Trigkey S5 AMD Ryzen 5 Mini PC Review! Synthetic Benchmarks and Teardown

[@robertroberts7137]

Found your channel recently, love the content and production quality for such a small channel.

[@ntgm20]

Thank you! My goal for it is to be at least not terrible. I experiment with elements sometimes and sometimes they don't work well.

[@schukaproallied9834]

Glad you took the security measures first with the firewall. Great review!

[@marcinx89]

5560U CPU seems to be perfect for yt playing at 1080p 60fps 1.5x speed. Great review.

[@errolfoster1101]

I brought a trigkey G2 and it has taken the place of my old tower and I am very happy with it I have been using it for over 12 months and not 1 single issue touch wood and your review here is very interesting

[@ntgm20]

Thanks for your feedback! Glad to hear you are happy with your machine. Any particular aspects of my review that you find more interesting than others?

[@errolfoster1101]

@@ntgm20 I found it amazing that there is such a large drop in power usage dropping from where around 5-600W to 35W

[@Jae_972]

excited to see the next minipc review. im liking these. hope your move goes well.

[@ntgm20]

Thanks!

[@wakeupcall2665]

Great review. Short precise, easy to listen to. And with a nice sense of humour, too. It is probably a lot of work, but while listing the details, it would be great to have the information at the same time on the screen, and leave it there for a short while to take them all in. But overall, I really enjoyed this review. Thumbs up and I leave a sub!

[@timcat1004]

I just bought this and I am very impressed.

[@evilelf19]

Neat. Glad you did an AMD machine. If you can get one with the RDNA 2 integrated graphics you could game on it as well.

[@noxy__azerty-_-ytb8607]

yeah i just bought it for 410dollars

[@kronckew]

I have Trigkey Ryzen 7 5700u, 32gb ram version. Works perfectly. Love it.

[@ntgm20]

Thanks for sharing!

[@garciapico1495]

Congratulations for finaly getting products to review from companies

[@ntgm20]

Thanks! So far I've not said yes to any due to the "you buy, we refund after a good review" thing. I've received one that was legit, but timeline constraints right now is why I turned them down, which is sad because I do like exploring new things.

[@sirdee9607]

Nice Review, Nice PC ,Wishing you a great first advent. I replaced my Ryzen 5 5600G with a GTX 3060, after I tested my Ryzen 3 3200G Back-UP-PC long-Time. I recognized I could play all of my Games on the Ryzen 3 APU, so I spared the Power of the GPU and used for a long time only the Ryzen 6 5600G as my Main PC, and then I decided to Safe even More Power by using a Chuwi RZ-Box with a Ryzen 7 5800H in 15W Mode, it plays all of my Games and works superbly as my every day Desktop, with a much smaller Footprint hidden behind my Monitors.

[@ntgm20]

Very nice! So there could be hope for someone wanting to game on this then. I didn't want to really say no gaming, but gaming that does require dedicated graphics is out. I think I've seen even Cyberpunk 2077 run on an APU, but at like 4FPS or something. Leaves a lot of other games open as playable with settings turned down, I'm just not a gamer to evaluate.

[@sirdee9607]

@@ntgm20 I was Gaming a lot when i was Younger, i played a lot of Shooters, But now i enjoy Traveling along the Galaxy's , hearing Deep House

[@mdnurol1078]

Lovely post with helpful information. This tutorial ha really helped me a lot. I do like and enjoyed this cool video.

[@roysonparsons3300]

Good review. Convinced me to buy one and plan to use it as my desktop replacement. I don’t do gaming or video editing anymore, so it should be more than adequate. I haven’t set it up yet. I already know I’ll need more storage, am interested in your opinion whether it would be smarter to upgrade the NVME drive to 2T, or just add a 2T SSD drive. The cost for either is about the same. My immediate thought is that the NVME drive should be faster, but if I go with the SSD I’ll end up with 500g more total memory. Also be interested to see your Ram upgrade

[@ntgm20]

Thanks! I don't know which would be better, NVMe or SATA if the price is near the same. Just have a backup plan for your data either way. The RAM upgrade went smoothly with the one I put in the description.

