ACEMAGIC F2A Review: Intel Meteor Lake Mini PC

The ACEMAGIC F2A is a mini PC with a choice of Intel Core Ultra 5 125H or Core Ultra 7 155H processors based on Intel Meteor Lake architecture, support for up to two displays, and the latest networking technologies including WiFi 7 and 2.5 GbE Ethernet.

We wanted to know how those features perform in real-world settings, so we took ACEMAGIC up on their offer to send a demo unit to test for this review. While the computer offers decent performance, it’s a relatively expensive device when compared with some other mini PCs from Chinese brands. And unfortunately there are some shortcomings that make it difficult to recommend at its current price.

First introduced earlier this year, the ACEMAGIC F2A is available for purchase from the ACEMAGIC website or Amazon, with prices starting at $699.

ACEMAGIC sent an F2A with a Core Ultra 7 155H processor, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SD to test. This mini PC was provided to Liliputing for free, with no requirement that the computer be returned upon completion of the review. This review is not sponsored by ACEMAGIC, and the company did not modify or approve the content of this article in any way.

Is it safe to use?

Before going any further, here are the answers to a couple of questions I expect from anybody who has been following the Chinese mini PC space recently:

“No it didn’t” and “Yes I did”.

It may seem a strange way to start a review, but I want to immediately address the questions of “Did it come with any viruses?” and “Did you perform a full scan and/or offline scan for viruses?”

Late last year, some ACEMAGIC mini PCs were delivered with pre-installed software that set a shady website as the default search engine, and triggered virus warnings from Windows Defender. What ensued became a marketing nightmare for ACEMAGIC as consumers lost confidence with the brand. Now when you search for information about ACEMAGIC computers, odds are you’ll find plenty of reddit threads, YouTube videos, and comments on tech news sites where people tell you to stay away from ACEMAGIC PCs.

But not all ACEMAGIC systems were affected, and it’s unclear how widespread the issues were.

ACEMAGIC responded to the web browser incident with a software update, blaming the problem on a “previous supplier of bulk installation systems,” which had “independently added pre-installed software without ACEMAGIC’s explicit authorization.” ACEMAGIC has since cut ties with that supplier.

The company then responded to the virus alerts with a statement noting that “Our software developers, in an effort to enhance user experience by reducing initial boot time, made adjustments to the Microsoft source code, including network settings, without obtaining software digital signatures … This oversight led to isolated reports of virus-infected mini PCs”.

ACEMAGIC consequently took proactive measures to enhance product security and rebuild consumer trust by strengthening digital signature authentication for all released software.

While I cannot guarantee that all ACEMAGIC computers that are shipping today are totally virus and malware-free, I can say that the review unit the company sent me seems to be clean.

Design

The F2A is a little larger than many of the other mini PCs I’ve tested. It has an all-plastic case measuring 148 x 120 x 39 mm (5.8 x 4.7 x 1.5 inches).

On the front of the case you’ll find:

• 1 x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2×1 (10 Gbit/s) port
• 2 x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1×1 (5 Gbit/s) ports
• 1 x 3.5mm headphone jack
• 1 x illuminated power button

The left side has a large intake air vent at the top and a series of small vents along the bottom:

The right side only has the smaller vents around the bottom:

Most of the computer’s ports are on the back of the mini PC, including:

• 1 x pin-hole UEFI/BIOS reset
• 2 x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1×1 (5 Gbit/s) ports
• 2 x HDMI 2.0 ports
• 1 x 2.5 Gb Ethernet port (Realtek RTL8125)
• 1 x power jack

Note that while the ACEMAGIC website indicates that the USB Type-A ports on the computer are USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, they’re actually Gen 1 ports, which means they support speeds up to 5 Gbit/s rather than 10 Gbit/s.

There is also a Kensington Lock slot and some further air vents along the top of the rear.

The top of the device contains the fan:

So you have to access the motherboard’s main swappable components from the bottom of the device. First remove the rubber feet which actually screw into the base.

