Given the networking focus of STH, I'm kinda disappointed that halfway through the video you've failed to mention what type of 2.5G ethernet it is. Likewise, it's completely absent from the STH website review. For many people (myself included) having a Realtek NIC is a total deal breaker. Fortunately, according to the Aliexpress page, it's using an Intel i-225 NIC.
@@offspringfan89 it's my understanding Realtek support in Linux is found is most/all current distributions, though I don't know about this newer 2.5Gb unit. I have been bitten wrt VMware
Here's an idea for an addition to the TinyMiniMicro-Series: the Framework Laptop in the CoolerMaster case. It has great performance, sub-1liter, you can configure the port selection with swappable modules (3 monitors or 3x 2.5Gbit NICs), user replacable RAM (Ryzen may actually support ECC modules for up to 64GB) and SSD. I think for those interested in the TinyMiniMicro series the framework-system is an interesting and viable alternative with unique features. The RUclips channel Elevated System had a great video on how the framework motherboard can be used in different configurations outside the laptop.
N305 models are quite a bit more expensive than the N100s. It seems that at that 300+ price point an older 11th/12th gen intel or Ryzen options start to compete when it comes to raw performance. This is still dominant when it comes to power efficiency and idle though. The whole new N series is great, but seems to gimped by single channel DDR5 which I suspect they will unlock in later gens for free performance. I guess Intel didn't see a point in going dual channel and out competing themselves in this space, when this gen's improvement was already drastic enough. Still a shame that the N300 and N305 didn't have dual channel at the very least as they have a noticeably higher MSRP. Excited to see how an N100 performs if you're able to get your hands on one. Thanks for the review as always Patrick.
It would be interesting to see what the N300/305's 32 execution unit GPU could do with dual-channel memory but when Minisforum will sell you a much more powerful 5600H system for $219 I don't really see the point. N95/100 is great for a basic media computer but N300 just seems like too much money for this application. On the other hand N300s will probably make great CPUs for network attached storage devices.
@@aa-yt7wo I purchased an intel N100 4 port 2.5gb router bare bones from China recently for 172USD. Hopefully it is here soon. The comparable N305 was mid to high 300s bare bones at which point I'd go with the Ryzen as you said. The N100 seems to be anywhere from 20% - 80% faster than last gen celerons like a celeron 5105 while only being 6W (with a higher unspecified boost depending on OEM set up). What's even better is that single core performance is nearly double the 5105 according to Geekbench 5. Given that many found the N5105 plenty performant enough as a router, firewall, NAS, media server and office PC. Having something in the same package except noticeably faster for less power with DDR5 and AV1 decode support sounds like a no brainer. The low 6W TDP is rather enticing too as it can be sold fanless and sip power for a 24/7 deployment. It looks quite promising.
@@Ilost11 I've actually got an N100 in a media PC for the bedroom and another in a laptop. The media PC is plenty quick for what it is, the laptop does stutter a bit but that's probably because I haven't sorted out the crapware the manufacturer shipped it with yet.
I ended up going with a GEEKOM Mini IT12. Intel 12th gen i7, 32 GB RAM, and a 1 TB NVME. RAM is only DDR4. Based on what I ended up deciding to use it for, I wish I had gone with a high end AMD model instead, as the 1070ish equivalent GPU capability would be nice to have. Live and learn.
Nah, stick with Intel NIC's and 8 cores is way way overkill unless you are running a ton of site to site VPN's and lots of end users. And in that scenario DEFINITELY stick with Intel NIC's
@@udayreddy6795 I compiled the latest Realtek drivers for my repurposed HP Pavilion (i5 2600, 8 GB DDR3, sata ssd) with opnsense 23.x and so far so good. I was expecting problems and figured I would have to buy new NICS but so far so good... EDIT: omitted details. On-board intel nic for WAN and TWO Realtek pcie cards. One for LAN and another waiting to be used as DMZ.
Currently using one as an OPNsense box. PFsense couldn't recognize the intel NIC's use OPNsense to avoid a headache. Once I got OPN installed it works amazingly and flawlessly. Fits below my switch on the rackmount and looks sharp. Been running about 7 days now no issues. I used a slightly lower spec'd model with an intel quad E core forgot the exact CPU ATM
The sweet spot for this is proxmox running your router OS at 2.5gbps and some dockers like pihole and ipfs or whatnot. It should do those things together, very well.
8 core..... Let me start this by saying that if this is the core i3-N305, it had better not be priced like a core i3-1215/1315 system because Intel set the CSP to the same $309 for both processors. If it is, very few people should buy this, as users for this processor would be very niche where they need this many cores, at this TDP, and they cant just take the better processor, and limit it to the same TDP. Not to say beelink and others should cut margin, but that either consumers should not buy this overpriced hardware until Intel offers a reasonable price reduction to reflect the shortcomings compared to the i3-1215u/1315u The N305 is the fully unlocked Atom N100, with the only apparent difference being 2 fully unlocked core complexes(8 E cores) Now my only problem with the i3-N305 is price, well, i dont like it carrying the i3 name when it is a dedicated atom die with atom spec, atom ram limitations, and atom PCIe but that can be overlooked if the price fit. The i3-1215 is a far better value at the same price because you get 3 core complexes, with 2 of those being P cores and 1 E cores, making for a 2+4 total, you get 2 channels of DDR5, which can in theory support the future 64GB sodimms, or up to 256GB of RAM if you had 4 slots at up to 5200MT/s(though probably max 32GB at that speed) though Intel may put a firmware limit of 64GB, we wont know without testing, you get 20 PCIe lanes with most of them being gen 4, along with 64 Xe graphics cores Atom/i3-N305 is literally less than 1/2 the SOC for the exact same price, yes i'd personally go for 8 E cores over 2 P cores given the choice, but the i3 comes with 2P cores plus 4 E cores, the N305 is also limited to no more than 16GB of single channel DDR5 at 4800, which will have an effect on the iGPU which is 1/2 that of the i3-1215/1315. Oh and instead of 20 PCIe lanes of mostly 4.0, you get only 9 lanes of 3.0 Now the main thing that will affect most people are the lack of P cores, 1/2 the GPU power limited by single channel RAM, and a supposed hard firmware limit of 16GB. This processor would be fine with a CSP of $129, but not $309
The main use case for a processor like this, where the much more powerful and feature rich 1215U is available for the same price, would be in OSes where they do not handle mixed cores at all. While yes 2P cores plus 4 E cores would be quite fast compared to 8 E cores, if you have to disable those 4 E cores on the 1215U, you will get better performance out of 8 E cores when both processors are limited to the same TDP, those 8 E cores would approach the performance of 4 P cores without hyperthreading when both processors are limited to ~8w
3-4 of these could make a pretty decent HA cluster for your Proxmox environment. Although, I think their price is just a little too high even for what these are. I think, around $300 would make more sense. $350 is just a little bit of a stretch. Remember, you have to buy NVMe SSDs for them, and that is another $50 ea. Plus, you'd might as well increase the RAM. I feel like I'd want to wait for a better deal, personally. I like that it has dual NICs, so you can use one as OoB management. The power consumption is going to be tripple, tho.
@@sergioruocco6181 That's possible, but wouldn't be HA enough. Would rather use a distributed file system, like Gluster. That way the storage is also HA.
