This GEEKOM mini PC makes me wonder why people even buy desktops
I've been building PCs for over 20 years, so naturally, I get why people do it: it's fun, and you get a great computer at the end. But beyond the fun, is there any reason to spend the time and money anymore when a plug-and-play mini PC can absolutely replace your daily driver for almost anything but gaming?
Price and availability
The GEEKOM IT13 2026 mini PC is available directly from GEEKOM and Amazon. Both sell it for $1,399, which is a discount from its MSRP of $1,689.
GEEKOM's IT13 is a tiny box of many possibilities
It did a better job than I expected
As I use a massive desktop tower as my daily driver, I think I may have underestimated GEEKOM's latest take on a mini PC. Testing it quickly cleared that up for me, though.
This mini PC, while truly tiny (1.29 pounds), is a beast in more ways than one. It weighs less than my laptop, all the while offering performance far above what many laptops can provide. I'll dig into the numbers in a second, but let's start with a big-picture overview of what we're dealing with.
The IT13 has excellent build quality. The metal frame definitely adds a bit of weight, but it's negligible given its small footprint. It feels and looks premium, though, with a nice blue-ish finish that sets it apart from similar PCs.
As far as ports go, you have a full-fledged desktop on your hands, with more connectivity than many ATX motherboards can provide. Two USB4 (40Gbps) ports, four USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, two HDMI, one 2.5GbE Ethernet, an audio jack, and an SD card reader is plenty enough for my needs, although I would've liked a front-facing USB4 port.
I know it's a small thing to many, but other than the lack of a front-facing USB4/USB-C, I like the way the manufacturer planned the ports here. You can plug in up to four screens, so those cables would be a pain to deal with if they weren't exactly where they are: at the back of the PC.
The IT13 stayed cool under pressure
Better cooling than many laptops
Taking it apart was easy, and as it's upgradeable, that's noteworthy. I like that the screws are attached. You can add up extra RAM, although the 32GB DDR5 that it comes with should be plenty for what most people are going to use it for. You can also add extra storage up to 4TB.
Despite the tiny form factor, temperatures don't appear to be a problem for this mini PC. It averages 51 to 58 degrees Celsius during my benchmarks, although running 3DMark Steel Nomad Light (GPU test) made the CPU spike up to 74 degrees. No biggie, though. The box remained quiet throughout every test. It got warm to the touch at times, and the back vents did a good job of expelling hot air. I've certainly had laptops that performed worse while heating up more, so in this regard, it's a full 10/10 for GEEKOM's IT13.
The performance surprised me
I put this mini PC through its paces, and it kept up throughout
Under the hood, the IT13 runs on Intel's Core Ultra 7 356H, part of the Core Ultra Series 3 family, which you probably know as Panther Lake. It packs 16 cores without Hyper-Threading, with four Cougar Cove P-cores, eight Darkmont E-cores, and four low-power E-cores.
As we all know, raw benchmark numbers mean very little when viewed in a vacuum. To make sense of these scores, I compared this model to the other mini PCs we've recently reviewed here at How-To Geek, including the Acemagic K5 and the Lenovo Yoga Mini Gen 11 . GEEKOM's own IT13 Max is another interesting point of comparison.
In Geekbench 7, the IT13 2026 scored 2,430 in single-core and 15,504 in multi-core, which actually puts it ahead of the IT13 Max by roughly 14% and 8%, respectively. The Yoga Mini leads the charge by about 4% and 10%. Geekbench 6 showed similar results, although the multi-core score turned out to be much closer when we compare the two GEEKOM PCs.
Cinebench 2026 backed that up, with the IT13 landing about 11% and 17% ahead of the IT13 Max. The Yoga Mini maintains a lead, but it's a subtle win that won't be felt in real-world performance.
7-Zip benchmarks flipped the situation around a little bit. The older GEEKOM pulled ahead thanks to the extra threads on the Core Ultra 9 185H. However, the results are all close enough for these PCs that we're not talking about a make-it-or-break-it type of situation.
GEEKOM's IT13 has a powerhouse of an NPU, and it shows up in benchmarks
The AI capabilities are definitely there
The 50 TOPS that the Core Ultra 7 356H is rated at is enough to clear Microsoft's 40 TOPS bar for Copilot+ PC features with room to spare. It also sets the IT13 apart from other, more budget-oriented mini PCs, like the Acemagic K5—which, while equipped with an NPU, is nowhere near as capable.
The scores speak for themselves. I tested the CPU and the NPU using Geekbench AI, and through Intel's OpenVINO framework, the NPU scored 34,822 in half-precision and 54,006 in quantized, which is about 21x and 7x faster than the CPU. The Acemagic K5 was left in the dust.
These scores bode well for this PC's capabilities when it comes to running local AI. The only thing stopping you will be the lack of a discrete GPU, which can obviously be remedied with an external graphics card.
Actually using this PC was a wild ride
In the best way possible
GEEKOM couldn't have picked a better person to send this review unit to, at least if being unbiased was their goal. In fact, I may not have been unbiased, but rather borderline prejudiced .
My previous experiences with mini PCs haven't been as good as this, so to say that the GEEKOM IT13 impressed me would've been an understatement.
I put the PC through its paces. Benchmarks, stress tests, and all of that went smoothly, so I decided to try using it for my actual work, which involves having dozens of tabs open at any given time, often while running some kind of software in the background, from games to Photoshop. All that RAM combined with a beefy processor ensured that the IT13 didn't even wince when faced with my usual workloads.
I also tried some tasks that I don't normally deal with, such as video editing in 4K, and thought the entire process was super smooth. I don't have a benchmark to compare to as it's been a while since I tested a mini PC, but there were no freezes or other weirdness that would've made me pause and wonder whether I was pushing the PC past what the manufacturer intended it to do.
I honestly could've replaced my desktop with it and not even noticed.
I'd have noticed when it came to gaming, though. This isn't a gaming PC by any stretch, but I was able to run some games on it, including World of Warcraft Classic, Fortnite, and Apex Legends. I had to scale down to 1080p and play on low settings, but I was able to maintain around 40-60 fps in these titles. One of the few downsides of this mini PC, as well as its processor, is that the integrated graphics could be better, but it was never made to be a gaming computer, so this isn't really an issue.
Should you buy the GEEKOM IT13 2026?
At just under $1,400, GEEKOM's IT13 2026 isn't the cheapest mini PC you can buy right now. If you just want something that'll run your spreadsheets and let you watch Netflix, you can get away with something cheaper.
However, if true performance is what you're after, GEEKOM's IT13 2026 definitely delivers. Although I would've liked to see it at a lower price point, I feel like the performance and build quality just about justify it. It's fast enough to keep up with my $3,000 desktop PC in everything related to my work, and that's a lot more than I can say about most laptops I've had the chance to test.
If you're looking for something actually good and not just something that works, GEEKOM's IT13 2026 is a fantastic choice. It's a powerful machine hidden in an ultra-portable little box, and it's entirely plug-and-play, with zero hassle involved.
