AOOSTAR GEM12 Review: Mini PC with OCuLink, 2.5 GbE LAN and up to Ryzen 7 8845HS

The AOOSTAR GEM12 is a small desktop computer with a lot of features and a lot of customization options.

It features a set of ports that includes OCuLink, USB4, and 2.5 GbE LAN. It’s available with a choice of AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, Ryzen 7 7840HS or Ryzen 9 6900HX processor options. And it can be purchased as a barebones system or with up to 64GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.

Prices at the AOOSTAR shop start as low as $339 for a barebones model with a Ryzen 9 6900HX processor, $429 for a barebones Ryzen 7 7840HS version, or $479 for a barebones model with a Ryzen 9 8845HS processor.

Liliputing readers can also save an extra $30 on models with Ryzen 7 8845HS processors by using the coupon AOOSTAR GEM12 8845HS at checkout.

Several pre-configured models are also available from the company’s Amazon store, including a model with a Ryzen 9 6900HX processor, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, which is on sale for $424 when you clip the on-page coupon, as of June 25, 2024.

When selecting a processor, keep in mind that the Ryzen 7 8845HS and Ryzen 7 7840HS processors are very similar. The biggest difference is that the 8845HS has a higher-performance Neural Processing Unit (NPU). The Ryzen 9 6900HX, meanwhile, is a slightly older processor that lacks an NPU and features previous-gen CPU and graphics architecture.

All models feature an OCuLink port that can be used to connect an external graphics dock with support for data transfer speeds as high as 64 Gbps. And if you don’t have an eGPU with an OCuLink port, there’s also a USB4 port that supports 40 Gbps connections to graphics docks or other accessories.

AOOSTAR sent me a GEM12 with the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processor, fitted out with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB NVMe 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 AOOSTAR, and the company did not modify or approve the content of this article in any way.

Design

The GEM12 has a metal case with plastic top and bottom and measures 130 x 130 x 60 mm (5.8 x 4.7 x 2.4 inches). That makes it a little larger than the typical “NUC” sized other mini PCs I’ve tested, which typically tend to be closer to 117 x 112 x 54mm (4.6″ x 4.4″ x 2.1″).

But it’s still pretty small compared with a typical desktop tower PC.

On the front of the case you’ll find:

• 1 x illuminated power button
• 1 x 3.5mm headphone jack
• 2 x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2×1 (10 Gbit/s) ports
• 1 x USB4 (40 Gbit/s) port
• 1 x OCuLink (64 Gbit/s) port
• 1 x pin-hole UEFI/BIOS reset

It is important to note that the Optical-Copper Link (OCuLink) port does not support hot swapping. You must power off the mini PC first before plugging or unplugging any OCuLink cable. Otherwise you are likely to get a blue screen of death and face the possibility of data corruption or worse.

Both sides of the computer have large intake air vents:

The rest of the computer’s ports are on the back, including:

• 1 x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2×1 port (with support for 10 Gbit/s data, DisplayPort Alt Mode and USB Power Delivery)
• 2 x 2.5 Gb Ethernet port (Intel I226-V)
• 1 x HDMI 2.1 port
• 1 x DisplayPort 1.4
• 2 x USB Type-A 2.0 (480 Mbit/s) ports

There’s no traditional 5.5 x 2.5mm power jack. Instead you can power the computer using the rear USB Type-C port with the included power adapter. Both the USB Type-C port on the back and the USB4 port on the front support USB Power Delivery. So you can power the computer using either port with a USB PD 100 W or higher power supply.

Personally, I prefer to have a dedicated power jack, because you basically lose access to a USB-C port when you plug in a power supply unless you also connect a USB hub that supports passthrough power. And doing that adds to the price of the mini PC and also increases the physical footprint.

To access the GEM12 mini PCs’ motherboard you first need to remove the rubber feet on the bottom of the device, and then the screws they conceal. Interestingly, the feet are not initially installed when receiving the device, but come with the mini PC in a small accessories plastic bag. I actually received two sets of feet, with one labelled 5 mm and the other labelled 8 mm giving me the option of slightly raising the device to improve air flow if required.

With the screws removed the plastic base cover can then be lifted off. However the base contains a small cooling fan and you must be very careful as attached to the base are its power cable together with the two WiFi antennas.

The power cable is quite short so it is best to disconnect this from the motherboard. Fortunately the WiFi antennas are sufficiently long enough to allow the base to be laid down next to the chassis.