I got one of these! It's pretty okay but the power supply and lack of PCI-E lanes really is a bummer. If people are considering this, try and find an i3-1220P instead. They're about the same price (about $75 more) and have way way more for the money. I don't regret this little EQ12 Pro, I traded from a Dell Opti 5080 Tiny 10600T, and it's been mostly great. It really is let down by the crummy power supply, make sure to get a 12v/5A adapter. Also, for some reason, inside the shell are vent screens - these choke the system out like crazy. Feel free to peel them off if you aren't in a super dusty environment.
I had to contact Beelink support once to do exactly the same thing and ran into the same issue. Ultimately what they sent DID work and got me back up and running, but I definitely agree it feels a little sketchy.
Thanks for the awesome video! Can you pass the NICs through to VMs (as you tested with some other mini PCs)? Also, if only the power usage was a little lower, you could power this thing of POE+!
@@rohitk8797 They are one of the most anti-consumer companies in the computer industry. Their printer division is downright evil, tricking customers into signing up for a "free" support plan that locks out third party ink. Even Apple will at least say they offer a repair program, HP will straight up tell people to throw away an almost fine laptop.
N305s were a no go here in Brazil, bought the N100 and I am happy with it. Now to learn how to setup a proper NAS w/ shares and a VM for vuze (yes, I still use Vuze and love it)
Patrick, building out a pfsense router from the aliexpress fanless units. Would you think The N305 would beat out the Pentium gold 8505 with it's single P core and higher single threaded workflows. Biggest stressor on my system is running effective site to site VPN with tail scale and I'm betting the single core gets me more but I don't know how pfsense handles big little cores.
@@renegade_patriot I speak only from what I read online and not from personal experience since the only system I have is one of the i225 NICs but everyone says the updated CE 2.7 dev or the pfsense plus builds work.
This would be fantastic for a router if they'd just give us dual 10g interfaces. I've been looking really hard recently for a powerful mini PC like this with dual 10g to be a pfsense router for my 5gb fiber internet. My ont has 10g base-t but none of the small router boxes I've looked at have 10g ports. Very frustrating times.
FYI, I've been able to successfully run a single Crucial 48GB SODIMM in both my N100 EQ12, and my N305 EQ12 Pro. So while losing dual channel sucks, gaining DDR5 speeds and 48GB over DDR4 32/64GB, isn't a bad tradeoff.
I cant see myself building home desktops anymore with the way these MiniPCs are progressing. The only letdown is advanced graphics but they are certainly capable or playing most mid-tier games.
I think with the next gen AMD Strix APUs and Intel Meteor Lake (if it comes to mini PCs) that problem will basically start disappearing. Moreoever if you buy one with eGPU support and the new upgradable 16-inch laptop from Framework takes off and enhances the eGPU market (because their GPU modules can be used as eGPUs) I think we'll have such a perfect environment for just using mini PCs for everything.
Might be worth noting that SMB3 multi-channel works when you have modern Windows OS on both client and server side. While I believe that BSD and NIX based OSes that use Samba will not support this out of the box today. Last I heard was SMB3 multi-channel was added as experimental in 4.4.0 release many years ago and there are corner cases that it can cause data corruption due to race conditions. Even Microsoft has had a number of their own issues with it.
Have N6005 mini-pc right now, and the performance bump to this N305 seems very nice. Am sad it's only single channel though. The thing i'm most worried about with this design is how much the cooling is affect by adding that sata ssd.
That's why I commented on Linus's release video for his screwdriver, that bits are too short. Rather have shorter shank and longer bits, to fit in tight screw holes
I got a couple of the Beelink Ryzen 5560 units and reinstalled Windows 11 on them from a jump drive. When installing it asked for the key, I said I did not have one. Once it was fully installed though, it automatically activated once online. I also got the 7735HS Beelink unit for one of my kids and it has been awesome so far.
In Geekbench: Power saver mode 1159 single core, 4807 multicore / high performance single core 1271, multi 4478. Is it correct? Was there any kind of thermal issue?
Would be interested into measurements include also low-power bios setting (if available). Looking for a 5w-20w proxmox server machine. Found some older gen. candidates which have a bios options to reduce idle power significantly, but prefer a newest gen. product. Thanks
too damn expensive for what you get. bought a Beelink Ser5 pro (8/16 core 5800H With 16gb/512GB SSD) 2 months ago during AliExpress sales. it was $310. the memory was ADATA (Samsung chips) and the SSD Kingston 2700 MB/sec. It handles any AAA game at 720p. twice the performance.
Re: your key lessons learned 1) I think that they have the mega link for the Windows install because I think that they have integrated the drivers into the installer, which is always nice/helpful/useful. (In case the default installer from Microsoft, doesn't have, for example, all of the network drivers, etc.) 2) I've reached out to them before as well, for my GTR5 5900HX for a Windows 10 key, and like you said, they'll back to you within about a day or two with a key. So, that's usually/generally not a huge deal, unless your SSD has already died, and you need to revive the system immediately. But otherwise, the N305 looks like it would be a great desktop replacement. I DO wish that they supported more RAM though (16 GB nowadays is the bare minimum, I think). (I'm using their GTR5 5900HX with 64 GB of RAM, and right now, I am using about 40 GB out of that.) And I also fully agree with you that I think some of the other Beelink units have lower idle power consumption as well, IIRC.
I think this is the one I was looking at yesterday to replace my kids linux computer running on an AMD A8-5000. My dad ordered a G7 yesterday and had me looking at their other options.
Is that ~4400 multi geekbench peformance sustained or just 1 run where it is turbo'ing for much of the run? Curious of long term full load clocks/performance at 25 watts wall power consumption! And, how it compares to same scenario with 4-core N100. ~4400 is slightly slower than 6-core i5-8500, which u can sustain at 3.89GHZ at 60 watts at the wall (~40w CPU in hwinfo) within an HP Prodesk SFF box undervolted by 140mV reliably stable via Throttlestop and old BIOS pre-plundervolt, crunching WorldCommunityGrid Workunits. So.. basically, N305 is 2x the efficiency of good 'ole undervolted mature Coffeelake. Just napkin math mind u. Thought it would be more like 3x.
KEY lessons learned: use something like "produkey" to see and save your product key that you have out of the box so you can reinstall later. Also do a driver export (google it) to be safe.
That Windows reinstall does sound a bit flaky. Given your status as a regular, respected reviewer you could reach out to Microsoft for their guidance and share it with us? It would prompt me to stick with Dell, Lenovo and the others where you can install from there approved Microsoft media creator ISO files. Thanks for the update. I do like the dual NICs, I don't like the fans.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Check out your product key BEFORE you rebuild. There are a lot of ways to grab such info, but it does no good IF the company "hacks" windows to provide that key without actually putting it in manually, or via a registry hack perhaps. With Beelink being a Chinese company, I suspect "hacked" .. The ONLY place I could find it was thru the registry : Working the bowels of corporate IT does have its benefits; often beyond what normal users would be able to find.
Very exicted about the "next generation" of Mini PC's Would love to see these become even more efficient at idle, and DUAL CHANNEL RAM is an absolute must. And slightly better quality cooling. At 15w TDP, all they need to do is put a slightly larger fan in. A single heatpipe should be more than adequate to transfer the heat from the die to the heatsink, I think just making the fin stack larger and a larger fan would make a big difference in noise.
