A Smaller, Cheaper Steam Machine? The GEEKOM A5 PRO 2026

Every single day I get emails from companies wanting me to make videos about their products: power banks, dodgy software serial numbers, wallets, makeup, today I even got one for a $5000 electric surfboard - you name it, someone wants me to tell you about it - and GEEKOM are no exception - they’ve actually been trying to get in touch for quite a while now - and I kept ignoring them, because they make mini PCs designed for Windows and office productivity, and - no offence to anyone who’s into that - but that’s not really what this channel is about.

But they kept at it - fair play to them - and eventually I replied and said - look, if you send this thing to me I’m not going to sit here and show it running Microsoft Excel. I’m more likely to wipe Windows off it completely, install a gaming-focused Linux operating system, and see if I can use it as a kind of Steam Machine-esque living room gaming machine.

And they said - yes, fine, do that! Which, honestly, I found a bit alarming. Because I had a pretty good feeling that the GEEKOM A5 Pro 2026 Edition wasn’t really designed for that use case. It is absolutely not a gaming PC - and, perhaps against their better judgement - they also didn’t ask me to sign a contract, they haven’t asked for any editorial control, and I get to keep the machine after the review.

They’re certainly brave - so I gave them my address and shortly afterwards it arrived on my doorstep. So I guess the least I can do is unbox it, take it apart, and see if I can do anything interesting with it.

…and indeed here it is: the box for the GEEKOM A-Series Mini PC. Now not a lot to see here on the outside of the box, it’s quite nice, it’s got this lovely matte black finish and this kind of embossed text but other than that not a huge amount of information. Obviously we can see from the sticker here that this is the Pro version as mentioned - and on the back we can see the specs for this specific review unit that I have been sent - so this is the A5 Pro and it has the AMD Ryzen 5 7530U CPU which is a laptop-class CPU with an iGPU which we will of course take a look at a bit later on in this video.

It has 16GB of DDR4 SO-DIMM RAM so there’s laptop style RAM again - and again that should be upgradable so we’ll also take a look at that - and finally the storage which is a 1TB m.2 SSD. So let’s get this thing unboxed and then perhaps even take it apart and see what’s inside it - so genuinely my first time opening this box.

It’s a nice tight fit, there we go - and there is the actual mini PC itself. My goodness, so the marketing information that they sent to me actually said that this was palm-sized - and I know that there are varying definitions of that but that is my actual palm there, which is I assure you a perfectly standard, perfectly average, human male sized palm - and it’s very lightweight actually, I quite like this. I like this a lot, it feels very nice in the hand - of course I’m not going to be spending most of my time holding it. It should be tucked away behind the TV.

So first up I will just unwrap this and we’ll take a look at the actual PC itself - and then we’ll have a look at the other stuff in the box - so I’ll just get that out of the way - and there it is - so this is an actual metal finish. This is the metal case itself and it does feel, it feels quite premium actually. I quite like the feel of that.

These are 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A ports on the front. We also have a 3.5mm headphone jack on here as well which is always really nice to see - and of course the power button. On this side there is an SD card slot so if you are using this for media type stuff, photos and video editing, that kind of thing, that is incredibly useful to have - and of course on the back we can see the rest of the ports - and considering the tiny size of this thing there is quite the selection of ports on the back here - so we have not one but two HDMI ports - and they are HDMI 2.0 which is great to see. We have two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C ports on the back. We have a USB 2 port there - and we also have another USB 3 port there.

We’ve got the LAN here which is a 2.5GB LAN - so we’ve got that onboard which is really cool - and yeah, what have we got left? We’ve just got the DC jack - so standard 19V DC connector there, of course the power supply in this is external as you might expect given the size.

One thing that I have noticed on this is that it doesn’t have Thunderbolt. Which is worth a mention I think. It’s quite a common question on mini PCs of this size - so I thought I would point that out if

Anyway, let’s take a look at the other stuff that we have included in the box here - and let’s see how all of this fits together - so yeah, nice kind of premium packaging here.

He says that but in the bottom of the box all the stuff is just kind of loose in there. But that’s fine. We’re only going to use this once. What’s this? Thank you for your support. Is this something that they send to reviewers or is-

So dear customer, thank you for purchasing our products to facilitate your daily life. We hope they serve you well, etc, etc - so, oh, look at this.

Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that. That all unfolds into this big sheet. That’s quite cool - so we have the disassembly instructions on here. We have instructions on how to change the SSD, how to change the RAM - so indeed that is all replaceable, which is really nice to see on a PC of this size - and on the back just more legal stuff, regulatory stuff.

Next up we have, that’s an HDMI cable included in the box, which is always nice to see. We have screws.

Exciting.

We have, what’s this? This is a back plate - so this is actually a VESA mount / wall mount type thing - and of course we have the screws included with that - so somehow the PC, oh yeah, so the PC will actually slot onto that - and that means that you could perhaps mount this underneath a desk maybe, or on the back of your monitor, or on a wall, or the back of your TV, or whatever - so that’s quite a nice tidy solution - and nice to see that included in the box as well - so more points to GEEKOM for including that.

Finally, the last thing we have here in the box is the standard power supply - 19 volts as mentioned - that’s also quite a nice compact unit as well if we just compare it to the size of the PC. Very nice indeed - and of course, me being in the UK, mine comes with one of those marvellous UK plugs as well. But of course the manual does come with quite detailed teardown instructions - so I am quite keen to see what’s inside this.

Okay, so according to the manual that we have just here, let’s just try and get that centered on camera, there should be four screws underneath these four rubber feet on the bottom and then this should lift off and that’s what it should look like inside - so, all seems fairly straightforward, even for me, let’s see if I can manage this - so here is our little GEEKOM mini PC again and these are the four feet on the bottom - so I have my very dirty unboxing, oh there we go, unboxing knife here. These have these little tabs on the end which is quite cool so they just kind of slot in, they also have these adhesive pads on. I’ll try not to lose those or wreck the adhesive because I would quite like to be able to put this back together.

That’s number two, all seems pretty straightforward so far.

Number three and number four, very good - so just a standard Phillips screwdriver.

So this is the bottom, oh okay, that just flops off - so yes, I think that’s the WiFi antenna so I do need to be careful not to damage that and there is another, let’s just pull that out of the way, there is another plate under here as well.

…and what do we have here, we have four more screws - nice! So this is our RAM - as we can see from the sticker, this is DDR4, it’s Kingston RAM so that’s quite nice - and this is dual channel as well, notice we have two SODIMMs in here - I’m told, I am not an expert on these mini PCs - but I’m told that quite a lot of them out there only have single channel RAM and that is quite a limiting factor for performance - and of course in this day and age with RAM prices being what they are, that’s really really nice to see.

We also have the SSD here - so this is a 1TB m.2 SSD, can I just lift this thermal pad, see what brand this is? This is a Wooposit - okay so it’s not a brand I’ve heard of. It says PCI Express on it, it’s a Gen4x4 NVMe SSD so that’s good to see, 1TB capacity which is quite a lot - and we also have this shorter m.2 slot.

The RAM is as mentioned DDR4 3200, that is upgradable to 64GB, my review unit here has 16GB - and the second storage slot apparently is 2242 SATA 3 and that supports up to 1TB drive so if you wanted a bit of extra storage in there or perhaps a dual boot system that would be quite useful. On the other side of the box we have that CPU that I mentioned and the part number of that has just completely slipped my mind - what did it say on the bottom of the box, I can’t remember!

It is the Ryzen 5 7530U laptop-class CPU which we have on the other side of this board and that is a 25W TDP chip which is very very low power consumption - so I’m expecting this to be very quiet and also to run very cool which I think is very useful if you’re going to be using it in a living room setting. But that’s the insides, I’m going to get this put back together and let’s get it all hooked up and booted up.

Ah yes, my old nemesis - Windows 11.

As for office productivity - well, yes. Of course it does that. You can run Office, Chrome, Slack, whatever you need - it’ll handle it all without breaking a sweat. This is after all what it was designed for, and I’m not going to insult your intelligence by sitting here showing you a spreadsheet.

What I am going to do is run some benchmarks, because some of you will want to see the numbers - and then we’re going to do something much more interesting.

First up is CrystalDiskMark. Sequential reads hit 3,712 megabytes per second, and sequential writes came in at 3,283 - which is excellent for a PCIe Gen 3 drive. This is of course the 1TB version, so do bear in mind that the base 512GB model might be a touch slower as smaller NVMe drives tend to be.

For the CPU and GPU scores, I used GeekBench. The Ryzen 5 7530U scored 1,753 in the single-core test and 5,669 in multi-core - solid numbers, especially considering this is a 25 watt mobile chip.

