ACEPC WizBox AI F1M “Intel Core Ultra 7 155H” Mini PC Review – Meteor Lake Unleashed

The world of Mini PCs is more vibrant than it ever was. We are seeing more manufacturers hop into this field, offering unique solutions to cater to consumers in the PC market. The manufacturers are not only offering Mini PC solutions but also designing new and innovative platforms such as 3-in-1 tablets, handhelds, and even AR/VR sets leveraging similar hardware capabilities.

Among the increasing list of manufacturers is ACEPC, a US-based firm that was established in 2017 and has rolled out quite a large array of products since its inception. The company offers both AMD and Intel-powered systems and is partnered with the likes of AOC, Microsoft, HASEE, and KONKA to name a few. Intel is one of ACEPC's primary partners and the launch of Meteor Lake "Core Ultra" CPUs gave ACEPC the perfect opportunity to unveil one of their latest products for the emerging AI PC market segment, the WizBox AI.

The WizBox AI is designed as an AI-first solution thanks to the NPU onboard the Core Ultra CPUs from Intel but it's ever so much a standard Mini PC with loads of CPU and GPU power packed into one singular chip. This is also our first taste of Meteor Lake so let's get started.

Today, we will be testing the WizBox AI Mini PC which features the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU with 32 GB DDR5 memory and a 512 B SSD, all for a price of $783.99 US.

ACEPC WizBox AI F1M Mini PC comes in two Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" CPU flavors at the moment which include the Core Ultra 5 125H and the Core Ultra 7 155H. For this review, the sample that we got was equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU. ACEPC plans to expand into the high-end category too once Meteor Lake supply gets better in the coming months. Our unit was the fully decked out variant with two DDR5-4800 32 GB (16 GB x2) SO-DIMM memory modules and a 512 GB PCIe Gen 4.0 x4 M.2 drive.

Coming to the specifications, the ACEPC WizBox AI F1M Mini PC rocks the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU equipped with Redwood Cove P-Cores and Crestmont E-Cores. It features 6 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores, 2 LP-E Cores, 22 threads, 24 MB of cache, and a boost clock of up to 4.80 GHz. The CPU has a base TDP of 28W with a Maximum assured power of 65W and a maximum turbo power of 115W. The chip also packs a dedicated NPU which offers around 11 TOPs of compute performance & supports all the latest AI formats including INT8, FP16, BF16, and FP32.

The iGPU is a major component of the Intel Core Ultra lineup which comes in the form of the Xe-LPG "Alchemist" Arc graphics chip. This iGPU packs 8 Xe cores and is clocked at 2250 MHz. This is Intel's stronger integrated GPU solution to date, supporting the latest APIs and all the latest tricks that Intel has up its sleeves such as support for XeSS upscaling. The GPU is compliant with all of the latest display options including DP2.1 (USBR20) and HDMI 2.1. It also has the same driver-level optimizations that Intel has incorporated within its Arc A-series discrete graphics cards and we can expect a great software framework in the coming years.

Other specs for the ACEPC WizBox AI F1M Mini PC include 32 GB DDR5 (Dual-Channel) memory operating at 4800 MT/s. This isn't soldered and instead features a SO-DIMM design so users can completely upgrade it as they wish (supports up to 96 GB). Storage comes in the form of two M.2 2280 SSD slots running at Gen 4.0 speeds. The unit was mounted with a 512 GB SSD.

I/O on the Geekom A7 Mini PC, includes one USB4 (40 Gbps / DP) port, four USB 3 Type-A ports (5 Gbps), a 2.5 GbE LAN port, a DC Jack, a power button, two HDMI 2.0b outputs, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The ACEPC WizBox AI F1M Mini PC comes in a black cardboard package that has a very premium feel and has a flyer that covers the box with the WizBox AI branding and a picture of the product itself.

The back of the box has some basic specifications that list the specific configuration for this model. We were sent the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU variant with 32 GB of memory and 512 GB storage capacities.

Lifting the top box cover, you are welcomed by a soft foam internal in which the PC and its various accessories are kept safe and away from harm.

Before talking about the case itself, we have to mention the accessories that come with the ACEPC WizBox AI F1M PC. It comes with a Power Adapter, a mounting bracket with screws, and a manual. It has a power adapter that is rated to deliver up to 19V, 6.3A of current, or up to 120W of power to the system.

With the package out of the way, you can now glance your eyes on the AI PC itself.

So looking at the PC, you are met with a gorgeous and perfect square-shaped chassis that comes reflective black surface on the top and an aluminum chassis surrounding it. The curved edges and the aluminum + shiny exterior have a very premium feel. The PC measures 5.79x5.79x2.19 inches & weighs 840 grams.

The top is fully enclosed along with the sides, leaving only an exhaust vent on the rear IO and the bottom to dissipate hot air. But that's not all, the top cover is elevated a bit and there's room between the chassis and the top for the air to vent out through.

The front I/O on the ACEPC WizBox AI F1M Mini PC comes with one USB4 port, two USB 3 Gen 2 Type-A ports, a microphone jack, and a Power On/Off button.

