ASUS V500 Mini Tower (V500MV) Review – Decent For Basic Work

Unboxing

Today we’re taking a look at ASUS V500 Mini Tower, a PC designed for typical home office use. Inside this box includes the PC itself, along with peripherals and additional components for optional upgrades.

Here’s the full list of accessories:
– SATA power connector
– SATA data connector
– HDD mounting screws
– Quick start guide
– EU regulatory documentation
– Warranty card
– ASUS AW311KB keyboard
– ASUS AW311MS mouse
– AC (C13) power cable (Type G, UK/MY/SG)

Walkaround

The ‘Mini Tower’ in this PC’s name is referring to the form factor, which is a size category below mid-tower that’s more commonly seen in most gaming PC cases. Mini Towers are more suitable for home office PCs that still offer reasonable amounts of expandability over the more tightly-integrated SFF (small form factor) designs. The side panel is secured via two captive screws, and next to the top screw you’ll find a QR code that gives you access for its video guide.

There are a few things worth mentioning when it comes to V500’s internals: despite it being a desktop PC, the CPU that powers it is not a desktop one; instead, you’ll find one of three Intel laptop processors cooled via pre-installed heatpipe(s) connecting to a single 120mm exhaust fan. In our case, we have the range-topping option with Core i7-13620H, which is the only variant that features three heatpipes to enable up to 95W of sustained power (all other models will only be cooled by a single heatpipe, and maxes out at 45W).

Down below, you’ll find the pre-installed primary SSD and a vacant PCIe slot, the latter of which operates at PCIe 4.0 x8 signaling. While you can technically install a discrete GPU, this variant (or rather, all variants available in the Malaysia market) doesn’t offer power connectors required to operate GPUs that needs additional PCIe power. Hence, your options are limited to cards that max out at 75 watts, which will not require supplemental power to work.

For I/O, the offerings are decent: at the front you get a pair of USB-A ports with 5Gbps speed, a USB-C port offering the same speed, along with the headphone jack; behind the case you get four USB 2.0 ports, two display outputs (DisplayPort 1.4 & HDMI 1.4), surround audio outputs, and a Gigabit LAN port.

Specifications

ASUS V500 Mini Tower (V500MV-13620H018WS)

Full specifications available on product specification page.

CPU	Intel Core i7-13620H 4.9GHz / 6P+4E, 16 threads
RAM*	16GB (1x16GB) DDR5-5200 (SO-DIMM) Max. 64GB
GPU	Integrated: Intel UHD Graphics Discrete: Optional via PCIe x16 (PCIe 4.0 x8) slot
NPU	Not present
Storage	SSD #1: PHISON 512GB (Model unknown) EM280512GMN48-E21T1AS PCIe 4.0, M.2 2280 SSD #2: Vacant HDD upgrade kit provided
Display	Not applicable
Keyboard	Wired full-size keyboard (ASUS AW311KB) included in-box
Touchpad	Not applicable Wired optical mouse (ASUS AW311MS) included in-box
Audio	Not applicable Outputs: Realtek ALC897 Codec
Webcam	Not applicable
Biometrics	Not applicable
I/O	Front: 1x 3.5mm combo jack 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) Type-A 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) Type-C Rear: 1x HDMI 1.4 1x DisplayPort 1.4 4x USB 2.0 Type-A 1x RJ-45 GbE LAN 1x 7.1 channel audio (microphone, line-out, line-in)
Connectivity	Wireless: Realtek RTL8852BE PCIe NIC Wi-Fi 6 dual-band, 2×2 MIMO Bluetooth 5.3 Wired: Intel I219-V Gigabit LAN Controller
Battery	Not applicable
Power Supply	330W 80 PLUS Platinum internal power supply unit, AC C13 connector *180W 80 PLUS Bronze for lower-end SKUs
Operating System	Windows 11 Home 24H2
Dimensions	155 x 296 x 347 mm (excluding chassis feet & GPU bracket)
Weight	6.0kg

*Note: We found the pre-installed memory comes with a rated clock speed of DDR5-5600, but the Intel Core i7-13620H processor on this desktop is designed to support clock speeds up to DDR5-5200 only. As such, the reported memory clock speed will be capped at 5200MT/s, even if faster modules are installed.

Performance

Storage

The primary SSD of this PC originated from a Phison unit that we can reasonably believe is at least a variant of its E21T series, though the exact specs don’t seem to perfectly match our peak performance benchmark data above. Still, we consider this level of performance perfectly adequate for the users this PC is intended for.

CPU

Remember we just mentioned our unit features the range-topping Intel Core i7-13620H processor with additional cooling added on top of it? This effectively allows the V500 to top the charts among laptops and light-duty PCs, despite a significant core count deficit against the Core Ultra 7 165H (10C/16T vs 16C/22T), or even the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (10C/16T vs 12C/24T), both of which are significantly power-constrained due to their form factors.

GPU

Unfortunately, the 13th Gen Core’s onboard graphics are so dated at this point that it is functionally useless as far as gaming is concerned. Don’t expect to play modern titles without tuning the graphics settings to the absolute minimum, but you might just be able to get away with esports titles if the resolution is low enough.

System

In terms of general system performance, the ASUS V500 sits in the middle of the pack, though the CPU’s largely unrestricted power limit gave it a lot of leeway to improve the overall scores. Once again, graphics is the glaring weakness of this machine, so if you need to do some light graphics work, perhaps you need to get a small discrete GPU to get things going (although by that point it probably wrecks the value proposition of this PC).

The Good

The positive aspects of the ASUS V500 Mini Tower mainly comes down to the easy maintenance and upgrades you can perform on this PC. You have two SSD slots to boot, along with SO-DIMM slots for RAM upgrades; HDD upgrade kit is also provided if you still have any existing 3.5-inch HDD to migrate, or if you just want more low-cost storage for the machine. Suffice to say, one screwdriver is pretty much all you need to get things going.

As for the Core i7 processor onboard, adequate cooling does give the chip plenty of headroom to work with; for those looking for plenty of CPU performance, this neatly ticks that box. The acoustics are good, given that a large 120mm fan is more than capable of expelling 95W worth of heat away from the PC without making significant levels of noise. To give you some context, any laptop dealing with this level of heat generation will require fans screaming at top speed to do the same.

The Bad

Of course, there are major limitations to consider if you’re buying this PC – for one, the dated 13th Gen design offer very little graphics performance, so gaming is pretty much unachievable bar a few exceptions; while you can, in theory, install a discrete graphics card to solve this problem, ASUS didn’t provide the necessary parts like a PCIe 8-pin connector to allow this. That limits your option to GPUs up to 75W in TDP, and not many options exist today in this category.

Another negative of this PC comes down to the nature of this PC itself. For better or worse, this is effectively a laptop internals installed inside a desktop PC form factor, so your upgrade path is already quite limited in this regard. If you want a pre-built desktop PC that can be easily converted or upcycled in the future, perhaps this is not the best candidate for that purpose.

Verdict

At RM3,799, this particular variant of the ASUS V500 Mini Tower is certainly on the expensive side of the home PC spectrum, considering that it practically lacks any GPU capability beyond basic display duties. Would I pay this kind of money for extra CPU performance? Perhaps not. For home office use, you’re perfectly fine with a Core i5 instead – just save that RM1,100 and spend it on something more valuable than a minor processor upgrade.

Special thanks to ASUS Malaysia for providing the V500 Mini Tower for this review.