The motherboard has two SODIMM slots with support for DDR5 memory and the review unit came with two sticks of Crucial (CT16G56C46S5.M8G1) 16 GB RAM for a total of 32 GB of memory.

There are also two M.2 2280 slots for PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe storage with the review unit having the left-most slot populated with a Crucial P3 Plus (CT1000P3PSSD8) 1TB drive. It is also covered by a heatsink attached by two removable rubber bands. If purchasing a pre-configured system you also get an activated copy of Windows 11 Pro (version 23H2 OS build 22631.2861) installed on it.

Underneath the right-most M.2 2280 storage slot is the M.2 2230 slot for a WiFi card. The GEM12 ships with an Intel WiFi 6 AX200 160 MHz card that also provides Bluetooth 5.2 (LMP 11.8580).

Power for my review unit was provided by a Huntkey (HKA11019058-0A2) 100 W (19.0 V 5.26 A) power adapter with a USB Type-C connector and this was because the review model is the version sold in the US. For European customers, they will receive a Huntkey (HKA12019063-0A3) 120 W (19.0 V 6.32 A) USB Type-C power adapter and the bottom label will reflect 6.32 A.

Also included in the box is an HDMI cable, a VESA mount with screws, two NVMe heat sinks each with a thermal pad and three rubber affixing bands, the aforementioned rubber feet, an English/Chinese/Japanese user manual and a “Thank You” card which included the after-sales service contact details.

Performance on Windows

Initially I updated Windows 11 Pro by applying all the available updates, taking it to version 23H2 OS build 22631.3593.

All of the computers ports worked as expected with the exception of the “full-featured” rear USB-C 3.2 port. This port would only work with cables that can best be described as having a “slightly longer” USB-C connector that measures 7mm in length. The port is quite deep-seated and is not flush with the case’s rear panel, resulting in most USB-C cables not properly making a connection and being very prone to simply fall out if lightly nudged.

The included power adapters do not support any Power Delivery protocols so they will only work in the rear USB-C port. However USB PD chargers (i.e. USB PD power supplies) will work with either of the Type-C ports (assuming no “length” issues with the rear one) and AOOSTAR offer the following supplementary recommendations when using one:

• If you use a USB PD power supply, it is best to use PD revision 3.1 and 140 W.
• If you use a 100W PD power supply, change the UEFI/BIOS setting “P3T” to 70 W.

Both the power adapters are much smaller in size than the more traditional 19 V brick adapter that has typically been provided with most recent high-end mini PCs.

But the provision of two types of power adapters based on location of purchase is also slightly confusing. The US version, the 100 W Huntkey HKA11019058-0A2 adapter, is labelled as requiring an input of 100 to 120 V and uses 1.6 A to produce its output of 19 V at 5.26 A. The EU version, or 120 W Huntkey HKA12019063-0A3 adapter, is labelled as 200 to 240 V and only uses 0.8 A to produce its output of 19.0 V at 6.32 A.

AOOSTAR has advised me that both adapters actually accept a wider range of input voltages and actually support 100 to 240 V regardless of their input label. Interestingly one of AOOSTAR’s competitors, Beelink, also uses this same mix of adapters, albeit with 5.5 mm power jacks, and have similarly stated they support the wider input voltage range.

What was comforting is that the attached power cable is marked, i.e. rated. Amongst the text stamped into the cable is “E323876 AWM STYLE 11353 16 AWG 80°C 300V” so it was safe to use for my testing given the nominal voltage of electricity here is 230 V. As the cable didn’t melt or even get hot, the adapter is also likely only drawing a maximum of 0.8 A.

I ran a set of benchmarks using “Performance Mode” in the UEFI/BIOS settings and Windows Power mode set to “Best performance” which together set the values for PL1 to 65 W and PL2 to 70 W. The “Slow PPT Time Constraint” (or “Tau”) was set to 5 seconds and Tjmax was 89 °C by default.

I started performance testing by using Crystal Dew World’s CrystalDiskMark to measure storage performance on the included M.2 2280 NVMe drive:

The official specification lists the read and write speeds as 5,000 and 3,600 MB/s respectively. So the performance seen is very good for the drive. As a PCIe Gen 4 drive it isn’t the fastest available, however these are quite respectable speeds and are better than for a Gen 3 drive.

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 several other high-end mini PCs I’ve tested recently, for the sake of comparison.