[@talk9415]

You got me nervous! I just got my Beelink mini S, similar form factor, it came with win-11 pro pre installed and I just started to use it with all my gmail accounts, can you share your findings regarding the security risks you've mentioned? have you find any? P.S really good quality review. I'm a sub from now on

[@ntgm20]

You may be okay and may not be, that is all the issues with machines that come preloaded. I can't remember on the Beelink ones I received if I saw, but if you need administrator rights to run a program (like an install) but the dialog box doesn't pop up that is a real problem. I'm hoping one day I can take all my screen captures and make a video on it and show how anyone can use the Windows Out of the Box Experience reset to make it look like a fresh install. Thanks for your comment on quality and subscribing!

[@talk9415]

​@@ntgm20 Thank you for the replay! If this info helps: it was purchased from the official beelink store on AliExpress. The thing is that I purchased a better SSD, and meanwhile (until it arrives) thought I would leave it with the "original" windows 11 install, in addition I understand there is some "pain" with the drivers, and on top of that I'm not sure if the license is legit so would be another adventure to activate windows after fresh install... Would be awesome to hear your thoughts regarding this. As regarding the security prompt before install / run as admin program, it's there and pops each time.

[@danhostetler1423]

I also got this from the Vine program and another Intel Celeron one a year before and this is still hooked up and I've been working on making it the desktop for the Ender 3 3D printer cart I'm fashioning in my basement. It's tiny but powerful. I did do testing with graphic benchmarks and it can do some entry level 1080P games today on low to medium settings and push out fluid motion in 30-60 frames, but it could do high graphics and aliasing for games 5+ years ago. Which for its size and integrated graphics only was impressive.

[@ntgm20]

Nice! Thanks for your feedback!

[@Crashed131963]

I think all Ryzen 5000 series come with built in Radeon Vega-7. It about as good as you can get for integrated graphics. Vega7=Performance of a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 card.

[@zoiemorrison]

I loved this review!!

[@drtoxiccookie]

I am actually buying this week after next so thanks for the teardown video. The system will not be running linux for long plan to install manjaro and use this as my new web development pc.

[@ntgm20]

Very cool! I upgraded mine to 32 GB and ran it as my desktop for a couple of months. Only moved back to a full desktop because I got my stuff back from shipping across country. I hope you like it!

[@ctortolini]

Great review... How do you get to the BIOS tough?

[@ntgm20]

Thanks! F7 for the boot menu and Del for the BIOS.

[@scottcondor3365]

I had already bought one of these on sale and have had no issues at all, but my requirements are pretty elementary compared to yours. I was assigned TDY to Asia for 6 months and wondered if I will be able to convert this to 240V... I am guessing yes. I am lazy and quite old, so I just bought one of the Samsung 1TB USB SSD memories... it's still the fastest unit I've ever had.

[@ntgm20]

I don't think I've claimed recently to not be lazy or old. Hope your TDY is or was fun and safe. The power brick that came with mine is dual voltage, so would just need the plug adapter.

[@dmbphe6137]

Hi, great video. What drivers were missing on w11 re-install? I'd like to do a clean install on my S5 not using the files supplied on their website.

[@ntgm20]

I think they were for Bluetooth and audio of some sort. I downloaded AMD Adrenalin edition 22.9.2 minimal and that but ran that after downloading some CAB files. Go for it, and if you run into any issues send me an email and maybe we can get it all right to share for others.

[@dmbphe6137]

@@ntgm20 Thanks for your quick reply, will let you know how I get on. Loving the speed of this thing so far though!

[@DouglasJenkins]

I think the Beelink SER5 is at thie same pricepoint currently, and it might be the safer option?!

