This processor comes with 16 GB of RAM memory DDR4 3200 MHz on two SO-DIMM modules of 8 GB each, although they can be replaced by up to 64 GB of RAM. As for storage, it leaves the factory with a 512 GB PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD, which isn’t the most modern or the fastest but it will be more than enough for this team’s needs. Also inside we have a hole to install an additional 2.5 inch drive.
Finally, to highlight its wide connectivity which includes a Gigabit RJ45 port and WiFi 6 for the network, as well as Bluetooth 5.2 (in this way, if you put it behind the monitor, you will only have to connect the power cable and the video cable, since you can connect the peripherals via Bluetooth and the network over Wi-Fi). It also has 3 USB 3.2 ports and two USB 4 ports, in addition to the usual audio minijack and an SD card reader.
Unboxing and external analysis
The Geekom Mini IT11 comes packaged in a deluxe rigid cardboard box as it gives us the impression of being in front of a Premium category product. At the top we can see the company logo and basically the model of the mini PC, while on the back we simply have a label that lists its hardware.
On the sides, just as Intel does on its NUCs, we have some images that show us precisely the sides of the device, with all its connections and so on.
The box opens by removing the upper part, and in doing so, we can directly see the mini PC protected by plastic and, in turn, enclosed in a black expanded polystyrene structure to protect its integrity during transport.
Let’s start by looking at what comes in the box besides the mini PC itself; To start, we have a “letter” thanking us for purchasing a branded product and a brief instruction manual.
Also included are an HDMI 2.0 cable, the VESA adapter to install it on the back of a monitor as we mentioned earlier, and the necessary screws to anchor both the mini PC to the VESA bracket and a disk. 2.5″ which, as we have already mentioned, it can also be installed indoors.
To finish with the accessories, we also have an external power supply with its European power cord. This power supply is 64.98W and has a standard connector.
We are now going to see the Mini IT11, which, as we mentioned before, is initially protected by a plastic that we must remove.
Externally, the Geekom Mini IT11 looks quite sleek with gray and black colors, but the entire outer casing is plastic except for the vents.
Let’s see all its parts: on the front we have, from left to right, a status indicator LED, a USB-C port (USB4), a USB 3.2, a 3.5 mm mini combo jack and the power button.
At the rear, a hot air outlet grille dominates the entire tray. Below, from left to right, we have the power connector, mini DisplayPort, RJ45 Gigabit, two USB 3.2, another USB 4 and the HDMI 2.0 output.
On one of the sides we have an air intake grille and the SD card reader.
While in the other, another grille dominates almost the entire surface, in addition to a Kensington security lock.
We go to the lower area, where we find the same typical structure as in the NUC: four feet with rubberized screws that we will have to remove to access the interior, as well as four perforations with rubber covers that we are going to have to use if we want to use the VESA anchor.
After seeing the device from the outside, let’s see what it hides inside.
It’s the Geekom Mini IT11 inside
As we have just mentioned, accessing the interior of the device is as simple as removing the four screws from the feet and removing it, giving us direct access to the interior.
In the part that we removed we have the hole to install a SATA 3 storage device already prepared and connected, so just insert it, screw it and that’s it. If you look closely, in this area they installed a thermal pad to passively cool the SSD.
Inside the Mini IT11 we have direct and easy access to the two SO-DIMM RAM memory modules and the M.2 socket, which houses a factory-installed Lexar NM620 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD (the RAM is also Lexar , by the way, and that’s fine because we always prefer branded hardware over OEM.)
There is no access from here to the WiFi + Bluetooth module, which comes from the bottom (in fact we see the antenna cables above the SSD in the photo above), and changing it would be much more complicated, just like its blower fan, processor, etc. Since this is a mini PC designed to plug and play, we won’t go into detail, so we’re ending this section here.
Geekom Mini IT11 Performance Tests
In fact, to operate this mini PC we will only have to connect it to the power outlet and to a monitor, since as we mentioned before, thanks to WiFi we can have an Internet connection and thanks to the Bluetooth we can connect a wireless mouse and keyboard, being its use more comfortable and leaving us an aesthetic appearance on the desk cleaner and more sober.
However, as the Geekom Mini IT11 comes with Windows 11 Pro installed from the factory, for the initial setup we will need to connect some peripherals via USB before we can configure others wirelessly; keep that in mind.
That being said, let’s start with the tests, and as we always do, showing you a screenshot of CPU-Z which is going to show us the material that it mounts.
