hi guys Chris here back with the Gemini
Lake mini pcs that have been released by
Beelink recently so we have the X45 and
this is the X45 premium model which has
6 gigabytes of RAM the Intel Celeron J
4105 with a maximum turbo 2.5 gigahertz
then we have this model here which is
the Beelink x 55 now the X 55 slightly
more powerful it has 8 gigabytes of RAM
versus the 6 on this model double data
rate for speakers well 128 gigabyte SSD
in both of these models and they both
can take a 2.5 inch SSD or hard drive
that's set a 3 spec so this one has the
Pentium silver J5005 with a maximum
turbo of 2.8 gigahertz so there's the
difference between them we have more RAM
300 megahertz slightly faster processor
on this one 50 megahertz faster clock on
the GPU but their performance was very
very similar almost identical apart from
just slightly slower at this model here
but price-wise this is the one here to
go for and the model I will be focusing
on so use of a menu here which covers
the basic operation of it after service
some sort of thing here if you are
satisfied or depressed I think they have
been dissatisfied with the purchase so
you can call the support or whatever
system PC activation instructions or
check of it is actually activated and
there it is so you can see it is very
very small just a tiny little unit and
in the Box on the top here which is
labeled accessories in fact the whole
thing just comes right out so here we
have this is the plug for your 2.5 inch
SSD or mechanical hard drive if you
wanted to put like a huge one and there
you could up to 4 terabytes I think you
can get them now a bracket here so this
is for the VESA mount if you wanted to
mount it on the back of a TV or a
monitor just to get it out of the way
completely and here we have some
extension cables here so this actually
no that's our HDMI so we're on an HDMI
cable with it and then another one
here which is even shorter so depends on
what one you want to use to connect that
to your TV so that's why they I think
they've done that and good quality
cables as well by the looks of it plugs
on the end of them and the European
charger you can see here for its this
will be what will be powering it so
that's 12 volts 2 amps which is pretty
standard for the Gemini Lake and then
we've just got some screws here so some
of these here will be for the hard drive
to mount it inside which I'll show you
in just a minute and here for the VESA
mount bracket and so here we have the X
45 premium model which is my one so
we've got plastic on the top the bay
link logo there Intel inside there's a
vent on the side so this is passively
cooled so it should not have any thermal
throttling but we will have a tiny
little bit of fan noise I will cover
that in this video as well microSD card
slot there on the right along the front
we have a 3.5 when I'm in a headphone
jack with microphone support the power
button and 2 USB 3 ports on the left
some more events and like the Intel
nukes that I looked at we have a very
similar layout so two HDMI 2.0 spec ones
here so this is important so it's 4k 60
Hertz we're not limited to only 30 Hertz
anymore so you can run two monitors
Gigabit LAN port another two USB 3 ports
there a dcn for power of course even a
Kensington lock slot which is great to
have on there and this is the exit vent
here so the hot air will be coming out
of the back of this now this is just for
those that want to fit it in a TV
cabinet and perhaps you already have
like a DVD player or your PlayStation
Xbox or whatever it's got limited space
so the height of it you can see here is
just over four centimeters and then the
width of it this is around about 12
centimeters so it is tiny so the back
here we've got four solid rubber feet
and this has in fact where the screws
are so it will remove these now and I'll
show you the internals so the back is a
little hard to pry off because we've got
alloy against alloy so the whole outside
is made out of metal and the book
quality is rather decent not quite at
the same level as the Intel a little
mini pcs that I looked at so we pull
this off here
we can see here's our space now for the
hard drive here so this is where you'll
screw it into place
and then you need to apply a course that
cable they gave you in the box to that
and then onto the motherboard so the
internals do look a little messy don't
nee because they've got the battery
backup here for this is for the bias to
retain the seedings on there right there
and it's just stuck on with some
double-sided 3m tape by the looks of it
right here is our wireless chipset they
have put some glue over the plugs there
now this is common a lot of
manufacturers do do this and the reason
why they do it is so they don't
accidentally come off in transit so
people will have problems with their
wireless here is the plug there for the
setter that you need to plug into and
right there as the EM sorry no not MDOT
- I'm so used to saying that the em
setter SSD 128 gigabytes depends on the
version you buy of course now underneath
that slot is space for one of those half
mini PCIe cards here so what you could
use in that if you want to do is you can
probably put in then a wireless card so
if you weren't happy with the Intel
Wireless 3165 wireless AC you want to
something a little bit faster you can
put it in here but of course then you're
going to have to somehow and get rid of
that glue and then plug in those
antennas okay so I started here in the
buyers just wanted to show you a few
things so the bias is completely
unlocked to us this is great a lot of
Chinese manufacturers do do this that
means we can tweak a lot of settings and
also some that could get you in a little
bit of trouble and end up actually
breaking the system so I recommend not
messing about with us if you don't know
what the setting actually does so the
RAM speed
it's 2133 megahertz we've got six
gigabytes worth and according to the
