The Geekom Mini IT13 PC certainly lives up to that.

The miniature PC is popular in the United States and Europe but is mostly unknown in Australia.

Taiwanese multinational electronics company Geekom is all about small — and they sent me the Geekom Mini IT13 unit to test out.

The mini PC is totally different to anything I’ve ever seen before.

My first thought was: How could this be a PC? It appeared to be just a tiny box.

But it’s packed to the brim — as I’ll explain.

Along with the box was a power and HDMI cable, plus some screws so you can bolt it to the back of a monitor.

Set up

Getting set up was very simple. I just plugged in the power, connected it to my existing PC monitor (HDMI or USB only as there’s no DisplayPort) mouse and keyboard.

Windows 11 Pro was already pre-installed and only needed a quick update.

I selected the keyboard settings, linked to the Wi-Fi and I was in business.

A quick aside about my normal set-up — I have a Tower 500 Mid Tower Chassis. This is an monstrous tower that can fit all my custom set-up including a AMD Ryzen 7 gaming CPU, GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card and numerous hard drives. So this was a completely new experience for me.

Up and running, I quickly installed Steam to try out the games I’ve been playing on my normal PC. Lately I’ve been revisiting The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (it’s old but still incredibly fun to play through again). I also tested Counter-Strike 2 out on the Mini IT13, a fairly new game that was first played professionally recently at Intel Extreme Masters Sydney 2023.

The game play on Skyrim was very smooth, essentially the same as my normal PC.

The graphics looked great as I roamed around Tamriel.

Getting stuck into CS2, the Mini IT13 also performed well and I managed to get multiple kills (was it the Mini IT13 or was I just on a lucky streak?).

So what’s the idea for the Mini IT13, and do you still need a huge PC packed full of components?

After having used the Mini IT13 I say — why not have both?

I can see the Mini IT13 being extremely useful in a tight environment, either in the office or at home.

You can strap it to the back of a monitor and have it power up to four screens, which is an incredible design achievement by the Geekom team.

The other use I can envisage for it is for a network gaming night.

Lugging a PC to your brother or mate’s house isn’t ideal, although laptops work.

But having a tiny PC is another great solution if you’re keen for a LAN night.

Talking of tech innovation, the components of the Mini IT13 are smartly sandwiched into the box, all connected to the ultra-fine mini motherboard.

What’s in the box

The Mini IT13 boasts a cutting edge 13th Gen Intel Core i7/i9 with 14 Cores, 20 Threads and 24 MB Cache, up to 5.00 GHz.

In terms of graphics, it is Intel Iris Xe Graphics eligible.

On the memory front, there is a dual-channel DDR4-3200 SODIMM, and it supports up to 64GB.

For storage, there’s an M.2 2280 PCie Gen 4×4 SSD, which supports up to 2TB.

There’s also a SATA SSD slot which is expandable up to 1TB.

Really that’s enough storage for most people, especially since external storage is so cheap these days.

There are a bunch of ports on the small box including 3xUSB 3.2 Gen 2, 1 USB 2.0, 2xUSB4 (yes this means fast-charging), an SD card reader, 3.5mm headphone jack, 2.5GbE LAN and 2xHDMI 2.0.

It also has Bluetooth v5.2 and Wi-FI 6E AX211.

There’s also a quiet fan to keep everything cool.

I like how the team offered the possibility for extra storage and upgrades.

My take is, it’s a fantastic mini PC.

I still love my gigantic, super-jacked PC. It’s easy to upgrade or replace parts and there’s space for a massive graphic card and insane amounts of storage that I can’t do without.

But a mini PC is a great option too, and in many respects can be almost as good.

It’s specially handy for people living or working in tight environments and an alternative to a laptop.

And it’s fairly cheap, retailing at $1400.

Geekom sent me out some promo codes for Australia, US and UK, so have a look if you’re interested.

Australia: AU$30 off code – DailyIT13AU

United States: $US20 off code – daily13USA

United Kingdom: £15 off code – daily13UK