With the Intel branded NUC's, most of Intel's in the same price ranges are all DDR4 from what I could find. Some of the "off-brands" like Beelink, well, they are offering the same in DDR5; which sort of gives you the performance similar to DDR4 dual channel. But even Beelink's lineup can be confusing blend of "this model has DDR4" and a very similar model, same chip set, but with DDR5 at a slightly higher price. Granted, I'd want DDR5 and dual channel if given the choice. Generally speaking, I also want the option to go up to 64GB ram or beyond too..
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Aah that is unfortunate, I did not realize that. My Intel n6005 based NUC I felt a noticeable difference in day to day usage going to dual channel after using just 1 channel for a while, especially browsing youtube and testing with Parsec for remote gaming. Sad to see Intel strip so many features off the new generation. Even the iGPU eu's are kind of disappointing, was hoping to see 32 eu's in the lower end sku's, and something like 48 eu's in the N305. Really helps make the machine feel snappy when watching content in the browser.
The 12/13th gen e cores are said to be as powerful as Skylake cores. So does this finally answer the question of what would happen if you put an old architecture on a node 8 years ahead? Also isn't this a SoC already, since you don't seem to have an additional chipset?
Kind of, but there are some critical differences that make it not an apples-to-apples comparison. The best 8-core Skylake chip I can find on Ark is the i7 7820X, which has SMT enabled. The differences are huge and make any benchmark meant to simulate Skylake on Intel 7 inaccurate. The i7 has 2x the L3 cache, or almost, at 11MB to the N305's 6MB. It has SMT, which means 16 threads vs 8. It has a much higher TDP as well, 140W vs 15W, and the clocks are different. 4.5ghz for the i7 vs 3.8ghz for the N305. The more important difference is in the IPC and in lower-level architectural changes such as the better branch prediction of Gracemont cores. Finally, to answer the second question: This is a mobile CPU, and will have a PCH like all other mobile chips from Intel. This is effectively the chipset, just on the same package as the CPU in a second die.
I've had my eye on a few Beelink PCs but I'm always weirded out by them suggesting you don't connect to the internet until AFTER you've done the Windows OOBE. That tells me they're fibbing with the activation status and raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the Windows license.
In my opinion the Beelink Sei12 with the Intel 12th i5-1235U is a better value, you get two more CPU cores and drop an ethernet jack for the same money.
@8:59 - yes and no. Nobody will use J4125 as desktop computer but it works perfectly as firewall/router appliance. So mixing these 2 makes no real sense.
There were a TON of J4125 Mini PC desktops. We were going to start the STH Mini PC series with them. The J4125 is great for a firewall/ router. Next, we are going to have N100/N200 firewall/ routers so stay tuned for the next video this week.
Hey Patric, have you checked the CL statuses? Maybe some of the hardware preventing it from entering CL8[and running CL3] hence the higher power consumption.
Just ordered EQ12 regular from Amazon for $315 (click-on coupon that appears every 12 hours it seems). What bothers me is that I didn’t pay attention and they (Beelink) say that I can only upgrade to 2Tb NVME and only 2TB SATA drive.. I can’t understand why… I understand memory is restricted to 16Gb by memory controller but why is disk restricted? So now looking again at i3-1315U based NUC or Miniforum NBP-6 - the latter one also has 2 2.5Gb ports….
I am not 100% sure we are going to publish the video, but I recorded a GEEKCOM AS6 review before leaving for Taipei (as in cameras stopped, started dumping footage and got in the car to the airport.) It is an ASUS PN53 IIRC underneath. We may look at the PN65 once it is out.
That does not surprise me at all; by handicapping certain models, Intel forces one to choose between lower performance and higher performance with their dollars. Heck, all of their mini-form factor NUC's I could find online are still using DDR4. Limiting IO and memory channels is also another great way to make someone choose between lower performance and higher performance at a significantly higher cost. Many consumers want the "intel" brand name, but don't want to fork over $$$ for the higher performing chipsets/CPU's/GPU's ; even I do ...
Hi Patrick, awesome analysis, i loved key lessons learned but seems a bit pricey to me, because from around 300 dollars you can dual 2.5 ethernet in Minisforum NAB6, if i have to deal such walk around with support to do a fresh windows install, getting a barebone and getting more than 10x the performance, doesn't seems crazy, right?
I love how he says the HDMI ports are ONLY 4K60. Like you are using a CPU that has Intel Efficient cores and an IGPU, trust me, that combo is NOT going to be able to do 4K at anything beyond 60Hz.
9:32 older versions of edge doesnt have a feature called "startup boost" which keeps browser open in the background for faster load times, maybe it didnt have that feature cuz win10 or smth edit: its actually not even the new edge thats why its so slow lmaooo, i think that browser test is completely invalid just because of that, your point stands ofc but the example is invalid
These little boxes need support for 32 GB of RAM to make them interesting as candidates for little small business mini-servers! An N305-based system having 8 cores/8 threads is just begging for a few of these to be viable for SMB use...; perhaps 4 of them ($1400 total?), providing small businesses with almost everything they need in a moderately powerful footprint of 4 small boxes that occupy 1/4 of the space of a typical 1U server...
how ist the integrated GPU on these powerfull small E core CPUs? is it similar to 12/13th gen intel? at least when transcoding? Also I can't wait for an Intel NUC with these - maybe intel can push them down in the 3-4W regime...
It has the 32-EU UHD iGPU clocked at 1250mhz. This is almost the exact same as the iGPU on Raptor Lake S, which is different in only clocks. The 13900K clocks the same 32 EUs at 1650mhz.
This thing is twice as fast as my N5105, but it also uses twice the power, so I dont see any real reason to upgrade as the performance per watt is exactly the same.
Looks like a nice mini and then I look at my 35W 800 G3 running an i5 7600t and wonder if it can match that and if it can game at all. I can play older titles with the HD 630 quite well with the G3. Downside of G3 is the fan noise whenever under load. I notice Dell stuck with the HD 630 all the way to the G8 I think is when it upgraded, which makes it costly to move up to better graphics with HP minis.
I have one and im wondering what will happen if the power goes out ? These don't have a battery so when the power goes down that's it and if it's updating when the power goes off you may lose you system and have a brick, The power in my area goes down a lot 4 to 6 time a year, Not off for hours it just flickers of and back on so just enough to turn the tv off or mess up the clocks but what will that do to this PC with no battery? My phone and tablet and laptop don't mind a power failure because they have batteries
It's impressive. It'd be great for a lot of minipc use-cases. I'm just waiting 'til they have the ability to slap a full-sized GPU on them. Maybe in a few years, they'll have an exposed 4 lanes for PCIe 5 that will work with Nvidia's 50 series cards and AMD's equivalent. 4 lanes of PCIe would be fairly small to tack on, and 4 at gen 5 speeds would be roughly the same bandwidth as 16 lanes at gen 3 speeds. That's something I could work with :)
NOWHERE TO BE FOUND, Does anybody know why? They're not just out of stock, it got competely removed even from the official Beelink page. They're all replaced with the N100 version
You'll need to place a very think strip of foam between the bottom of the SSD tray to separate the SSD from hitting the fan blades according to another user.
I love Patrick from STH.....but I think he's way to upbeat for the average linux user....we like dry, humorless, soul less you tube hosts, that drown us in techno babble....this is obviously for the windows crowd....cause Patrick is so upbeat and positive....Linux people can't relate to that. We are soul less, drains on society.....and Patrick should at least acknowledge that.....he is way to upbeat and happy. Linux users will not stand for that
does anyone know if that kind of PCIe slot that the WiFi card is plugged into could accommodate a PCI breakout cable that could give you 10GbE? 2.5 (or 5, bonded) is still too slow for me, I need fast networking but can compromise on other stuff.