[@ntgm20]

Looks to be near the same price. Both are still probably made by the same manufacture. I'm still using the S5 as my desktop and so far no real issues.

[@DailyCorvid]

There is currently a tonne of new and newish mini PC's out - the industry has realised now there is a big market for 2nd computers, and these are perfect for it. I have one driving a pair of TV's for watching sports. Perfect for it, I got the AMO2 Ryzen 7 one. Couldn't be happier with it. I prefer that to the Beelink box tbh.

[@stevecruztube]

twist? What do you think is going on with sysbench? Thanks again. I've been wondering how the AMD based mini pc stack up to intel based systems. I can't wait to see what you do with all these little guys.

[@ntgm20]

I really don't know why the sysbench scores came back so high. I found an article from 2016 where it was claimed that it biased Intel chips, but why does this one score so high and skewed against the likes of other CPU benchmarks? I've never seen an anomaly like this, but it is my first Ryzen system too.

[@elijah_m]

Great review as always but personally Id buy the Beelink version of this. It has a better build and has better overall software support.

[@ntgm20]

The support may be better, but from the ones I have I'd say there is a good bet they are actually both made by AZW.

[@jondonnelly3]

they are exactly the same.

[@alx8439]

AMD integrated graphics is quite decent - don't rip the idea of gaming on it :) it will not do 1080p ultra for sure, but 1080p low or dropping to 720p will make pretty much anything playable

[@ntgm20]

Very true, and while from most reviews I've seen the AMD integrated graphics do better than Intel, you still might not to buy it with that in mind, unlike most desktop systems that you can swap one in later. As you may have seen though, my XPS doesn't have a graphics card either.

[@Comfy_Bed]

​@@ntgm20 egpus are a thing.

[@darkhelmet]

I just ordered one of these for about 290 USD (big sale going on at Amazon since I think new Ryzen 7 version are starting to hit the market). I wanted to ask if it is possible to get all the drivers I would need and also use the Windows 11 key (license) without issue by just installing off a fresh USB Windows installer?

[@ntgm20]

Very nice! For the video I just ran a fresh install off USB media, and activation happened without entering a key. Now I had connected it to the internet before then , and I think they do to, so your results may vary. As for the drivers Windows update may have them now. It was only those few it couldn't find but I found looking them up in the Windows update catalog.

[@darkhelmet]

Thx for the reply! I am thinking of booting it first off a Linux USB, checking if things work, then boot and install off a new Windows USB. Great video!

[@TheRetarp]

Don't expect name brand components. I bought a different Trigkey model and it had generic white label AZW ram and nvme.

[@ntgm20]

I lucked out then I guess.

[@theinktician]

This is somewhat bizarre. This is a mobile chip, so I'm surprised how close the benchmarks were. It's suppose to go up to 25w, but the Amazon page for this mini pc says it has a 35w tdp. Maybe it's the extra power being fed. Eith way, it's $310 right now. That's a lot (and I mean a LOT) better than what you'd get for a laptop OR desktop of the same price

[@ntgm20]

That is kind of weird, as I look at the AMD page on the processor and the configurable TDP is only up to 25W. So maybe a typo on the seller page? Then again, I bought the GK2 because Intel said that processor only supported 8GB of RAM and the machine had 12, and sure enough all 12 GB worked. That price is fairly good considering the retail evaluated price when I received it.

[@longdang2681]

@@ntgm20 What are the PL1 and PL2 values in the bios? (it should read something like 15000 if it's 15W) (tdp is not really representative of power consumption as it's just a figure for heatsink requirement which is not the same thing)

[@ryanw1906]

Did you ever find anything nefarious on the default installation?

[@ntgm20]

On this one I don't know that I did, but because the drive had over 800GB written and 13 power on hours I figured it wasn't just an expanded install at the factory, someone powered it on and probably ran updates. I did feel it safer to just wipe it all and do a reinstall. The rest of the machines though, I need to go back through all the screen captures again to make sure, but those I would say reload the OS before using as there were some red flags there.

