WO-WE is back without another in their ever-expanding line of minicomputers. The last time we checkout out the company we featured their entry-level AMD Excavator A9-9400 mini-pc that costs just over $100 (read review here). That unit is currently pulling full-time duty in my garage as my 2nd business PC, and it’s been great. But one thing that it isn’t great at is gaming. Sure, it’s not sold as a gaming machine and I only ever play some solitaire on it, but there are times that I want to get some quick MOBA or shooter time in when I’m taking a break. It seems that WO-WE understands this feeling because they sent over their AMD Ryzen 5 5600U Gaming Mini PC for us to check out to see if it will fill our basic gaming needs.
I know that WO-WE bills this as a gaming PC, but you need to come into things with tempered expectations. Look, no matter what you name a machine, a tiny PC like this (and by just about every other company) has to work within some given technical limits. There just is no way that you can fit a RTX 4080 inside a box that fits in the palm of your hand. Even the smallest and thinnest low-profile cards on the market don’t fit. This means you are limited to onboard graphics, but thankfully those have come a long way over the past few generations and can offer up some decent performance for basic gaming.
Outfitted with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600U processor (6Cores/12 Threads; Total L2 Cache 3MB, Total L3 Cache 16MB), WO-WE’s little gaming machine has a decent amount of power behind it. It’ll easily handle all the software you want to throw at it from business to production. It’s a speedy-enough chip (it easily outpaces its closest competitor the Intel i5) that easily pushes 4K content, something that their entry-level box had some problems with. In fact, you can be watching 4K video on YouTube and working with another program on a second screen without issue, something that I did while working/testing.
This is helped thanks to the included 16GB of DDR4 RAM that the system features which can be maxed to 64GB. And even better is that you can connect up to three monitors with two HDMI ports and a video capable USB-C for those newer monitors. This little PC runs Windows 11 right out of the box, and it runs smoothly and looks great. One thing I noticed is how nicely the machine looks on my 4K 32-inch curved display. I’m not quite sure what’s going on but this AMD Ryzen 5 5600U machine outputs Windows 11 better visually than my Ryzen 7 with a 1660 Super. It’s not going to compete in terms of gaming, but for whatever reason it outputs Windows 11 better and I had a great experience simply using Windows and all my basic software.
And thanks to the 16Gb of RAM and a robust 512GB M.2 drive means this is a well-rounded machine for editing. The two videos included in this review were all done on the machine, and everything was incredibly smooth. Video editing was speedy, as well as audio and photo editing. I’d bet this machine would be the perfect rig for any college student because of the versatility and size. Pair this up with a tablet for your notes on the go and you really have quite the PC setup that fits anywhere you can fit a screen. It even comes with an included monitor mount for those looking for a very clean and minimalist setup.
But what about the one thing that everyone is wondering about: the gaming. WO-WE has seen fit to include the Radeon Vega 7 integrated chip inside this little machine. It’s an older chip released sometime in 2018 and has seen three newer versions (R8, R10, R11) surpass it. That said, the chip can just about handle anything released in the past few years on low settings or a mix of low and medium settings. If you are going to be jumping into games like League of Legends or other MOBA titles, you can expect to be pushing silky smooth 30 to 60FPS on high settings (it can hit 100+ when not capped in many eSports titles).
Likewise, any modern online competitive shooter isn’t a problem with the likes of Overwatch 2 and Valorant running great at high settings at around 60 FPS. GTAV can push 40 FPS most of the time and if you cap it at 30 FPS you have a pretty smooth experience on high/medium settings. But more modern games are going to struggle on any integrated chip and that is no different here. Red Dead 2 and Assassins Creed Valhalla struggle on 1080p low settings, but with some tweaks you can push 30 a lot of the time, especially if you are okay with 720p output. It’s not the best experience for these games, but they are playable. You’ll also get much better results if you want to push the chip using tools but do so at your own risk.
If you look online you are going to find a lot of tests with the Ryzen 5 5600, but you need to be a little careful. There are actually two separate models of this chip, the Ryzen 5 5600U (included in this WO-WE machine) and the Ryzen 5 5600G that came out later in the same year. Both chips are solid but the 5600G beats the 5600U in just about every bracket with the most notable being that it’s between 30 to 50% faster with its clock speeds, especially with regards to multicore speed. This means it’s a far better chip for gaming, even when paired with the same Radeon Vega 7 GPU. Most test show off this chip and can throw off consumers trying to spec test.
If I were to peg the graphics capability in terms of something relatable, I would say the WO-WE AMD Ryzen 5 5600U paired with the Radeon Vega 7 performs around the level of a stock GTX 1030. That’s more than enough for most online games and anything in the past few years, but if you check out a game and don’t see the GTX 1030 on its list of minimum system requirements then you are going to have a bad time, and if you do it’ll be running at low settings. I’d love to see WO-WE move to the updated G chip if possible as that would make this a much more viable gaming machine but I’m not sure if that’s possible.
It needs to be known that the WO-WE AMD Ryzen 5 5600U isn’t a AAA gaming machine, but you should already know that. This is going to be an entry-level gaming machine for lite and medium gaming. If you do some tweaking in whatever game you are playing, you can get some decent numbers on low settings, with more modern titles doing okay on 720p low on something like Call of Duty Warzone. If you can handle 30 FPS on low settings it’s a fine machine, especially for single-player game, just don’t expect to compete with the big boys. But if you just want to have fun with some eSports titles, you’ll be all set.
Now, if you want to use this box for streaming through GeForce Now or any cloud-based gaming it’s a great option. And if you want to turn this into an emulation box then you are going to have a lot of fun as we loaded up a PS2 emulator and had no issues with stock PS2 settings. I think the WO-WE AMD Ryzen 5 5600U is a great machine for those that need a new work-based computer for college or the home, but also want the option to do some lite gaming. That said, WO-WE themselves offer another mini-PC without the gaming tag that might actually spec out better for a little less money. Their AMD Ryzen 7 3750H with a Vega 10 CPU looks like a better gaming option, but one limited by lower RAM. Maybe we’ll check that one out for a deeper comparison down the road.
As it stands the WO-WE AMD Ryzen 5 5600U Gaming Mini PC is a great choice, especially as a secondary PC, or one for a child or college student. It’ll run you $290 which isn’t a bad deal for everything that you are getting. When you consider that building a comparable PC will run you hundreds more (the GeForce GT 1030 card alone is floating around $120). We price-checked a custom built that runs equal to this unit for around $700, so the WO-WE AMD Ryzen 5 5600U Gaming Mini PC is an amazing bang for the buck.
At the end of the day the WO-WE AMD Ryzen 5 5600U Gaming Mini PC is a fantastic PC in its own right and one that comfortably allows for lite gaming.
Check out the machine here: https://tinyurl.com/wowegaming
*A review unit was provided by the manufacturer for this article*
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