The Beelink GTi15 Ultra is a high-end mini PC offering that's powered by Intel's Core Ultra 9 285H processor, and comes with features such as dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports and a PCIe 5.0 x8 slot that allows it to be used with a desktop graphics card via Beelink's EX Pro docking station.

If you've been frustrated by the lack of graphics processing power on mini PCs owing to their use of mobile GPUs or integrated GPUs, fret no further, for Beelink might have just the mini PC for you. Enter the GTi15 Ultra, which comes with a built-in proprietary PCIe 5.0 x8 slot that allows it to be used with an optional Beelink EX Pro graphics card docking station.

Powered by Intel's high-end "Arrow Lake" Core Ultra 9 285H mobile processor (this processor comes with an Intel Arc 140T integrated GPU that can surprisingly, handle light gaming at 1080p), the GTi15 Ultra packs a whole list of high-end features such as dual Intel 10 Gigabit Ethernet controllers and an Intel WIFI7 module that supports the 320MHz channel width. The key feature of the GTi15 Ultra's got to be its compatibility with Beelink's EX Pro dock, which allows you to use a full-sized desktop graphics card to transform the GTi15 Ultra into a beast of an AI and gaming PC. Read on to see how this mini PC performs on its own and when paired with an external desktop graphics card, a MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16G GAMING TRIO OC!

Summary of Specifications: Beelink GTi15 Ultra

• Processor: Intel Core Ultra 9 285H (6 P-cores, 8 E-cores, 2 Low Power E-cores)
• Memory: 64GB (32GBx2) Crucial DDR5 5600 SODIMM
• Storage: 1TB Crucial E100 NVMe SSD
• GPU: Integrated Intel Arc 140T graphics
• Audio: Realtek ALC897
• Ethernet: Dual Intel E610-XT2 10 Gigabit Ethernet
• Wireless: Intel BE200 WIFI 7 with Bluetooth 5.4
• Power Supply: Built-in 145W power supply
• Dimensions: Approx. 158mm x 158mm x 60mm
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
• Official Beelink product page: https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-gti15-ultra9-285h 

Note, the GTi15 Ultra featured in this review is the variant that comes shipped with 64GB of DDR5 5600 RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD. A variant that comes with 96GB of DDR5 5600 RAM and a 2TB NVMe SSD is available to purchase from Beelink's website as well:

Packaging & Accessories

In terms of packaging, we’ve got a minimalistic white box that features an image of the GTi15 Ultra splashed across the front.

On the top short edge of the box, we get an image of a PCIe slot that’s in reference to the fact that the GTi15 Ultra comes with a proprietary PCIe 5.0 x8 slot that allows it to be used with an optional Beelink EX Pro docking station.

The following accessories come included with the GTi15 Ultra:

• Instruction manual
• Information leaflet on microphone array and CMOS reset button
• Power cable
• HDMI cable

Aesthetics & Physical Features

The GTi15 Ultra has a very clean aesthetic thanks to its predominantly metal construction, where we do get some plastic bits on the rear and for the bottom lid. The front and rear panel’s pretty straightforward; we get your usual array of connectivity options, and the front panel also has four small round holes that are openings for the GTi15 Ultra’s built-in microphone array. The mini PC can be considered a smidge larger than typical mini PCs, where it measures in at approximately 158mm x 158mm x 60mm (including the PC's feet).

As can be seen, we don’t get any ventilation openings at all on the left and right sides of the GTi15 Ultra, and on the top panel, we get a Beelink logo.

A plastic lid serves as the bottom panel of the GTi15 Ultra, where we get lots of little round ventilation openings and two raised rubber strips that serve as feet for the mini PC. Also visible are four round rubber covers, which obscure the screws that hold the bottom lid in place, as well as a long rubber strip that covers the mini PC’s proprietary PCIe 5.0 x8 slot that’s to be used with the Beelink EX Pro docking station, more on this feature later on in this article.

