ACEMAGIC M1

Updated on July 27, 2026

The ACEMAGIC M1 is a 128 x 128 x 41mm square that ACEMAGIC also markets as the Matrix Mini M1, and it exists to put a full mobile Intel i9 into roughly the footprint of a Mac mini. Two builds matter to buyers. The flagship pairs the 14-core, 20-thread Core i9-13900HK with Intel Iris Xe graphics; a cheaper build drops to the 8-core, 16-thread Core i9-11900H with the 11th-generation Intel UHD graphics. Both ship with 32GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200, a 1TB M.2 2280 NVMe drive, a second empty M.2 slot, six USB-A ports, one front USB4 Type-C, HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, and Windows 11 Pro. It is a CPU-and-ports machine rather than a graphics machine, and the reviews below set out where that line falls.

Pros and Cons of the ACEMAGIC M1

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ACEMAGIC M1 Comparison Chart

	ACEMAGIC M1	ACEMAGIC M1
Price	List Price: $699.99 Amazon Prices: Loading prices...	List Price: $599.99 Amazon Prices: Loading prices...
Version	32GB/1TB/i9-13900HK	32GB/1TB/i9-11900H
Performance Rating	9.1	8.1
Operating System	Windows 11 Pro	Windows 11 Pro
Processor	Fourteen-core 2.60 Ghz (max 5.40 Ghz) Intel Core i9-13900HK	Octa-core 2.50 Ghz (max 4.90 Ghz) Intel Core i9-11900H
GPU	Integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics	Integrated Intel UHD Graphics
RAM	32 GB DDR4	32 GB DDR4
Internal Storage	1 TB	1 TB
Dimensions width x length x thickness	5.05 x 5.05 x 1.61 inches (128.27 x 128.27 x 40.89 mm)	5.05 x 5.05 x 1.61 inches (128.27 x 128.27 x 40.89 mm)
Weight	1.18 lbs (0.54 kg)	1.18 lbs (0.54 kg)
WiFi	Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax)	Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax)
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 5.2	Bluetooth 5.2
Ethernet	1 Ethernet port at 2.5 Gbps	1 Ethernet port at 2.5 Gbps
HDMI	1 Full-Size HDMI Port	1 Full-Size HDMI Port
DisplayPort	1 DisplayPort (1.4)	1 DisplayPort (1.4)
VGA	No VGA Ports	No VGA Ports
USB Ports	6 USB 3, 1 USB 4 Front USB4 Type-C: 40Gbps, DisplayPort Alt Mode, no power delivery	6 USB 3, 1 USB 4 Front USB4 Type-C: 40Gbps, DisplayPort Alt Mode, no power delivery
Thunderbolt Ports	No	No
OCuLink	No	No
Internal SATA Ports	No SATA ports	No SATA ports
Card Reader	No Card Reader	No Card Reader
Headphone Jack	combo	combo
Fanless	No	No
VESA Mount	Yes	Yes
In the Box	ACEMAGIC M1, 120W Power Adapter, HDMI Cable, VESA Mount Bracket with Screws, User Manual	ACEMAGIC M1, 120W Power Adapter, HDMI Cable, VESA Mount Bracket with Screws, User Manual
Expandability	RAM upgradeable to 64GB DDR4, second M.2 2280 slot free from the factory (up to 4TB total)	RAM upgradeable to 64GB DDR4, second M.2 2280 slot free from the factory (up to 4TB total)

Detailed Insights into the ACEMAGIC M1

The chassis is a rounded 128 x 128 x 41mm square weighing about 1.18 pounds, sold in silver or graphite, with a VESA bracket in the box so it can sit behind a monitor. Every reviewer who handled it made the same note about the material: PCWorld found “the chassis is made of plastic on the outside and a metal core on the inside,” and IT Pro wrote that “its shell has a plasticy feel to it, which is also visibly noticeable whenever you glance towards it on your desk.” Neither treated it as disqualifying at the price, but it is the visible gap between the M1 and the aluminum boxes it competes with.

