Gigabyte A5 K1 review: Old-school gaming notebook

After we had already tested the just under 1,800 Euros (~$1788) A5 X1 with Ryzen 9 5900HX and GeForce RTX 3070 , Gigabyte has now sent us the much cheaper A5 K1, which also has 16 GB of DDR4 RAM (2x 8 GB Dual Channel) and a 512 GB NVMe-based SSD, but has to make do with less CPU and GPU power. However, a Ryzen 5 5600H and a GeForce RTX 3060 are very respectable for around 900 Euros (~$894). In this price range you often only get a GeForce RTX 3050 or 3050 Ti .

Gigabyte (or the barebone manufacturer Clevo) uses a matte 144 Hz panel with 1920 x 1080 pixels for the display. Attention: The computer actually only comes with FreeDOS. However, Gigabyte was kind enough to install Windows 11 Pro for us in advance.

The A5 K1’s competitors include other 15-inch gamers with GeForce RTX 3060 or the equal Radeon RX 6600M like the Asus TUF Gaming F15 FX507ZM , the Lenovo Legion 5 15ACH6A and the MSI Alpha 15 B5EEK , which are, except for the Legion, much more expensive. The latter notebooks appear in the tables as comparison devices. Since the chassis is identical in construction to the A5 X1 except for minimal changes (the sides are now textured/structured in places), we will not re-evaluate the case, ports and input devices in this article.

You can find the corresponding information in the linked test report . The screen scores a bit weaker compared to the A5 X1, but is still on a pretty good level overall. Instead of a panel from AU Optronics, our test configuration of the A5 K1 had a BOE panel on board.

Besides the illumination (the display struggles with visible screen bleeding), the brightness could also be better. An average of 281 cd/m² might be sufficient for most indoor environments, but you will quickly wish for a higher luminosity in brighter places like winter gardens, balconies or terraces. The more expensive brother still achieved 325 cd/m² here.

The advantage of the A5 K1 is the slightly lower black value (0. 29 vs 0. 4 cd/m²), which leads to a noticeably higher contrast on paper (1,107:1 vs 838:1).

However, the differences are limited in practice because the A5 X1 offers a larger color space. The latter is also slightly ahead in terms of color accuracy. Viewing angles and response times are satisfactory in both devices.

With a hexa-core CPU and a 6 GB GPU, the A5 K1 makes itself comfortable between the mid-range and the high-end. 16 GB of RAM are also not bad for the advertised price. Among other things, the power mode can be changed in the preloaded Gaming Center, which is visually familiar from other Clevo barebones.

Apart from the battery test, which was performed in entertainment mode, our measurements were taken with the power profile (including automatic fan speed setting). For a longer battery life and a lower operating noise, we recommend the power-saving mode and the silent mode, which does not quite live up to its name. The Ryzen 5 5600H is an ideal companion for the GeForce RTX 3060.

The six-core model from AMD’s Cezanne generation offers 16 MB L3 cache and can process up to 12 threads in parallel via SMT. The TDP of the 7 nm chip is 45 watts. Although the Ryzen 5 5600H unsurprisingly cannot compete with the stronger AMD brothers Ryzen 7 5800H and Ryzen 9 5900HX, the processor delivers a good performance.

In the loop test with Cinebench R15, the result remained very consistent and was on par with the Lenovo Legion 5, which is also equipped with a 5600H. Although it scored at the bottom of the test field in PCMark 10, the system performance of the A5 K1 is mostly convincing. 6.

341 points are definitely respectable in view of the notebook’s price. The laptop does less well in terms of latency. According to the tool LatencyMon, those who want to edit audio or video in real time should rather look for an alternative (or do it manually), and many notebooks reveal weaknesses here.

The installed 512 GB SSD is neither particularly fast nor particularly slow for an NVMe drive, but performs in the midfield of the comparison devices. We have to criticize the long-term performance in particular. In the long-term test with DiskSpd, the speed dropped massively after several runs and then settled at a medium level.

