The Geekom A8 AI is the Empire Strikes Back of the Geekom A-series – it's that good

Like buses, you wait ages for a mini PC with AMD's powerful 780M integrated GPU, and then two come along at once. Hard on the heels of MSI's Cubi Z AI 8M comes Geekom's A8 AI.

The Geekom challenger uses a very similar AMD Ryzen 7 CPU and the same integrated GPU, AMD's much-lauded and tried and tested Radeon 870M. The Geekom box is smaller and lighter than the MSI, but it also has fewer ports.

At first glance, the Geekom machine is also more expensive at £609 to £475, but Amazon, the only retailer pointed at from the MSI UK website, has a ship date of "12 February – 22 June, 2026" which is little use if you want a mini PC now.

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More importantly, when we queried this with MSI UK, it clarified that the £475 model is barebones, so no operating system or SSD. And the Geekom A8 comes with 32GB of DDR5 RAM as standard compared to the MSI's 16GB.

Factor is the price of upgrading the RAM, adding a 1TB SSD, and, assuming you want to run Windows, a Microsoft licence, then the MSI machine will be the more expensive of the two by no small amount.

Geekom's new challenger actually comes in two iterations. Alongside the model we were sent to test, there's another built around the Ryzen 9 8945HS processor. Both have 32GB of RAM and the same integrated GPU, but the Ryzen 9 machine comes with a 2TB SSD as standard and sells for £799.

MSI's UK website lists Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 5 versions of the barebones Cubi Z, but they are both listed as 'coming soon', and we've not been able to ascertain when, or if, they will officially go on sale in the UK.

Geekom A8 AI: Design

The A8 is one of the smaller Mini PCs to land on our desk here at ITPro, measuring just 112 x 112 x 38mm and weighing only 450g. The diminutive size is all the more surprising given that this is not a box built around a low-power chipset like the one inside the similarly diminutive Acemagic Vista V1.

The external case is a solid metal affair covered with a matte silver paint. The whole thing feels very solid and sturdy, and there's no give in the vent grilles that take up all the left and right-hand sides of the body.

On the front of the A8, you'll find the on/off button, two 10Gbps USB-A ports, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Turn the unit to the right, and you'll find an SD card slot, while at the rear, there are two more USB-A ports, one 10Gbps, one v2.0 480Mbps, two USB-C ports, one 40Gbps, one 10Gbps, two HDMI 2.1 video outputs, and a 2.5GbE RJ45 jack.

Both the Type-C ports can output DisplayPort video, but neither can be used to power the system. For that, you are dependent on the 120W rat-and-tail DC power supply. Given how small, light, and thus eminently lootable the A8 is, a Kensington lock of some sort would be appreciated. Geekom does, however, bundle a VESA bracket.

To get inside the A8, you need to remove four rubber feet, undo the four Philips screws beneath, remove the plastic base plate, and then undo four more screws to remove the metal shield that covers the motherboard, two SODIMM slots, and the mount for the 2280 SSD.

Care is required because firstly, there's a sticky thermal pad joining the metal plate and the SSD, and secondly, there's a short cable that connects the wireless modem to a Wi-Fi antenna fixed to the underside of the metal plate.

Moving the plate to one side to access the internals will almost certainly make the short wire ping off its motherboard attachment. Reattaching it is a fiddly process that requires a magnifying glass, tweezers, a steady hand, and the patience of an Old Testament prophet.

Given that you can't add a second SSD – a design feature common with the MSI AMD box – and that the one that comes as standard is a 1TB affair, and that you get two 16GB sticks of RAM, we'd argue there's no real need to go ferreting around inside the A8.

Wireless communications are handled by a MediaTek MT7922 card, which supports 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. Reception and performance were both good once we'd reattached the antenna cable.

The PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD is supplied by Chinese maker Wodposit, a name we'd not encountered before. Unfamiliar moniker aside, the drive performed very well, returning overage sequential read and write speeds of 5,669MB/s and 5,335MB/s, respectively.

Geekom A8 AI: Specs and Performance

AMD's Ryzen 7 8745HS Hawk Point family chip is not a common CPU, as it was originally intended for China-only use and never received an official launch in the rest of the world. The 8745HS features 8 cores and 16 threads running at up to 4.9 GHz, and is partnered with the ever-capable Radeon 780M iGPU.

The major difference between the 8745HS in the Geekom A8 and the 8845HS in the MSI Cubi Z AI 8M is that the latter includes a 16TOPS NPU, while the former lacks anything in the way of an NPU.

The irony of the Geekom box being named the A8 AI despite it not having an NPU is not lost upon us. Given that 16 TOPS isn't enough to warrant Copilot+ accreditation and thus support for Windows features like Recall, we regard the absence of an NPU as of little import.

On paper, the difference between the 8745HS and 8845HS is marginal, a matter of just a few watts more or less here and there. In testing, though, the Geekom's chipset enjoyed a small but consistent advantage over the one in the MSI box.

In ITPro's bespoke 4K multi-media Handbrake benchmark, the Geekom A8 scored 363 points compared to the MSI Cubi Z AI 8M score of 341 points. That score also puts it ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V-powered MSI NUC AI+ 2MG, which scored 301 points and, surprisingly, is even a nose ahead of the 356 scored by the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370-powered Geekom A9 Max.

In the Cinebench R24 multi-core CPU test, the new A8 AI scored 873 points. That compares to 378 and 1172 for its A5 and A9 Max AMD-powered Geekom stablemates, 871 for the MSI Cubi Z, and 468 for the Intel Lunar Lake-powered MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 2MG. Clearly, the A8 doesn't lack for raw CPU horsepower.

Turning to graphics performance, the A8 ran the SPECviewperf 3dsmax 3D modelling benchmark at 40fps compared to the 33fps from the Cubi Z AI 8M, 26fps from the MSI NUC AI+ 2MG, and 43fps from the Geekom A9. Given that the A9 Max is several hundred pounds more expensive and uses a more modern chipset, the A8's performance is impressive.

Though gaming performance is rather outside our remit here at ITPro, the A8 is capable of playing all but the most demanding 3D titles as long as you're prepared to dial the detail and lighting effects right down in pursuit of a half-decent frame rate.

If all you want is something to blast through something like Halo: The Master Chief Collection for an hour at lunch or while you wait for rush hour to die down, the A8 is the perfect tool, capable of pushing out frame rates significantly higher than most even high-end office monitors can match.

The A8's performance at no point strains the cooling system. After two full hours with the CPU and GPU running under maximum stress, utilisation levelled out at 97% and 100% respectively, with minimal fan noise.

The A8 comes loaded with a fully activated install of Windows 11 Pro, but everything worked as intended when running Ubuntu 24.10, making this a good platform for anyone wanting to use an open-source OS. It's a shame you can't buy the A8 without an operating system preinstalled to save some money.

Geekom A8 AI: Is it worth it?

At just over £600 at the time of writing, the new Geekom A8 AI is an impressive little machine. Performance is strong. Indeed, very strong, given how small and light it is, and the range of I/O ports is good, again considering the small size.

In fact, Geekom's A5, A8, and A9 Max boxes form a very appealing trio of AMD-powered Mini PCs, each offering highly competitive, indeed, class-leading performance for the price in a well-made and compact form factor.

Of the three, the A8 is arguably the most compelling. Geekom's The Empire Strikes Back to the A5's Star Wars and A9 Max's Return of the Jedi, if you will.

The only significant absence from the A8 is a Kensington security lock. Given how small and thus easily pocketable it is, we can see them going walkabout from some workplaces at an alarming rate.

Geekom A8 AI Specifications