chipset configuration here it is running
in dual channel alright so I've come to
the typical Windows setup menu see here
our language options were got English
German Spanish French Italian Chinese
and Russian Windows activated without
any problems it's the version 1709 so
this is not the latest build you will
need to run Windows Update to get that
right up to date to the latest redstone
5 or 6 or everything is out now so the C
Drive here if you take a look from
Windows when you first boot up you've
got around a hundred and
gigabytes free of course you can expand
upon that and you can see right here
that I have actually installed a 500
gigabyte 2.5 inch drive in there that's
gonna have my Steam games and few other
things on that for the purposes of this
review so the micro SD card slot it fits
in really nice and flush
but it's only running at USB to speed so
it's not a super high speed one
unfortunately which is a bit of a shame
there now the speeds of that C Drive we
have that SSD I do not know the brand of
it but the speeds are good here you can
see for a set of three not quite the
fastest but overall very decent we look
now at the device manager got real tick
for the LAN port there which is you goo
Bert Ethernet and then wireless AC this
is the 3165 a super common chipset and
it's not the fastest so maximum speeds
an FTP file transferred tests are just
over 300 megabits per second they're now
looking at a couple of synthetic
benchmarks so this is Geekbench for the
single core score is close to 1800 and
almost 5400 there so this is on par with
other devices many PCs that I've tested
with this processor very similar scores
are in fact to the in 4100 now the other
model I have which is the Gemini Lake X
45 sorry 55 that model gets right here
2000 and almost 6000 so it is a little
bit faster but as mentioned at the start
there this is probably the model I feel
that most people will go for which is
why I'm focusing more on this one here
so one more synthetic benchmark and this
is the pass mark rating here which is
quite good but when you have a look at
the CPU mark yes
it's out relatively low in fact very low
for the type of system as expected here
and also wanted to comment at the start
of the video while towards the start
here the temperatures because I know
this interests a lot of people now fan
noises to comment on it that it is very
quiet when it's on the lower sitting it
seems to have two seatings so once the
CPU reaches about 75 degrees it kicks
into what I think is 100 percent and you
can hear it but it's really not that
bothersome
also if you have this in a TV cabinet or
something like that or even away from
you you don't even really hear it and
it's really only when it gets over 75
degrees will you actually hear it
because the low setting you don't hear
anything so it does reach 91 degrees
okay it's getting hot but it's not
triggering any thermal throttling I
believe that be linked have that set to
probably a hundred degrees or 105 when
it will actually trigger that or maybe
95 it was probably because t-junction
max will be a hundred and five so that's
when it will put itself into sleep but
it doesn't trigger it so that is okay
but yes it is getting a little bit hot
but the actual little mini PC itself not
even really getting warm just a little
bit on the bottom of it so we're looking
at a maximum power draw once you're
gaming and using both the GPU in the CPU
at 13 watts now from the wall you add
about 2 watts more so you're looking at
about a maximum power consumption of
this little mini PC of about 15 watts
the whole package the whole thing so
that is really good looking at the
general performance so I'm doing I would
call medium to light multitasking right
now at the moment so I've got steam open
Chrome over and a few things now you do
notice that the performance in Chrome is
pretty good you see the animation there
sometimes a little stutter e there and
that's partly cuz I'm running so much at
the moment so I haven't quite completely
fooled up the RAM I'll just show you now
and it's getting there it's about 70%
almost full there so if I move over to
my website that is very smooth here in
chrome the scrolling no real problems
now this is very image heavy this site
and I'll just load up a page here and
you'll see that everything pops in
really quick so for these kind of light
tasks these little mini pcs are ideal so
also that covers office docks Excel
things like that which I have open at
the moment so here's an Excel
spreadsheet this is relatively large
this one here so searching a database
like verse it's gonna be fine your edits
I've also loaded in a very heavy doc
file here so this is 5 megabytes and
there's a huge amount of pages I mean
it's still actually loading them and at
the moment so very heavy test for this
but you can still go along and edit you
can see it's a little choppy so but it's
go and remove some text here
you can see the kind of speed to expect
there that it's not going to be super
fast but bear in mind that it is just a
massive file that I have open here so
the more you push it you do start to see
the the PC struggle a little bit this
Gemini Lake process so they do have
their limits remember this is not a
super powerful CP this is not a core i5
so things like editing video you can't
really do it I mean you can hit it 1080p
basic edits there that is going to be
okay but anything super demanding you
will run into problems now it also just
test out a couple of video files here
for some reason the windows video player
doesn't want to play the jellyfish file
here so this is a very high bitrate and
it's a 10 bit 4k HEV C codec which it
natively plays the hardware but for some
reason that doesn't want to open it so
I've got to use VLC player for that and
you see at the beginning there are a few
little stutters okay in even glitches
there at the start but once it gets
going it's actually alright just