Why they can't get any perfect port layout? The old U59 Pro had the same twin HDMI and Ehternet (but 1Gbit) but it had dual USB 3.0 back and front and since the USB-C was DP-Alt but not PD it was purfect at the front. Not I also have a B95 that have the same front selection of ports but the USB-C was upgraded to Power Delivery which is weird to pug your device upfront. The back have the same ports minus one 2.5GB. Your new Q12 finally get a USB-C with AltDP and .PD at the back!... so why the barrel connector? Why we loose a USB at the back for A USB 2.0, . It's just weird (especially if you have multiple rand brand version.
i3-1220p is much faster, +2 p-cores, more pci-e lanes, better gpu, 2ch memory, more and faster memory, double the cache etc. for the same price (the chip, $309) but of course it uses way more power.
I am seeing reviews just like the other versions of this breaking very quickly rebooting problems. It’s a hard pass. What I’m reading it doesn’t even last five days. In some cases the longest was 19 months.
Key lesson learned: The included Windows key is probably not legit. Probably fell off the same truck as all those cheap windows key websites. Where do they all come from? Who knows!
Yeah. Not at all impressed. I can find an 8th gen Windows 11 compatible laptop in like new condition for less than that. Faster, and with a screen. And a keyboard. And a battery. This is a hard no. Someone will buy it, that I am sure of.
All of my Imtel NUC girlies never were slow, but top edge high performance systems! Very bad: All USB-A ports (and the Ethernet ports as well) on your Beelink mini PC are turned upside down, so nearly unusable for everyday USB-Sticks😂
Windows blah blah windows. Dude, this is STH, do some linux compatibility testing on things. Please. Especially on dual nic units that the majority of people would want to use a linux based os on.
Ubuntu just worked. The Linux compile benchmark and such are all done with Ubuntu as the standard. Not too exciting when the result is just that you can use a standard installer
the amd chips are just better - largely accurate but mini pc will keep getting better - they are ok for some situations like travel but really the fascination and interest in small form factor pc is unhealthy and misguided for a ton of reasons given the alternatives - they are not going to save the pc industry but good to see some innovation - they are miles and miles ahead of sbc/soc
Mini PCs aren't even good for travel. Hauling around a monitor and keyboard is a major hassle. Laptops still rule there. Maybe if you live in a van or RV or on an off-grid solar power system and you really need low power, maybe then mini-PCs are the best. For everyone else, they're functionally not any better than a traditional tower. I suppose some people like to use these as network appliances, which is fine if you're conscious that it's as much a hobby as a tool. Functionally you'd probably be better with a dedicated appliance.
Don't care what you say right from the start. The listener would like simple relaxed clear knowledge from you in a step by step clear way. Not a performance like a used car salesman grasping at opportunity just out of his reach.
Given the networking focus of STH, I'm kinda disappointed that halfway through the video you've failed to mention what type of 2.5G ethernet it is. Likewise, it's completely absent from the STH website review. For many people (myself included) having a Realtek NIC is a total deal breaker. Fortunately, according to the Aliexpress page, it's using an Intel i-225 NIC.
Like, yes. I get that your focus was on the Alder Lake E-cores and their performance at this price point. However, great CPU is only half the story.
What's the problem with Realtek NICs? AFAIK, they don't have chronical issues like i225 has.
@@offspringfan89Realtek NICs don't work well with many alternative operating systems like VMware, BSD, and even sometimes Linux.
@@thewheelieguyAhh, that's a big deal then, as servers pretty much only run Linux.
@@offspringfan89 it's my understanding Realtek support in Linux is found is most/all current distributions, though I don't know about this newer 2.5Gb unit. I have been bitten wrt VMware
Here's an idea for an addition to the TinyMiniMicro-Series: the Framework Laptop in the CoolerMaster case. It has great performance, sub-1liter, you can configure the port selection with swappable modules (3 monitors or 3x 2.5Gbit NICs), user replacable RAM (Ryzen may actually support ECC modules for up to 64GB) and SSD. I think for those interested in the TinyMiniMicro series the framework-system is an interesting and viable alternative with unique features. The RUclips channel Elevated System had a great video on how the framework motherboard can be used in different configurations outside the laptop.
Completely agreed! Hopefully he sees this once the AMD mainboard gets released :D
N305 models are quite a bit more expensive than the N100s. It seems that at that 300+ price point an older 11th/12th gen intel or Ryzen options start to compete when it comes to raw performance. This is still dominant when it comes to power efficiency and idle though. The whole new N series is great, but seems to gimped by single channel DDR5 which I suspect they will unlock in later gens for free performance. I guess Intel didn't see a point in going dual channel and out competing themselves in this space, when this gen's improvement was already drastic enough. Still a shame that the N300 and N305 didn't have dual channel at the very least as they have a noticeably higher MSRP. Excited to see how an N100 performs if you're able to get your hands on one. Thanks for the review as always Patrick.
It would be interesting to see what the N300/305's 32 execution unit GPU could do with dual-channel memory but when Minisforum will sell you a much more powerful 5600H system for $219 I don't really see the point. N95/100 is great for a basic media computer but N300 just seems like too much money for this application. On the other hand N300s will probably make great CPUs for network attached storage devices.
@@aa-yt7wo I purchased an intel N100 4 port 2.5gb router bare bones from China recently for 172USD. Hopefully it is here soon. The comparable N305 was mid to high 300s bare bones at which point I'd go with the Ryzen as you said. The N100 seems to be anywhere from 20% - 80% faster than last gen celerons like a celeron 5105 while only being 6W (with a higher unspecified boost depending on OEM set up). What's even better is that single core performance is nearly double the 5105 according to Geekbench 5. Given that many found the N5105 plenty performant enough as a router, firewall, NAS, media server and office PC. Having something in the same package except noticeably faster for less power with DDR5 and AV1 decode support sounds like a no brainer. The low 6W TDP is rather enticing too as it can be sold fanless and sip power for a 24/7 deployment. It looks quite promising.
@@Ilost11 I've actually got an N100 in a media PC for the bedroom and another in a laptop. The media PC is plenty quick for what it is, the laptop does stutter a bit but that's probably because I haven't sorted out the crapware the manufacturer shipped it with yet.
You are totally right!
@@aa-yt7wo all alder lake N are single channel.
yeah, ryzen 5500u, 5600u/h is a better choice than N305 atm
I ended up going with a GEEKOM Mini IT12.
Intel 12th gen i7, 32 GB RAM, and a 1 TB NVME.
RAM is only DDR4.
Based on what I ended up deciding to use it for, I wish I had gone with a high end AMD model instead, as the 1070ish equivalent GPU capability would be nice to have.
Live and learn.
Sounds like this would make a phenomenal pfSense or OPNSense firewall box.
They would though the 2.5G nics aren't supported or reliable outside of Windows 😒
Been down that eval road.
Nah, stick with Intel NIC's and 8 cores is way way overkill unless you are running a ton of site to site VPN's and lots of end users. And in that scenario DEFINITELY stick with Intel NIC's
@@udayreddy6795 I compiled the latest Realtek drivers for my repurposed HP Pavilion (i5 2600, 8 GB DDR3, sata ssd) with opnsense 23.x and so far so good. I was expecting problems and figured I would have to buy new NICS but so far so good...
