ACEPC GK1 (4G+32GB/Intel Gemini Lake J4105)

Wonderful little PC with better performance than T8 computer tower I just replaced.I originally bough this to stream movies to my smart TV, but I have now started using it as my main desktop as the performance is just what I need.The ability to add a 2.5inch SATA drive into the supplied enclosure is a brilliant idea - I have placed an old 1TB drive in there as my program installation drive (with cloud storage for my pictures and documents).The performance is brilliant for my needs - it handles picture editing software fine and enables me to even do some limited editing.Connectivity is spot on too - equipped with dual output display ports (2*HDMI 2.0 port). along with 4 USB sockets (2 of them USB3).Add to that LAN, HDMI, micro SD and audio and you have a seriously useful piec of kit - with a nice blue glow!The only con i'd give it is the fan sound but thats just cause its so small, every now and then it kicks in to reduce heat on the task load. But for its size its perfectly understandable. And thats just a nitpick more than a con.I can't praise this little PC enough, even though it has 32gb of hard drive space, this is easily sorted with an SSD replacement in the hard drive caddy bellow.it's running smooth and by the numbers. Nice!

*** UPDATE 1/18/2019 ***Unfortunately, similar to others the fan failed on my unit after 3 months of operation.I tried to send an e-mail regarding warranty, but could not get any response from the seller. Therefore, I resorted to jury rigging a USB powered fan instead. It doesn't look pretty, but it brought the temperature down and hopefully lasts longer then the OEM fan.Please see the picture attached with a hole cut in the top if you want to consider this idea!*** UPDATE 9/29/2018 ***I now have an m.2 drive installed and working in the GK1 unit, giving me >200GB of free space and a faster read/write speed that the original installed eMMC drive, which is what I was after. I would probably update to 4 stars (due to noise) but will leave it at 1 star due to several hours of frustration and also so this review is more easily found when looking for a solution.Firstly, I believe the item description has recently been updated to specify a PCIe 2242 form factor m.2 drive. This information would have been useful earlier and would have avoided me ordering the wrong drives two times. The first drive I purchased was a 2280 form factor which was too long (80 mm vs. the 2242 which is only 42 mm long to fit in the enclosure). The second drive I purchased was a SATA drive, when what is actually required is a PCIe drive. Unfortunately, there seem to be very few drives that meet this combined PCIe 2242 form factor specification, but this is the one that I found on Amazon:Toshiba Memory America THN-RC10Z2400G8(TS OCZ RC100 Series NVMe M.2 2242 Internal SSD 240GBI installed the RC100 in the m.2 slot on the motherboard in the top half of the unit (you have to remove 4 screws under the rubber feet). However, it took some tweaking in the BIOS to get it to be recognized. I played with so many settings that I am not sure which ones finally worked. If I had to guess, I would say it was "Enabling" all of the PCI settings including power to all PCI slots 1-6 (instead of "Auto" or "Disabled"). Once the device was recognized in the BIOS as an NVMe drive (after booting to Windows and seeing the drive there first), I returned all BIOS settings to the defaults and it still worked.I cloned the existing disk to the RC100 using "Macrium Reflect 7 Free Edition". This also took a few attempts to get the settings right and have the RC100 recognized as a boot drive. It looks like you can reorder the partitions using "Drag and Drop" and expand the C: drive to fill the RC100 with "Cloned Partition Properties". However, I did not realize this at the time so I only cloned the first 3 partitions, but not the 4th containing the "Recovery" files. This is because otherwise I could not expand the C: drive to fill up the larger space using Windows "Disk Management" due to the order of the partitions.In summary, the following are the steps that worked for me, although not all may be essential:1. Install RC100 into the m.2 slot on the motherboard (remove base and take out 4 screws under rubber feet)2. Change the BIOS settings as shown in the attached pictures (press "delete" key during startup of the GK1)3. Boot into Windows and see if the drive is recognized (try tweaking the BIOS settings some more if not)4. (At this point you should see the RC100 in the BIOS NVMe menu, and can restore BIOS defaults if you want)5. Boot into Windows using the original installation and clone using "Macrium Reflect 7 Free Edition"6. I think it is important to use the "Advanced Settings" and select the "Forensic Sector Copy" option*7. DO NOT copy the "Recovery" partition at the end or you may not be able to expand the OS partition later*8. DO NOT expand the partition containing the OS yet or it will become a "Dynamic Disk" and may not boot9. Change the BIOS settings to boot into Windows from the RC100 (see screenshot) and save settings10. The RC100 should now be your C: drive and you can use "Disk Management" to expand the OS partition* these steps may be unnecessary if you use "Drag and Drop" and "Cloned Partition Properties" in Macrium ReflectI hope this works for others, but please feel free to share your experiences or questions.___________________________________________I bought this unit to replace another ACEPC T9 mini-computer that failed after 11 months. I went for the latest GK1 model due to the faster processor. I am also hoping the fan helps, since the T9 used to get very hot which may have contributed to its short life.Unfortunately, there is very little space left on the primary partition after the OS installation. Therefore, I bought a 256GB m.2 SSD onto which to clone the OS. I did not want to add a HDD in the base since it is only connected by USB. The m.2 SSD is advertised as supported in the item description and details.However, the BIOS will not recognize the drive, and after fiddling I can find no settings that work. It appears that at least one other buyer has experienced the same issue. Otherwise the PC is quite fast (better than the T9) and is doing its job, but I wasted money trying to upgrade.A solution needs to be provided or the item description should be updated.

I bought this to replace a little Raspberry Pi which I’d been hosting Plex, OpenVPN and Homebridge on. The Pi was fine but never had the horsepower to transcode video for Plex, leaving me to to have to first convert video to “lowest common denominator” format for hosting on Plex. I purchased the 4Gb/32Gb J4105 model and added a Samsung 860 EVO.The performance of the J4105 for transcoding exceeded my expectation. A couple of 1080p -> 720 transcodes barely registered and testing some 4k clips seemed no problem either. Time to rip those Blu-Rays! A few seconds lead time to buffer and we were off in real time. That’s with the video files hosted on a cheap and cheerful personal NAS (WD Mycloud) and R/W of 100/90MB/s over Ethernet.I seem to have so much RAM and CPU left over that I’m actually looking for other tasks for it. Already added NextCloud and I may add Hass.io and NodeRed into the mix.Altogether, very pleased with this little box.

I changed my rating to 5 stars, bcs it is an awesome product.After receiving replacement for the first shipment, which imnho appeared to be used, "open box " product, the GK 1 works great. I was able to activate Windows 10 without any questions, and also added Toshiba RC100 240gb m.2 ssd drive with no issues. Cloning the drive wth Macrium Reflect software took less than 10 min.I wish to thank user "soupdragon" for his how-to writup on adding ssd and copying Windows 10.One thing I done differently during cloning, was to expand the C: drive to the max (leaving 2gb for two last partitions) and it work very well. New C: drive now has 200gb free...-------------If this is a new product which includes Microsoft Win10 license, then why it cannot be activated???My PC received just today also showed default location in New Zealand, while I am in Florida, USA.Is it an opened box with MS license lifted off? Nowhere in the description it says that the end user MUST BUY new Win10 license? PLEASE ADVICE!