WTF?! We’ve seen many things turned into mini-PCs, but this could be the first time a repurposed graphics card has been transformed into a functioning computer. Made by custom PC builder CherryTree, the GeeFarce 5027 POS is certainly unique, though you’re unlikely to want to game on it.
CherryTree used an old RTX 2070 Super card for its mini-PC, which it sent to Gamers Nexus for Stephen Burke to examine.
The GeeFarce 5027 POS is powered by an integrated Asus NUC 13 Pro NUC board packing a 28W, 12-core/16-thread Core i7-1360P chip. Graphics are provided by the integrated Iris Xe graphics, featuring 96 execution units (EUs) clocked up to 1.5 GHz. It also comes with 64GB of DDR4-3200 SO-DIMM memory and a 2TB MP33 PCIe 3.0 SSD from TeamGroup.
The NUC is close to the I/O bracket, so you can install it inside a full-sized PC’s expansion slot — thereby creating a PC within a PC – and still access the two HDMI 2.1, two Thunderbolt 4, USB 3.2, USB 2.0, and 2.5 GbE ports.
The Gigabyte card’s heatsink isn’t used – the heatpipes have been cut – but its triple-fan cooler remains, helping to actively cool the NUC components.
For power, CherryTree converted the 8-pin PCIe power connector into a barrel-jack connector so it can be powered by an external wall adapter. The company said it can also use a 12-volt PCIe power connector.
In terms of performance, the GeeFarce 5027 POS does run older games like Doom, Doom II, and Quantum Break without problems.
Gamers Nexus compared the mini-PC to the standard RTX 2070 Super that serves as its shell. The Turing card obviously performs a lot better than the Iris Xe in synthetic benchmarks. GN also looked at power consumption, which peaked at an expected 87W, and found that the CPU and GPU thermals were in safe ranges.
The GeeFarce 5027 POS can’t be bought from CherryTree; it was simply a fun experiment to see how an old card can be repurposed. But we’ve seen other jokey/experimental hardware like this in the past become real products when the demand is there.
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