The plastic base cover can then be removed. However it has a small fan which is attached to it. Lift the base, and you’ll see the computer’s two M.2 2280 slots for PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe storage and two SODIMM slots with support for DDR5 memory.

You can easily unplug the fan to fully remove the base, giving you easier access to the memory and storage.

The F2A comes with a pre-installed Kingston Industrial (OM8SEP41024Q-A0) 1 TB drive. It doesn’t include a heatsink, but it is loaded with an activated copy of Windows 11 Home (version 22H2 OS build 22631.2428).

The two SODIMM slots are for DDR5 memory and can support a maximum speed of 5600 MHz. The review unit came with two sticks of Kingston (CBD56S46BS8HA-16) 16 GB RAM for a total of 32 GB memory. However it was configured to run only at 4800 MT/s.

Underneath the plastic tray is the motherboard which has a soldered-on CPU. You can either purchase the F2A with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor or the slightly less powerful Core Ultra 5 125H processor:

The computer ships with an Intel BE200 wireless card with support for WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 (LMP 13.16753). If you ever need to access that card, you have to remove the top plastic grill which is simply clipped in place.

This exposes the motherboard and fan assembly.

Once unscrewed this whole assembly can be removed from the case, noting that the WiFi aerials are still attached to the side of the case.

Power is provided by a Kuanten (KT120A1900630B3) 119.7 W (19.0 V 6.3 A) power adapter with a separate C13 “Kettle” power cord.

Also included in the box is an HDMI cable, a VESA mount with screws and a user manual.

Performance on Windows

Initially I updated Windows 11 Home by applying all the available updates, taking it to version 23H2 OS build 22631.3527.

Following testing of all the ports, besides the USB-A 3.2 ports being slower than advertised, everything else worked as expected.

I ran a set of benchmarks using the stock UEFI/BIOS settings and Windows Power mode set to “Best performance” together with the default settings for PL1 of 64 W and PL2 of 90 W, Tau set to 28 seconds and a Tjmax of 110 °C.

I started performance testing by using Crystal Dew World’s CrystalDiskMark to measure storage performance:

The included M.2 2280 NVMe drive is from Kingston’s Industrial line of SSD products. The official specification lists the read and write speeds as 3,700 and 2,600 MB/s respectively. So the performance seen is correct. Unfortunately the picture on ACEMAGIC’s website is misleading as it shows a read speed of 5000 MB/s.

I then ran the following benchmarks:

• PassMark Software’s PerformanceTest (general performance)
• UL’s 3DMark (CPU and graphics) and Procyon (office productivity)
• Maxon’s Cinebench (CPU)
• Primate Labs’s Geekbench (CPU and graphics)
• Unigine’s Heaven (graphics)

In the table below I’ve also included scores for two other high-end mini PCs I’ve tested recently, for the sake of comparison. The Simply NUC Onyx NUC13OXv9 features an Intel’s Core i9-13900H while the GEEKOM A7 has an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor.

The results show the massive improvement in graphics when compared with Intel’s previous-gen Core i9-13900H processor, which can be attributed to the move to Intel ARC integrated graphics.

But single-core performance is actually lower in most benchmarks, while multi-core performance has improved (most likely due to the fact that the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor has two more physical CPU cores than the Core i9-13900H).

Meanwhile AMD’s Ryzen 7 7940HS continues to be competitive with Intel’s latest chip in both CPU and graphics performance.

I also ran 3DMark Time Spy which achieved a score of 3658 with a GPU score of 3278 and CPU score of 10704 which makes it competitive with AMD’s Radeon 780M.

Performance on Linux (Ubuntu)

I installed Ubuntu 24.04 as a dual boot option on the F2A, allowing me to choose between operating systems at startup.

Similar to Windows, I checked all the usual areas of concern like audio, Bluetooth and WiFi, and everything worked as expected (again noting that the USB Type-A ports are 3.2 Gen 1 i.e. 5 Gbit/s ports).