The GPU Vulkan score came in at 12,118 - again, very respectable - but I’ll come back to that number later because I’ve actually found a way to increase that quite substantially.

Hmm.

Right, let’s actually play some games. First up is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 - the rather excellent 2020 remake - running at 1080p on low graphics settings - and I should point out that I haven’t played this in quite a while, so I’d ask any pro skaters in the comments to perhaps be a little gentle with their feedback on my moves.

In the iconic Warehouse level, which is the smaller and more enclosed of the two that I tested, framerates are sitting solidly in the forties - dipping into the high thirties and occasionally peaking into the low fifties. Very playable indeed.

The larger, more open Downtown level is more demanding - we’re solidly in the thirties here, with some noticeable stuttering in places. I did play this on the Dreamcast back in the day, for context, so graphically - even on low settings - I’m going to call this an improvement.

Wreckfest next - one of my personal favourites and a game I find myself coming back to regularly on this channel. Running at 1080p medium settings, in the weekly challenge and season challenge modes. This one did struggle a little bit more than I expected - we’re in the high twenties to low forties FPS-wise, with the low end being more visible in chaotic moments with a lot of debris and fire effects. Playable, but not as smooth as I’d have liked.

DOOM - the 2016 reboot - is running on the Vulkan renderer here at 1080p low settings on Ultra Violence difficulty, and id Software’s engine scaling is, as always, remarkable - framerates are consistently in the high thirties to low forties throughout, including in the busier arena encounters. The load times are impressively fast throughout too, which I’d credit to that quick NVMe drive. And I’m playing this with a controller, by the way - not that I’d necessarily be any better at it with a keyboard and mouse. The reason for that will become apparent shortly.

One thing I want to mention throughout all of this - the machine is basically inaudible. And I mean that genuinely.

[Breathes out through nose]

That’s about how loud it is. If this were sitting behind a TV, you wouldn’t know it was there.

And then there’s Stray - the rather lovely 2022 game where you play as - well, a stray cat. Unfortunately, at 1080p low settings, Stray is sitting in the teens - peaking at around 20 frames per second. It looks a bit rough, it feels sluggish, and I’m going to be honest with you - this one’s not playable.

Now, I picked Stray specifically because it’s always been a reliable stress test and because the results are interesting - and I want to be very clear - this machine isn’t supposed to run Stray, it’s a low power office PC. So I suppose the fact that it gets any frames at all is mildly impressive given what it is - and this is where I want to pivot slightly - because I’ve deliberately been putting this machine through games it was never designed for. But before we try out some more casual games, I want to try something. Because the more I was playing these titles on Windows, the more I kept thinking:

“I wonder if this would run better on Linux?”

Now, if you’ve been following this channel for a while, you’ll know that Bazzite is kind of a big deal for me. It’s currently my most viewed video with over 270,000 views, and I keep coming back to the topic because it genuinely keeps getting better.

For the uninitiated - Bazzite is a Linux distribution from a project called Universal Blue. It’s an immutable operating system - meaning the base system files are read-only, which makes it very stable and resistant to the kind of software rot that can affect a typical Windows or Linux install over time. It’s built on Fedora, draws heavily on Valve’s work with SteamOS and the Steam Deck, and it includes Proton - Valve’s compatibility layer that allows Windows games to run on Linux - right out of the box.

So not only is it a very solid and stable desktop OS - it’s also bloody good for gaming, too.

And there’s more good news - this is an AMD machine through and through, and AMD’s open source graphics drivers on Linux are frankly excellent. I’ve had some remarkable results on AMD machines in the past and I had a feeling this one might be worth investigating.

So here’s a USB stick that I prepared earlier.

The installer is clean, modern, and rather pretty - and I’ll be honest, I think this might be a newer version of it, because on some older hardware I’ve tried it on, the installer was correspondingly old school and didn’t have this rather nice live desktop environment.

I’ve set this up to wipe the SSD entirely and replace Windows - no dual boot - and I’ve enabled the root account because I’m a bit of a Linux power user, although that isn’t really necessary for most people. Of course, with that extra m.2 slot inside you could have a Windows drive and a Linux drive, or indeed have them both on the same drive. Whatever you fancy, really.