In the front I/O connectivity department, Beelink's included a USB 10Gbps Type-A port, a SD card slot, a USB 10Gbps Type-C port, a 3.5mm audio jack as well as a power button that comes with an integrated fingerprint reader.

Over on the rear, we get an AC in port for the mini PC's power cord, a USB4 Type-C port that supports DisplayPort video output and Power Delivery for device charging purposes, as well as a 3.5mm audio jack that comes with a built-in CMOS reset button within the jack itself - you'd have to use a thin object (e.g. a pin) of length no less than 2.5cm to depress the clear CMOS button inside the jack. Moving on, we get a HDMI port, a DisplayPort 1.4a port, dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports as well as two USB 10Gbps Type-A ports.

Service Access

After reading the entirety of this article, you'll come to realise that as the GTi15 Ultra has a whole lot going for it, service access is unfortunately not one of its key strengths, where getting access to the motherboard requires a fair bit of effort. To kick things off, you'll have to pry out four round rubber screw hole covers found on the bottom lid, which then reveals four screws that secure the bottom lid in place. With the screws out of the way, the rubber tab pictured above allows you to lift the lid from the chassis with ease.

Next up, we now have to undo four screws that hold down a dust filter plate.

Dust filter plate removed, you’ll then have to undo four screws that hold the speaker module in place, as it gets in the way of the removal of the power supply unit located right next to it. This then allows you to shift the speaker module to the side, where you can then undo the four screws that hold the power supply unit in place.

With the power supply unit shifted out of the way, we finally gain access to a metal plate that serves as the heatsink for the GTi15 Ultra's dual PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots - this has to be removed as well, and the plate is held in place by three screws and a standoff, as indicated above. For the standoff, you'll have to use a standoff remover tool or perhaps a pair of pliers to properly remove it.

As can be seen, the plate comes with two thermal pads attached on the side that faces the motherboard of the GTi15 Ultra.

After no shortage of steps, we finally get clear access to the motherboard of the GTi15 Ultra.

Pictured above are the two DDR5 SODIMM slots that the mini PC comes with. For this review, Beelink sent over the 64GB DDR5 variant of the GTi15 Ultra, where correspondingly, we get two Crucial 32GB DDR5 5600 CL46 SODIMM modules for a total of 64GBs of RAM. As of the time of publishing this review, the GTi15 Ultra comes with support for a maximum of 128GBs of RAM and the DDR5 6400 standard.

To the right of the RAM slots are two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, of which one slot is populated by the preinstalled Crucial E100 1TB NVMe SSD that comes with the 64GB DDR5 variant of the GTi15 Ultra as standard. According to Crucial’s specs sheet, the E100 has read speeds of up to 5000MB/s and write speeds of up to 4500MB/s. The other M.2 slot, which is a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, is empty and available for you to install a second drive where needed.

While we’re still on the topic of M.2 slots, the mini PC comes with an Intel BE200 WIFI 7 module that can be found beneath the second PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, where it utilises the M.2 Key E form factor. This means in future, you can swap out the module for something newer, say a WIFI 8 module when they’re released.

One thing worth pointing out is the fact that the GTi15 Ultra utilises a standard CR2032 CMOS battery, which is located along one of the four edges of the motherboard.

CPU-Z Screenshots

GPU-Z Screenshot

Benchmarks & Test Setup

The above's a recap on the specs of the GTi15 Ultra, where it’s pretty much a PC that’s ready to go out-of-the-box with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed.

In terms of preloaded software, the GTi15 Ultra does come with some preinstalled apps, in the form of a smattering of Wondershare stuff as pictured above on the Windows desktop.

The GTi15 Ultra also comes with a Beelink Control Center app installed. Upon opening the app, we see that it has a "Camera" tab, which I’m guessing allows you to tweak the video output from your webcam if you have one hooked up to the mini PC, a "Display" tab that allows you to tweak display settings such as colour, brightness and so on, as well as a "Performance" tab. The PC comes with the “Performance” mode selected by default, and that’s the mode that I’ll be sticking with to benchmark the GTi15 Ultra,

Over in the BIOS, for the purposes of benchmarking, I’ve set the processor TDP setting to the maximum permissible setting of 65W so that we can get the most out of the mini PC's Core Ultra 9 285H processor.

