Affordable 0.6-litre mini PC revealed with Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU, dual USB4, and up to 16 TB of storage
GMKtec has unveiled a brand-new mini PC, dubbed the NucBox K13. Joining the company's expansive K-series, the K13 sports an Intel Lunar Lake chip for decent CPU and iGPU performance. The system is expected to go on sale in China early next month, with a global release not in sight for now.
Mini PC with 8-core Lunar Lake CPU, 16 GB LPDDR5X memory
The 0.6-litre NucBox K13 mini PC will be powered by a capable 8-core Intel Core Ultra 7 256V Lunar Lake CPU with 4 Lion Cove P-cores and 4 Skymont E-cores, promising multithreaded performance which is in the same league as an Apple M2 - a powerful SoC that is over three years old. While far from a performance behemoth, the Lunar Lake CPU should still be able to handle the vast majority of day-to-day tasks.
In terms of memory and storage, the NucBox K13 mini PC sports 16 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory which happens to be non-upgradeable and up to 16 TB of solid-state storage. Understandably, the lack of user-upgradeable memory will definitely be a major turn-off for many people. Moreover, there appears to be no room for discrete graphics, thereby making the system depend solely on the Arc 140V iGPU.
Sitting between the Radeon 780M and 890M iGPUs, the Arc 140V with 8 Xe cores is by no standards a slouch. However, plenty of workloads, including gaming, are incredibly hardware intensive nowadays, while an iGPU in this bracket should only be able to handle moderately intensive tasks and lightweight gaming. It is unclear whether the NucBox K13 mini PC will boast an OCuLink port, which would allow for extremely fast eGPU connections.
Pricing and availability
We do know that the mini PC will sport dual USB4 ports and HDMI 2.1 (TMDS), but the exact details of its I/O options remain unclear as of this writing. ITHome reports that the NucBox K13 mini PC will go on sale on February 5, and will boast a price tag of $675 (4,699 Yuan) and $718 (4,999 Yuan) for the 512 GB and 1 TB variant respectively.
Considering that the more powerful GMKtec K12 with the AMD Ryzen 7 H 255 APU, twice the memory, and OCuLink support is currently available for $599 on Amazon, the K13 will likely need heavy launch discounts, or at the very least, an interesting feature set to make it worth its salt.
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