GEEKOM Mini IT13 Review: Core i9-13900H in a 4x4 Package

Power Consumption and Thermal Characteristics

The power consumption at the wall was measured with a 4K display being driven through the HDMI port of the system. In the graph below, we compare the idle and load power of the GEEKOM Mini IT13 with other systems evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran the AIDA64 System Stability Test with various stress components, as well as our custom stress test with Prime95 / Furmark, and noted the peak as well as idling power consumption at the wall.

The numbers are consistent with the configured PL1 / PL2 of 35W / 80W for the Core i9-13900H in the Mini IT13. On the idling front, the system is not able to meet the efficiency benchmark set by the Intel NUCs, but manages to better other DDR4-based RPL-P systems such as the ASRock Industrial NUCS BOX-1360P/D4.

Stress Testing

Our thermal stress routine is a combination of Prime95, Furmark, and Finalwire's AIDA64 System Stability Test. The following 9-step sequence is followed, starting with the system at idle:

• Start with the Prime95 stress test configured for maximum power consumption
• After 30 minutes, add Furmark GPU stress workload
• After 30 minutes, terminate the Prime95 workload
• After 30 minutes, terminate the Furmark workload and let the system idle
• After 30 minutes of idling, start the AIDA64 System Stress Test (SST) with CPU, caches, and RAM activated
• After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with the GPU, CPU, caches, and RAM activated
• After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with only the GPU activated
• After 30 minutes, terminate the previous AIDA64 SST and start a new one with the CPU, GPU, caches, RAM, and SSD activated
• After 30 minutes, terminate the AIDA64 SST and let the system idle for 30 minutes

Traditionally, this test used to record the clock frequencies - however, with the increasing number of cores in modern processors and fine-grained clock control, frequency information makes the graphs cluttered and doesn't contribute much to understanding the thermal performance of the system. The focus is now on the power consumption and temperature profiles to determine if throttling is in play.

The cooling solution for the processor package is effective, and the package power doesn't dip below the PL1 value of 35W throughout the duration in which it is stressed. The iGPU alone seems to have a power budget of around 25W. That said, the PL2 value of 80W doesn't appear reasonable for the cooling solution, as the temperature approaches 100C+ within a couple of seconds of load application, as shown in the graph below.

The limitations of the cooling solution are also evident during the pure GPU loading phase. Allocating 25W to the iGPU segment of the die results in the package temperature again touching 100C+ before the thermal solution can catch up. As part of this process, the iGPU does undergo intermittent throttling.

Based on our evaluation of the thermal solutions for different small form-factor systems, it appears that a 35W or 40W TDP solution meant for a quad-core processor might not be really effective at handling that package power for a hexa-core or octa-core one.