GMKtec EVO-X2 Internal Hardware Overview
Getting inside the system was not obvious from looking at it. Sam had to come over and ask me how to get in.
My response was that I bet that there were screws under the rubber feet, and there were. Generally, I dislike this arrangement we have seen on other mini PCs because the rubber feet often do not sit flat after re-assembly.
Once the first four screws are off, we can take off the top part of the chassis that has the user serviceable items.
The first one is a fan. Make that an RGB fan. It would be easy to forget this is an RGB fan since it lights up inside the chassis so if the room is well-lit, then the RGB effect is hard to see from the outside. Also, our best guess is that this fan was installed to cool the storage, WiFi NIC, and perhaps the back of the PCB, but it just feels like this is a suboptimal airflow design.
Just to give you some sense, here is the fan lighting up the system on set #2.
There is a cutout in the metal chassis to allow you to service the two M.2 drives. Our 128GB LPDDR5X system came with a 2TB ADATA Legend 900 SSD. We really like the move to a 2TB SSD, especially in a $2000 system. It is pretty trivial to download 1TB of AI models so storage is something that should not be taken lightly in a system like this. There is also a second M.2 slot here.
Hiding beneath the metal bit is the RZ717 WiFi 7 card. That would be nothing short of a pain to service as it requires even more system disassembly. To be frank, the recessed M.2 drives were also on the harder side to access from a mini PC service perspective. If we were to re-design the system, this whole top section would get some work done.
On the other side, we get two blower-style fans and the heatsink.
Here is a look at the fans.
Underneath these we get the heatsink and heatpipe assembly.
This whole setup is rather intense, but this is a higher-power SoC.
Built into the motherboard we have the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 which is the current king of consumer APUs. We also get 128GB of LPDDR5X memory. As such, really what we wanted to see was the performance. Let us get to that next.
It is a great system, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen such an ugly enclosure on a modern computer.
Pls inform me cost of evo x2
Make it 10GbE, quieter, and not an ugly AF box and it’ll sell like sno cones in Hawaii
what makes it ugly compared to a square black box?
I’d agree with others this is a horror show on the eyes. At least a square black box is easy to hide. This doesn’t have clean lines and 2 tone with RGB
In my opinion the Ryzen processor is very nice. At the same time, I’m not interested in a weird looking mini PC that is difficult to service. On the other hand, if there were a mini ITX motherboard with this processor, I could see placing four in a suitable 2U rack-mount case.
I like it aesthetic much more than a box, give me interesting asymmetrical every time over “it’s a box.
I differ on the claim “it’s meant to be vertical” , the feet were thought after naming ports, if you want to read it the way it’s meant to be read, this is a horizontal box.
They probably decided it’d have smaller footprint on desk or against a wall while vertical aaaand, “lets add feet on edge”
Where did the get the designer for this thing from? Such a great machine in such a poor housing! Looks like a 1987 clone pc!
Ugly?!? It’s a dam computer it’s a new platform . Why is there always something to bitch about. Couldn’t complain about it performance so this is you complaint???
WOW
Great review, thanks a lot! But what about image and video gen? Is that possible with 96GB RAM dedicated for the GPU?
(a) Typo on this page (bargin, rather than bargain)
(b) You mention Windows on GB10. Is that actually confirmed or conjecture?
So much hate on the design of the case. I mean, yeah, it’s a little weird looking, but I’m fairly certain I’ve seen worse. I’m indifferent to case aesthetics, myself. Form follows function, as I see it. If the thing works as the manufacturers intended, that’s all that matters. RGB, funky stepped housing design, all that’s secondary to the actual functioning of the unit. Yeah, there’s a few places where they could have done better, but if it works and does what its designers set out to accomplish, is the visual aesthetic really THAT big an issue?
The box is meant to stay vertical. If you let it stay horizontal, you are going to clog the cpu ventilation holes. I have been working on the evo-x2 for about two weeks and I am quite happy with it.
The FA-EX9 looks a bit more promising as a workstation, no 10gbe but 128GB 8000mhz RAM like the X2 and it has oculink (seems it’s shared with the second nvme port?). It’s starting to popup on aliexpress but I haven’t found a full review yet.
Oculink seems like a great choice until you realize how much an additional gpu enclosure and gpu costs. You might end up with another 2k.
Frame.work has an mITX board with 128Gb of RAM for 2000$, shipping end of the year if ordered now. Jeff Geerling has a video where he put them in a miniRack. An miniPC with triple fans isn’t really what I want on my desk. As an enthusiast I’d rather put it in a jonsbo N5 with lots of storage as an all-in-one NAS/compute server.