MSI Cubi 5 12M Review

With enough performance for either running basic productivity apps or video streaming, the MSI Cubi 5 12M (model 030US; $549.99) mini PC brings surprisingly big versatility in a small package. This tiny tower is small enough to fit nearly anywhere, whether it's next to the display in your home office or behind the TV in your home theater. While definitely miniature, the Cubi is large enough to fit plenty of necessary ports, and it has some minor internal expansion room. Plus, the Cubi operates quietly enough that it won't be a nuisance in either an office or living-room setting. Finally, the Cubi does all of this at a reasonable price, making it a smart bet as an inexpensive second PC or a decent budget buy if you're strapped for cash toward a new primary computer.

Our MSI Cubi 5 12M-030US features an Intel Core i3-1215U processor, 8GB of memory, and a 256GB solid-state drive. It costs $549.99 in this configuration and is actually the lowest-cost full system in the Cubi 5 12M series. An Intel Core i5-based barebones model that lacks memory and an SSD costs $100 less. And you can scale up to a Core i7-based model with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD that‘s priced at $929.99. All models feature 12th Generation Intel "Alder Lake" mobile CPUs from the efficient U series.

The Cubi 5 12M measures a compact 2.1 by 4.9 by 4.9 inches (HWD). It's roughly the same size as the Asus ExpertCenter PN52 and the Geekom MiniAir 11 Special Edition, each of which measures 2.3 by 4.7 by 5.1 inches. Likewise, this PC is a bit larger than the 2.1-by-4.6-by-4.4-inch Intel NUC 12 Pro. However, the Cubi is considerably smaller than another of MSI's very own mini PCs: The MSI Pro DP21 measures 2.2 by 8 by 8.2 inches. It's small enough to fit underneath a monitor on your desk or behind your TV in your home theater.

In addition to its compact size, the Cub 5 12M is easy to blend into any space because it's a basic, matte-black box. You'll find a small silver MSI logo on the top panel; the rest of the system is covered in vents. Half of the top panel is vented, as are both sides. Half of the back panel is vented along with most of the bottom panel.

The copious venting on the Cubi 5 12M allows it to operate in near silence. It's never completely silent but operates quietly with its cooling fan whirring at just a whisper. It's unobtrusive while seated at a desk with the system directly under the monitor at which you’re starting. You also won't notice it in your living room if you deploy it as a streaming box behind your TV. Even when watching a movie at low volume, I was unable to hear the Cubi 5 12M's fan.

MSI includes a mounting plate that you can use to attach the system to a wall or the underside of a desk. If you don't mount the Cubi 5 12M, the system rests securely on four small rubber feet. Inside each foot is a screw, which you can remove to access the system's interior. The only interior expansion is a free laptop-style SO-DIMM slot to add more memory. (One of the two slots was filled on our test system.)

The system has one M.2 slot, which was occupied on our test system by a 256GB SSD. A second M.2 slot would have allowed for easy storage expansion, and it's too bad because a 256GB SSD is on the small side for a desktop PC. Also, without a SATA connection, you also can't add a 2.5-inch laptop drive inside.

For such a small PC, the Cubi 5 12M has an impressive array of ports. It supplies four USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, a single Thunderbolt 4 port, HDMI 2.0b and DisplayPort 1.4 video outs, and a pair of Ethernet ports.

On the front panel, you’ll find that Thunderbolt 4 port, two of the four USB Type-A ports, and a combo headphone/microphone jack.

Around the back reside the other two USB-A ports, the video outs, the pair of Ethernet jacks, and the power connector. If you use the HDMI and DisplayPort connections in the back along with the Thunderbolt port on the front, the Cubi 5 12M can support output to three displays. That's a neat trick for a mini PC to pull off.

While I like having both USB-A and USB-C ports, I'd also happily trade one or two of the USB-A ports for another USB-C. I would have also liked to see an SD card slot. It will be difficult to find an easy way to expand the system's internal storage without replacing the M.2 drive on which the OS is installed.

