Ace Magician CK10 Mini PC Review: Smash or Pass?

Ace Magician previously sent the AMR5 Mini Gaming PC to our offices and has asked us to review another of their small form factor PC systems, the CK10, which offers the Intel Core i7-10810U processor, 16GB of LPDDR4 RAM and a 512 GB SSD drive. Let's see how it compares to the previous AMR5 system the company sent and discover what tasks best suit this mini PC.

The system focuses on streaming movies at home, small office tasks such as streamed meetings, and essential home use. It also offers gaming options; we will test that later in our review. Inside the case is an all-metal copper cooling fan that offers quick heat dissipation during more demanding tasks.

The Ace Magician CK10 Mini PC is shipped in a premium white box with a reflective logo on the top and the words "MINI PC" on two of the four sides. It is pretty striking, even without the product images on the box. It feels premium before looking at the specification details on the bottom of the box and removing the lid to look at the contents. Just like the previous AMR5 from Ace Magician, the packaging for the mini PC is secure and well secured, with no damage to any internals.

Ace Magician's CK10 is not an exceedingly striking mini PC compared to the flashy AMR5. It is a tiny system measuring 5.43 x 4.96 x 1.97 inches. With many uses that the CK10 will offer, you can hide the system or even have it on your desk without worrying that it will be distracting or incapable of reaching any of the ports you would need access to at any given time. The CK10 will fit in with most other mini PCs on the market, making it hard to stand out visually.

The power button, 3.5 mm audio port, a single USB-C port, and two USB-A 3.0 ports are on the front. The USB-C port on the front is for data transfers, so you will need to look elsewhere for charging capabilities for your phone and other mobile or USB-C charging devices. The company states that the USB-A 3.0 ports will produce speeds of 500 MS/s while the USB-C port will transfer at 10 GB/s.

On the back of the Ace Magician CK10 Mini PC is two USB-A 3.0 ports, two HDMI 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, and a power input port for the power source, rated at 19V. On the left side of the CK10 is a single VGA port, which is great for those still using the VGA port technology, but most likely, users will use the HDMI ports on the back.

Removing the bottom of the Ace Magician CK10, we can see the motherboard with an unknown 512 M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 compatible solid-state drive. The system can be upgraded to 2TB for the SSD storage, but the memory cannot be upgraded as it is soldered to the mobo. However, what is surprising and is not advertised is the option to add a 2.5-inch SATA drive. Ace Magician ships the additional cable and screws, and the port is available inside to attach the drive with plenty of room within the case.

Let us talk about the Intel Core i7-10810U. The processor comes to us in the second quarter of 2020 and is from the 10th Gen Core i7 processor series (Comet Lake) in the mobile line. Mobile processors are generally used in most mini PCs as they offer substantial performance compared to their desktop counterparts. However, we are currently in the Raptor Lake and upcoming Meteor Lake generation, which is three to four generations younger than the processor in the Ace Magician CK10. The Intel Core i7-10810U is built on the 14 nm process technology, offering six cores across twelve threads. The base frequency of the Intel Core i7-10810U is 1.10 GHz with a boost of 4.90 GHz. The total cache for the processor is 12 MB of Intel Smart Cache and offers a bus speed of 4 GT/s and a TDP of 15 W.

The graphics for the Ace Magician CK10 is integrated into the mobile processor, meaning that we are utilizing Intel's UHD Graphics from Comet Lake's mobile generation. The base graphics frequency is 300 MHz with a max dynamic frequency of 1.15 GHz. It should support 60 Hz at a maximum resolution of 4096 x 2304.

We will test the processor on the CK10 system while comparing it with the AMR5 Mini Gaming PC previously tested, along with the GEEKOM IT11 Mini PC.

CPU-Z collects data from your systems, such as the CPU name and number, series codename, process, package, cache levels, mainboard and chipset, memory type, size, timings, module specifications (SPD), and real-time measurement of each core's internal frequency and memory frequency.

Cinebench Release 20 (R20) offers a real-world cross-platform test suite that assesses the abilities of the system's hardware. Over the last few years, the suite has been updated to provide more support for newer processor and imaging render technology, supplying an exact measurement of Cinema 4D's capability to utilize multiple CPU cores and current CPU features that are obtainable to most users.

Geekbench 6 allows users to measure the system's CPU power but also offers GPU Compute benchmark tests and real-world testing. The previous two PCs were tested with Geekbench 5, which is less optimized than this new version. We will only provide the results of the Ace Magician CK10 Mini PC in Geekbench 6.

Compared to the Ace Magician AMR5 Mini Gaming PC and the GEEKOM Mini IT11, the Ace Magician CK10 struggles to compete with the other two systems, which is unsurprising. The GEEKOM Mini IT11 was fashioned with the Intel i7-1195G7 processor from the Tiger Lake generation (11th Gen Core CPU), while the AMR5 from Ace Magician was the AMD Ryzen 5 5600U mobile processor. Both were newer generations, so the improvement in performance for the CK10 is much lower. Single-core performance in CPU-Z for the CK10 was abysmal against the Mini IT11, losing by 195.2 points, but excelled against the competitor in the multi-core test by 249.9 points. The AMR5 performance is made to be beefier by marketing itself as a "Mini Gaming PC" and offering much better performance gains. Cinebench R20 tests displayed similar results to the CPU-Z except for the multi-core tests, where the GEEKOM Mini IT11 outshined the Ace Magician CK10 by 461 points.

To test gaming on the CK10 Mini PC, we did not use the duplicate software titles we used in previous tests, except Borderlands 3. Access to the software was not available at the time of writing, so we utilized the title as mentioned above and the following four games:

All games were tested at the exact resolution as standard handheld gaming screen resolutions, 1920 x 1080, with low presets, as anything higher crashed each test.

From the testing above, it is clear that this is not ideal for higher levels of gaming. Although some of the lower framerates that come from Borderlands 3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Total War Warhammer II are skewed due to the launcher, it was forced to utilize, which was Epic Games. Both Metro titles were benchmarked from Steam, which is much friendlier for those looking to benchmark our systems.

However, if you use Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with its cloud feature, or have access to cloud gaming, such as the Amazon Luna we reviewed, you will have better access to some high-level gaming. Also, emulation in older gaming generations that do not require many graphic resources will play fine, but it would be better to avoid newer console emulation. The Wi-Fi signal clocks in at 2.4 GHz, which will slow you down most of the time if you do a lot of over-the-air gaming, and it is recommended that you check to ensure that you have enough signal to gain better results.

The Ace Magician CK10 is a low-end mini PC with not an exceptional amount of power. It does offer the three monitor option, but one of the three must go through the VGA port, which is not as widely used. I continuously checked to see if the system was overheating during use, and I can safely say it remains pretty cool even during some stress level testing.

Compared to the previously reviewed AMR5 by the company, that system is much more ideal for gaming. For everyday tasks that do not require a lot of CPU overhead or GPU resources, it met close to the same performance as the GEEKOM Mini IT11.

For the money, the AMR5 is a better system for gaming and honestly outperforms its company's mini PC library. However, suppose the company releases a newer version of this model with updated processors from the last two generations. In that case, it is possible that it can compare better to the other systems that we have reviewed.

The Ace Magician CK10 costs the same as the AMR5 Mini Gaming PC from the same company, which makes this harder to fully recommend when it cannot compare in the same performance.

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