Geekom A9 Max AI review — excellent design undone by single-stick RAM
The A9 Max AI is a striking, well-engineered mini PC, but Geekom ships it with a single 32GB DDR5 stick, which cripples the Radeon 890M's performance.
I want to like the Geekom A9 Max AI — its design, engineering and connectivity are top-tier for a Mini PC. It’s a genuinely attractive device and, on paper, should be a clear contender for our best small-form-factor list. The problem is memory. Geekom ships the A9 Max with a single 32 GB DDR5 module at 5600 MT/s, and that single-channel configuration seriously starves the AMD Radeon 890M of bandwidth. I’ve tested similar hardware recently (Acemagic’s Mini PC Retro X5, which shares much of the same spec except for a smaller SSD and a slightly older CPU) and the impact is obvious. That choice has gutted the review score; the writer estimates switching to 2x16 GB would raise the score by roughly 15%. In almost every other respect the A9 Max is excellent.
A9 Max AI specs
CPU: AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470
Cores | Threads: 12 | 24
Clock speed: up to 5.2 GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon 890M
RAM: 32 GB (1x32 GB DDR5 @ 5600 MT/s)
