GMKtec NucBox G3

What owners say

Three reviewers had this N100 box, one of whom bought his own, and it has become a well-understood budget machine. It is quiet in ordinary use, although the reviewer who first called it usually silent later described it as quite noisy under load, once he had its quieter N150 successor to compare. His load tests showed no significant throttling. The 2.5GbE port is Intel and performed well; the Wi-Fi 6 was a little slower than expected, and there is no USB-C port at all. The top cover snaps off to reach a single DDR4 slot, so memory runs single-channel, and two drive slots; owners run 32 GB, though one reader's Crucial 32 GB module was recognised as 8 GB. Under Windows it handled five simultaneous Plex hardware transcodes at about 35% processor load, but 4K HDR tone mapping fell back to the processor; the reviewer says it works in hardware under Linux. Linux is mostly fine: Ubuntu booted cleanly for one reviewer, while a Mint live image lacked sound and Wi-Fi for another, and HDMI audio had to be picked by hand. Emulation splits owners — PS2 ran for one reviewer, while a Batocera owner saw graphics hangs — and games stop at light titles, GTA V at about 30 FPS at 720p.

For whom

A cheap, quiet streaming box, Plex server or home-lab node — owners run clusters of them — ideally bought barebone by someone with spare memory and an SSD.

Not for

Video editing or creative work above 1080p, modern games, and anyone who needs USB-C.

Our own summary of 7 published sources, reviewed Sep 23, 2026. We have not tested this Mini PC ourselves; the sources are listed under About this data.