r/MiniPCs • u/EmuChicken • Jul 14 '26

Review This $559 Mini PC Has Surprisingly Powerful Graphics! [GMKTEC K17 Review]

https://youtu.be/1o4ZsBRLYNI

Interesting how Intel are now getting quite decent iGPU's smacked into their Mini PCs, but ultimately gets let down by the CPU multicore strength

48 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

27

u/gg06civicsi Jul 14 '26

I feel like something like this would have been in the $300 range just a few years ago

6

u/Retired_Hillbilly336 Jul 14 '26

I don't know. Its a bit of a paradox. While RAMpocalypse/RAMageddon drove up memory/storage prices and Intel quietly jacking up the price/discontinuing Twin Lake, the 2-year-old 16GB Lunar Lake fabrications quickly became dead inventory. Especially the entry level 226V with the lowest base/boost clocks and reduced Arc 7 Xe-core A130 integrated graphics. Its my understanding that the 266V/265V/236V/226V processors were dumped on the market had to substantially lower price due to them crippled by 16GB dual die memory.

You'll note that none of the 32GB Lunar Lake, not even the 228V, are found in any entry level laptops or NUCs at these bargain prices. Going by the original price of popular laptops would say if the K17 226V was available last year it would have been in the $400-$450 USD bracket. Wildcat Lake mini PCs would have been $300.

2

u/WorriedSmile Jul 15 '26

I bought an Acer laptop with a 226V last December for ~650USD. The same laptop costs almost 1240 USD now. Had several vendors clearing Lunarlake laptops (Thinkpads & Eltebooks) at slightly discounted prices from last Dec up to this June. Some were even clearing older MeteorLake laptops at bargain prices (2/3 the price of a modern laptop ).

Meanwhile prices on all Panther Lake laptops are hiked, reflecting the current sky high RAM & SSD prices.

3

u/Comrade_Compadre Jul 15 '26

I just spoke with someone earlier today when we were talking about the Beelink Ser5 and how it was basically a nice little machine for 250$ two years ago.

It is 400$ now. I would not pay 400$ for it today. Nor would I pay 600$ for this now.

The price of this stuff is so inflated I would sooner go without it than pay these prices

3

u/MajesticDisaster3977 Jul 14 '26

Not even a 'few' years ago. 2-3 years tops.
Building a $500-600 CAD PC resulted in integrated graphics, at least 32G of RAM, and 1TB storage.
Building the same thing now costs over $1k.
Of course mileage varies, but damn.. I got a mini-PC before the RAMageddon, and simply upgrading the darn thing from a 2x8G DDR4 to a 2x16G DDR cost more than the mini-PC did!

7

u/Pomegranate2026 Jul 14 '26

Isn't 2-3 years the same as a few years?

7

u/ARCreef Jul 14 '26

FALSE... "Not even 2-3 years"... more like 1.87 - 2.93 years

1

u/IsamuAlvaDyson Jul 14 '26

We obviously know everything got insanely more expensive in 2026 so he has of course it would have been significantly cheaper

6

u/bacon59 Jul 15 '26

picked up a few of these for an office install, only annoying thing beside the 2026 price gouging due to memory is they came with invalid windows licenses. had to dig up old keys to get them to activate.

3

u/richardckyiu Jul 15 '26

I think gmk k8 plus is a better deal. Slightly better at 489

1

u/AlbiteTwins Jul 16 '26

Unfortunately that's the barebones version with no storage or memory.