The back I/O of the ACEPC WizBox AI F1M Mini PC comes with a 2.5GbE Ethernet LAN port, two HDMI 2.0b outputs, 2 USB 3 Type-A ports, and the DC-in power delivery port.

The interiors of the Mini PC can be accessed by removing four screws at the bottom. These screws are very easy to remove.

The first thing that you notice when removing the bottom cover is that there's a single LESCOTT low-noise and long life time fan which features a brushless design and is rated at 0.05A (5V DC). This fan is used to push air from the bottom and into the chassis to keep the memory and SSD running cool.

There's a secondary housing for the two M.2 Gen 4 slots and the two DDR5 SO-DIMM which is a very nice way to package things. This doesn't expose the PCB of the motherboard and there's a small cut through which the fan connects to the mainboard.

For SSD, ACEPC uses a Rayson RS512GSSD710 PCIe Gen4 storage device which comes in the standard M.2 2280 form factor and operates at a speed of 5500 MB/s (Read). This and the 2nd SSD slot can be populated with up to 4 TB capacities (each) and the fastest 7 GB/s+ speeds that you can get right now.

For memory, ACEPC is using the Kingston CBD56S46BS8HA-16 16GB modules which are rated at DDR5-4800. There are two of these modules to make up 32 GB capacities. Users can upgrade to 96GB capacities and faster modules as they prefer.

The cooling for the Meteor Lake Core Ultra CPU is on the flip side which comes with its massive blower fan that is attached to a central heatsink. You can see that the fan and heat-sink are duct-tapped together to make sure that the air passes through the heatsink and doesn't vent out from the sides.

The main baseplate is attached to the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU and there  are two large copper heatpipes which lead to the copper finned heatsink.

The whole heatsink assembly is super-premium in the fact that it uses copper. The CPU uses the standard TIM application while there are thermal pads attached for the VRMs.

The motherboard features an 8-phase power delivery for the Intel Core Ultra CPUs.

For performance testing, we used the standard 65W power profile for the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H when testing the WizBox AI F1M Mini PC.

For gaming, we tested a couple of the latest and most played esports titles along with a mix of AAA titles at 1080p resolution. The performance was measured between the AMD Radeon 780, Radeon 680M, AMD Vega 8, Vega 7, Vega 6, and Intel Iris Xe-LP integrated graphics.

Following are the power and thermal numbers of the Geekom A7 Mini PC using its standard 54W power profile.

As for thermals, the WizBox AI F1M Mini PC peaked at around 74C with the standard 65W profile which can go all the way up to 90W with the maximum turbo power. The fan was noticeable under full load such as multi-threaded and gaming tasks.

The Intel Core Ultra platform is brand new and we are only starting to see a slew of Mini PC and handhelds that utilize these chips as supply is still a bit low. For its 1st gen AI products, ACEPC is offering two Core Ultra solutions and they offered us a chance to test out their most premium offering.

In terms of performance, the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H with its 16-core design is a powerful chip that trounces the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS, the fastest APU from the red team. It was ahead in all benchmarks within a similar TDP. The average power was also a bit lower than the AMD CPUs & that's a good sign for Intel who have been trailing behind in efficiency compared to AMD for some time now. There's also the bonus of an NPU which has only recently started to see some consumer-centric adoption through Intel's OneAPI and OpenVNNI support. Proper software work needs to be done before it gets adopted by more consumers but the hardware is there & 11 TOPS is a good starting point.

On the iGPU front, the Intel Xe-LPG with 8 Xe-Cores can be a hit or miss depending on the games being tested. Our unit was equipped with just DDR5-4800 memory so the full potential of this iGPU is far from realized in ACEPC's offering. With the fastest DDR5-5600 memory overclocked to DDR5-6000, we can see even better performance. When it works, the iGPU is slightly ahead of AMD's Radeon 780M and while the driver work needs to be put in for other titles, I can see it turning out to be a rather competitive solution to AMD's iGPU dominance. XeSS support is also a plus point and I want to see Intel fast-forward its frame-generation solution so that it gets on par with AMD's FSR 3 which already supports the feature for iGPUs.

The design of the ACEPC WizBox AI is very premium and having two M.2 Gen4 slots and a solid cooling solution is a great thing. The only downside is the outrageously high noise output that the fan produces. It's very noticeable when playing games or running multi-threaded applications. For the I/O, there's USB4 but I would have liked if ACEPC had added more than 1 of those ports along with a dedicated DP2.1 output.

This is my first take of ACEPC's Mini PC products and I must say that the build quality is indeed impressive and provides them a good starting point for the AI PC segment. The Intel Core Ultra processors are ever so strong and a lot of their performance advantages will come to consumers with the next-few firmware and driver-level optimizations. Once those are in and the NPU gets a decent software support, these Mini PCs will be a very strong alternative to all the AMD options out in the market right now.

You can purchase the WizBox AI PC here and get an instant 30% discount!

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