GK3 Pro and NVMe...

[Gabe]

In case anyone was wondering, the GK3 Pro with the N5105 CPU is NVMe capable. It comes with an m.2 SATA drive, but the slot is NVMe ready.

I did a little swapping around of some drives over the weekend. Shortly after I got my AM02, I bought a 512GB XPG S8200 Pro NVMe drive for it to replace the SATA drive it came with. It was identical to the drive I had bought and used in my home built Ryzen 3400G based desktop, so I was already familiar with its capabilities.

After about a month of having the GK3 Pro I decided to take the XPG drive from the AM02 and put it in the AMR5, taking the NVMe drive from the AMR5 and putting it in the GK3 Pro, and then taking the SATA drive from the GK3 Pro and putting it in the AM02. The reason I decided to go this way is because the AMR5 is the best and most capable of the three, so that gets the XPG, which is the best drive, and between the AMO2 and GK3 Pro, the latter is better, so that got the NVMe drive originally in the AMR5. So now the AM02 is back with an SATA drive like it came with, though 512GB rather than its original 128GB. For reference, my AM02 is the one with the Athlon 300U, not the better CPU models available now.

The GK3 Pro is now even more responsive than it already was. The drive tops out at around 2550 MB/s and 1850 MB/s read and write speed, respectively, which is about 4.5 and 3.7 times that of the SATA drive originally in it (which is now in the AM02). Don't get me wrong, it was great even with the SATA drive, but now it's even better. I have no doubt the XPG would hit its top speeds of around 3500 MB/s and 3000 MB/s in the GK3 Pro, like it does in the AMR5, but compared to what's in it now the difference probably wouldn't be noticeable enough in real world use to cause me to buy another XPG for it. However, I don't really use that home built desktop much now, so it's possible that I'll take its XPG drive and put it in the GK3 Pro at some point, but we'll see.

Rather than messing with all of the cloning, especially since I don't save much on my PCs, I decided to perform clean installs of W11 Pro on all three. With all of the updates, driver installations, bloatware cleaning and settings changes to the way I like, each one took about two hours, but it was worth it.

[Tobi]

Thank you @Gabe,

this is a very useful information!

[dragonpoo]

That's awesome, Gabe. I saw the GK3pro on here and it sure looks tempting, especially with that 16GB of RAM and updated CPU. I'm glad to know it performs better with the NVMe chip.

[Gabe]

That's awesome, Gabe. I saw the GK3pro on here and it sure looks tempting, especially with that 16GB of RAM and updated CPU. I'm glad to know it performs better with the NVMe chip.

I was pleasantly surprised by it. I knew it would be better than my AK3, but I didn't expect it to ultimately be better than the AM02. Though the Athlon 300U has a slightly lower overall Passmark rating, some of the individual ratings showed a bit better than the N5105, so I figured the AM02, especially with the upgraded RAM I installed, would be better overall, but the GK3 Pro just seems more responsive. And the internal temps are improved, especially when compared to my AK3, which uses the same case and has identical board layout. I've found that once it's been on for a while, it idles in a range of the mid/upper 30s to lower/mid 40s, and when it gets higher under load it comes back down pretty quickly.

When I took it apart I saw that they've added a foam 'gasket' around the vent on the bottom of the case, essentially bridging the gap from that opening to the opening on the duct over the heatsink, right where the fan is. This ensures that all air drawn into and over the heatsink is fresh air from outside the unit. I suspect they've improved their application of thermal compound as well, and they may even be using a different kind. Whatever they've done, it's made a good improvement on system temps.

You can see the gasket they've added in the snapshot below. They've also added some to correspond with the outflow end of the duct.

100_0074.JPG (520.25 KiB) Viewed 4361 times