GMKtec NucBox M5 Plus

What owners say

Three reviewers had this Ryzen 7 5825U box, one of whom bought his own, and they agree its character depends on one BIOS setting. At the default 15 W it is nearly silent — about 38 dB at idle and 39 under load in one measurement — and cool, peaking at 70 °C in a warm room, but clocks stay low. At 35 W, the real Performance limit rather than the 25 W one review states, it is roughly 20% faster in video work and becomes clearly audible, 50.5 dB with a high-pitched fan, at 86 to 90 °C. One reviewer's verdict: quiet but underused, or fast but loud. Getting inside means two stages of clips, and the processor fan cannot be removed for cleaning. Both memory slots come filled with 8 GB modules, and a second M.2 2280 slot sits empty. The two 2.5GbE ports are Realtek, which rules it out for some hypervisors, although one owner ran a Nutanix node on it around the clock for five days. Linux owners report hibernation and MediaTek Wi-Fi regressions on newer kernels. The fastest port is USB 3.2 Gen 2, so external SSDs top out near 1,000 MB/s, and the plastic case can look cheap. The near-perfect rating on GMKtec's store is not reliable: almost all of those reviews are imported and unverified, and some are about another model.

For whom

A quiet office PC, or a firewall and home-lab box with two 2.5GbE ports, for someone who will choose between 15 W and 35 W in the BIOS.

Not for

Gaming, VMware or XCP-ng labs that need Intel network cards, and Linux users who rely on hibernation.

Our own summary of 8 published sources, reviewed Sep 23, 2026. We have not tested this Mini PC ourselves; the sources are listed under About this data.