The Beelink GTR6 overview: Not really a review.

My basic impression is that the Beelink GTR6 is a high-performance mini PC. And when I say high performance it punches well above its weight.

I was able to borrow and test this little unit for a little while. I've been using this computer for a couple days now, running (Nobara Project version 37) Gnu/Linux. It came with Microsoft Windows 11, however I was able to quickly temporarily replace the pre-installed SSD with my own SSD. 

Opening the bottom cover was painless. There is a small fan-heat sink combo I had to remove. It is designed to cool the memory and SSDs. After that fan is removed You will have access to a full-user serviceable area. There are 3 M.2 slots, one NVMe, one SATA one Wi-Fi+ Bluetooth. And last but not least two DDR5-4800 SODIMM slots.

The PC is only 4.96 x 4.44 x 1.65 inches, which is smaller than a lot of consumer Wi-Fi routers. 

-Picture-

The first thing I noticed it had a few features not found on other mini PCs such as lntels NUC (Next Unit of Computing):

Fingerprint reader

Wake on LAN

Quad Display output

4 HDMI port

2.5GB LAN Port

Those editions definitely put it in a league of its own. 

Note: I am using Nobara 37( KDE ) which is based Fedora 37. I am using the Linux 6.1.4 kernel along with the Mesa 22.3.3 open source graphics driver. Your mileage may vary if you are using older linux kernels or mesa open source graphics drivers.

What Beelink GTR6 so powerful? It is the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX SOC. This powerhouse processor 

integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. They support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). That puts it on par with things like the i9-12900HK and Apple's M1 Pro. 

The 6900HX integrated GPU Radeon 680M is the game changer. It's based on the RDNA2 architecture and offers 12 CUs (= 768 shaders) at up to 2.4 GHz making it one of the fastest iGPU out there. The Radeon 780M RDNA3 architecture with AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS will be even faster, if you can believe that. 

It has all the latest and greatest technology packed into its little chassis. It supports Wifi 6E (802.11ax) the latest Bluetooth 5.2 (AMD RZ608) technology and one 2.5GB Ethernet Intel (I225-V) port. It comes with 32GB DDR5 RAM expandable up to 64GB, 500GB of m.2 NVMe SSD expandible up to 2TB. Last but not least, this little device has all the ports you need, four HDMI 2.1 ports, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, and a USB Type-C port on the front.

Note:Thunderbolt is not supported because of the AMD CPU.

GTR6 is not really for everybody especially at a price of nearly $800 USD, which does not even a include keyboard mouse or monitor. I'm not saying that's a negative in any way. It's just a fact. There are many mini PCs out there that are a quarter of the price which translates to a quarter of the performance but in reality that's what the vast majority of people really need. In other words, the GTR6 is overkill for vast majority of computer users.

Final thoughts.

Again this was not really a review more of a overview in progress. 

It will come windows 11 pre-installed but it is very possible for people install Linux distributions of their choice such as openSUSE, Arch Linux and Ubuntu easily all by themselves. 

Ryzen 9 6900HX SOC allows the Beelink GTR6 to offer unprecedented multitasking and multimedia capabilities. The integrated 680M graphics, based on the RDNA 2 architecture gives it a powerful one-two punch. The now built-in hardware support for ray tracing has provided a significant performance boost over the last generation of Vega 8.

It can easily deal with light office work such as BRL-CAD, ONLYOFFICE, and Blender, can be used with Kdenlive video editing or Gimp photo editing, 4K video playback, gaming and virtualization. 

When it comes to gaming, the Beelink GTR6 is capable of playing triple-A proton-powered titles, such as OverWatch 2, Song of Iron, Mayhem Brawler and Cyberpunk 2077. However, with Cyberpunk you will need to drop quality levels to low at 1080p to hit the magic number of 30-40 frames per second. 

With the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS starting to hit the marketplace. We could probably start seeing deep discounts on many PCs and laptops with a Ryzen 9 6900HX. 7000HSs 780 integrated graphics will put it in good company with Apples M1 Pro (10-CPU 16-GPU) iGPU.