the handheld emulator Ryujinx, we see near perfect gameplay for lesser demanding games and third party titles. You won’t have so much luck with high demanding games or first party titles though. You will need an eGPU to get these to a playable state. The same for the Xbox 360 emulator Xenia, low demanding games work great, high demanding games will have lower performance.

Final Thoughts of our Geekom A8 review

Time to sum up our Geekom A8 review. We saw excellent results on the system benchmarks, either in the top results or close to them. In particular we saw great results in CPU performance, and the fast SSD storage really makes a difference when working with large office documents, video editing and game loading times.

For gaming we do see a mix of higher and lower than average performance. In Forza we saw it get the highest frames per second in our comparison, but then in other games we did see some lower than average. The Radeon 780M iGPU does hold back the performance when used with the CPU. When the GPD G1 eGPU is connected there is an overall higher performance boost than when compared with other CPUs.

My only negative point on the Geekom A8 is the loud fan noise. We got a highest of around 67dB which is quite loud. This is fine for gaming where perhaps you have the game audio on, but it is less than ideal if working in a quiet room or office and you are using more demanding software.

The result is that the Geekom A8 is an impressive mini PC. For your daily workload either in the home or office you can expect very high performance to get these tasks done efficiently without any delay. On the gaming side you can enjoy a large number of games, the more demanding ones will be required to run at lower resolutions and graphics settings though. And for emulation you can enjoy all the classics right up to more recent systems.

Where to buy the Geekom A8

You can learn more and buy the Geekom A8 from the following stores. Use the discount code droixGKA8 for 5% off on Amazon and the Geekom Store. The code expires August 31st 2024.

Geekom A8 Ryzen 9 8945HS: Amazon US , Geekom Store
Geekom A8 Ryzen 7 8845HS: Amazon US , Geekom Store

We hope you have enjoyed our Geekom A8 review! If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comments.