On a side note, it’s worth noting that the processor C-state was set to disabled within the BIOS for some reason, so I enabled it and got started with the benchmarks. In case you’re wondering, C-states refer to the power saving states of the processor, and allows it to reduce energy consumption where needed, for instance say, when the PC is idle.

To put the GTi15 Ultra through its paces, I’ll first test it without the EX Pro dock and external graphics card, where I'll be running the following benchmarks:

Synthetic Benchmarks

• 7-Zip Compression & Decompression
• Cinebench 2024
• Cinebench R23
• Geekbench 6.5.0
• Geekbench AI 1.5.0
• CrystalDiskMark 9.0.1

Gaming Benchmarks (1080p)

• Black Myth Wukong Benchmark Tool
• Cyberpunk 2077 v2.31 In-game Benchmark
• F1 23 In-Game Benchmark
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider In-game Benchmark

The PC was tested on the T203 BIOS release, with no other tweaks (apart from processor TDP and processor C state) made to the BIOS settings. All the latest Windows 11 24H2 updates were installed at the point of testing, and benchmark runs were conducted in a non-airconditioned room with an ambient temperature of around 29.7°C.

7-Zip Compression & Decompression

First up in the benchmarks section is 7-Zip's Compression & Decompression test, where the Core Ultra 9 285H processor achieves a compression score of 106.876GIPS and a decompression score of 97.531 GIPS.

Cinebench 2024

Next up is CInebench 2024, where the Core Ultra 9 285H achieves a multi core score of 1093 and a single core score of 129.

Cinebench R23

With Cinebench R23, the mini PC achieves a multi core score of 19181 and a single core score of 2074.

Geekbench 6.5.0

The GTi15 Ultra achieves a multi core score of 16168 and a single core score of 2952 when tested with Geekbench 6.5.0.

Geekbench AI 1.5.0

This being an "AI PC", it'd be remiss of me to not do an AI-related benchmark. With the Geekbench AI benchmark, the Core Ultra 9 285H processor achieves a single precision score of 4820, a half precision score of 2051 and a quantised score of 8798 when tested with the ONNX model.

When benchmarked on the Arc 140T iGPU instead with the same ONNX model, the GTi15 Ultra achieves a single precision score of 8676, a half precision score of 13258 and a quantised score of 5736 when tested with the ONNX model.

CrystalDiskMark 9.0.1

Rounding things off in the synthetic benchmarks section is CrystalDiskMark. Do note that Crucial advertises the E100 SSD to have sequential read speeds of up to 5000MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 4500MB/s, where the drive's performance is pretty much on the mark based on the results shown above.

Black Myth Wukong Benchmark Tool

In terms of gaming performance, the GTi15 Ultra achieves an average FPS of 25 with the Black Myth Wukong standalone benchmark tool on the "Low" preset at 1080p, with ray tracing disabled, upscaling disabled and frame generation disabled.

With XeSS enabled and the resolution scale set at 75%, we get a somewhat playable average FPS of 36.

Cyberpunk 2077 v2.3 In-game Benchmark

Next up is Cyberpunk 2077's in-game benchmark, where on the "Medium" preset at 1080p with upscaling and frame generation disabled, the GTi15 Ultra achieves an average FPS of 30.03.

With XeSS enabled and set to "Auto" on the same "Medium" preset, the mini PC is capable of an average FPS of 43.36, which can be considered playable. Frame generation was disabled for this particular benchmark run.

