AceMagician AM08 Pro review

AceMagician AM08 Pro AMD Ryzen 9: 30-second review

The AceMagician AM08 Pro offers a compact size with impressive connectivity and expandability options. Its straightforward setup and effective cooling system make it user-friendly. The design is instantly eye catching and reflecting the gaming market that it's intended for there's an array of coloured lights that adorn the front.

While excelling in intensive day-to-day tasks and offering mid-range gaming performance, some games with all effects at high resolutions will stutter. However, the system's excellent cooling ensures stable operation during all intensive tasks and gaming sessions. 

The small machine also offers triple 4K display support further enhancing its appeal as one of the best mini PCs for gamers and creatives. Though not the most affordable option, it's a decent and fun choice.

Price and Availablity

The AceMagician AM08 Pro AMD Ryzen 9 comes at a slightly higher price point than some of its competitors, but it brings with it a distinct gamer-style design, efficient cooling solutions, and convenient memory and storage upgradability. 

This added investment affords users the benefit of a machine that not only handles day-to-day tasks efficiently but also offers enhanced capabilities for more intensive gaming and creative applications like using 4K video editing software. While it might require a bit more financial commitment, the AM08 Pro stands out for its cooling efficiency, design aesthetics, and user-friendly upgrade options, making it a solid choice for those seeking both performance and flexibility.

• Score 3.5/5

Design

The design of the mini PC is a blend of elements that might not be universally appealing, yet manages to cater to a specific audience. Personally, the design didn't strike a chord with me, feeling slightly quirky with its triangular shape and prominent power button at the top the unit. However, the dynamic RGB lights and upright stance give it a distinct gamer aesthetic that can undoubtedly attract enthusiasts.

What truly stands out about the design is its practicality. The placement of main ports on both the front and back enables easy connectivity, while the unique triangular form provides stability and enables that effective cooling. This layout makes accessing ports easier, ensuring that plugging in peripherals or monitors is a hassle-free. 

• Design: 3/5

Features

The AM08 Pro packs in features that make this machine suitable for both gamers and creatives. Featuring a relatively compact form factor of 149 x 77 x 188.47mm, it fits neatly on the desk. Inside is a relatively powerful AMD Ryzen™ 9 6900HX processor, boasting 8 cores and 16 threads, while not at the top end it does provide decent multitasking capabilities and robust performance across applications.

Backing the CPU is the AMD Radeon™ 680M GPU, again this will ensure decent graphics rendering for both gaming and creative tasks. backing up the processing is 16GB DDR5 RAM, with an option to upgrade to 64GB, this amount of RAM would be ideal for gaming, but I would recommend a boost to 32GB for smoother gaming. 

Storage options are equally impressive, offering a 512GB M.2 PCIe NVME SSD with expandability up to a generous 2TB. The fitting of both RAM and storage upgrade is simple in both cases. 

The AM08 Pro also features a good array of connectivity options with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, enabling the wireless communication. Furthermore, USB 3.2 Type-A ports and other interfaces, including HDMI and Type-C, enhance the machine's adaptability for various peripherals as well display options.

The machine comes with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed, the AM08 Pro which is a nice touch, although the boot times are slightly longer than machine running the home edition. 

• Features: 4/5

Performance

The AMD Ryzen 9-powered machine proved itself as a capable workhorse with solid performance across various benchmarks and real-world usage scenarios. Its specifications and benchmark results offer insight into its efficiency and suitability for different tasks.

In 3DMark Wild Life, the graphics score reached a commendable 15500, showing the machine's graphics abilities. This result indicates its capability to handle graphically demanding tasks, making it suitable for gaming and multimedia.

In the Fire Strike benchmark, the graphics score settled at 6523, while the physics score impressively hit 7057, and the combined score reached an impressive 25045. These results further demonstrate the AM08 Pro's well-rounded performance, particularly in graphics-intensive applications and multitasking scenarios.

Moving to Time Spy, the graphics score reached 2435, and the CPU score achieved a solid 9448, highlighting the machine's versatility for both graphics processing and computational tasks.

Cinebench R23 unveiled a multi-core score of 12478, showcasing the AM08 Pro's proficiency in handling multitasking and resource-intensive applications. The single-core score came in at 1602.

In GeekBench 5, the multi-core score impressed at 10532, while the single-core score reached 2184. Again these results are good putting the machine in the midrange for this level of machine. 

CrystalDiskMark demonstrated impressive read and write speeds, with a read speed of 2800.72 MB/s and a write speed of 2423.33 MB/s. These speeds are again mid-range, fast but by means the fastest for this size and price of the machine.

The all-important PCMark 10 benchmark test showed that the AM08 Pro produced a score of 6740, again on the midrange for this machine level.

Finally, the Windows Experience Index score of 8.2 reflects an overall solid but mid-range result for the machine. 

• Performance: 3.5/5

Should you buy a AceMagician AM08 Pro AMD Ryzen 9

The AceMagician AM08 Pro AMD Ryzen 9 is a great option for gamers and users doing more intensive day-to-day tasks such as video editing who are looking for a quirky yet efficient mini PC. Its gaming aesthetics, including LED lights and an upright stance, immerse you in the gaming culture. The machine's expandability is well thought through, allowing easy memory and storage upgrades for future-proofing. 

Despite being slightly pricier and lacking the sturdiness of metal-cased alternatives, the AM08 Pro offers robust build quality. While its performance is solid but not cutting-edge, the cooling system and abundant connectivity options make it an excellent choice for versatile day-to-day use and multimedia enjoyment.

Report Card

• Value: A bit pricier than some, but offers gaming aesthetics and expandability. (3.5/5)
• Design: Unique design with gaming flair, easy access, and versatile connectivity. (4/5)
• Features: Comprehensive features, triple displays, WiFi 6E, and easy upgrade options. (4/5)
• Performance: Good performance, though middle-of-the-road; enhanced cooling and connectivity. (3.5/5)
• Total: A solid mini PC choice with balanced features and performance. (3.5/5)

Why you should buy

Don't buy it if