EDIT: omitted details. On-board intel nic for WAN and TWO Realtek pcie cards. One for LAN and another waiting to be used as DMZ.
Currently using one as an OPNsense box. PFsense couldn't recognize the intel NIC's use OPNsense to avoid a headache. Once I got OPN installed it works amazingly and flawlessly. Fits below my switch on the rackmount and looks sharp. Been running about 7 days now no issues.
I used a slightly lower spec'd model with an intel quad E core forgot the exact CPU ATM
@@letterspace1letterspace266 the newest version of OPNsense supports it plug and play. PFsense wont recognize. Just did an install last week.
The sweet spot for this is proxmox running your router OS at 2.5gbps and some dockers like pihole and ipfs or whatnot. It should do those things together, very well.
8 core..... Let me start this by saying that if this is the core i3-N305, it had better not be priced like a core i3-1215/1315 system because Intel set the CSP to the same $309 for both processors. If it is, very few people should buy this, as users for this processor would be very niche where they need this many cores, at this TDP, and they cant just take the better processor, and limit it to the same TDP.
Not to say beelink and others should cut margin, but that either consumers should not buy this overpriced hardware until Intel offers a reasonable price reduction to reflect the shortcomings compared to the i3-1215u/1315u
The N305 is the fully unlocked Atom N100, with the only apparent difference being 2 fully unlocked core complexes(8 E cores)
Now my only problem with the i3-N305 is price, well, i dont like it carrying the i3 name when it is a dedicated atom die with atom spec, atom ram limitations, and atom PCIe but that can be overlooked if the price fit.
The i3-1215 is a far better value at the same price because you get 3 core complexes, with 2 of those being P cores and 1 E cores, making for a 2+4 total, you get 2 channels of DDR5, which can in theory support the future 64GB sodimms, or up to 256GB of RAM if you had 4 slots at up to 5200MT/s(though probably max 32GB at that speed) though Intel may put a firmware limit of 64GB, we wont know without testing, you get 20 PCIe lanes with most of them being gen 4, along with 64 Xe graphics cores
Atom/i3-N305 is literally less than 1/2 the SOC for the exact same price, yes i'd personally go for 8 E cores over 2 P cores given the choice, but the i3 comes with 2P cores plus 4 E cores, the N305 is also limited to no more than 16GB of single channel DDR5 at 4800, which will have an effect on the iGPU which is 1/2 that of the i3-1215/1315.
Oh and instead of 20 PCIe lanes of mostly 4.0, you get only 9 lanes of 3.0
Now the main thing that will affect most people are the lack of P cores, 1/2 the GPU power limited by single channel RAM, and a supposed hard firmware limit of 16GB.
This processor would be fine with a CSP of $129, but not $309
The main use case for a processor like this, where the much more powerful and feature rich 1215U is available for the same price, would be in OSes where they do not handle mixed cores at all.
While yes 2P cores plus 4 E cores would be quite fast compared to 8 E cores, if you have to disable those 4 E cores on the 1215U, you will get better performance out of 8 E cores when both processors are limited to the same TDP, those 8 E cores would approach the performance of 4 P cores without hyperthreading when both processors are limited to ~8w
3-4 of these could make a pretty decent HA cluster for your Proxmox environment. Although, I think their price is just a little too high even for what these are. I think, around $300 would make more sense. $350 is just a little bit of a stretch. Remember, you have to buy NVMe SSDs for them, and that is another $50 ea. Plus, you'd might as well increase the RAM. I feel like I'd want to wait for a better deal, personally. I like that it has dual NICs, so you can use one as OoB management. The power consumption is going to be tripple, tho.
No need for NVMe/SSDs. Just network-boot them and mount /home with CIFS or NFS from a central server (home or office).
@@sergioruocco6181 That's possible, but wouldn't be HA enough. Would rather use a distributed file system, like Gluster. That way the storage is also HA.
@@sergioruocco6181 how is that accomplished?
I got one of these! It's pretty okay but the power supply and lack of PCI-E lanes really is a bummer. If people are considering this, try and find an i3-1220P instead. They're about the same price (about $75 more) and have way way more for the money. I don't regret this little EQ12 Pro, I traded from a Dell Opti 5080 Tiny 10600T, and it's been mostly great. It really is let down by the crummy power supply, make sure to get a 12v/5A adapter. Also, for some reason, inside the shell are vent screens - these choke the system out like crazy. Feel free to peel them off if you aren't in a super dusty environment.
The eq12 vent screens block air? And we should switch out the power supply ; how would that help?
?
The N305 is just as fast as the good old 4790K. And my old 4790k still is used by my son for gaming. Amazing.
It is crazy how fast these are.
I had to contact Beelink support once to do exactly the same thing and ran into the same issue. Ultimately what they sent DID work and got me back up and running, but I definitely agree it feels a little sketchy.
You have to agree that their support if quite surprisingly good for a Chinese company though :)
Thanks for the awesome video! Can you pass the NICs through to VMs (as you tested with some other mini PCs)?
Also, if only the power usage was a little lower, you could power this thing of POE+!
Key Lesson Learned: HP Prodesk/Elitedesk Minis are INSANELY GOOD! Especially value for their money
Yea, but then you have to live with yourself knowing you gave money to HP.
@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 noob question, but what’s wrong with HP? I have never used HP anything.
@@rohitk8797 They are one of the most anti-consumer companies in the computer industry. Their printer division is downright evil, tricking customers into signing up for a "free" support plan that locks out third party ink. Even Apple will at least say they offer a repair program, HP will straight up tell people to throw away an almost fine laptop.
N305s were a no go here in Brazil, bought the N100 and I am happy with it.
Now to learn how to setup a proper NAS w/ shares and a VM for vuze (yes, I still use Vuze and love it)
Patrick, building out a pfsense router from the aliexpress fanless units. Would you think The N305 would beat out the Pentium gold 8505 with it's single P core and higher single threaded workflows. Biggest stressor on my system is running effective site to site VPN with tail scale and I'm betting the single core gets me more but I don't know how pfsense handles big little cores.
Use OPNsense. PFsense wont recognize the intel NIC'S in these systems.
@@renegade_patriot pfsense plus will (I use CE2.6 right now in a different system and 2.7 will probably include support for these nics
@@gregoryfricker9971 I must have been using a wrong version or something. In any case glad it worked for you
@@renegade_patriot I speak only from what I read online and not from personal experience since the only system I have is one of the i225 NICs but everyone says the updated CE 2.7 dev or the pfsense plus builds work.
This would be fantastic for a router if they'd just give us dual 10g interfaces. I've been looking really hard recently for a powerful mini PC like this with dual 10g to be a pfsense router for my 5gb fiber internet. My ont has 10g base-t but none of the small router boxes I've looked at have 10g ports. Very frustrating times.
Yeah frustrating, the only I know of is the Gowin r86s
@@dustingodin5323 Ya I was going to say the Gowin r86s, supposedly gowin is working on an alderlake one that SHOULD be announced this month
10GE, use fibre not copper. The sfps for fibre use like 3 times less power
@@SuperSpecies lol right so there is not 10gbit standard for copper. So wonder that powers all those 10g ports over cat 6 using 802.3an
Can't we just add a 10gb ethernet adapter to the USB 3 10g port?
