Trigkey S5 Mini PC Ryzen 5560U

I’ve returned my MeLE PCG35 HD3 mini PC.

The story

I fully realize this is a bit extreme. I mean the MeLe PCG35 has a low-end N5105 CPU. This one has a Ryzen 5560U cpu which you can consider high end in its segment. I’ve basically gone from one end to the other end.

I originally wanted Trigkey 3200U version which would have cost me 310 CAD. After some research though, I’ve come to a conclusion that 3200U is not that faster than N5105. In addition, the 3200U version has a 8GB RAM where Ryzen iGPU needs to use more extra RAM than normal. By default, 3GB is allocated. While you can reduce it, at the least you want 1GB. Given Windows 11 itself uses 4GB of RAM nowadays. I’d need another 8GB stick which obviously costs money, around 30 CAD.

So, 3200U unit would cost me 340 CAD. 5560U version would cost me 460 CAD which comes with 16GB RAM already. The 120 CAD extra would give me so much more CPU performance that I decided to go with the latter.

5560U is a 6 core / 12 thread CPU.

Now, I had a choice of going for a Beelink brand mini PC but chose Trigkey for one simple reason. The Beelink version has a mesh top whereas Trigkey version has a solid top. I did not want a mesh top. That’s the only reason. I generally do not want top of a computer to be open in case of water drops.

Performance

There isn’t much to talk about its CPU performance. With six of Zen 2 cores at 2.3ghz with a turbo of 4.0ghz, this mini pc will outperform a lot of folks’ main PC. Every operation within Windows 11 is butter smooth with its CPU rarely hitting 100%. Most of time, CPU usage was hovering between 10 ~ 30%.

The only caveat is that this is a U CPU, meaning it has 15w TDP. A H mobile CPU, like 5600H, has 35w TDP. The higher TDP allows more cores to boost and for a longer period as well. If a vendor desires however, both CPU can have an extra 10 TDP with better cooling. So, 5560U can be configured as a 25w TDP CPU and 5600H can be configured as a 45w TDP CPU.

For this specific model, the 5560U has been configured as a 15w TDP CPU.

Coincidentally, I have both 5560U and 5600H. 5560U is from this mini PC. 5600H is from my Dell laptop. So, here is CPU-Z bench comparison.

As you can see, single core is almost identical. What differs is multi-core score where higher TDP matters. 5600H has a higher TDP limit, allowing more cores to boost higher.

Now, let’s compare 5560U with N5105. This isn’t even going to be a contest but let’s see the difference anyway.

Well, the difference is so large that it’s laughable. But then, again, we are comparing a low end mobile Celeron chip with a high-end Ryzen zen 3 mobile CPU.
This massive difference does explain why everything in Windows 11 is butter smooth compared to my past experience with N5105.

Gaming

I don’t plan to game at all on this unit. However, given it has a decent iGPU, I might as well try a few games.

I’ve played Kenshi and Kerbal space program, both of which recorded 30ish FPS with default settings. The games were definitely playable. It’s an impressive feat.

I wager this CPU is perfectly fine for casual gaming. I wouldn’t call Kenshi a casual game though. It’s a full blown 3D game. Granted, I didn’t test it with a lot of characters on screen but it was nevertheless impressive that the game played smoothly.

Temperature

Looking at its BIOS, it’s clear that this pc is meant to be silent.
On low, CPU fan speed is fixed at 2,200 rpm and is barely audible. The BIOS supports even fan shut-off temp.

The temp stays around 50 ~ 70c under general tasks such as youtube and video playback. By default, below 50c is where fan will turn off completely.

The unit is overall virtually silent. In fact, MeLE PCG35 HD3 was louder due to electrical whirring / buzzing.

By default, 90c is where the fan will kick in full.

Build quality

I expected its case to be of metal, aluminum to be precise. But, nope, the whole case is plastic with only its bottom plate being metal. Not a big let down, but I expected a bit better for a unit that cost nearly half a grand.

Its included 500GB nvme and a pair of 8GB RAM (DDR4-3200) are both low-end. But that’s to be expected. I don’t have any problem at all with the cheap included SSD. It’s good enough for an OS drive.
As for its RAM, I won’t game on this thing, so ultimately it does not matter to me also. It does support a SATA drive which I am going to use a cheap 2TB SSD for.

Conclusion

Well, I am happy with the performance of the unit. Whatever I’ve thrown at, it has performed more than adequately. But then it should be this good, given I’ve paid 466CAD for this.

In fact, it is overkill for my needs but N5105 wasn’t cutting it. There isn’t really a middle choice, at least not in Canada. I would have preferred Ryzen 5300U.

Anyway, I ain’t returning this one for sure. I am very happy with it.