Back to Bazzite, one particularly nice touch during installation is this - a prompt to enrol the secure boot key, complete with a QR code that takes you to the documentation. When you first boot into Bazzite, you’re asked to enrol the key and enter a password, which - as the documentation helpfully tells you - is simply “universalblue”. Secure boot is a good idea, especially when combined with an immutable OS, and making it this accessible is genuinely impressive.

The entire installation process took around 12 minutes - and, on first boot, every single piece of hardware was detected and working immediately - no faffing, no driver hunting. Just - worked. Which, increasingly, is just what Linux does these days.

The first boot experience comes directly from SteamOS, of course, and it takes you through connecting a controller or a keyboard and mouse, and then asks about your timezone and network connection before running through the standard Steam updater - and then, after logging into your Steam account, you’re looking at Steam’s Big Picture Mode, ready to go. The perfect couch gaming, console-style interface.

I’m using my trusty 8BitDo Ultimate controller here, by the way, with its dedicated wireless base rather than Bluetooth - just a personal preference but of course you could pair a Bluetooth controller in a couple of seconds with no problems at all.

I also want to briefly mention that Bazzite isn’t just a locked-down console-style environment. If you want a full Linux desktop - and you might on an office machine like this - it’s a couple of button presses away.

In fact, the first thing I used desktop mode for was copying my entire Steam library over from my NAS, rather than re-downloading everything on my studio’s frankly abysmal internet connection. That’s a very practical tip for anyone following along at home, actually - back up your steamapps folder before you wipe Windows, copy it across on Bazzite, and Steam will verify the files and pick up where it left off.

Bazzite also supports GOG, Epic Games, and various other storefronts via launchers like Heroic and Lutris - so it’s not just Steam. I’ve covered all of that in quite a lot of detail in my Bazzite playlist, which is linked at the end of this video if you want to go deeper.

Right. Let’s look at some numbers - and - well…

CPU single-core: 1,982. That’s up from 1,753 on Windows: a 13 percent improvement in single core CPU performance.

CPU multi-core: 7,108 - up from 5,669. That’s a 25 percent improvement!

And the GPU Vulkan score: 17,229 - on Windows, that was 12,118. That is a 42 percent improvement in GPU performance on the same hardware - just by changing the operating system!

But - how!? Well, AMD’s open source AMDGPU driver stack on Linux is simply better optimised for the Vega architecture that this machine uses. This is well documented and not a new finding - but being able to see it this clearly on a single piece of hardware is definitely worth shouting about.

On top of that, an immutable Linux OS with essentially nothing running in the background has far less overhead than Windows 11 with all of its telemetry and background services. The Linux kernel scheduler also handles AMD’s architecture particularly efficiently.

Add all of that up and you get a 42 percent GPU improvement. I must admit even I was surprised by that.

Let’s see if it translates to actual games.

Wreckfest first - same settings as before, 1080p medium.

In the Demolition Race Weekly Challenge we’re sitting very solidly in the mid thirties to mid forties, with peaks into the low fifties in places - and in the Road Rage Season Challenge - which involves driving a monster truck into hordes of oncoming traffic, which is about as much fun as it sounds - we’re solidly in the forty to forty-five range, with only minor dips even with a lot of debris and fire effects on screen.

I cannot believe this is running on a laptop chipset.

And I’ll also mention - because I think it deserves saying - that Bugbear are still putting out some really great online challenges for Wreckfest all these years after release. It’s one of the reasons I keep coming back to it and also why it keeps showing up in my videos.

So that’s a win for Bazzite. Let’s see how the rest of these games compare.

Tony Hawk’s 1+2 Remake - low settings, 1080p again. The Warehouse level is sitting solidly at forty frames per second, barely wavering a couple of frames in either direction. Silky smooth despite all of my sick moves, I must say - I’ve still got it. Misspent youth on that Dreamcast.

And Downtown - this is the important one. On Windows, this level stuttered consistently right at the beginning, every single time I loaded it. On Bazzite, we’re sitting solidly around forty frames per second, climbing as high as fifty in places, and that stutter is completely gone.

In a game where split second reflexes do matter, that’s a big quality of life improvement - and this is something that others in the community have been noticing too - RandomGamingInHD did a great video covering this phenomenon with GTA 4, where the consistency improved enormously and that game’s notorious stutter disappeared. We’re seeing exactly the same thing here - although maybe for different reasons.