[@ryanw1906]

@@ntgm20 Ahh ok. It wasn't for lack of trusting the vendor but the fact it had been demoed by someone else?

[@ntgm20]

@@ryanw1906 I would consider the lack of trust the vendor. It may not be the company itself, but could be someone in line before the items are packed up, or who is doing the testing.

[@Hihellohihello-l3b]

good point​@@ntgm20

[@JuAnMaXoNGamePlayer]

Bios dont let turn on when power Carme back?

[@MM-fe9mz]

Was going to get a beelink u59 n5105, now thinking about switching to the trigkey s3 3550h ryzen 5

[@ntgm20]

Sounds cool. Either way I hope your experience isn't terrible.

[@MM-fe9mz]

@@ntgm20 that sounded ominous. Did you continue to use this trigkey unit after the review? Just wondering if there's something that I should be aware of.

[@ntgm20]

@@MM-fe9mz I am using the S5 currently while my big desktop is being shipped with the rest of my belongings. I upgraded the RAM to 24GB and so far haven't had any issues.

[@Zavala-z9g]

This Mini PC is on sale right now $308.20 with the $33 discount coupon you need to click before hit buy now button.

[@ntgm20]

Good find!

[@kalamazoowifi3531]

Just wondering if this mini pc will run ChromeOS Flex?

[@ntgm20]

That I do not know.

[@ridgedbullet2420]

You can use an external GPU dock and hook it up where the wifi card goes

[@ntgm20]

I've heard of that but never really looked into it. Would be a neat thing to see.

[@zedorda1337]

This one seems like a huge price hike from the Ryzen 5 3550H model you can get for under $300.

[@Hihellohihello-l3b]

do you think these come preloaded withalware to mine Bitcoin, in reference to the driver issues

[@ntgm20]

That is always a risk. There has been malware found on another Trigkey product from around the same time, but without any new Trigkey products in my hands to test I'm unable to verify.

[@Eysenbeiss]

How could you get this through Vine, when there are restrictions and a minimum number of reviews necessary, to order things like this? You need to be a Gold Member to order things above 100$ and to get there, you would have to review dozends of other things first.

[@ntgm20]

This was before the current tier structure. It was really a timing thing, just looking at the right time. I am currently Gold, reviewed around 200 items the past evaluation period, should be about the same for my next one.

[@Hihellohihello-l3b]

do you think that the driver issue that you experience was due to the manufacturer installing software to mine Bitcoin

[@ntgm20]

Not certain. I've not revised though to see if it is any easier to find.

[@CMackthe3rd]

Does the Trigkey S5 R7 5800H also share the same security concerns?

[@ntgm20]

Not having one I can't say for certain. The easiest way to hide something from any manufacturer or seller is in the pre built installation of the OS.

[@zyghom]

can this work as a home server? proxmox + 3x linux on it, + home assistant etc?

[@ntgm20]

I would believe so, as I'm considering the less powerful Celeron units for Linux server tasks.

[@TomBortels]

Honestly, the "support never got back to me" kinda makes the rest of the review irrelevant. There are SO MANY mini PC providers out there now, I can bypass a vendor that bails on support.

[@ntgm20]

It could be a two way street, if I needed to get back with them after they sent me that message. There are some cultural difference that maybe I missed the opportunity to get better support. Still haven't bought another Trigkey though.

[@timcat1004]

One question. If I need to re-install win 11, how do I do that?

[@ntgm20]

The way I do it is with an image downloaded from Microsoft and use a USB thumb drive. I delete all the drive partitions from within the setup program and just go from there. I posted a video today on how to get around signing in with a Microsoft account.

[@timcat1004]

@@ntgm20 During setup I signed with Microsoft. No problem. But It asked if I wanted to transfer my bookmarks and setting in edge. I said no and it did anyways. I did not know that that much information was saved of their servers.