As you can see, CPU-Z is not able to detect the specific CPU model, and that’s a bit strange because it’s already a few years old… anyway, you already know it’s is an Intel Core i7-11390H with 4 cores and 8 threads that can go up to 5 GHz at their maximum turbo speed. We can also see the RAM memory, in total 16 GB DDR4 at 3,200 MHz.
On the other hand, this is what GPU-Z tells us about the integrated graph.
In this case it detects it perfectly and shows us the integrated Iris Xe which works up to 1400 MHz, a graphic which obviously will not allow us to play triple A titles but which can be quite noticeable for simple games , Yes. it is true that this mini PC is not designed for gaming.
noise and temperature
The biggest problem with mini PCs, and especially those with powerful hardware like this, is that they get quite hot and due to their small size, very good thermal solutions cannot be integrated. In the case of this Geekom Mini IT11, it has a heatsink with a blower fan that cools the processor only and exclusively, that is, we have no dissipation for the rest of the elements except, as we saw by looking inside, a thermal pad for the SSD.
However, we can tell you that the equipment was not noisy at all, not even under maximum load; Yes, it is true that the fan does make itself heard when we “hit” it, but unless you have the room in complete silence, you won’t even notice it.
As for the temperature, having 23ºC in the room where we tested it, the processor remains at around 45-50ºC at rest and reached 80ºC under load, a perfectly acceptable temperature because it is far from the limit; However, it would be necessary to see what level of noise and temperature the equipment presents over the long term, for example after a year of daily use.
synthetic benchmarks
We will start with the tests, and as always we first proceed to measure the performance of the SSD with CrystalDisk brand.
We’ve seen before that the SSD is PCIe 3.0, but even so those over 3400MB/s read and over 2600MB/s write turn out to be excellent making everything very fast and agile, so nothing to object to
We continue to see the performance of RAM memory, and for this we use Aida64.
The performance this benchmark shows us is honestly excellent for 3200MHz DDR4 RAM, and in fact it’s almost on par with many LPDDR5 SO-DIMMs.
But a benchmark is one thing and a real situation is another, so to get closer to it we will subject the Mini IT11 to a test of Super Piwhere we will force the processor to calculate 32 million decimal places of the number Pi in an intensive operation for both the processor and the RAM.
The result is remarkable, almost at the level of many desktop DDR5 memories, partly thanks to the fact that the Core i7 processor of this mini PC has very, very good performance.
And speaking of processor, it’s time to see how it “hits” if asked to render 3D scenes with Cinebench R23.
Here we come to the other side of the coin, which is that the performance offered by this Core i7-11390H is a little below for 3D rendering. To give you an idea, the score obtained in both multi-core and single-core performance was lower than what can be obtained with a laptop equipped with a low-power Core i7-1355U.
Ok, we have to admit that it is not a mini PC designed for 3D rendering, but let’s see what overall performance it offers us with PC Mark 10a benchmark that will globally measure the performance of the entire team in everyday situations (videoconferencing, navigation, office automation, etc.), where all the material elements that compose it are involved.
These almost 4,800 points in PCMark 10 tell us that the performance of the Mini IT11 is notable or particularly high, which clearly shows that it is an excellent mini PC for telecommuting tasks.
Finally, and although we have repeated several times that this mini PC with integrated graphics card is not intended for gaming, let’s see what results we obtain in 3DMarkstarting with Fire Strike.
With this result, it is quite clear that this device is not made for gaming, probably not even at 1080p resolution and low settings. But let’s see what he says time spywhich performs a similar test but using the DirectX 12 graphics API.
In view of these results, of course this PC is not designed to offer good performance in games and, nevertheless, we can expect excellent performance in multimedia tasks.
Conclusion and judgment
While it is true that we are not facing the most powerful or the cheapest mini PC on the market, the Geekom Mini IT11 has shown us quite solid and remarkable performances in all the tests to which we have submitted it, clearly indicating that if you intend to use it to work with the daily tasks that this entails (office automation, navigation, videoconferencing, multimedia, etc.) you will have equipment for some time.
From our point of view and after having tested it, this mini PC gives soups of waves to these cheap mini PCs that we can buy for only 200 $ in all areas, from quality to sound, passing by performance. In short, we think this is one of the best options on the market right now if you’re looking for a decent mini PC that doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg to work from home.
For all these reasons, we think it deserves our gold medal, as well as our recommendation for its performance/price ratio.
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