My first reaction to the Geekom A9 Max was basically: “Sure, it’s powerful, but there’s no way that thing is a real gaming PC.” I’ve spent enough time with mini PCs that I’ve learned to be suspicious when marketing slaps “gaming” on anything smaller than a shoebox.
Then I started digging into benchmarks, teardowns, and power measurements. The moment it clicked was when I saw Cyberpunk 2077 holding around 60 FPS at 1080p medium with upscaling on an integrated GPU… inside a 0.8 L metal brick that weighs less than a kilo. That’s when the eye-roll turned into, “OK, I need to take this seriously.”
But “take it seriously” doesn’t mean buying into the idea that this is a straight gaming desktop replacement. It isn’t. What the A9 Max really is: a tiny workstation with an overachieving iGPU that just happens to game surprisingly well if you understand its limits.
If you’re a pure gamer looking for the most frames per dollar, this box probably isn’t for you. If you’re a creator, developer, or power user who also cares about games, the story gets a lot more interesting.
Before we get lost in feelings, here’s what you’re actually getting, stripped of buzzwords.
On paper, the headliners for gamers are obvious:
But the most important line in that spec block is also the one most people gloss over: integrated GPU. That one word explains both why this machine is kind of magical and why it’s absolutely not for everyone.
The Geekom A9 Max didn’t hook me because it’s “the most powerful mini PC of 2025” — every year has one of those. What grabbed me was how balanced (and weirdly honest) its actual gaming profile is once you ignore the buzzwords.
Three things jumped out immediately:
It took me a while to understand why the A9 Max feels different from the random “gaming mini PCs” we’ve seen before. The moment it clicked was when I stopped thinking of it as a PC built for games, and started thinking of it as a portable workstation that happens to game better than it has any right to.
Context matters. In late 2025, your ~$1,000 gaming options look something like this:
Those first three options annihilate the A9 Max in raw gaming performance. No contest. A mid-range desktop GPU will crush an integrated Radeon 890M, even on its best day.
So why would anyone pick the A9 Max?
Because it’s doing a different job. It’s trading GPU grunt for:
If you’re expecting it to behave like a shrunken RTX desktop, you’ll hate it. If you treat it like a supercharged Mac mini-style box, but for Windows and AMD gaming, it starts to make sense.
The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is the real adult in the room here. It’s a 12-core, 24-thread chip that’s basically laptop-tier high-end silicon in an even smaller chassis. In practical terms, that means:
Under sustained gaming loads, our tests saw clocks settle around 3.9 GHz all-core, with package power around 50 W. That’s not the kind of throttling that ruins gameplay; it’s just the CPU settling into its comfortable long-term power budget.
For actual gaming, the wild part is this: the CPU is rarely your bottleneck here. You’d need to be streaming, recording, running a dozen background apps, and maybe compiling code before you even sniff its limits. In most games, the GPU taps out long before the CPU breaks a sweat.
The A9 Max also includes a 50+ TOPS Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for AI workloads. For gaming right now, that doesn’t directly matter: there are no games offloading ray tracing or NPC AI to this chip.
Where it might matter:
If your main question is “Will this NPU make in-game upscaling smoother?” the answer is: not yet. But it’s a forward-looking bonus for creators and developers.
The Radeon 890M is the star that keeps us debating whether “integrated graphics” still deserve that name. In our benchmarks:
Yes, it can handle demanding AAA titles at medium settings, but don’t expect 100+ FPS on everything. When you push texture quality or shadows up, frame rates will dip into the 30s–40s. For any serious competitive edge, a discrete GPU still reigns supreme.
In a chassis this small, thermals are typically the showstopper. Yet the A9 Max manages reasonable temperatures:
The tiny fans rarely ramp up to ear-splitting speeds. Unless you’re in a library hush, you’ll barely notice it over your headset or speakers.
Despite the size, Geekom didn’t skimp on I/O:
That covers most setups, though power users might miss Thunderbolt or legacy VGA. The power brick is a compact 120 W unit that stays surprisingly cool.
All benchmarks were run on Windows 11 Pro with the latest AMD chipset and GPU drivers as of October 2025. We configured 32 GB DDR5 at XMP defaults, and storage was a Gen 4 NVMe SSD. Games were tested at 1080p with built-in benchmarking tools or CapFrameX captures. Ambient temperature hovered around 22 °C.
The Geekom A9 Max is a statement piece: a sub-liter mini PC that punches above its weight, especially for CPU-centric tasks and light gaming. It breaks the mold of “integrated graphics are jokes,” but it’s not a stand-alone gaming desktop replacement.
If you need a tiny Windows box that excels at creative workflows, AI experiments, and can also run big AAA games at medium settings, it’s a match made in silicon heaven. If you just want the highest frame rates for esports, look elsewhere.
Creators, developers, and power users who need top-tier CPU performance in a tiny form factor and occasional gaming on integrated graphics.
Competitive gamers or anyone seeking the highest possible FPS in modern AAA titles; those wanting full GPU upgrade paths.
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