On Ubuntu I only ran the following benchmarks:

• PassMark Software’s PerformanceTest (CPU and memory)
• Primate Labs’s Geekbench (CPU)
• Unigine’s Heaven (graphics)
• Thomas Kaiser’s “sbc-bench” (server performance)

The “sbc-bench” results should be available online at https://sprunge.us/WkKHvi. However as the website currently appears to be non-functioning, they can be seen in the following screenshot:

The Ubuntu results are interesting as whilst the CPU scores are similar to those seen on Windows, the iGPU score highlights a likely driver issue.

When I initially tried playing a 4K60FPS video in Firefox it dropped 671 frames out of 4051. Once I started to install a few drivers, performance improved, and only 73 frames were dropped out of 4042. Intel ARC GPU support on Linux has always been a work in progress, so it’s not surprising that Windows performance was more consistently reliable. But hopefully this is something that will improve over time as Linux developers continue to improve support for Intel’s integrated graphics.

Power and Temperature

Whilst running Windows, I stressed the system and measured the power consumption by connecting a meter to see how much electricity the computer was drawing from a power outlet.

The workload consisted of running Cinebench R23 in a ten minute loop along with running FurMark at full-screen. I also monitored the CPU temperatures on Ubuntu whilst similarly stressing the system. However on Ubuntu the workload consisted of running “stress” on all CPU cores.

The power consumption at idle measured 9.6 watts and the main fan was silent most of the time. But rather strangely, the fan occasionally turned on and then off in frequent little bursts before becoming silent again. The idling temperature was around 50°C in a room with an ambient temperature of 17.1°C.

When stressing the system, the power usage initially rose to around 102 watts but then averaged around 100.4 watts. In turn, the CPU temperature hit 82°C during the same period, and then dropped to an average of 77.3°C for the duration of the stress testing. Interestingly, the maximum core frequency essentially stayed consistent at 4400 MHz. In response, the main fan ramped up and averaged 47.8 dBA. But it was loud, very loud.

Normally I check the temperature on the top of the device to see if it becomes alarmingly hot. However due to the design of the F2A, the top of the computer actually gets cooler under heavy load, as increased workloads cause the main fan to spin faster, drawing ambient air in from the top of the computer.

The biggest issue I encountered was during gaming. When running the Shadow of the Tomb Raider (SOTTR) benchmark, power usage averaged around 53.4 watts. However the main fan kept pulsating, going from 36.5 dBA up to a very loud 50 dBA. Gaming on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II resulted in an even worse fan behaviour. During the loading of the game, the fan main kept bursting to full speed (and loudest noise) becoming somewhat annoying. Then when the game started, the main fan ran full speed and the noise measured between 47.7 to 49.9 dBA.

Unfortunately, when exiting the game and returning to idle, the main fan continued running at the same high speed and loudness, even though the power usage dropped to 12 watts indicating the fan alone was using 2.4 watts. This wasn’t an isolated case. If I pushed the mini PC by running heavy loads, the main fan would seemingly get stuck in this full-on mode.

Worse still, if the mini PC was shutdown when in this full-on mode, it seemed to remember the fact so that when rebooted, the main fan immediately started back in the very loud full-on mode. And this happened regardless of OS. It would then take running a sufficiently high load for a relatively short period for the fan to reset itself. However, actually getting the main fan to reset like this was a bit hit-and-miss.

If the main fan behaves, it can then be considered just as a loud fan. But again that is likely due to the design. This fan draws air from the top of the mini PC unlike many mini PCs which draw air in from either the bottom or from the side. It seems that one’s ear is more susceptible to hearing the main fan due to its position, effectively acting as a directional speaker.