[@Swavywastaken]

Would it be able to play microsoft flight simulator

[@PioPamintuan]

Whats the risk of using the installed windows? Does installing antivirus will fix the issue?

[@ntgm20]

Risk is do you trust a company you haven't heard of that is across the ocean to not install a back door or something else. It is uncertain that any AV could catch some things misconfigured to allow remote access vs a known virus.

[@jackbriant1244]

Mine locks up when using some apps, when I am using a Logitech webcam to make a video call on WhatsApp call, the whole computer locks up and makes the WhatsApp disconnect noise a few times whilst frozen, and I have to hold the power button. One time playing Fall Guys (yes this can run fall guys flawlessly) and frozen again. Tested RAM, SSDs, and tried different Windows versions to no avail. Checked drivers and were up to date. Could my AMD APU be a lemon?

[@ntgm20]

It could be. Is it still under warranty? If not, have you ever done a fresh install of Windows?

[@KoljaMineralka]

what kind of memory is supported? Want to expand memory in mine

[@ntgm20]

DDR4 SODIMM. I put a TEAMGROUP T-Create Classic 16GB 3200MHz(PC-4-25600) in mine and it played well with the RAM it came with. I hope this helps.

[@souldigital8148]

Any chance someone can confirm how it works eith lightroom and Photoshop cc

[@alfredo19560]

Both programms are running without problems on this PC. I use lightroom classic and PS beta nearly each day and they are running smooth and there are no crashes. Working with RAW files. I do not regret the purchase !

[@ntgm20]

Thanks for your feedback! Great to hear it is working out for you.

[@chronicgaming8973]

Would this pc be good enough to run obs studios to stream from al be playing on a ps5

[@ntgm20]

This should be able to handle a OBS stream picked up from a PS5 without issue.

[@chronicgaming8973]

@ntgm20 this might sound daft but will it be ok for editing videos aswell that's all al be using it for it to stream from and edit my videos I don't know much about pc's tbh any advice on a cheep pc would be appreciated thanks

[@ntgm20]

@@chronicgaming8973 I used mine to edit a few videos. While a little slower than my XPS machine at the time it wasn't bad to work with and is capable at 1080p. It could do higher resolution but really slow down.

[@chrisliddiard725]

Does anyone know how to solve the glitchy graphics artifacts on these boxes? I may have bought a dud, but I'm hoping there's a fix. It's the same chipset 5560u Trigkey S5 with Windows 11. I know there's an issue with windows 11 not supporting all the latest codecs out of the box, even so, and with AMD driver finder installed, this box still has those darn artifacts.

[@ntgm20]

Are you taking about the actually display having issues or video playback? I've had some issues with the included video player for Windows 11 on my i7-10700 that is annoying but I've not looked into.

[@chrisliddiard725]

@@ntgm20 It turns out this cpu / windows 11 combination doesn't support the AV01 codec increasingly favoured by youtube. The work around is to find the 'H264ify extension' and add it to your browser. The thumbnails for AV01 codec are also glitched, whilst VB09 codecs are fine. The other issue is dedicated graphic memory which is fixed at 512mb. Its Shared graphic memory is only limited by the ram on the device, but most programs are limited by the amount of dedicated ram. This mean my browser crashes every time i have too many tabs open, and go over that 512mb limit. If this isn't bad enough, the bios has no settings to change the 'UMA frame buffer size'. I can only think the dedicated graphics memory is fixed by the drivers. If you open Task manager, then go to Performance you will see the amount of dedicated memory under GPU. If you right-click a youtube video and select 'stats for nerds' you'll see info on the codec used by that video.

[@ntgm20]

@@chrisliddiard725 Thanks for sharing. I'll look into that soon. Most YT videos I watch at VP9 so I hadn't noticed. How many tabs are too many?

[@Hihellohihello-l3b]

did you do a fresh install of windows?

[@anttt___]

I dont have time or even know half of the stuff you did. Will this work out of the box??