FYI, I've been able to successfully run a single Crucial 48GB SODIMM in both my N100 EQ12, and my N305 EQ12 Pro. So while losing dual channel sucks, gaining DDR5 speeds and 48GB over DDR4 32/64GB, isn't a bad tradeoff.
Wow awesome! Thanks for that info
I cant see myself building home desktops anymore with the way these MiniPCs are progressing. The only letdown is advanced graphics but they are certainly capable or playing most mid-tier games.
I think with the next gen AMD Strix APUs and Intel Meteor Lake (if it comes to mini PCs) that problem will basically start disappearing. Moreoever if you buy one with eGPU support and the new upgradable 16-inch laptop from Framework takes off and enhances the eGPU market (because their GPU modules can be used as eGPUs) I think we'll have such a perfect environment for just using mini PCs for everything.
It sucks that its single channel memory though. The potential graphics boost would be so nice with dual channel.
True. The other side is that single channel is between the 1ch and 2ch DDR4 memory bandwidth
Might be worth noting that SMB3 multi-channel works when you have modern Windows OS on both client and server side. While I believe that BSD and NIX based OSes that use Samba will not support this out of the box today. Last I heard was SMB3 multi-channel was added as experimental in 4.4.0 release many years ago and there are corner cases that it can cause data corruption due to race conditions. Even Microsoft has had a number of their own issues with it.
Have N6005 mini-pc right now, and the performance bump to this N305 seems very nice.
Am sad it's only single channel though. The thing i'm most worried about with this design is how much the cooling is affect by adding that sata ssd.
That's why I commented on Linus's release video for his screwdriver, that bits are too short. Rather have shorter shank and longer bits, to fit in tight screw holes
I got a couple of the Beelink Ryzen 5560 units and reinstalled Windows 11 on them from a jump drive. When installing it asked for the key, I said I did not have one. Once it was fully installed though, it automatically activated once online.
I also got the 7735HS Beelink unit for one of my kids and it has been awesome so far.
In Geekbench: Power saver mode 1159 single core, 4807 multicore / high performance single core 1271, multi 4478. Is it correct? Was there any kind of thermal issue?
If you don't cover up the middle fan with a SSD, there's enough cooling to keep thermal issue from happening.
Very suspicious indeed.
I suspect he turned the multi core scores up side down
Checked these. We labeled them as we uploaded to the GB browser. They were all running into power limits
Would be interested into measurements include also low-power bios setting (if available).
Looking for a 5w-20w proxmox server machine. Found some older gen. candidates which have a bios options to reduce idle power significantly, but prefer a newest gen. product. Thanks
too damn expensive for what you get. bought a Beelink Ser5 pro (8/16 core 5800H With 16gb/512GB SSD) 2 months ago during AliExpress sales. it was $310. the memory was ADATA (Samsung chips) and the SSD Kingston 2700 MB/sec. It handles any AAA game at 720p. twice the performance.
Re: your key lessons learned
1) I think that they have the mega link for the Windows install because I think that they have integrated the drivers into the installer, which is always nice/helpful/useful.
(In case the default installer from Microsoft, doesn't have, for example, all of the network drivers, etc.)
2) I've reached out to them before as well, for my GTR5 5900HX for a Windows 10 key, and like you said, they'll back to you within about a day or two with a key.
So, that's usually/generally not a huge deal, unless your SSD has already died, and you need to revive the system immediately.
But otherwise, the N305 looks like it would be a great desktop replacement.
I DO wish that they supported more RAM though (16 GB nowadays is the bare minimum, I think).
(I'm using their GTR5 5900HX with 64 GB of RAM, and right now, I am using about 40 GB out of that.)
And I also fully agree with you that I think some of the other Beelink units have lower idle power consumption as well, IIRC.
Such a wonderful review video!! We will finish our R86S-N series soon,expect for the N305 model too.
I just subscribed to your channel. Very nice videos about the mini PC's, thank you!
Thank you Mark!
I think this is the one I was looking at yesterday to replace my kids linux computer running on an AMD A8-5000. My dad ordered a G7 yesterday and had me looking at their other options.
Is that ~4400 multi geekbench peformance sustained or just 1 run where it is turbo'ing for much of the run? Curious of long term full load clocks/performance at 25 watts wall power consumption! And, how it compares to same scenario with 4-core N100.
~4400 is slightly slower than 6-core i5-8500, which u can sustain at 3.89GHZ at 60 watts at the wall (~40w CPU in hwinfo) within an HP Prodesk SFF box undervolted by 140mV reliably stable via Throttlestop and old BIOS pre-plundervolt, crunching WorldCommunityGrid Workunits.
So.. basically, N305 is 2x the efficiency of good 'ole undervolted mature Coffeelake. Just napkin math mind u.
Thought it would be more like 3x.
KEY lessons learned: use something like "produkey" to see and save your product key that you have out of the box so you can reinstall later.
Also do a driver export (google it) to be safe.
That Windows reinstall does sound a bit flaky. Given your status as a regular, respected reviewer you could reach out to Microsoft for their guidance and share it with us? It would prompt me to stick with Dell, Lenovo and the others where you can install from there approved Microsoft media creator ISO files. Thanks for the update. I do like the dual NICs, I don't like the fans.
I know people at Azure, but Windows folks I have no contacts for
Honestly I was about to buy one for home office, but I got nervous about how safe it is
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Check out your product key BEFORE you rebuild. There are a lot of ways to grab such info, but it does no good IF the company "hacks" windows to provide that key without actually putting it in manually, or via a registry hack perhaps. With Beelink being a Chinese company, I suspect "hacked" ..
The ONLY place I could find it was thru the registry : Working the bowels of corporate IT does have its benefits; often beyond what normal users would be able to find.
Add 4-5 Sata ports to it, and it'll be a great nas
I got your idea!!
Very exicted about the "next generation" of Mini PC's
Would love to see these become even more efficient at idle, and DUAL CHANNEL RAM is an absolute must.
And slightly better quality cooling. At 15w TDP, all they need to do is put a slightly larger fan in. A single heatpipe should be more than adequate to transfer the heat from the die to the heatsink, I think just making the fin stack larger and a larger fan would make a big difference in noise.
The Alder Lake-N parts are single channel only so it is an Intel platform limitation
With the Intel branded NUC's, most of Intel's in the same price ranges are all DDR4 from what I could find. Some of the "off-brands" like Beelink, well, they are offering the same in DDR5; which sort of gives you the performance similar to DDR4 dual channel. But even Beelink's lineup can be confusing blend of "this model has DDR4" and a very similar model, same chip set, but with DDR5 at a slightly higher price. Granted, I'd want DDR5 and dual channel if given the choice. Generally speaking, I also want the option to go up to 64GB ram or beyond too..
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Aah that is unfortunate, I did not realize that. My Intel n6005 based NUC I felt a noticeable difference in day to day usage going to dual channel after using just 1 channel for a while, especially browsing youtube and testing with Parsec for remote gaming. Sad to see Intel strip so many features off the new generation. Even the iGPU eu's are kind of disappointing, was hoping to see 32 eu's in the lower end sku's, and something like 48 eu's in the N305. Really helps make the machine feel snappy when watching content in the browser.
The 12/13th gen e cores are said to be as powerful as Skylake cores. So does this finally answer the question of what would happen if you put an old architecture on a node 8 years ahead?