remember that again this is a very
demanding file that I'm testing here so
it's great to see that there's how we
can even actually run it because you try
this on old generation Intel chips they
won't even be able to play it that will
absolutely struggle that and be like a
slideshow Kodi performance it's go
actually quite good it's probably even
better than VLC for some of the files so
right now I'm looking at an external
drive here so I've got my micro sd card
in here and what I'll do is just check
out that same video where I showed you
so 140 megabits per second 4k file see
how Kody handles it and look at the
difference 60 frames per second so Kody
comes highly recommended for video
playback of HEV C files because it's
just no stutters no problems in the
beginning and a solid 60 frames per
second there as you can see so no issues
I have had some questions on Twitter
that people asking me I did post that I
had this that I'm being testing it a lot
of people are asking about 4k so with HD
our 4k is working but no HDR it sings
because I'm not getting that sitting
even though my TV I'm using at the
moment does support it normally right
here under display you would see HDR
options that you can actually enable
that I get that on my desktop PC with my
HD are I set up I've got at home but
here you can't but it's running 4k 60
Hertz but for the HDMI ports without any
problems there so no issues there I
think someone asked me well their unit
they had they had some issues but I'm
not encountering any problems with that
whatsoever so 4k streaming I'm just
gonna check out one of my own videos
here so I don't run into any copyright
problems and we'll see how that runs so
just change that sitting over now to 4k
and will enable the steps see if it's
gonna be dropping any frames so you can
see it's not actually dropping any
frames or just one there so that's
keeping up that's running fine so what
happens when I put this into fullscreen
and it just dropped one frame there so
really good 4k performance out of this
tiny little mini PC now if you fancy do
a game on the side in 720p
on the lowest settings this is Counter
Strike and we're getting a playable
framerate most of the time and stepping
down a little bit so you can see it runs
around 30 just over 30 scraping and if
you lower the resolution down so if you
go with something like 800 x 600 which
doesn't look wonderful at all that will
boost the framerate up about 10 frames
per second making a lot smoother but I
just wanted to show you at 720p because
it's what I tested on the other systems
and here we have legal agents so this is
running in 1080p on the lowest sitting
and the frame rate I mean that's okay
around 30 frames per second but I have
seen a lot higher here so the gaming
performance out of this B link X 45
isn't really that great the X 55
slightly better performance but again a
little disappointing as well not as fast
as their Intel counterparts that I have
tested now I did test out the Linux this
is one of the latest builds off here of
Linux Mint no problems what so
everything's working Internet is working
and it's running quite well the
performance so far I'm just been testing
a few things out as expected so this is
good Linux support is there just make
sure you of course using a latest build
with the latest kernels okay so what
I've done now you can see the frame rate
is right up there as I have increased
the power limit and I've also changed
the thermals here so now we're getting
about 40 frames per second which is
great and it looks like I just died yep
but the performance you can see has
increased dramatically so the frame rate
is up but it still took it's down to
about 25 frames per second however we've
got a new high of about 50 much more
fluid much more playable in all the
games you test out there so you just got
to go in to the BIOS and increase the
power limits and then also tweak when
it's going to thermal straddles so just
pump up from I think it's set at 60 to
passively start to throttle you want to
change that to about 75 okay guys so
overall we have a very decent mini PC
here the performance for your typical
office and light tasks is excellent it's
good no problems with that whatsoever
you cannot edit 4k videos you can't play
call of duty you can't play the latest
triple-a titles I mean that's obvious to
most people but some people do get a
little bit confused there so where it
runs into a few little minor cons is the
fact that the USB ports are upside down
that's been picky there's no microphone
on this at all so if you want cortana
support you need to then plug in one of
those tiny little 3.5
inch minimally - sorry mics on to the
front of it so it's gonna be sticking
out and it's just a little additional
cost there it's not ideal but at least
there is a solution for that now where
it is disappointing as out of the box
the gaming performance is a little bit
crippled due to perhaps the power limits
but more where they have set it to
passively throttle so through the buyer
so you can see now with counter-strike
then playing here you can get very
decent frame rates now 720p on low
settings and that is because I have
increased the power limits and also
changed when it will throttle so now the
CPU is going to get a little bit hotter
up to about 93 degrees you hear the fan
a little more but it has really opened
up the performance so that's the only
real thing with this little meanie PC
apart from that great performance great
little unit and you don't really hear
that fan much at all with that with
normal tasks so when you start to game
then you hear the fan pick up a little
bit more but overall great little mini
PC so if you're interested in the
juvenile aches the may be seized I've
got a review here of Intel's and also
the Alpha wise one right up here please
check those out and I do hope to catch
you back in the channel with more
up-and-coming videos bye for now