Port placement is the strongest part of the design. The front carries the power button, a 3.5mm combo jack, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, and the single USB4 Type-C. The rear adds four more USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4, the 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet jack, and the DC input, which totals six USB-A ports and three video outputs capable of driving three 4K displays at once. The one real omission is power delivery over that Type-C port. How-To Geek put it plainly: “this port can’t be used for power, only data and video, so you’re stuck with the included AC adapter.” There is also no SD card reader, which IT Pro listed as its second complaint.

Inside, the M1 uses two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots (32GB fitted as 2 x 16GB, upgradeable to 64GB) and two M.2 2280 slots, only one of which ships populated. Tech Guy Beau’s teardown confirmed both the free slot and the memory brand, and found a large heat sink with dual heat pipes and ordinary thermal paste on the chip. That second slot is the cheapest upgrade path on the machine: the total storage ceiling is 4TB across the pair.

The two CPU builds are genuinely different machines, and the reviews reflect that. PCWorld tested the i9-13900HK version and recorded a PCMark 10 overall of 6,288 with a 3DMark CPU-profile single-thread score of 1,082, which is the class of result that makes compiles and interactive work feel quick. How-To Geek tested the i9-11900H version and recorded a PCMark 10 total of 4,930, describing it as “behind the average for a 2023 office laptop at 5,848, but still better than 41% of all results.” Those runs come from different testers on different days rather than a controlled head-to-head, so treat the gap as directional. The graphics difference is more clear-cut: the 13900HK build gets Iris Xe, while the 11900H build gets the older 11th-generation UHD graphics, and neither is a gaming part.

Cooling is where the M1 earns its keep. ACEMAGIC holds the 13900HK to roughly a 60W package limit instead of letting it run to its ceiling, and Tech Guy Beau’s live monitoring showed the machine staying quiet without dropping clocks under sustained load. How-To Geek saw the same behavior on the 11900H build, noting a 54W peak and reporting that “it never gets overly hot, nor does the fan run particularly long or loudly.” PCWorld’s phrasing was similar for idle and office use, with the caveat that “under prolonged full load, the fan revs up and is then audible, but not shrill.”

Reviewer Insights on the ACEMAGIC M1

PCWorld: benchmarks for the i9-13900HK build

PCWorld’s review by Christoph Hoffmann (December 2025) scored the M1 4 out of 5 and tested the i9-13900HK configuration. Its pros list includes “very compact form factor with a fully-fledged i9 platform” and “strong single-core performance also for development and light rendering,” and the verdict calls it “a very fast, surprisingly compact mini PC that brings classic desktop performance and near silent operation.”

The measurements set realistic expectations for a chip that launched in January 2023. PCMark 10 came in at 6,288 overall, which Hoffmann put “around 20 to 25 per cent behind” a Core Ultra 9 285H or Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 mini PC, “without dropping noticeably in typical office workloads.” Graphics is the wider gap: he measured 1,467 in 3DMark Time Spy and noted that Radeon 890M systems “show a GPU performance that is around 30 to 40 percent higher with 3,500 to 3,700 time-spy points and over 3,000 points in Steel Nomad Light.” He also flagged the absent NPU directly: “the 13900HK does not have a dedicated NPU, all AI workloads run via CPU and GPU.”

Storage was the one measurement that fell short of the spec sheet. CrystalDiskMark returned “3,425 MB/s read and 3,284 MB/s write,” which Hoffmann listed as a con (“SSD somewhat slow for PCIe 4.0 level”) because the drive is a PCIe 4.0 part performing at PCIe 3.0 speeds.

How-To Geek: living with the i9-11900H build

How-To Geek’s review by Bill Loguidice (December 2025) rated the M1 8 out of 10 and covers the cheaper i9-11900H configuration rather than the 13900HK build the other two publications tested. His conclusion: “this is no PC for graphics-intensive operations or gaming, but for everything else, it’s fair to say that it delivers big things in a very small package.”