The system comes preloaded with Windows 11 Home and supports the latest wireless standards with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. What is not included, however, is a keyboard and mouse. You’ll need to bring your own input devices to the Cubi party.

If you plan to use the Cubi 5 12M in a kiosk, or another retail or office setting, and worry that its small size might make it a tempting target to thieves, you can cable it down with the Kensington-style security-lock slot on the back-right corner.

Again, this MSI Cubi 5 12M-030US features the Intel Core i3-1215U processor, 8GB of RAM, integrated Intel UHD Graphics, and a 256GB SSD. The Core i3-1215U chip is a mobile processor and a member of Intel's 12th Gen family of chips, code-named Alder Lake. This generation features Intel's new hybrid architecture with Performance and Efficient cores, and so the Core i3-1215U has two P-cores cores, four E-cores, and support for a total of eight processing threads.

With that, we've compared the Cubi with other mini PCs and small budget desktops, most of which feature a desktop CPU. The Dell Inspiron Desktop is a budget microtower desktop that features a similar Core i3-12100 CPU. Likewise, MSI's own Pro DP21 makes use of the very same Intel CPU as the Dell. Meanwhile, we have the Acer Aspire TC-1760-UA92, a slightly more powerful budget microtower with a Core i5-12400 chip. Rounding out the charts is the Geekom MiniAir 11 Special Edition, a mini PC based on an Intel Celeron N5095 processor. All the systems feature an integrated GPU, and all but the Acer Aspire (with its 12GB) supply 8GB of RAM.

The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10's Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a PC's storage.

Three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro by Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Our last productivity test is PugetBench for Photoshop(Opens in a new window) by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

Against its desktop-class competition, the Cubi 5 12M and its efficient mobile processor acquitted themselves well. It topped the 4,000 mark on PCMark 10, which shows it's a reliably capable productivity machine. The Cubi finished behind the pace set by the MSI Pro DP21, Dell Inspiron, and Acer Aspire but well ahead of the Celeron-based Geekom MiniAir. We saw similar results on the Cinebench, HandBrake and Geekbench tests. Taking longer than 15 minutes to complete our HandBrake video-encoding benchmark and a middling Cinebench score, however, indicate that the Cubi 5 12M is not a great choice for serious media creation or editing. However, as you'll soon see, the Cubi might be even better suited as a media player instead.

We test Windows PC graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).

Additionally, we run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, which are rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.

The Cubi 5 12M did surprisingly well on both 3DMark tests. It topped every other PC in each test it managed to carry out. (It was unable to complete one of the GFXBench tests.) No system with integrated graphics will be confused with a gaming PC, but the Cubi 5 12M has a bit of graphics pep to help it run graphics-heavy web pages without a hitch and smoothly display HD video. This is where the home theater application comes in, with the Cubi well suited to play 1080p video or even serve as a retro or indie gaming box.

As configured, our MSI Cubi 5 12M sits in the sweet spot for a mini PC. With a Core i3 CPU, it delivers enough performance for office tasks, web browsing, and media streaming while also remaining affordable at $550. It's also compact and quiet enough to seamlessly blend into an office or any room in your home. If you have an extra monitor in your home office, the MSI Cubi 5 12M is a cheap way to turn it into a useful screen for browsing the web, checking email, and watching shows and movies.

If you are looking for a mini PC purely as a media streaming box, however, then the Geekom MiniAir 11 Special Edition is a much more affordable option. It's priced at only $299 and on sale for $199 at the time of this writing. Its budget Celeron CPU limits its overall utility but is still capable of HD video streaming and basic web browsing. Of course, if you need a bit more power than that, consider the MSI Cubi 5 12M. As soon as you start using it as a day-to-day device, it feels like a clear step up by comparison.

Compact, quiet, and just powerful enough, the MSI Cubi 5 12M mini PC is decent as either a basic productivity machine in the home office or a media streaming box in the living room.

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