The results show that the CPU performance is very similar for each of the mini PCs. So are the iGPUs with the exception of the Intel Iris Xe Graphics which trails behind recent AMD processors, as well as Intel’s newer Meteor Lake processors with Intel Arc integrated graphics.

There are also some variances in disk and memory scores as these are dependent on the components used.

The only benchmark that is lower than expected for the GEM12 is the Procyon score. Rerunning the benchmark didn’t substantially change the results as each time they were within the expected margin from running multiple test runs. However, I did notice that there were subtle differences between each mini PC’s environment. For example, the iGPU driver, OS and application versions differed due to the testing being undertaken on different dates, obviously being dependent on what was available on the day of testing. The extent of variance caused by these differences has not been explored further.

I also ran 3DMark Time Spy which achieved a score of 3321 with a GPU score of 2955 and CPU score of 11182 which was also inline with the other mini PC’s results.

Functionality on Linux (Ubuntu)

I installed Ubuntu 24.04 LTS as a dual boot option on the GEM12, allowing me to choose between operating systems at startup.

I checked all the usual areas of concern like audio, Bluetooth and WiFi, and everything worked as expected. I also confirmed that the USB4 port could operate at 40 Gb/s (i.e. with two lanes of 20 Gb/s).

Power, Temperature and Noise

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

At idle the power consumption measured 11.3 watts and the top of the device was around 32°C in a room with an ambient temperature of 16.2°C. I also measured how loud the main top fan was by using a sound meter next to the device. Despite only idling, the main fan was making a noise like a fast ticking or clicking sound. I presume my unit’s fan is somewhat faulty as the noise registered 42.5 dBA on my sound meter. This seems very high given the device is doing nothing and I would have expected it to be near silent, with the fan either not running at all or spinning at a low speed.

I then ran a high workload which consisted of running Cinebench R23 in a ten minute loop along with running FurMark at full-screen. The maximum power draw I saw was 100.5 W but after several seconds this dropped to 96.5 W whilst the fan noise increased to around 47.6 dBA and the top of the device reached 41.6°C. This time the fan noise seemed appropriate as it was a genuine fan sound and no clicking could be distinguished. If the fan is faulty, the reading might be slightly higher than it should be, however probably not by much so this is a good indication of how loud it gets.

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.

When idling, the CPU temperature sat at 26°C and the CPU frequency fluctuates around 5050 MHz. At the start of stressing the system, the CPU temperature initially climbed to 77°C and the average frequency dropped to 4413 MHz. The CPU temperature then dipped to 74°C before climbing to an average of 82°C. During this period the CPU frequency dropped further to an average of 4330 MHz for the duration of the test. You can also see that at one point the CPU frequency bounced up slightly to around 4360 MHz causing the temperature to peak at 83°C. On completion of the test, the CPU temperature dropped rapidly before stabilising at its earlier idling temperature of 26°C and the average frequency became 5060 MHz although it very much fluctuated.

In summary, the key Windows power consumption scenarios were measured as follows:

• Powered off (shutdown) – 3.3 W
• UEFI (BIOS) – 16.0 W
• Idle – Windows 11.3 W
• CPU & GPU stressed – Windows 100.5 W then 96.5 W

Note that as mentioned earlier, the power adapter was only capable of providing 100 W maximum.

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” which resulted in an average FPS of 42. Dropping the graphics setting to “Low” resulted in an improved average FPS of 57.

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 GEM12 can play some “AAA” games at 1080p resolution, but to achieve an acceptable framerate, you’d probably have to reduce graphics quality in some more demanding games.

OCuLink vs USB4

One key selling point of the GEM12 is the inclusion of an OCuLink port, which is basically a standard that allows for external PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 connections using an OCuLink cable. While this standard will soon be superceded, as PCIe 5.0 and 6.0 will use the recently released CopprLink standard, over the past few years we’ve seen a number of mini PC, laptop, and handheld PC makers add OCuLink connectors to their products as a way of supporting high-speed accessories with up to 64 Gbps of bandwidth.

But there are still relatively few graphics docks or other accessories that support OCuLink. Fortunately the GEM12 also has a USB4 port. It offers a theoretical bandwidth of up to 40 Gbps. But while it has a minimum bandwidth available for data transfer of 32 Gbps, in reality it currently is just over 30 Gbps when coupled with the ASM2464PD controller.

This is still faster than Thunderbolt 3 which has a minimum data transfer bandwidth of 16 Gbps, and Intel suggests that it actually has a maximum available bandwidth of 22 Gbps due to bandwidth reservations.

