GEEKOM is back with a fully qualified Copilot+ PC with its A9 Max offering. If you read Neowin"s reviews you are familiar with its mini PCs.
GEEKOM"s "A" series of Mini PC is described as:
The A series is crafted as the AMD Ryzen Mini PC with its advanced Ryzen Al processors, featuring exceptional aesthetic appeal, engineered to unleash its gaming capabilities and power of creative tasks fully.
With that out of the way, first a disclaimer: GEEKOM provided a free sample without any editorial input or review pre-approval. Now some specifications:
| GEEKOM A9 Max | ||
|---|---|---|
| Dimensions | ||
| Size | 135 × 132 × 46.9 mm (W × D × H) 5.32 x 5.2 x 1.8 inches | |
| Weight | 707 g (self-weighed) | |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 12C, 24T (Base 2.0 GHz, Boost 5.1 GHz) 24 MB L3 Cache, TDP 28W | |
| Graphics | AMD Radeon 890M (16 CU"s, 2900 MHz) | |
| NPU | 50 TOPS (dedicated) with a combined 80 TOPS | |
| Memory | 32GB Dual-channel DDR5 5600 MT/s Wodposit SODIMM | |
| Storage | 1 x M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 x4, Lexar NQ7A1 PCIe 4.0 SSD 2TB 1 x M.2 2230 PCIe Gen 4 x4, Unpopulated | |
| Operating System | Windows 11 Pro 24H2 | |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth v5.4 | |
| Ethernet | Intel® 10/100/1000/2500 Mbps RJ45 Ethernet | |
| Wireless LAN | MediaTek MT7925 M.2 Wi-Fi 7 LAN card | |
|
| ||
| Rear I/O ports | 1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A 1 × USB 2.0 Type-A 1 × USB 4.0 Type-C DP-Alt-Mode / PD-In 1 × USB 4.0 Type-C DP-Alt-Mode, 2 × Ethernet RJ45 2.5 Gbit/s 2 × HDMI 2.1 1 × DC-In | |
| Front I/O ports | 3 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A 1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A Always On 1 × 3.5 mm headphone jack | |
| SD Card slot | 1 × SD card reader 4.0 | |
| Kensington Lock | Yes | |
| Power | 19V, (120W External PSU) | |
| MSRP | $1,199 | |
The A9 Max is powered by the July 2025-released AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 mobile CPU built on the Zen 5 architecture with Socket FP8. Thanks to AMD Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT), the 12-core count is effectively doubled, to 24 threads. It runs at a base speed of 2.0 GHz and can boost to a max turbo frequency of 5.1GHz. However, overclockability is limited on this chip since the multiplier is locked. On the graphics front, the HX 370 includes a Radeon 890 M integrated GPU with a max GPU frequency of 2900 MHz across 16 cores. It has been said that the iGPU is equivalent to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 in gaming and synthetic benchmarks. On the AI front, the HX 370 features a dedicated NPU (50 TOPS) and is rated at up to 80 TOPS, combining CPU cores, GPU cores, and NPU. Other highlights include DDR5 memory at 5600 MT/s, WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, an SD card slot and a Kensington Lock.
AI PC?
This qualifies as a Copilot+ PC thanks to the dedicated NPU delivering up to 50 TOPS, and as previously mentioned, with help from the CPU and iGPU cores, it is capable of a combined 80 TOPS.
I"ll just say straight off, the packaging and build are similar to others in the A series that I have reviewed, such as the A6, A7, and A8, so my findings will not be any different on that front. I can tell you that it still exerts the same premium feel as you pull the top of the box off to reveal the Mini PC sitting inside the cardboard mold interior. Once you have the PC out and the mold is removed, you are greeted with an envelope. Below that, and after removing the cardboard "shelf", you can find the other components, such as the power lead, HDMI cable, VESA mount plate with a bag of screws, and the instruction manual.
What’s In The Box
- 1 x GEEKOM A9 Max Mini PC
- 1 x HDMI Cable
- 1 x VESA Mount
- 1 x Power Adapter
- 1 x User Guide
No carry bag
GEEKOM left out the carry bag again, which is a bit of a shame for first-time buyers, as you may have noticed from the specs.
GEEKOM goes Green?