Also isn't this a SoC already, since you don't seem to have an additional chipset?
Kind of, but there are some critical differences that make it not an apples-to-apples comparison.
The best 8-core Skylake chip I can find on Ark is the i7 7820X, which has SMT enabled. The differences are huge and make any benchmark meant to simulate Skylake on Intel 7 inaccurate.
The i7 has 2x the L3 cache, or almost, at 11MB to the N305's 6MB. It has SMT, which means 16 threads vs 8. It has a much higher TDP as well, 140W vs 15W, and the clocks are different. 4.5ghz for the i7 vs 3.8ghz for the N305. The more important difference is in the IPC and in lower-level architectural changes such as the better branch prediction of Gracemont cores.
Finally, to answer the second question: This is a mobile CPU, and will have a PCH like all other mobile chips from Intel. This is effectively the chipset, just on the same package as the CPU in a second die.
I've had my eye on a few Beelink PCs but I'm always weirded out by them suggesting you don't connect to the internet until AFTER you've done the Windows OOBE. That tells me they're fibbing with the activation status and raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the Windows license.
In my opinion the Beelink Sei12 with the Intel 12th i5-1235U is a better value, you get two more CPU cores and drop an ethernet jack for the same money.
If you saw the performance charts, the 1235U is only slightly faster. I was a bit surprised by that but it seems to be power limited
Reckon you could review the sei12pro 1260p at some point?
Patriy, it will be great if you review a N95 based mini pc. Apparently they ship will configurable TDP that exceeds N100 performance
@8:59 - yes and no. Nobody will use J4125 as desktop computer but it works perfectly as firewall/router appliance. So mixing these 2 makes no real sense.
There were a TON of J4125 Mini PC desktops. We were going to start the STH Mini PC series with them. The J4125 is great for a firewall/ router. Next, we are going to have N100/N200 firewall/ routers so stay tuned for the next video this week.
I wonder how commonplace replacement fan will be in 5 years.. that will be the one that will need replacing eventually
Love my Intel NUC 11 with N5105! It was cheap.
Hey Patrick, one question what's the fastest mini PC from beelink and minis forum?
If you just want fast, wait for the GTR7 that will be coming out soon.
It'd be interesting to see how this stacks against n100
N100 / N200 fanless is the next video
Hey Patric, have you checked the CL statuses? Maybe some of the hardware preventing it from entering CL8[and running CL3] hence the higher power consumption.
I've recently been looking at mini pc for dedicated model railroad use. Got a big question. Where is the big, screw in, monitor plug?
It is a bit harder to find a VGA monitor plug on these today. Usually you would need an embedded PC for that.
You could backup windows product key into your Microsoft account right?
Just ordered EQ12 regular from Amazon for $315 (click-on coupon that appears every 12 hours it seems). What bothers me is that I didn’t pay attention and they (Beelink) say that I can only upgrade to 2Tb NVME and only 2TB SATA drive.. I can’t understand why… I understand memory is restricted to 16Gb by memory controller but why is disk restricted? So now looking again at i3-1315U based NUC or Miniforum NBP-6 - the latter one also has 2 2.5Gb ports….
My guess is that they have not tested over 2TB in these.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I received response from Beelink support - they say both drives are limited to 2TB and you can't install a larger disk.
@@mutovkin Carey Holzsman just done a video showing installing 4gb and 8 gb nvme and the system works fine.
@@kenthesparky178 Strange, I don't see any recent videos about EQ12 from him... Only the old one in which 32gb ram stick killed eq12...
Right. Beelink went out and bought two Windows 11 activation keys for you. Wink, Wink. Nudge, nudge. Say no more.
Using that mini PC as a VPN firewall - what protocol would you recommend for max performance? IPsec, wireguard or cloudflare zero trust tunnels?
Check out the ASUS PN65 mini with a 14th Gen Core Intel CPU and with DDR5-5600 memory. I don't think it is being sold yet though.
I am not 100% sure we are going to publish the video, but I recorded a GEEKCOM AS6 review before leaving for Taipei (as in cameras stopped, started dumping footage and got in the car to the airport.) It is an ASUS PN53 IIRC underneath. We may look at the PN65 once it is out.
Would like to see Beelink offer this with no windows key, mem, SSD as a very barebone option, I'd then add my own ram/ssd and install proxmox
You also going to review these?
GMKtec K4 Mini Pc AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS DDR5
We have the Beelink GTR7 review recorded. Hopefully Alex finishes it so it can go-live next week.
Oof, the NVMe slot is still only a 1x interface. ☹️
That does not surprise me at all; by handicapping certain models, Intel forces one to choose between lower performance and higher performance with their dollars. Heck, all of their mini-form factor NUC's I could find online are still using DDR4. Limiting IO and memory channels is also another great way to make someone choose between lower performance and higher performance at a significantly higher cost. Many consumers want the "intel" brand name, but don't want to fork over $$$ for the higher performing chipsets/CPU's/GPU's ; even I do ...
Hi Patrick, awesome analysis, i loved key lessons learned but seems a bit pricey to me, because from around 300 dollars you can dual 2.5 ethernet in Minisforum NAB6, if i have to deal such walk around with support to do a fresh windows install, getting a barebone and getting more than 10x the performance, doesn't seems crazy, right?
Breakthrough? With this power consumption vs performance seems a bit of overstatement..
I love how he says the HDMI ports are ONLY 4K60. Like you are using a CPU that has Intel Efficient cores and an IGPU, trust me, that combo is NOT going to be able to do 4K at anything beyond 60Hz.
9:32 older versions of edge doesnt have a feature called "startup boost" which keeps browser open in the background for faster load times, maybe it didnt have that feature cuz win10 or smth
edit: its actually not even the new edge thats why its so slow lmaooo, i think that browser test is completely invalid just because of that, your point stands ofc but the example is invalid
These little boxes need support for 32 GB of RAM to make them interesting as candidates for little small business mini-servers! An N305-based system having 8 cores/8 threads is just begging for a few of these to be viable for SMB use...; perhaps 4 of them ($1400 total?), providing small businesses with almost everything they need in a moderately powerful footprint of 4 small boxes that occupy 1/4 of the space of a typical 1U server...
The N305 in our most recent R86S Pro video has 32GB
I did notice that one exception to date thus far...!@@ServeTheHomeVideo
how ist the integrated GPU on these powerfull small E core CPUs? is it similar to 12/13th gen intel? at least when transcoding?
Also I can't wait for an Intel NUC with these - maybe intel can push them down in the 3-4W regime...
It has the 32-EU UHD iGPU clocked at 1250mhz. This is almost the exact same as the iGPU on Raptor Lake S, which is different in only clocks. The 13900K clocks the same 32 EUs at 1650mhz.
This thing is twice as fast as my N5105, but it also uses twice the power, so I dont see any real reason to upgrade as the performance per watt is exactly the same.
Looks like a nice mini and then I look at my 35W 800 G3 running an i5 7600t and wonder if it can match that and if it can game at all. I can play older titles with the HD 630 quite well with the G3. Downside of G3 is the fan noise whenever under load. I notice Dell stuck with the HD 630 all the way to the G8 I think is when it upgraded, which makes it costly to move up to better graphics with HP minis.