F1 23 In-game Benchmark

With F1 23's in-game benchmark, the GTi15 Ultra achieves a very playable average FPS of 70 when tested at the 1080p resolution on the "Medium" graphics preset - these results were obtained with all forms of upscaling disabled.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider In-game Benchmark

Concluding things in the gaming benchmarks section is Shadow of the Tomb Raider's in-game benchmark tool, where the GTi15 Ultra achieves a playable average FPS of 42 on the 1080p resolution. These results were achieved on the "Medium" graphics preset with all forms of upscaling disabled.

Power Consumption, Thermals & Acoustics

Under Load [F1 23 In-game Benchmark, 1080p, Medium Detail Preset, TAA, XeSS Off, Singapore Circuit, Five Laps (~9 minutes)]

• Avg. CPU Package Temperature: 78.9°C
• Max. CPU Package Temperature: 89.0°C
• Avg. CPU Package Power: 51.0W
• Max. CPU Package Power: 56.0W

Under Load [Cinebench 2024 Multi Core - 10 minute run]

• Avg. CPU Package Temperature: 89.0°C
• Max. CPU Package Temperature: 93.0°C
• Avg. CPU Package Power: 64.3W
• Max. CPU Package Power: 65.0W

Idle

• Avg. CPU Package Temperature: 67.7°C
• Max. CPU Package Temperature: 82.0°C
• Avg. CPU Package Power: 14.9W
• Max. CPU Package Power: 25.9W

The CPU package temperature and CPU package power figures above were obtained from HWiNFO64 sensor readouts, in a non-airconditioned room with an ambient temperature of around 29.7°C.

The idle power draw and thermals were unfortunately on the higher side of things (when idle, the CPU fan ran at an average speed of 1695 RPM). I’m guessing this could be something to do with the fact that the power supply is contained within the chassis of the GTi15 Ultra, where the heat generated from the power supply could have contributed to the internal heat levels of the mini PC. Your guess is as good as mine!

A brief note on acoustics, the GTi15 Ultra was really quiet when under load. In fact, I think it’s one of the quietest mini PC’s under load that I’ve got the chance to test – in a room with around 47.0dB of ambient noise levels, my decibel meter recorded approximately 47.2db of noise when the mini PC was idle, and around 47.9db of noise when running F1 23's benchmark for around nine minutes, which is pretty impressive. During the said benchmark, the CPU fan ran at an average speed of 1894 RPM. I think its safe to conclude that the MSC2.0 cooling system that Beelink's used for the GTi15 Ultra is pretty good at what it’s supposed to do.

Audio Performance

The GTi15 Ultra comes with dual built-in speakers that perform unremarkably - given that they're integrated speakers after all, I found their sound quality to be tinny without much going on in the bass department.

The audio quality of the built-in microphone array is unremarkable too. If you're interested to hear how they sound like, do be sure to check out the video review for this mini PC at the top of this article, at the time stamp 17:53.

AI Workloads

Given the GTi15 Ultra’s specifications, plus the fact that it can be paired with a desktop GPU via the Beelink EX Pro dock, I suppose that the GTi15 Ultra can be a pretty competent AI box, especially if you’re intending to run AI models locally.

Also, Beelink touts the GTi15 Ultra’s built-in microphone array as one of its selling points, so as AI voice interaction features becomes more developed on platforms such as ChatGPT, I guess the GTi15 Ultra would be very ready for use with such voice interaction features.

Usage Experience with Beelink EX Pro Docking Station

Seeing as Beelink also sent over their EX Pro docking station together with the GTi15 Ultra, I decided to spend some time benchmarking the GTi15 Ultra together with the EX Pro, just to see how much gaming performance we can eke out of the GTi15 Ultra when we pair it with a modern mid-range desktop graphics card.

A quick lowdown on the EX Pro dock, it comes with a built-in 600W power supply, which means that it should support pretty high-end GPUs such as the GeForce RTX 4090, though Beelink doesn’t explicitly mention support for it.

The dock also comes with an additional PCIe 4.0 x1 M.2 slot that can be used to install an additional M.2 NVMe drive. If you’d like, you can swap out the M.2 drive slot module for a M.2 WIFI slot module instead - this said WIFI slot module comes included with the EX Pro.