Two of his measurements are worth carrying over. Wired networking was excellent: “when wired into one of my TP-Link Deco BE22000 Wi-Fi 7 satellites, Ethernet performance was excellent, with an average ping of 14ms, download speed of 1,900Mbps, and upload speed of 359Mbps,” which is a useful confirmation that the 2.5GbE port really does clear a gigabit. Wireless was the disappointment. “Unfortunately, WiFi performance was a bit underwhelming,” he wrote, adding “I rarely exceeded 500Mbps or so download.”

He also called out the software image, which is a genuine differentiator among white-label mini PCs: “there’s no bloatware or third-party software of any kind, leaving over 900GB of storage space free on the 1TB SSD.” His two stated wishes were more than one Type-C port and the ability to power the machine over USB-C, but his summary judgment was that “what is there, from the processor to the selection of ports to the thermal management, impresses.”

Technically Unsure: the i9-11900H build on the bench

Technically Unsure also tested the i9-11900H build, in his case the roughly $300 barebone configuration (discount codes bring it closer to $270; RAM and storage cost extra). His teardown through the rubber-foot screws found thermal pads already fitted, a Realtek wireless module, Kingston DDR4-3200 memory, and the second free NVMe slot; he installed two 4TB drives and confirmed both bays work at once, “one is Windows, one is Linux,” switching between them in the BIOS.

His measurements bracket the cheaper chip nicely. Cinebench 2024 returned a multi-core score of 454, idle draw sat near 20 watts in Windows and 18 in Ubuntu, and an all-core stress run pushed the package to about 90 watts, the one point where the fans became audible; his overall read was that the machine is “very quiet overall.” Euro Truck Simulator 2 at 1080p ran in the low 20s on high settings but held 33 to 52 fps on medium, which he called “definitely playable,” and an iperf3 run under Linux confirmed the 2.5GbE port delivers its rated speed.

The distinctive part of his test was local AI. Running Ollama under Ubuntu, the 11900H produced 10 tokens per second on DeepSeek R1’s 14B model and about 19 on a smaller Llama 3.1, drawing around 90 watts: “for a $290, $300 mini computer with 90 watts, we are hitting 10 tokens per second for the 14B model of DeepSeek R1.” His verdict was a thumbs up: “everything I benchmarked, I got impressive scores for the price.”

IT Pro: design, value, and a multi-core result below expectation

IT Pro’s review by Keumars Afifi-Sabet (December 2025) rated the i9-13900HK unit 4.5 out of 5 and described it as “a smart-looking machine with plenty of connectivity options and a reasonable price.” Its listed strengths were the design and build, the port selection, and value; its listed weaknesses were “less powerful than we’d expect” and “no SD card slot.”

That performance complaint is specific. Geekbench 6 returned 2,806 single-core, which the reviewer called highly respectable, but “it scored only 8,912 on multi-core testing. This is less than the Geekom Mini IT13, which scored 10,286,” and the review concluded that “in the Acemagic, the CPU slightly underperformed against expectations.” That is consistent with the power limit ACEMAGIC applies. The SSD measured 3,478MB/s read and 3,370MB/s write on its bench, close to PCWorld’s figures. Even with the shortfall, IT Pro’s verdict stayed positive on price: “you still get far more bang for your buck with it than you might with some of its key rivals.”

IT Pro is also the source confirming the model’s spread of chips, noting the review unit shipped with the i9-13900HK “although you could also pick up a version with the Intel Core i9-11900H processor or AMD’s Ryzen 7 6800H chip.” The AMD side of the line has since moved on: the original 6800H build is out of production, and ACEMAGIC now ships the chassis with a Ryzen 7 7735HS and soldered memory, covered on its own page.

Tech Guy Beau: the 60W tuning and the USB4 port

Tech Guy Beau reviewed the i9-13900HK M1 with a teardown and live thermal monitoring. His headline finding is about tuning rather than raw speed: ACEMAGIC caps the chip well under its ceiling, and he described the choice as giving it “a little bit of a wattage limit here, you know, 60 watts, for example, on the CPU.” The tradeoff worked out in the machine’s favor. At idle he reported “it’s completely silent when just hanging out in Windows doing basic stuff,” and while running the load test he confirmed on screen that “as you can see, we’re not throttling.” His summary was that “this thing runs very, very, very quiet and cool.”