The key power consumption scenarios were measured as follows:

• Powered off (shutdown) – 0.4 W
• UEFI (BIOS) – 28.1 W
• Idle – Windows 9.6 W, Ubuntu 9.2 W
• CPU & GPU stressed – Windows 102 W then 100.4 W; Ubuntu 97.5 W

Gaming

Given the strong performance of the iGPU when running Unigine’s Heaven benchmark, I looked briefly at the performance whilst gaming on Windows.

Initially, I ran the built-in benchmark in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (SOTTR). Using the default graphics setting of “High” resulted in an average FPS of 35.

Dropping the graphics setting to “Low” did result in an improvement, but only to an average FPS of 46.

I then tried enabling XeSS. For the “High” default graphics setting combined with an XeSS setting of Quality, improved performance to an average of 39. By setting XeSS to Performance, the average improved to 47. Finally, by dropping the graphics setting to “Low” whilst keeping XeSS at Performance managed to get a performance average of 56 FPS.

I also ran the built-in benchmarks in two further games: Horizon Zero Dawn and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II using the default settings of both performance and quality.

The results show that the F2A can play some “AAA” games at 1080p resolution, but Intel ARC integrated graphics don’t yet offer the same level of performance as recent AMD Radeon integrated graphics.

Networking

The 2.5 GbE LAN port network throughput is very close to the top speeds you’d expect from the hardware.

The Intel WiFi 7 BE200 card is slated as providing a link speed of up to 2402 Mbps over the 5 GHz band and up to 2882 Mbps over the 6 GHz band.

When tested, it did connect to both the 5 and 6 GHz band at the highest link speeds, but interestingly the WiFi was faster over the 5 GHz band.

UEFI (BIOS)

Overall, the UEFI/BIOS is reasonably open with most of the options a user would need to access being available. These include setting Power Limits and memory overclocking.

Unfortunately, one set of controls I couldn’t find anywhere were for fan curve management. However it may be buried somewhere amongst the options, and I’ve just missed it.

Given the fan issues experienced, it is probably the first thing that needs to be looked at if trying to improve the overall user experience.

Verdict

Unfortunately the ACEMAGIC F2A is an underwhelming mini PC. Not from a performance viewpoint as it has improved graphics performance over previous generations of Intel mini PCs. It also has a dedicated NPU … if you actually have a need for one. The problem with the F2A is that its usability is compromised by the limitations of the ports being offered.

The slow speeds of the USB Type A ports is disappointing as they are all only 5 Gbit/s. And the omission of a USB4 or Thunderbolt port is frankly unacceptable given the price of the mini PC. So this means no eGPU usage unless you go the DIY NVMe route. It also results in the single USB Type C port being the fastest port on the device at 10 Gbit/s.

The strange behaviour of the computer’s fan is also unusual and disappointing. Not only can the fan be obnoxiously loud from time to time, but it’s also hard to predict when the fan will become noisy and difficult to get it to quiet down once it does. Perhaps this can be addressed by a UEFI/BIOS update. However such updates are typically as rare as hen’s teeth from the majority of mini PC manufacturers.

When searching for positives about the F2A, each always seemed to be coupled with a negative. For example, the CPU performance is impressive, but look how high those power usage figures are when under load. There is a 2.5 GbE port, but why only include one of them? When you purchase the mini PC it comes with an activated Windows licence, but it is only Windows Home and not Windows Pro meaning there’s no built-in remote desktop feature. I did appreciate the WiFi 7 card inclusion, but not many routers and/or other devices support WiFi 7 yet.

In summary, this is a missed opportunity for ACEMAGIC. The F2A is essentially a powerful processor in a budget case at a premium price. Additionally, it is only sold as a preconfigured system and no barebones version is available.

I’d like to thank ACEMAGIC for providing the review unit. At time of publication, the F2A is available from Amazon and also available directly from ACEMAGIC’s website.

Prices start at $699 for an entry-level model when you apply the coupon code ACEF2AFD at the ACEMAGIC website. Prices are a little higher if you order from Amazon.

The configuration featured in this review (an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD) has a list price of $1,199, but is currently on sale for $799.