In terms of connectors, the EX Pro comes with a pair of WIFI antenna connectors, a USB 2.0 port, two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, a PCIe 5.0 x8 slot for a desktop graphics card, as well as a four-pin fan header should you choose to setup some form of cooling for the EX Pro dock.

Getting the GTi15 Ultra installed on the dock is just a simple matter of removing the rubber strip covering the connector from the bottom lid of the GTi15 Ultra, and installing it onto the dock as pictured above.

For this test with the EX Pro dock, I’ll be using a MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16G GAMING TRIO OC graphics card with the same suite of four gaming benchmarks (at 1440p instead) just to see how this combination is going to fare from a gaming perspective. In case you're unaware, the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti utilises a PCIe 5.0 x8 interface.

Black Myth Wukong Benchmark Tool

With the Black Myth Wukong standalone benchmark tool, the GTi15 Ultra and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB combo puts out an average FPS of 51 on the "High" preset at 1440p, with ray tracing and all forms of upscaling disabled.

Cyberpunk 2077 v2.3 In-game Benchmark

Moving on to Cyberpunk 2077's in-game benchmark, the GTi15 Ultra and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB combo achieves an average FPS of 69.25 on the "Ray Tracing Low" preset at 1440p, with all forms of upscaling disabled.

F1 23 In-game Benchmark

With F1 23's in-game benchmark, the GTi15 Ultra + RTX 5060 Ti 16GB pairing achieves an average FPS of 58 on the "Ultra High" graphics preset at 1440p - once again, these results were obtained with all forms of upscaling disabled.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider In-game Benchmark

Rounding things off in this section is Shadow of the Tomb Raider's in-game benchmark tool, where the GTi15 Ultra+RTX 5060 Ti 16GB achieves an average FPS of 67 on the 1440p resolution. These results were achieved on the highest possible graphics settings with all forms of upscaling disabled.

Conclusion & Pricing

To sum up, the Beelink GTi15 Ultra is a pretty solid offering of a mini PC that performs pretty well at productivity tasks, given the performance of its Core Ultra 9 285H processor. The integrated Arc 140T graphics is pretty capable for an iGPU solution, where it can game at somewhat passable framerates on the 1080p resolution on low-to-medium ish quality settings – you can definitely squeeze out some additional performance if you’re intending to use upscaling wizardry such as XeSS. Pair the GTi15 Ultra with the EX Pro dock and a mid-to-high-end desktop graphics card, and you have a really competent AI and gaming PC on hand. To put things into perspective, with the RTX 5060 Ti and Core Ultra 9 285H combo, the gaming FPS results I obtained were very not very far behind the results that I got when I first reviewed the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, at least with the four games that I benchmarked the GTi15 Ultra with in this review.

Build quality is pretty good on the whole, where the GTi15 Ultra feels premium thanks to its predominantly metal chassis. Thermal performance is also very commendable, where the Core Ultra 9 285H remained comfortably under 100°C when under a productivity or gaming workload, all while running pretty quiet, which is impressive.

Some misses to mention, the GTi15 Ultra runs warm when idle. In fact, even when it's powered off, the mini PC remains warm to the touch, as long as you’ve got it plugged into the mains with the power socket switch left on. I’m thinking this is likely because the power supply is located within the PC case. Also, getting access to the motherboard for service access purposes was not easy at all, given the number of screws and bits and bobs that you’ll have to remove to get to the RAM slots and M.2 slots.

As of the time of publishing this article, the variant of the GTi15 Ultra that comes equipped with 64GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD is available to purchase from Beelink’s website for a price of US$1249.

Get this mini PC from Amazon: https://amzn.to/4resneu 

ALKtech may earn commissions from qualifying purchases made using affiliate links, at no extra cost to you as a customer. These commissions go a long way in supporting the platform!

The mini PC featured in this article was a review unit provided on loan from Beelink.