My problem with mini PCs is that they always look like great value when you see them listed online, with great specs featuring the latest in mobile processing squeezed into a pint-sized form factor, until you realise that you're looking at a barebones unit. Sure, you get a great ickle chassis and loads of connections for your micro motherboard inside, but when you've got to then go off and buy your own RAM, SSD, and Windows license to kit it out inside that value proposition takes a bit of a pounding.
And, honestly, at $799 this Geekom A7 mini PC actually looks a little pricey considering the sort of gaming PC deal you can pick up for the same price. You can grab a full RTX 4060-based gaming rig for that money. But look closer, and you'll see you're getting a full 32 GB of DDR5-5600 memory and a 2 TB SSD—the sort of full PC you'll find at this price will exclusively sport 16 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD at most.
Then look even closer and you'll see there's a tasty PC Gamer discount code attached to this wee box that will slice another $120 off the Geekom A7 sticker price. At $679 this starts to become a great under-your-TV box, or micro office machine that will deliver impressive 1080p gaming as well as serious productivity chops thanks to that eight-core, 16-thread CPU at its heart.
The Ryzen 9 7940HS is a fantastic mobile chip. Sure, it's not the fancy chiplet stuff Zen 4 on the desktop is made of, but it's still the finest AMD laptop APU of the past generation. And that means you get the full Radeon 780M integrated GPU, which can really deliver the goods in games when you've got this much speedy RAM to help prop it up.
As well as the 2 TB Gen4 SSD, you're also looking at Wi-Fi 6E connectivity (if your router is up to snuff) and USB4 connectivity. So, if you jammed an external GPU into it you're suddenly looking at a very capable gaming PC.
For $679 you're getting a fully functional, high-functioning mini PC that is replete with all the techie good stuff you could want from a small form factor machine. And one that is really small form factor, you hear that, Nvidia?