This is the first GEEKOM Mini PC I have seen with documentation stating that it is a "Green" mini PC. The little envelope with the documentation states on the outside:
"Green Mini PC Global Leader GEEKOM"
This made me laugh a bit because although GEEKOM is now using recyclable plastic (noted below), it still wraps everything in plastic.
04 PE-LD (low-density polyethylene) is a soft, flexible plastic used for bags and films, and while it"s technically recyclable, it often requires special collection points, such as in-store supermarket drop-offs, rather than being accepted in household kerbside bins.
Yes, instead of standard plastic packaging, GEEKOM is now using recyclable friendly plastic bags, this still requires effort from the end user to properly dispose of them though, they aren"t biodegradable so they won"t break down.
- The box itself had a plastic covering
- The GEEKOM A9 MAX had a plastic covering
- Every accessory was in a plastic bag
I"m sorry, but you can"t claim to be a Green Global Leader while you are still putting everything in plastic. For example, Nvidia switched to eco-friendly, cardboard-based packaging for its latest GeForce RTX 50 series Founders Edition GPUs, moving away from plastic and foam inserts. Even the outer box did not use plastic packaging tape. So, let"s talk again when GEEKOM does something similar.
Design
The A9 Max"s design is basically the same as others in the A series, right down to the ports (on the rear), because on the front, there are two additional Type A USB ports. It is a similar weight and retains a good heft to it; while not being heavy, it isn"t light either. It definitely gives off a premium and balanced feel to it. All the edges and corners, except for the bottom edges of the Mini PC, are rounded, so it is comfortable to hold and move around. It must be noted that GEEKOM did not include a specifications section on the official product page, and I could not find the official weight, so I weighed it myself, and it came to 707 grams; all of that weight is thanks to the all-metal frame and housing.
Although the A9 Max also includes two USB4 ports (Type-C), unfortunately, these are still located on the back of the Mini PC. I can only imagine this decision was made to make the front of the A9 Max look more uniform with its ports; however, having the option for Type-C and USB Type-A on the front of the Mini IT11 is what made it great. The Mini PC still includes five USB3 Gen 3.2 ports and one USB 2.0 port, that"s two more than other A series Mini PCs I have tested, and these extra ports are located on the front, one of which is an "Always on" port for powering external devices while the Mini PC is powered off.
As far as looks go, it has a fully silver/gray exterior, and it"s not a fingerprint magnet. GEEKOM does not say what materials are used for the exterior other than a "reinforced full-metal chassis" exterior. The product page claims that the A9 Max can withstand over "200kg of pressure without bending," but we wouldn"t recommend loading heavy objects on top of it anyway; it supposedly gives protection against accidents and falls. It doesn"t feel cheap and isn"t flimsy either, and even when the base is removed, it remains sturdy.
Teardown
To access the A9 Max is a bit of a task, and you also have to watch out that you don"t accidentally unplug the WiFi antenna, because it is taped to a metal plate that needs to be removed to access the SSD and memory slots.
- Use a flat-head screwdriver to pry the glued-on rubber feet free
- Remove four Philips screws located under the rubber feet
- Use a flat-head screwdriver or a knife to remove the plastic bottom cover
- Remove four screws on the internal metal plate
- Carefully lift the plate free, making sure not to pull on the WiFi antenna
- Now you can access the M.2 slots and memory
As you can see from the above images, which can be enlarged when clicked on, there is ample room to manage the SODIMMs and Lexar NQ7A1 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, so you can swap it out for something else if you want. The A9 Max includes an option to add a second NVMe SSD, as long as it is only 30mm long. A word of warning: if the WiFi cables become unplugged, they are very difficult to reattach, which makes it a poor design choice. At the very least, longer cables would have made it easier to manage the internals, but it is what it is.
Usage
BIOS
The A9 MAX includes an AptiBIOS, which is not locked down; you can edit it to your heart"s content (1), (2), (3).
On first boot, you are prompted to complete the setup of Windows 11 Pro, meaning you do not have to fork out for a license, which is nice. After the setup is finished, I am happy to report that it does not come with any bloatware installed. The OOBE also installs several updates to Windows 11 24H2, so the updates were relatively minimal.