He was equally direct about the limitation, calling out that “the only real negative, I suppose, if that’s the right term to use here, is it doesn’t have a powerful iGPU, so it’s not a gaming PC.” He then used the front USB4 port to route around it, attaching an external GPU enclosure with a Radeon 7600M XT: “you’re able to take this little ACEMAGIC here, because it has USB4, and turn it into a gaming PC legitimately.” Running Cyberpunk 2077 through that eGPU at 1080p, he reported “right now, you’re getting 60, so you’re able to do stuff like 60 fps gaming at 1080p, which is very good.” His point about why that works here is worth keeping: a USB4 mini PC with a weak CPU bottlenecks an external GPU, and the M1’s 14-core chip does not.

His teardown also confirmed the expansion story, showing both M.2 bays with one free (“so you can actually get dual 2280 support here”) and two Micron DDR4-3200 modules in accessible SO-DIMM slots.

Customer Reviews

The i9-11900H, 32GB, 1TB configuration sold by ACEMAGIC US (ASIN B0FG7YD2D8) carries a 4.3-star average across 90 ratings as of July 2026, and it is the build with enough owner feedback to read a pattern from. The buyer feedback splits along predictable lines: people using it as a quiet desktop replacement are happy, and the complaints cluster on electrical details and on support.

On the positive side, CleoZ (verified purchase, March 2026) mounted it behind a monitor and wrote that “it’s very quiet; I never even hear the fan unless I put my ear right up next to it,” adding that plenty of I/O remained unused. Cathy Sue (verified purchase, February 2026) reported it handled her photo and video editing and that “quality was better than expected, plenty of ports.” Another verified buyer using it as a home-theater source in January 2026 found that enabling HDR output transformed playback on a 4K set.

The critical reviews are specific rather than vague, which makes them useful. Wm Gait (verified purchase, February 2026) rated it 4 stars after months of use and traced an audio problem to the machine: “extraneous noises come out through the speakers indicating a shielding issue with the PC itself.” Retired Badger (verified purchase, January 2026) hit a related electrical issue when using the M1 to drive a CNC controller, explaining that “because the power supply is an AC to DC adapter, the PC itself is not earth grounded,” and that the resulting interference dropped the Ethernet link to the controller. Neither issue affects ordinary desktop use, but both are worth knowing if you plan to wire the M1 into audio gear or shop equipment. The harshest review comes from Sivam (verified purchase, June 2026), whose unit died after a couple of months and who reported that “they don’t have customer support in US” beyond an email route to a team in China.

Conclusion

The ACEMAGIC M1 is a straightforward proposition once you accept what it is not. It is not an AI PC, it has no NPU, and its integrated graphics sit well behind a Radeon 890M. What it offers instead is a lot of general-purpose CPU in a very small box, a genuinely good port layout for the money, and a cooling design tuned so that the machine stays quiet rather than chasing the last 20 percent of the chip’s performance. PCWorld and IT Pro, the two publications that ran CPU benchmarks, landed in the same place: strong single-threaded work, adequate multi-threaded work.

The choice between the two builds is mostly a budget question. The i9-13900HK is the meaningfully faster chip and the one PCWorld and IT Pro tested; the i9-11900H build is the cheaper one and the one How-To Geek lived with, and it was fast enough that his complaints were about WiFi throughput and USB-C power rather than speed. If you are buying for compiles, virtual machines, browser-heavy multitasking, or a homelab node with a real 2.5GbE port, either build does the job.

The one upgrade path worth planning for is the front USB4 port. Tech Guy Beau’s eGPU demonstration shows the M1 can become a competent 1080p gaming machine later without replacing the box, and a mini PC’s external-GPU options are worth understanding before you commit: see Starry Hope’s guide to mini PC eGPU connectors. To weigh the M1 against current alternatives on specs, the Mini PC Comparison Chart lines them up side by side.

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