[@ntgm20]

It does work out of the box, though I always recommend doing a fresh OS install of about any PC that is purchased, mini or not.

[@anttt___]

@NotTerribleByGoodmonkey OK thanks 👍

[@pillettadoinswartsh4974]

I would think that anyone interested in this type of (discount) computer wouldn't be swayed by lists of benchmarks. They'd want to know if the thing will die a year after they buy it.

[@ntgm20]

I too want to know how long any of the ones I've bought recently will last, and how many can be revived. Online reviews of failures may say it won't boot anymore, but did they swap out storage? I hope to post updates as things progress. Big PC gets turned off tonight so this will be my desktop for a couple months, or that is the plan.

[@christopherkowalke3960]

Twist

[@GamingAdventureWithAtif]

Love from Pakistan

[@ntgm20]

Thanks! I severed with someone from Pakistan many years ago.

[@dennistomsen5822]

What about the fan noise?

[@ntgm20]

It can make a little noise when on high, but I'm using it right now, paused what I have on, and don't think I can hear it.

[@rudycastillo6369]

what mini pc u would suggest

[@ntgm20]

It depends on your budget and what you are using it for.

[@rudycastillo6369]

@@ntgm20 i just want something to play guitar sims threw

[@vidarv.9010]

USB C power adapter for this device and for that matter any NUC should really make it stand out as portable and even more material and weight saving while travelling. Therefore suits our future environment challenge better than a monster tower. Who would buy those things today for anything not needing a top gaming pc. Most of us not.

[@ntgm20]

I do think the lack of USB-C style powering of the device is a loss, but it is probably cheaper for them to make it like this. As for portability, the real selling point for lots of these are to be hung from the back of the monitor. This does cost more than the others I've reviewed, but also a lot more powerful and I'm using it now as my desktop and am okay with it.

[@xumatyt]

You could probably find a fitting cable with 20V PD-trigger

[@ntgm20]

@@xumatyt Just remember, if the USB-C port wasn't configured for PD you can ruin it.

[@xumatyt]

@@ntgm20 There are cables usb-c-to-barrel jack. USB-C end goes into power supply with PD support and has builtin PD-trigger that asks PSU to output 20V. The other end is a barrel jack that goes into miniPC's DC socket. You don't need miniPC to support PD.

[@LowcastleTech]

Noice

[@ntgm20]

And I didn't even have to find a poll noodle.

[@LowcastleTech]

@@ntgm20 😂That's always a bonus!

[@TafferBoyElvis]

I'm liking your videos, but the clickity clackity music you have in the background for the first few minutes is quite detracting from listening to your narration.

[@ntgm20]

Thanks for your feedback. I used to cycle through music quite a bit, but with the success of the AK2 review video I tried keeping the same format and that mostly includes the music too. What about the other two songs in this one? I can see how the intro one could be distracting to some people. I would still like to have background music, but considering my next one is still a few weeks away I can always rotate to new music again.

[@TafferBoyElvis]

@@ntgm20 the other background music in your video is a lot less distracting.

[@zolar7a]

Twist.

[@MaricopaJeff]

$293 on Amazon right now

[@ntgm20]

Not a bad deal.

[@Hchris101]

Computer

[@ntgm20]

That it is, and one that isn't terrible. Actually it has been pretty good.

[@taunteratwill1787]

Desktop killer? 😂😂🤣🤣😂😂

[@ntgm20]

Depends on your desktop I guess.

[@taunteratwill1787]

@@ntgm20 I guess you're right. 😋

[@sournugz4722]

so if i just get (Crucial RAM 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR4 3200MHz CL22 (or 2933MHz or 2666MHz) Laptop Memory CT2K16G4SFRA32A) it should work just fine, just swapping them out?

[@ntgm20]

It should. I swapped one of the modules for a Teamgroup 16GB 3200MHz(PC4-25600) CL22 and it worked fine.

[@Tommy_Boy.]

Twist