My Review of the AD03 N95 Mini PC

[M B]

In summary: the Ace Magician AD03 is a solid Mini PC for office use, home theater PCs, streaming, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, 2D indie, and retro-era gaming.

The images that go along with this review are in this Google Photos album. I did take more photos, but the photos featured in that link are an edited selection that follows the text of this review. I'll see if I can directly embed them into this post (or a subsequent post) at a later date.

A while ago I began searching for a replacement for an older tablet Windows 10 PC that I was using to stream video (YouTube, etc.) via HDMI to a 1080p television. It was taking a number of seconds to load pages and well over ten seconds to simply expand a YouTube video to full-screen mode. That older, fanless tablet PC had a 22 nanometer Intel Z3795 quad-core Atom processor that was launched in May of 2014, paired with 4 GB of RAM. Quite simply, modern websites and video have been bogging it down for some time now. However, it uses only a few watts of power when in use and it’s based on ten-year-old technology, so that's to be expected.

Instead of another tablet or laptop to replace it, I came upon the relatively new phenomenon of "Mini" PCs: systems which use low-powered chips (often used in tablets and laptops) in a lightweight, small-form-factor case that you can hold with one hand.

I began researching Intel’s current successor to those 22 nm Atom processors from nearly a decade ago. All of Intel's modern, low-power chips feature “efficiency” (“E”) cores and a total power draw of less than 20 watts. Their most recent desktop processor architectures, Alder Lake and Raptor Lake use large “P” cores and those smaller “E” cores to complement them and provide more grunt for multi-core workloads.

Well, it turns out that those “E” (“efficiency”) cores are quite capable on their own, so Intel is selling them as solo products: their current Intel “N” series of CPUs, which launched in January of 2023. And this Mini PC features the “N95” processor, with four of those efficiency cores, a turbo frequency of up to 3.4 GHz, and a total power usage of less than 20 watts, even when maxing out all four cores. This particular Mini PC from Ace Magician that I'm reviewing (model “AD03”) also features a 512 GB SSD and 16 GB of 3200 MHz DDR4 RAM in single-channel mode, instead of the dual-channel mode of its “P”-and-“E”-core big brothers, but for the typical use cases of the N95, single channel works well enough. For a cost savings the AD03 also comes with a 256 GB SSD and 8 GB of RAM.

Now, upon unboxing the PC I was struck not only by its size, but by a rattling noise that I heard inside. I immediately went about opening the case to see what was going on. It’s more difficult than it seems at first glance to open the case, which one must do when upgrading or replacing the 512 GB NVMe M.2 SSD or the single SO-DIMM RAM stick that are included inside.

After loosening two screws in the front, I took a dull butter knife and worked it around the sides and top of the cover, very-slightly damaging the plastic housing in the process of loosening the clips that held the cover in place. After freeing the clips, I was able to slide them from their holes and remove the cover, revealing the culprit of the rattling noise. It turns out that the CMOS battery, which allows the PC to remember the time, date, and BIOS settings, had come loose (as seen in the included image). During shipping it must have dislodged from the included bit of adhesive on the motherboard. Thankfully, it was still undamaged and tethered to a plugged-in wire, so I was able to instantly remedy the loose battery by gently pressing it back down on the adhesive until it was firmly in place again.

From there on it was smooth sailing to set up the PC, which comes with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed. The included images tell the story of my testing while I evaluated the PC’s specifications and its gaming capabilities. Normal web browsing and video streaming was no problem for this new chip, and its included integrated graphics did their job almost flawlessly here. As an aside, I did go into Device Manager to change the Wi-Fi’s driver from using 2.4 Ghz to 5 Ghz (“ac” wireless mode), which, in my case, dramatically improved my Internet speed (from 4 Mbps to almost 200 Mbps). Normally an automatic “handshake” between my router and my Wi-Fi devices changes this setting eventually, but I decided to do it manually for the sake of testing (see the included images for reference).

After doing some research, I found benchmarks online stating that the N95 chip was about 300% faster than my old Z3975 chip while using similar amounts of power. As a result, I was able to stream a 20+ minute 4k60 YouTube video in full-screen mode with only 11 dropped frames (out of 83,316), while downscaling to a 1080p television (image included as proof). I haven’t been able to test if cutting-edge home-theater-PC features such as HDR10 or Dolby Vision are possible with the N95. However, it's clear that normal 4k video playback is effortless for it.

Ace Magician’s cooling system and fan work wonderfully. Idle on the desktop, the N95 ran at about 8C! While playing 4k YouTube video it settled at around 12C. Normal desktop usage, like downloading a Steam game, showed a temperature of around 16C (as seen in the included photo). While playing a game like the ones described below it was still under 30C, and the fan was barely audible in all tested scenarios. (Ambient room temperature while testing was about 68F, or 20C.)

I never even bothered to try running games on that 2014 Atom Windows tablet (other than a “card-battling”-style game). However, when firing up Steam and the Epic games store on the N95 system, I found what you’d expect from a modern, low-wattage x86 chipset: It was able to run PC versions of games from the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 generation (or before) quite well. For example, Half Life 2 (which released in 2004) ran at over 100 frames-per-second at 1080p high settings in indoor areas. Furthermore, the original 2008 release of Bioshock ran at 60 fps in normal indoor areas at 720p high settings. Of course, the included SSD allowed Bioshock to load in 4-5 seconds from a saved game, vs. up to a full minute on the PS3 and 360 versions, which ran from DVD discs and mechanical hard drives at only 30 fps back in the day.

Modern “retro-style” 2D games also ran quite well on the N95, which means that Sega Genesis games (under emulation) from Steam are obviously an option as well. Probably the most challenging game that I tried running was Rocket League from the Epic games store, which is a game from the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One generation. I turned the resolution down to 720p and all the settings at their lowest (“Performance” mode, etc.) and the game was able to run at about 80-85 fps in training mode. Not too bad, as frame rate is possibly the most important metric when running this game -- a game that the PS4 only runs at 60 fps (albeit at 1080p with higher graphics settings). The included gaming images should illustrate the frame rates that the N95 chipset was able to achieve.

So there we have it: Intel and Ace Magician have provided a solid platform for numerous office, streaming, and gaming scenarios at an extremely affordable price. It comes with everything you need to get started: Windows 11 (Pro), a 30 watt power adapter, an HDMI cable, and even a kit for mounting to the back of a monitor or under a desk. I applaud Ace Magician and Intel's efforts here and highly recommend this Mini PC for use cases such as those detailed above. I hope this review helped. Thanks for reading!

[admin]

AMAZING REVIEW!

[Gabe]

Fantastic review!

I have Half-Life 2 and Bioshock as well. The entire series of each, actually. I love the Half-Life series, though I haven't yet played much of Bioshock. I got the latter when Epic Games was giving it away for free for PC.