Review of Newsmay Neosmay S2-B560TPM mini PC: small office PC with efficient Intel Core i5-11400T

Newsmay Technology specialises in building compact mini PCs. We already had the opportunity to take a look at two of its tiny PCs: the AC8 and AC6. With the recently released Neosmay S2-B560TPM, the company is taking a slightly different route and has set its sights more on industrial applications. Although the other models likewise show up more in B2B sales, it doesn't mean that the consumer market is excluded. Visually, the Neosmay S2-B560TPM is rather reminiscent of a typical industrial PC. Well-known manufacturers also offer very similar products, such as the Lenovo ThinkCentre and Dell OptiPlex. With its great specifications, the Neosmay S2-B560TPM certainly has what it takes to get a piece of the pie in this segment.

Our review unit comes with an Intel Core i5-11400T, one stick of 16 GB RAM and an M.2 drive with a capacity of 500 GB. With an almost square footprint and sides each measuring around 18 cm (7.1"), the system is also quite compact and offers all the external ports you need in everyday use.

The barebone version of the Neosmay S2-B560TPM can be had for around US$135, whilst our review unit costs US$569. We used the pre-installed Windows 11 Professional as the operating system during our review.

There isn't really anything outstanding about the appearance of the Newsmay Neosmay S2-B560TPM, which is to be expected considering its intended applications. The case is sturdy and robust, and our review unit is well-built. The cover can be opened without difficulty, thus making it easy to upgrade or expand the system. The SSD is placed in a slightly inconvenient location underneath the CPU cooler. Inside the box, you will find a vertical stand as well as a VESA mount for attaching the system to a monitor.

The Newsmay Neosmay S2-B560TPM weighs about 1,300 g (2.9 lb), and the external power adapter around 360 g (0.8 lb). However, we have to mention that our review unit came with the wrong power adapter. The right one may be slightly heavier because the adapter we received is only capable of delivering 4.74 A at 19 V, whereas the system requires an adapter that can output 6.15 A at 19 V in order to operate properly.

The Wi-Fi module in the Newsmay Neosmay S2-B560TPM is made by Realtek and supports the 5 GHz band. The transfer and receive rates are slightly below 1 Gbit/s and were always stable during our test. Those who prefer a wired connection can also use the RJ45 port on the device, which is capable of data transfer speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s.

Our review unit is equipped with an Intel Core i5-11400T – a solid processor with six cores and twelve threads. This means the device packs enough power to handle everyday office work. If you are someone who keeps many browser tabs open at once, then you should go with the model with 16 GB of RAM to ensure the computer has enough resources.

The Core i5-11400T is part of Intel's Rocket Lake-S series. In the Newsmay Neosmay S2-B560TP, it sits in a conventional LGA 1200 socket. A "T" processor in this series operates at a TDP of 35 watts (equivalent to its PL1). If the CPU isn't throttled, it can draw up to 84 watts of power, which corresponds to its PL2. In desktop computers, we have seen that the PL2 is often equal to the PL1. However, Newsmay forces the CPU to observe the TDP limits through the BIOS, presumably to avoid overheating. Nonetheless, we believe that the system can afford to raise the PL1 slightly, even under load. These values can be changed using XTU to produce significantly better results.
The values shown here were determined with standard settings. So we weren't surprised that the Intel Core i5-11400T only ranked somewhere in the middle and is clearly beaten by the Intel Core i5-11320 in some respects. The Cinebench R15 nT benchmark illustrates how much untapped potential still lies within the Intel Core i5-11400T, as you can see in the screenshot we have included. The Intel Core i5-11400T has a base frequency of 1.3 GHz and can reach up to 3.7 GHz in Turbo Boost.

For more comparisons and benchmarks, you can refer to our CPU comparison table.

Our endurance test, which was performed by looping Cinebench R15, showed that Newsmay is able to control the Intel Core i5-11400T well at standard clock speed. Due to the small cooling solution, the low power limit of the processor is usually the bottleneck in the system. With an average score of 664 points, the result is nevertheless very stable across all 50 runs.

The Newsmay Neosmay S2-B560TPM is equipped with an Intel UHD Graphics 730. Featuring 24 Execution Units and a max frequency of 1,200 MHz, this integrated GPU is nowhere near keeping pace with the AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 on the current AMD Ryzen APUs. It is probably not a great idea to run anything more than office applications on the Intel UHD Graphics 730, as you can see in the overview of its performance in the games tested.

The Newsmay Neosmay S2-B560TPM always produces a noticeable amount of noise when in use, despite our measurements suggesting that noise levels are rather moderate. At average load, the noise level of 35.8 dB(A) is still acceptable. The system was never completely silent in operation. Even at idle, it emitted no less than 31.8 dB(A) of noise based on our measurements. The fan curve is well configured and responds promptly to changes in load without constantly readjusting the fan speed.

Thanks to the low TDP of the Intel Core i5-11400T, the Newsmay Neosmay S2-B560TPM uses relatively little power at average load, drawing around 56 watts from the power adapter. Power consumption may sometimes rise to 107 watts for a brief period when the processor is operating in the PL2 state.