Ace Magician AMR5 Mini Gaming PC Review: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 Under the Hood

Ace Magician, a Mini PC maker for the home or office, has sent us at Wccftech the AMR5 Mini Gaming PC, an AMD Ryzen 5 5600U PC with integrated AMD graphics and several unique designs from aesthetics to functionality. The company bills the AMR5 as a “gaming Mini PC” with variable interfaces and power under the chassis. Is this a proper mini-gaming PC, or does this suffer from much misinformation? Let’s take a deep dive into the chassis, look at what is under the hood, and process some necessary benchmarks, and while we are at it, compare it to the GEEKOM Mini IT11 PC to see the performance of this AMD build to the Intel build from GEEKOM.

First, let’s break down the specifications of the AMR5 Mini PC from Ace Magician. The AMR5 offers an AMD Ryzen 5 5600U APU with integrated AMD Radeon graphics on the processor, 16GB of DDR4-2666 SODIMM memory, and a 512GB M.2-2280 SATA III solid-state drive. Inside, the chassis is cooled by an all-copper cooling fan with three exhaust vents to keep the system cool.

On the back of the system are two USB 3.0 ports, one DisplayPort, a single HDMI 2.0 port, a 1Gbps Ethernet port, and a power port. On the front of the AMR5 is a 3.5mm audio jack, two USB 3.0 ports, and a single USB-C port, a fully functional data port for displays. The AMR5 supports Windows 11 Pro, which the company has already preinstalled. This is the only configuration offered by Ace Magician and retails for $445 with a three-year warranty and a 30-day refund and return policy.

Ace Magician AMR5 Mini Gaming PC Unboxing & Closer Look

The AMR5 Mini Gaming PC comes in a smooth black box with the product card sleeve surrounding it. You can see the 3/4th view of the system next to the product name and brand logo. The back of the package shows that you can design, play games, and multitask for work, along with product information.

Sliding off the card sleeve, you can see the cardboard case with a clamshell lid, complete with the logo, product name, and images. To make it easy to open, the company placed a fabric handle at the bottom to open the package. Upon opening, we are greeted with a slight description of the product and what to anticipate. It helps to build suspense for the product. Underneath is a foam layer, protecting the contents inside.

Once we remove the foam layer, we can see the AMR5 Mini Gaming PC wrapped in protective plastic, with a box to the left of the PC that will house the accessories. Everything is neatly packed and ready for assembly.

The ARM5 is one of the more visually attractive Mini PCs I have seen. Its pseudo-futuristic-looking style and angled case stand out compared to most mini PCs shipped in a square or smaller. Also, the fact that the company has made the mini PC stand vertically helps to make this a unique build.

The logo for the company is in the middle of the top of the chassis, which has RGBs behind to light up with three different color modes: Breathing, Cycle, and Rainbow. Or, you can turn them off if you choose. The RGB software is downloaded separately from the company’s website.

The power button and performance dial are on the system’s top and towards the front. This is unique as users can alter the amount of power consumption from the AMR5 on the fly between three different settings: Silent ECO MODE, AUTO MODE, and Performance MODE. Each is also distinguished by color on the system. In Silent mode, the power button glows blue, Auto mode glows green, and Performance mode glows red.

On the right side of the case is a removable shield to protect the internal memory, and magnets hold onto it for easy access. The single Lexar DDR4-2666 SODIMM memory is held in its pre-designed slot, while the 512GB M.2-2280 SATA SSD is screwed into place and surrounded by two clear bands. I have not seen this in other Mini-PCs and wonder if that could be an issue over time. Users can upgrade their memory and storage to 2 x M.2 2280 NVME/NGFF 2TB SSDs to equal 4TB of storage space and 2 x SODIMM 32 GB DDR4 memory to increase to 64 GB of RAM.

Now, let us talk about the AMD Ryzen 5 5600U APU. The AMD APU in the AMR5 is part of the Cezanne-U series (Zen 3 architecture) built on the 7nm process node technology. The AMD Ryzen 5 5600U offers six cores spread across twelve threads with a base clock of 2.30 GHz and a boost of 4.30 GHz. The AMD APU has a combined L3 cache of 12MB with seven Compute Units (CUs, or 448 Stream Processors) by the Vega iGPU, a GPU clock of 1800 MHz, and a TDP of 10 to 25W.

The Lexar DRAM for the AMR5, the Lexar DDR4-3200 SODIMM, is actually “laptop” memory. The DRAM series also featured a UDIMM desktop memory, offering speeds of 3200 MT/s. The two memory options offered a low voltage of 1.2V and operating temperatures of -20C to 85C with storage temps of -55C to 100C. Lexar assured users that the stability of the DRAM would be ideal for homes, offices, or classrooms.

The M.2-2280 SATA SSD in the AMR5 is an inexpensive FPT310M8SSD512G generic brand that has only been around since the latter part of November 2022. It offers a SATA III interface. This is not sold by itself and is typically seen in a custom build, such as the AMR5 Mini PC.

One of the highlights that the website points out about the AMR5 is its support for up to three displays. While that is true, each display would need a different connection as there are only an HDMI, DisplayPort, and front-facing USB4 port for displays. The three ports do support 4K resolution at 60 Hz refresh rates.