Anyway… DOOM 2016. Now, I noticed that the game was oddly capped at 30FPS. It turns out this is a known bug running under Proton with the Vulkan renderer, so I switched to the OpenGL renderer instead - and now framerates are back in the high thirties to approaching fifty in places. Very playable, id Software’s engine doing its usual remarkable job.

So, what we’re actually running here - under Linux, remember - is a Windows game using OpenGL, being translated by Proton, ultimately rendered via Vulkan. The mind genuinely boggles.

All that said, in this case, performance was pretty similar under both Windows and Bazzite.

But then there’s Stray. You may remember this was completely unplayable on Windows - with framerates stuck in the low teens. On Bazzite, on the same settings…

We’re opening at thirty frames per second. The first scene with your cat companions is solidly in the low to mid thirties. Even with those rain, fog and lightning effects going on.

The more demanding outdoor canyon tutorial section is sitting around twenty-one frames per second, which isn’t going to set any records, and the pro gamers in the audience are probably going to have opinions about that. But compared to where we were on Windows - a game that was entirely unplayable has become, at the very least, playable…

If you have quite low standards.

Right. I’ve been putting this machine through its paces with some fairly demanding titles, and the results have been - honestly - better than I expected, especially on Bazzite. But I wanted to make a broader point here, because I think it’s an important one.

When most people think of PC gaming, they think of high-end graphics cards and chasing frame rates and expensive hardware. But Steam has an absolutely enormous library of games - thousands and thousands of them - that don’t need any of that. Brilliant, charming, funny, creative games that will run on pretty much anything, and that are genuinely perfect for sitting on a sofa with a controller in your hand.

Overcooked - the original, from 2016, developed by Ghost Town Games and published by Team 17 of Worms fame. Of course there’s Overcooked 2 as well but this was a chaotic cooperative cooking game that I am right now heroically playing entirely on my own in the studio because I don’t have a player two here. It runs absolutely brilliantly, it looks great, and in my opinion it’s one of the best couch co-op games ever made.

Thank Goodness You’re Here, from 2024, developed by Coal Supper. I want to talk about this one for a second because I genuinely love it far more than I really should - it’s even been the wallpaper on my laptop since the day it came out. It’s a surreal comedy adventure set in a fictional Northern English town that is laugh-out-loud funny from start to finish, absolutely dripping with character, and more people should play it.

Untitled Goose Game, from 2019 from House House. You are a horrible goose. That’s the pitch. It’s wonderful. Always popular with the kids and you’ve probably heard of this one.

Cuphead, from 2017 - Studio MDHR. A stunning hand-drawn run and gun game inspired by 1930s animation. I am, for the record, still not very good at it.

And of course - DOOM. The original 1993 classic, remastered and re-released by Nightdive Studios. I’m playing this surrounded by my rather extensive collection of DOOM releases and memorabilia - regular viewers will know this as the Doom Shrine - and it runs, as you’d expect, completely flawlessly.

I think Valve - with the Steam Deck, and now the upcoming Steam Machine - have really changed the conversation around what a gaming PC can look like and how you use it. We don’t actually know the price of the Steam Machine yet as everything’s been delayed thanks to all this AI-fuelled component shortage nonsense, but all signs seem to point to something starting at around £700 at the very least for the most basic configuration, while the GEEKOM A5 Pro is a lot cheaper, a lot more portable, and it’s basically completely silent.

They’re marketing it as “The Best $600 Mini PC In 2026” for everyday computing - home office use, that kind of thing. Obviously it does all of that without breaking a sweat, and the gaming stuff? That’s very much a bonus.

So what I can say is that for casual couch gaming on a 1080p TV - the kind of gaming that - let’s be honest - most normal people actually do most of the time - this is genuinely a lot of fun. And with Bazzite installed I’d go as far as saying it punches well above its weight.

If that’s piqued your interest, there’s a link down in the description to get your very own GEEKOM A5 Pro - or indeed, perhaps something else from their surprisingly capable range of rather lovely little mini PCs.

As for me? I’m going to take this home, plug it into the back of my TV, and carry on where I left off.

Big thanks as always to my supporters on Patreon, Ko-Fi, and YouTube channel memberships - you can see their names on screen right now. They got to see this one a little bit early, and with the ads off.

If you want to know more about Bazzite, there’s a playlist linked below, and if you want to see me do more questionable things with hardware that probably wasn’t designed for it - well, make sure you’re subscribed to the channel.

Thanks ever so much for watching, and I’ll see you next time.