I have one and im wondering what will happen if the power goes out ? These don't have a battery so when the power goes down that's it and if it's updating when the power goes off you may lose you system and have a brick, The power in my area goes down a lot 4 to 6 time a year, Not off for hours it just flickers of and back on so just enough to turn the tv off or mess up the clocks but what will that do to this PC with no battery? My phone and tablet and laptop don't mind a power failure because they have batteries
You can get an external UPS unit. Since these are lower power they will run for a long time on the battery
Is it the SSD that's Gen3x1 or is it the motherboard that's Gen3x1?
It's impressive. It'd be great for a lot of minipc use-cases. I'm just waiting 'til they have the ability to slap a full-sized GPU on them. Maybe in a few years, they'll have an exposed 4 lanes for PCIe 5 that will work with Nvidia's 50 series cards and AMD's equivalent. 4 lanes of PCIe would be fairly small to tack on, and 4 at gen 5 speeds would be roughly the same bandwidth as 16 lanes at gen 3 speeds. That's something I could work with :)
Then it would be a sff or like a normal pc haha. I do think in China (and recently miniforum) there are a few minis with a pci slot on the outside
A little sad that these mini PCs don't get that good support, nor BIOS updates, etc
Agreed
NOWHERE TO BE FOUND, Does anybody know why? They're not just out of stock, it got competely removed even from the official Beelink page. They're all replaced with the N100 version
Is there an updated link for Aliexpress, doesn't look like it is there anymore.
How will this hold Openmediavault with about 20 containers running?
Finally n305,,,
Seems to me that memory cooling fan will get blocked by a SATA drive.
You'll need to place a very think strip of foam between the bottom of the SSD tray to separate the SSD from hitting the fan blades according to another user.
It would be interesting to compare it with AMD Mendocino.
Are you kidding? How is this faster than the ser5 5800? The ser6 7735? A freaking n300?
I love Patrick from STH.....but I think he's way to upbeat for the average linux user....we like dry, humorless, soul less you tube hosts, that drown us in techno babble....this is obviously for the windows crowd....cause Patrick is so upbeat and positive....Linux people can't relate to that. We are soul less, drains on society.....and Patrick should at least acknowledge that.....he is way to upbeat and happy. Linux users will not stand for that
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
This one was rough. I was sick when I recorded it.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo feel better soon, man!
does anyone know if that kind of PCIe slot that the WiFi card is plugged into could accommodate a PCI breakout cable that could give you 10GbE? 2.5 (or 5, bonded) is still too slow for me, I need fast networking but can compromise on other stuff.
Minisforum NPB5 is a better option at this price range. Intel 13500H and 2 * 2.5 Gig Ethernet
Why they can't get any perfect port layout?
The old U59 Pro had the same twin HDMI and Ehternet (but 1Gbit) but it had dual USB 3.0 back and front and since the USB-C was DP-Alt but not PD it was purfect at the front.
Not I also have a B95 that have the same front selection of ports but the USB-C was upgraded to Power Delivery which is weird to pug your device upfront. The back have the same ports minus one 2.5GB.
Your new Q12 finally get a USB-C with AltDP and .PD at the back!... so why the barrel connector? Why we loose a USB at the back for A USB 2.0, .
It's just weird (especially if you have multiple rand brand version.
Great review! How would this compare to previous generation i3-1220p found in the ASUS pn64?
It's the same generation
i3-1220p is much faster, +2 p-cores, more pci-e lanes, better gpu, 2ch memory, more and faster memory, double the cache etc. for the same price (the chip, $309) but of course it uses way more power.
I am seeing reviews just like the other versions of this breaking very quickly rebooting problems. It’s a hard pass. What I’m reading it doesn’t even last five days. In some cases the longest was 19 months.
I mean I have had the GTR5 running 24x7 for well over a year. We have a total of 6 Beelink units running and none have had that issue
Would you be able to power a 3.5” hard drive in that data slot?
Dual 2.5 GBE NIC's. I didn't catch anything about who makes the chips - Intel, Realtek?
Did he talk about the USB C Port at all? Does anyone know? I've watched a few times and I'm not seeing it.
Key lesson learned: The included Windows key is probably not legit. Probably fell off the same truck as all those cheap windows key websites. Where do they all come from? Who knows!
Yeah. Not at all impressed. I can find an 8th gen Windows 11 compatible laptop in like new condition for less than that. Faster, and with a screen. And a keyboard. And a battery. This is a hard no.
Someone will buy it, that I am sure of.
i3 1220p is my sweet spot
Nice case but better if it has Ryzen 7840U and mounts for a Noctua 120mm or 80mm fan.
All of my Imtel NUC girlies never were slow, but top edge high performance systems! Very bad: All USB-A ports (and the Ethernet ports as well) on your Beelink mini PC are turned upside down, so nearly unusable for everyday USB-Sticks😂
that's about a Haswell i7 4790 score in Geekbench
The link keeps going to the Amazon Beelink U59 Mini PC Intel N5105 4C/4T Turbo 2.9Ghz
i am from india recently purchased asus GO 15 LAPTOP WITH THIS i3 n305 its fine but gaming is not working
Good as pfsense router with ips ? 500 Mbit plus?
Without IPS it will be 2.5G no problem. Just depends on how much and what type of traffic and rules you have
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Yes ofc so one should test with the same ruleset, standard and with imix traffic if possible. Something you could perhaps test?
Windows blah blah windows. Dude, this is STH, do some linux compatibility testing on things. Please. Especially on dual nic units that the majority of people would want to use a linux based os on.
Ubuntu just worked. The Linux compile benchmark and such are all done with Ubuntu as the standard. Not too exciting when the result is just that you can use a standard installer
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I have problem with my Wifi 6 driver under Linux in Beelink EQ12 not available yet, Debian Arch etc
i really missed IO performance of the 1x m.2 slot.
the amd chips are just better - largely accurate but mini pc will keep getting better - they are ok for some situations like travel but really the fascination and interest in small form factor pc is unhealthy and misguided for a ton of reasons given the alternatives - they are not going to save the pc industry but good to see some innovation - they are miles and miles ahead of sbc/soc
Good old ATX still has its strengths.
Mini PCs aren't even good for travel. Hauling around a monitor and keyboard is a major hassle. Laptops still rule there. Maybe if you live in a van or RV or on an off-grid solar power system and you really need low power, maybe then mini-PCs are the best. For everyone else, they're functionally not any better than a traditional tower.
I suppose some people like to use these as network appliances, which is fine if you're conscious that it's as much a hobby as a tool. Functionally you'd probably be better with a dedicated appliance.
They are great from home networking use. Perfect as a DIY router.
@@renegade_patriot But a router is a better router than anything DIY.
@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 nonsense
5:20 16GB is the max the CPU supports.
Want this with passive cooler and max 5 watt idle
13:14 hmm.. multicore is higher on power saver than high performance..
Yea that was fascinating. It is all power limited since they are running effectively the same turbo power levels
Proxmox doesn't support the wifi and bluetooth chip
single-channel DDR5? wonder how much of a ding it takes for that 🤔
and I like dual-LAN...for making lil' router/network appliance boxes
nirsoft's produkey works wonders btw
and it's probably a volume license key they gave ya 🤣
The memory controller in the CPU is single channel, so there won't be a model with this CPU that has dual channel memory.
Yes.
Don't care what you say right from the start.
The listener would like simple relaxed clear knowledge from you in a step by step clear way.
Not a performance like a used car salesman grasping at opportunity just out of his reach.