On a positive note, the case can accommodate up to two M. 2 drives (PCIe 2280) and a 2. 5-inch drive.

The GeForce RTX 3060 is a ray-tracing GPU based on Nvidia’s Ampere architecture. The DirectX 12 model has 3,840 shader units, although the performance depends very much on the TGP setting. Gigabyte chooses a very high value for the RTX 3060 with a maximum of 130 watts, which can also be seen in the benchmark results.

These are almost 10% better than the previously determined 3060 average. The RTX 3070, on the other hand, is about 20% faster in the GPU portion. The memory configuration is not quite up to date anymore.

6 GB VRAM already reaches its limits in demanding games – at least in higher resolutions and settings. Passionate gamers should at least use an 8 GB GPU. In the native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, the A5 K1 can run almost all current games very smoothly with high to maximum details.

More than 60 FPS is not an exception, but rather the rule, which benefits the 144 Hz screen. Analogous to the CPU loop, there were also some problems with the graphics card in the long-term test (60 minutes, The Witcher 3 ) did not show any abnormalities. The GeForce RTX 3060 ran with a stable frame rate.

As expected, the high TGP of the RTX 3060 comes at the expense of noise development. When using performance mode, the 15-incher reaches a very high 56 to 58 dB(A) under load. This is an annoyingly loud level that forces the use of headphones, although some rivals get similarly loud – though these offer thinner chassis.

The Clevo barebones usually have to accept a lot of criticism in idle mode and during simple tasks like office, video and web. However, the A5 K1 surprises positively here because the fans are partly inactive and the frequency and intensity of the start-up phases are limited by Clevo’s standards. Nevertheless, the potential noise is one of the device’s weak points.

The temperature development of the A5 K1 is also not brilliant – despite the generous height. A maximum of 50 °C (122 °F) on the upper side and 51 °C (123. 8 °F) on the underside after 60 minutes of full load are more than many thinner laptops with comparable equipment.

The situation is not necessarily better inside the case. Although the CPU and GPU did not throttle during the stress test with the FurMark and Prime95 tools, which is not a matter of course, a maximum of 98 °C (208. 4 °F) for the Ryzen 5 5600H and up to 88 °C (190.

4 °F) for the GeForce RTX 3060 (data from the HWMonitor tool) are borderline. Thanks to graphics switching (Nvidia Optimus ), the laptop is reasonably frugal in idle mode with 10 to 17 watts. Under load, we could coax between 113 and 245 watts out of the 15-inch laptop, which is a typical consumption for the installed hardware and the offered performance.

The battery life is on par with the more expensive brother. Just under 7 hours of Internet surfing via WLAN (display brightness reduced to 150 cd/m²) are only beaten by some rivals. However, these also offer larger batteries (80+ Wh instead of 49 Wh).

If you ignore the price, the Gigabyte A5 K1 has a hard time against the similarly fast 15-inch competition. Besides the loud noise in 3D mode (performance mode), the high temperature development of the components should be mentioned on the downside. Despite the relatively thick case, the laptop gets very warm and loud under load, which does not exactly speak for the cooling system.

Speaking of the case: The chassis does not cut a particularly good figure in terms of quality. The plastic surfaces look rather cheap and also tend to rattle. In most other disciplines – be it the input devices, the screen, the connectivity or the battery runtime – the Gigabyte laptop is quite unspectacular and does not stand out from the crowd, neither positively nor negatively.

However, those who primarily pay attention to the price-performance ratio will get a pretty good offer with the A5 K1. Most gaming notebooks under 1,000 Euros (~$993) are either slower or have to make do with a poorer display (keyword: color space). The reviewed Gigabyte A5 K1 with Ryzen 5 5600H, GeForce RTX 3060, 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD is available for around 900 Euros (~$894) at various online stores (e.

g. Notebooksbilliger ). .