Before starting with benchmarks, I checked Windows Security, which gave several alerts, which ended up being because the Memory Integrity setting was disabled. Once opening and locating it on the Core Isolation page, I enabled the security-related settings and restarted, which gave an all clear on the Windows Security app.
Just like with the original IT13, it"s physically possible to directly attach four screens to the A9 Max using the two full HDMI ports along with the two USB4 ports, if you wanted, although be aware that only one of the USB4 ports has Power Delivery to power an external portable monitor. Regarding connectivity, there"s also a single USB 2.0 port, a 3.2 Gen 2 port, two 2.5 GbE ports, along with a barrel port for power on the back. Around the front, there are four USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports and a port for a 3.5mm headphone jack.
As you can see from the images above, you can affix a Kensington lock on one side and insert an SD adapter for a micro SD card on the left side of the A9 Max.
Benchmarks
With that out of the way, and because people like that sort of thing, I ran some benchmarks and added Mini PCs with the top pre-Core Ultra series CPU, as well as AMD"s Ryzen 9 8845HS for comparison. The A9 Max is running Windows 11 Professional 24H2 build with the latest (August 2025) updates, and the latest AMD Graphics and Chipset drivers (25.8.1 and 7.06.02.123).
For the benchmarks, I used Cinebench 2024, 7-Zip, AS SSD, and CrystalDiskMark. 3DMark, PCMark 10, Procyon (Windows ML for CPU and GPU, and Intel OpenVINO for NPU) was provided to Neowin by UL Solutions; Primate Labs Inc. provided us with commercial versions of Geekbench 6, and Geekbench AI.
3DMark Time Spy tests gaming capability with DX12 graphics performance. PCMark tests are a mix of CPU and real-world productivity tests, such as using an office suite, web browsing, light photo/video editing, and making conference calls. Cinebench stresses the entire CPU as it is a multi-threaded rendering test. Geekbench is a synthetic benchmark that is great for a quick look at the potential performance across a wide range of workloads.
I also used HWiNFO to monitor hardware sensors and temperature readings.
| GEEKOM A9 MAX Ryzen AI 9 HX370 | Geekom IT15 Core Ultra 9 285H | Geekom AE8 Ryzen 9 8945HS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3DMark: Time Spy Steel Nomad Light Steel Nomad Fire Strike Wild Life | 3,732 3,293 518 8,579 20,773 | 4,128 3,329 843 | 3,343 |
| PCMark 10: Standard Extended test | 7,762 7,675 | 7,468 7,544 | 7,488 7,423 |
| Procyon: Windows ML CPU | 129 255 788 | 122 | 125 219 - |
| Geekbench 6: Single Multicore Compute (OpenCL) | 2,885 15,196 39,233 | 3,044 15,634 40,628 | 2,662 13,468 31,707 |
| Geekbench AI: ONNX CPU ONNX DirectML OpenVINO NPU | 4229, 2100,7774 7596, 12469, 5730 6197, 6177, 16420 | 4803, 1962, 8835 8013, 12079, 5233 5476, 9557, 14506 | 4503, 1978, 8823 7301, 11678, 5499 6394, 6329, 17840 |
| Cinebench 2024: Single Multicore | 120 1,146 | 131 857 | 107 938 |
| 7-Zip | 123,551 | 101,483 | 102,259 |
Geekbench AI scores are in the following order (left to right): Single Precision, Half Precision, Quantized.
The newer HX 370 easily beats the Ryzen 9 8945HS in Cinebench 2024 single core and Multicore, as AMD here takes advantage of its Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT), which Intel dropped in 2024.
With its extra GPU horsepower, 16 CUs on the 890M vs 12 CUs on the 780M, I expected the Ryzen AI 9 HX370 to dominate the 8945HS as the former is 38% better spec-wise, but that was not the case. It appears that we were held back by memory bandwidth on this occasion since both of them have been paired with 5600 MT/s system memory.
Neither quite measures up to the Intel Arc 140T, which is a discrete graphics card.
It is noteworthy here that Intel graphics is not quite as efficient as AMD Radeon in terms of driver overhead and other similar optimizations. As such, the real-world performance may be closer than what we see here in 3DMark synthetics.
