My custom desktop is large, but the Corsair H100 RGB AIO liquid CPU cooler doesn’t actually fit comfortably inside it, so it sits on top of the case. It looks fine in there, and the pump and dual 120mm fans keep my system cool. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, my cats sometimes compete with each other to see who can sit in the stupidest spot. As I type this, one is sitting on the back of my office chair, and another is snuggled up comfortably behind one of my monitors.
It's not uncommon for them to pile into the space above my PC case, with their furry bodies practically glued to the fans. They also get a kick out of the spinning of the blades, which is also not a good thing.
Beelink, which makes a range of excellent mini PCs, has a new model, the GTi14, which comes with a PCIe 8x slot on the bottom of the machine, allowing for the addition of a dedicated external GPU, which significantly improves graphics performance. That inevitably sounds like a bad idea to me.
Ports galore
The GTi14 measures 158 x 158 x 56 mm and supports up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor with Intel Arc Graphics, up to 96GB of DDR5-5600 RAM, and two PCIe 4.0×4 NVMe SSD slots.
In terms of connectivity, the GTi14 supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. Ports on offer include a Thunderbolt 4 port capable of 40Gbps, a 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, five 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, a DisplayPort 1.4a, two 3.5mm audio jacks, two 2.5GbE Ethernet ports, and an SD card reader.
The system is ready to run Windows 11 Pro and also supports Linux, offering versatility for different user preferences. The device comes with built-in speakers, four microphones, a built-in 145W power supply, and a fingerprint reader.
There's no word on global pricing yet, but in China it's selling for $672.
