ACEMAGIC Matrix M5 Review: A Nice Step Up

At times, it really feels like some of these companies have an endless supply of new releases.

In case you haven’t been keeping up, ACEMAGIC has been one of the most prolific mini PC makes I’ve covered here on Retro Handhelds. Whether it’s high end RDNA GPU Mini PC’s or low powered N150 machines that could double as solid Batocera boxes, they’ve been able to cover most facets of Mini PCs.

But with the continuing rising costs of ram and SSD storage, some concessions have had to be made since then, but that doesn’t seem to stop AceMagic from continuing to drop more options. So this time, we’re looking at the ACEMAGIC Matrix M5 Mini to see if it’s worth the rub, or if you should scrub somewhere else.

AceMagic Matrix M5 Mini Specs

When it comes to pricing, it can be hard to tell what you’re really paying as numbers keep changing the longer we wait. At the time of writing, the ACEMAGIC Matrix M5 Mini comes in at $629 over on Amazon, and for that price you’re getting 24GB of RAM, and just 512GB of SSD storage. Whether that’s worth it to you, is all up to if the specs seem up to snuff.

Build and Expandability

When it comes to the build and expandability, there’s a couple of things worth mentioning. First, compared to the complete ease of access to the internals of the ACEMAGIC Retro X3, this time around if you want to get inside the M5 you’ll have to flip it upside down. Why’s that? Because you have to peel the feet off and get a tiny screwdriver in to unscrew it.

But don’t worry, after that you can flip the unlock latch to pull the top off, and eventually peel away the metal plate beneath that to access the insides. I definitely wish, that latch would’ve been everything separating me from the inside of the PC, but unfortunately those bottom screws exist. Once you’re inside though you can… upgrade the storage. And change the wifi card. All because ram is now soldered into place.

As for the rest of the mini PC, it’s your standard affair. Light blue plastic all around, that doesn’t feel cheap, but doesn’t feel like it’s going to outlast the components inside of it. I definitely preferred the build of the Retro X3, but this is far from the worst build on a mini PC that I’ve seen.

Performance

When it comes to looking at performance, I’m going to be splitting it into two main categories; Synthetics and gaming. This comes down to just being able to see what the difference is between repeatable numbers, and how the systems perform in more common real-life scenarios.

At the time of writing, Geekbench 7 has been released, but I am currently not using it until I can get more systems benchmarked again on the platform. For now, Geekbench 6 will be the go to across a few similar systems. Including the following:

• ACEMAGIC Matrix Mini M5
• ACEMAGIC Retro X3
• GMKTec Nucbox M7
• ACEMAGIC Matrix M5 (14900HX)
• ACEMAGIC Matrix Mini M1 (11900H)
• ACEMAGIC Matrix Mini M1 (13900HX)

Yeah… Not only is it a lot of ACEMAGIC, but it’s a lot of Intel. Purely out of my own curiosity on how the new Core 5 220H performs against older Core i9 Models from the same company… and against a couple of more recent AMD releases. 

Synthetics

Starting off with Geekbench 6, in terms of CPU performance, the only one that seems to beat the Core 5 220H is the Intel Core i9-14900HX. Considering this i5 is going toe to toe against top tier CPU’s from just a few years ago, that’s genuinely pretty impressive. AMD on the other hand trends towards the bottom in single core performance, and the middle of the pack in multi-core.

That changes for GPU synthetics as AMD’s older 680M beats every option provided from Intel by at least a factor of 2 in terms of geekbench. Its 3DMark scores are closer to being about 20% higher than that of the Core 5. That being said, I think it still deserves a win as this Core 5 CPU won every last GPU test over its i9 contemporaries. 

Gaming

Jumping into my usual benchmarking suite we’ll have Cyberpunk 2077, Tomb Raider (2013), Strange Brigade, Dirt 3, and Bioshock Infinite as a series of games to test what a mini PC can really do when it comes to real world numbers. And the Intel iGPU is not too impressive. If you drop down to low, and and high in Cyberpunk and Strange Brigade, you can get a solid 30FPS in both titles for the most part, but as these are my benchmark settings, it easily falls behind the 680M by around 40-50%.

That being said, again, this Core 5 performs better than any other Intel ACEMAGIC PC I’ve run across to date. So if you’re looking for intel power, surprisingly this midrange chip will be the answer.

Extra Gubbins

In the last little bit, there’s a few things that I wanted to mention that don’t particularly fit anywhere else, but are still worth mentioning. The fan on this unit is mounted on the underside like a lot of mini PCs. There’s plenty of ventilation, but it feels like the fan could be working overtime even if it doesn’t have to.

For the most part my temperatures were nice and cool, but when regularly pushing it, even with Steam downloads, I could start to hear the fan from a normal seated position to the Mini PC at the back of my desk. It’s a lower pitch so it isn’t the most annoying, but it was at least noticeable. 

Alongside that my other minor complaint or quibble comes from that midplate during the tear down of the Matrix M5 Mini. It looks like it should perfectly fit a 2.5” SSD, but ends up being completely useless even though there are screws in place. It’s not the biggest deal, but I do miss the days of Sata SSD upgrades. Personally I’d rather ACEMAGIC integrate that metal midplate into the top of the Mini PC rather than as an extra step to get in. 

Final Thoughts

As a whole, do I think the Matrix M5 Mini is a bad PC? Absolutely not. What you’re looking at is going to be a workhorse for those people that don’t have a focus on gaming. For the people looking to have something reliable that’ll work for as long as they need it.

I think the M5 will be perfect for that. It has a ton of features in it, it supports three displays if you need to expand, and having 12 cores, regardless of if they’re performance or efficiency will only help the user experience. 

That being said, like most of the RH community, if you’re reading this you likely enjoy gaming instead of homelabbing. And if you do enjoy both you probably have a preference towards the former like I do. But if graphics performance is your end goal, the ACEMAGIC Retro X3 that I’ve mentioned a few times throughout this article is priced about the same as the M5 at the moment.

And it really out performs it in terms of gaming. So find your needs, find what works best, and if it’s that need for core performance, this could be a solid option.