The NPU on the Ryzen AI 9 HX370 is seriously impressive. In Procyon, it is over twice better than the Intel 285H"s NPU and we can probably guess from the specs that 8945HS would have been three times slower.
Browser Performance
| Browser | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Chrome | 34.1 | 35.9 |
| Edge | 35.5 | 37.5 |
| Firefox | 26.4 | 27.5 |
Next up, I tested browsing performance using Speedometer 3.1. Speedometer provides a value and also a range showing the lowest and highest scores after three runs, as indicated in the chart above by the two scores for each browser. It"s clear to see that Edge and Chrome leave Firefox in the dust by 9.1 and 7.7 on the low, and 10 and 8.4 on the high, respectively, while Edge, with 1.4 on the low and 1.4 on the high, is slightly ahead of Chrome for the winner.
Disk performance
I also tested the SSD"s capability using AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark.
| AS SSD | CrystalDiskMark |
|---|---|
The A9 Max comes with a 2TB Lexar NQ7A1 2 TB SSD, and it easily exceeds the official 6000/5200 MB/s read/write rating for the drive. Good news!
Despite running all of the above benchmark tests, the A9 Max did not get hot (or even warm) to the touch, and no annoying noises were coming from the single fan that cools the unit. The Highest CPU temperature recorded was during TimeSpy (77.6 °C), where the CPU Core reached 83.3 °C.
Infrared thermal imaging
| Top | Bottom |
|---|---|
Despite all this, the outer shell never exceeded 34.5 °C while I was pointing my FLIR ONE Gen 3 thermal camera at a hotspot on the bottom. The bottom of the Mini PC even showed a more uniform 29.3 °C across the whole plate, while on the top, it was more concentrated towards the back.
Conclusion
I"ve said it time and time again, I love these Mini PCs. They simply aren"t gaming PCs, though, so you will not be able to enjoy graphically intensive games on them. For that, you need a dGPU along the lines of the mobile Nvidia 4060, AMD 7600 (XT), or better. However, it absolutely is suited for light gaming (Radeon 890M is roughly equivalent to GTX 1650 dGPU), and as an office workstation. Perhaps it"s a good solution for a student with limited living space, with the ability to pack this into a backpack for a portable solution. This thing isn"t taking up much room, you can even screw it to the back of a screen if it has VESA support with the included mount plate.
In a world that is apparently too stingy for phone manufacturers to include a power lead and charger for their flagship phones, GEEKOM has provided all of the cables and tools necessary to get started straight away, along with a Windows 11 Pro license and a clear guide with instructions on how to access the internals.
When it comes to Mini PCs, the market is saturated with crap, so you really have to be on the lookout and study the specs properly. One trick I have seen often is Mini PCs utilizing old tech, sometimes two generations behind. This Mini PC will let you connect to four displays, whereas cheaper solutions will be limited to two screens.
Assuming you"ve made it this far, yes, at an MSRP of $1,199, the A9 Max is a hard sell, even if we consider that GEEKOM currently has it discounted down to $999 on the official website. If we also consider that, for some reason, there"s no USB Type-C around the front, and the poor design choices made for end users to access the internals, this adds up to it costing a point off a perfect ten. It"s still great, though. Aside from not being able to game on it seriously, it"s still a very powerful machine inside a tiny frame.
Where to buy & coupons
Although the A9 Max has an MSRP of $1,199 on the official website, it is currently listed for $999, but you can also add the NEOWINA9 coupon code to bring that price down almost $60, saving you over $250 off that already discounted price.
What"s more, GEEKOM has partnered with Neowin on a promotion that lets you save off the price of the A9 Max until Oct 31, when you enter the NEOWINA9 coupon code upon checkout through Amazon.com that brings the price down to a total of $942.66 with free delivery and returns for Prime (SNAP) members which is also an option.
United States
- GEEKOM A9 Max on the official website for $942.66 (use promo code NEOWINA9)
- GEEKOM A9 Max on Amazon US for $942.66 (use promo code NEOWINA9)
United Kingdom
- GEEKOM A9 Max on official website for £979 (use promo code NEOWINA9)
- GEEKOM A9 Max on Amazon UK for £979 (use promo code NEOWINA9)
Sep 8 Update: Promotional code for Amazon UK added.
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