I tested both the OCuLink and USB4 ports using an external GPU I will soon be reviewing. Without pre-empting those findings, I can reveal that whilst running the SOTTR benchmark, I got around 120 FPS over USB4 and around 145 FPS when using the OCuLink port.

This shows over 20% improvement in FPS for that particular game when using OCuLink rather than USB4. However, such an improvement is not representative of what you will always get, as it is very much dependent on both the GPU used and the game played.

Networking

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

Unfortunately the Intel WiFi 6 AX200 160 MHz card does not offer the 6 GHz band. However, testing over the 5 GHz band, which provides a link speed of up to 2402 Mbps, the GEM12 showed very good results.

UEFI (BIOS)

The UEFI/BIOS is slightly restricted and doesn’t offer all the settings you might want to change. But the minimum settings you would expect to see are available, and there are a couple of useful settings that you may want to try under “Advanced” and then “Power Configuration”.

The first is the further sub-setting again called “Power Configuration”. This has three preset options to choose from and they configure the “Power Limit” settings:

• “Silent Mode” sets PL1 to 45 W and PL2 to 54 W
• “Balance Mode” sets PL1 to 54 W and PL2 to 65 W
• “Performance Mode” sets PL1 to 65 W and PL2 to 70 W

Also under “Power Configuration” in “Advanced” you will also find the “P3T Limit” (or Peak Package Power Limit) setting. This is the setting you should change when following AOOSTAR’s advice if using a 100W PD power supply as they recommend changing its value to “70W”. This will prevent the instant shutdown that can be experienced immediately after turning the power on.

The AMD processor includes a “SMU” (or System Management Unit) which is a microcontroller that handles real-time events such as power management. To allow the highest power limit that AOOSTAR recommends of 75 watts, you need to change some different settings. To do that, open the “Advanced” menu and choose “AMD CBS” and then “SMU Common Options”. You need to go into “SmartShift Control” and toggle “SmartShift Control” to “Manual”. Then you can set all your required limits including setting “Fast PPT Limit” to “75000” which is 75,000 milliwatts or 75 W. If you also want to change the “Slow PPT Time Constraint” (or “Tau”), go back out to “SMU Common Options” and then set “PPT Control” to “Manual”. Now enter a new value in seconds and also update all the settings for the limits with the same values you previously used under SmartShift Control.

Verdict

The GEM12 has proven itself during my testing to be a capable and powerful mini PC. Both the CPU and iGPU performance is very good.

One weakness is that even the most expensive versions of the mini PC come with a WiFi 6 card rather than a newer card with support for WiFi 6E or WiFi 7. That means the GEM12 is not capable of using a 6 GHz WiFi band. However, as it physically is a M.2 2230 card in the GEM12, this could be swapped as part of a user upgrade if required. The 5 GHz band performance however was one of the best I’ve seen so such an upgrade is probably a low priority.

The cooling system works well including when the GEM12 is under extreme loads. The CPU temperature is kept below the maximum junction temperature at all times. I couldn’t confirm how noisy the fan was when idling as my unit emitted a clicking noise that probably indicated it was faulty. However under load, the fan wasn’t the noisiest I’ve heard indicating that a good fan is likely to produce perfectly acceptable noise levels. Hopefully the faulty fan issue isn’t widespread.

A key selling point for the GEM12 is that this mini PC offers both OCuLink and USB4 ports. While we wait for Thunderbolt 5 to arrive, OCuLink has emerged as a somewhat popular alternative interface because of its increased bandwidth compared with USB4/Thunderbolt 4. It’s been most widely adopted in handhelds and mini PCs from relatively small Chinese brands like AOOSTAR, MINISFORUM, GPD, and One Netbook. But it comes in handy if you’re looking to get the highest frames per second while playing AAA games on a PC that doesn’t have space for a discrete GPU inside the case.

By including an OCuLink port and a simple UEFI/BIOS configuration to put the mini PC in a “Performance Mode”, the GEM12 becomes a good candidate for gamers looking for a powerful set-up with a small footprint.

I’d like to thank AOOSTAR for providing the review unit. At time of publication, the GEM12 is available from Amazon and also available directly from AOOSTAR’s website. The configuration featured in this review (an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processor, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB NVMe) has a list price of $629, but you can save $30 on most models with Ryzen 7 8845HS processors by using the coupon AOOSTAR GEM12 8845HS at checkout.