As mentioned earlier, the mode dial on the top has three options, so let us dive into what each mode offers users. Silent mode is slated to provide power consumption levels of 10 to 15 watts with a fan speed of 2500 RPM. They suggest this for everyday use, such as web browsing or streaming movies or other content. This mode ensures it will produce the least amount of temperatures compared to the alternatives. Auto Mode increases the power consumption to between 15 to 20 watts and a fan speed of 3000 RPM. This mode the company recommends if you plan on working on office tasks or multitasking processes. Performance Mode is the highest setting, increasing power consumption to 20 to 25 watts and a fan speed of 4200 RPM, which they promise will increase frame rates in gaming and assist the processor with graphics-heavy tasks.

The RGB option on the system is simple. After installing the AMR5 RGB Control Software, you are greeted with a static screen with four buttons on the bottom. The far left allows you to turn on and off the RGB effects, with three lighting effects to the right of the ON/OFF lighting switch. Breathe mode selects the current color of the power setting you are on and brightens and darkens the solid color. Cycle mode takes the same single color and rotates it between the power button, the company logo, and the semi-transparent holes on the sides of the chassis. Rainbow mode cycles through the seven colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple) until you choose a different setting. None of these modes have any true customization and cannot control the speed at which the light travels.

Ace Magician AMR5 Mini Gaming PC — CPU System Performance

To test the APU on the AMR5 system, we compared it with the previous mini PC we tested, the GEEKOM IT11 Mini PC.

CPU-Z (Higher is Better)

CPU-Z collects data from your systems, such as the CPU name and number, series codename, process, package, cache levels, mainboard and chipset, memory type, size, timings, module specifications (SPD), and real-time measurement of each core’s internal frequency and memory frequency.

Cinebench R20 (Higher is Better)

Cinebench Release 20 (R20) offers a real-world cross-platform test suite that assesses the abilities of the system’s hardware. Over the last few years, the suite has been updated to provide more support for newer processor and imaging render technology, supplying an exact measurement of Cinema 4D’s capability to utilize multiple CPU cores and current CPU features that are obtainable to most users.

3DMark Time Spy (Higher is Better)

3DMark Time Spy is created to calculate the gaming performance of a Windows computer system. The utility allows us also to view the processor’s performance.

Geekbench 5 (Higher is Better)

Geekbench 5 allows users to measure the system’s CPU power.

As you can see from the above tests, the Ace Magician AMR5 Mini Gaming PC was slower in single-core and single-thread tests in CPU-Z and Geekbench 5, but in multi-core and multi-thread tests, it performed much better. Cinebench R20 showed the opposite, with the AMR5 being higher. 3DMark Time Spy was also a clear winner with the AMR5 from Ace Magician.

Ace Magician AMR5 Mini Gaming PC — GPU Gaming Performance

To test gaming on the AMR5 Mini Gaming PC, we used the duplicate titles, with one exception, that we used with the GEEKOM IT11 Mini PC tests.

Gaming Benchmark Tests

The difference in this test compared to the GEEKOM IT11 Mini PC gaming benchmarks was the inclusion of Forza Horizon 5 instead of Hitman 2. Initially, we could not run the Forza 5 game on GEEKOM’s system, but the Ace Magician AMR5 had less trouble running the software. All the benchmark results were run in Performance mode, offering the highest power consumption from the system.

Ace Magician AMR5 Mini Gaming PC — Final Thoughts and Conclusion

There was one major issue I had with this system. When I looked through the instructions, this particular section that I have highlighted made me question the use of external components, cables, and more:

We know a manufacturer is particular with its components, and we understand the necessity of sticking with the power supply that was shipped with the system. However, it had us question the impact of using a different display cable instead of the one shipped with the system. We intended to use a DisplayPort cable with the system, which was six feet in length and was a generic cable. The one shipped with the system was a three-foot HDMI cable, so we figured a boost in the graphics would be good by going with the DisplayPort cable. After several attempts and several blackouts from the connection when using the DP 1.2 cable, this happened:

It was irreversible. Then, we went with the HDMI cable and still received occasional blackouts from the system. It could be an open port since it has happened to two different display cables, but it is unknown. There is no information on the official forum where anyone has received a similar issue, which does not affect how we feel overall about the performance.

The Ace Magician AMR5 Mini Gaming PC produced similar results between its three different mode settings, with Performance mode offering the best overall performance, but only by a slim margin. The only downfall to this mode is how loud the cooling fan becomes in this mode. Additionally, compared to GEEKOM’s system that we previously looked at, this comes in at a lower cost with better gaming performance. If I was looking at a budget PC that could run some slightly older games, emulate older home consoles, and use some of the cloud gaming platforms available on the market (Xbox Cloud Gaming and Amazon Luna, to name a few), this would be an excellent alternative for that. The build is rememberable, and I think many retro or budget-conscious gamers would consider this a viable option.

Right now, Ace Magician is offering a code for users to purchase the AMR5 at a drastically reduced price point. On Amazon, between February 14 to February 19, 2023, you can save $100 by using code “wccftechonly” or almost $200 on the company’s website using the code “AMR5394,” which will reduce the price to $399 on both websites. The code on Ace Magician’s website runs from February 14 to March 31, 2023, while supplies last.

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