Geekom A9 Max AI ZDNET's key takeaways The Geekom A9 Max AI is available for $999 on Amazon.
This tiny PC has tons of power to spare and can even work well with the inefficiencies of Windows.
However, its fans can be quite loud. $999 at Amazon
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When I review small form factor PCs, I tend to keep my expectations in check. Given that I use a monstrous System76 Thelio desktop for most of my work, it's generally a challenge for such a tiny, shiny box to match. In fact, I've never met a tiny PC that could outperform my Thelio.
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The GEEKOM A9 Max AI Mini certainly gave it a run for its money. And while being hampered by an inferior OS. Note to all companies sending me PCs to review: Please send me machines with Linux preinstalled. Not only do I find it far easier to review computers with Linux, but it also shows consumers that you do offer open-source options.
With that request out of the way, let's talk about the A9 Max AI.
My experience
Naturally, because this machine sported the Windows operating system, it took a long time before I could even use it. There were updates aplenty, logging in with my Microsoft account, blah, blah. You know the drill.
As you probably noticed, the name of the PC includes AI, and I'm sure you can guess what that means. That's right, this little buddy was built for "unmatched AI performance." What does that even mean?
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Consider this: most people who use AI aren't using it locally; they'll be using ChatGPT or one of the many cloud-based services.
According to the description, the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor "delivers an industry-leading 80 TOPS of total AI acceleration, featuring a next-gen XDNA 2 AI engine that pumps out 50 TOPS of dedicated NPU performance, enabling seamless Copilot+ experiences, local large model deployment, and advanced content generation."
Yeah, of course. And why wouldn't it, right?
The rear of the A9 Max AI PC. Jack Wallen/ZDNET
The thing that jumped out at me is the "local large model deployment," so I did exactly what you might expect: I installed Ollama and downloaded one of the bigger LLMs to see how well it would perform. The model in question was the 9GB deepseek-r1:8b, and I pulled it for both the A9 Max AI and my System76 Thelio, running Pop!_OS.
After the model was pulled, I asked each the same question (both being used from the command line:
What is Linux?
It's a fairly straightforward and simple question. So, how did they fare? Here's a breakdown.
Even though both machines used the same LLM, deepseek-r1:8b running on Linux produced an answer that was considerably longer and more in-depth. On top of that, the answer produced by the A9 Max AI suffered from terrible grammar and created far more mistakes than that the Thelio's.
As far as the times, they looked like this:
Thelio: 2:42.38
A9 Max AI: 01:07.69
Unfortunately, the times don't really tell an accurate story, given how much more in-depth the Thelio answer was.
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From an overall experience, my System76 Thelio was much more up to the task of running AI. To be fair, the A9 Max AI was hampered by Windows 11, which would make a big difference, given that Windows 11 consumes far more system resources than Linux.
I then tried to really push the A9 Max AI and use the gpt-oss:120b model, which is considerably larger and more capable than the DeepSeek model I originally used. I thought this would task the A9 Max AI beyond what anyone would use it for.
The results? Well, it was very slow, but that should be expected by such a massive model on a small machine. The good news is that the results were considerably more accurate. I could hear the fans running at high speeds to keep the CPU cool, and the end result took nearly 5 minutes to complete.
But given that this machine doesn't have a powerful NVIDIA GPU, it was still pretty impressive that it was able to run the model to be with.
Let's get beyond the AI issue and look at this from a more traditional user experience.
Installing and running applications
You'll find plenty of USB ports on this baby. Jack Wallen/ZDNET
I installed several applications on the A9 Max AI and found they all installed very quickly and ran quite well. I installed LibreOffice, GIMP, Msty, and VirtualBox to see how well the A9 Max stood up to what I'm accustomed to.
In the end, everything installed quickly and ran smoothly. With the applications ready, I decided to create a virtual instance of Ubuntu using VirtualBox to see how well it performed. I gave the VM 10GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores (out of 32GB of RAM and 24 CPU cores).
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After the installation finished (took about 2 minutes), I started the VM to see how well it would run. During the installation of the Ubuntu guest, the fans on the A9 Max AI were at their loudest, so under load, this is not a quiet machine. I was able to hear the fans running from within another room of the house. If quiet is a necessity (and you really push your machine), this might not be the computer for you. If sheer power and a small size are what you're looking for, this mini PC is a great option.
After the VM was created, I fired it up. It should come as no surprise (especially given the resources I allocated for the machine) that the Ubuntu guest ran very well. Even with the VM up and running, installed applications performed quite well.
I should add this: The Ubuntu guest OS ran circles around Windows 11, even though it had a third of the RAM and a sixth of the CPU cores. That alone validated my supposition that Windows was a hamper.
ZDNET's buying advice
At first blush, a mini PC selling for $999 might seem like a bad bargain, but when you consider the performance you get with the A9 Max AI, the cost becomes less of a factor. This little machine handled everything I could throw at it, and the only reason it blinked was because of Windows 11. If I had taken the time to install Linux on this machine, I can imagine it would perform insanely well. Unfortunately, Windows is a resource hog and doesn't achieve nearly the efficiency of Linux.
That being said, the Geekom A9 Max AI mini PC seriously impressed me. If I were on the hunt for a powerful PC that took up next to no space, this might well be my first choice.
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Geekom A9 Max AI mini PC tech specs
Processor: AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (configurable TDP up to 54W)
Graphics: AMD Radeon 890M (RDNA 3.5, 16 compute units)
AI Performance: Up to 80 TOPS of total AI performance, with a dedicated AI engine
Memory: Up to 128GB of dual-channel DDR5-5600MHz RAM
Storage: 1 x M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD slot, 1 x M.2 2230 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD slot
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 2 x 2.5 GbE RJ45 ports Multiple USB ports, including USB 4.0 Type-C ports with DP-Alt-Mode and Power Delivery
2 x HDMI 2.1 ports
Full-size SD card reader
Operating System: Windows 11 24H2
Dimensions: 135 × 132 × 46.9 mm