I recently purchased a SER5 with a 5600U to serve as a media PC for my camper during the summer months that I host for the US Forest Service. Living off the grid, power consumption is important and this little box rocks and is doing a fantastic job at everything I have asked it to do.
@@zigziar namely because I didn't come across a 5500 U and I'm an AMD fan (and I didn't come across an N100). The 5600U isn't exactly a high TDP and the power draw off the inverter and battery banks isn't terrible. It isn't like I watch a lot of TV, and the machine goes to sleep when I don't watch it which lowers the power even more. TDP is definitely something to keep in mine, but my experience with this little machine tells me that when it's just playing a video, it really doesn't use all that much power, the CPU is largely idle when I'm watching.
I have been using this mini-PC for a couple of months now. Excellent, silent, capable of gaming on an ultrawide monitor without a sweat (even if not at ultra settings). And it's really cheap compared to many other PCs, including the Intel NUCs. Only a small flaw, it's not as easy as on a NUC to upgrade firmware and BIOS.
I ended up my buying this exact mini pc last week after going back and forth with the Intel NUC12i5. This ended up being the cheaper option with arguably better performance. The selling point for me over lower end Beelink mini PCs was the USB 4 on the front. I work from home and have my work setup with dual monitors to my work laptop via a USB-C dock. When I’m done working I simply unplug a single USB-C cable from my work laptop and plug it into the mini pc to swap my whole setup over to my personal computer
Patrick, after watching all of STH videos on micro PCs. I bought a Beelink tiny PC. Imaged her old hard drive on a ssd, installed it and she is happy and amazed with her little PC. We travel to AZ for the winter and the Beelink is in her suitcase. Fast, reliable, quiet, portable and powerful. Unfortunately she doesn’t give me credit. Many thanks for the reviews. Now I’m looking to retire my tower PC. Did I say she loves her mini Bee PC. 🎉🎉🎉
I agree, the AMD SER6 Pro is one of the best bangs for the buck out there. While it's by no means a high-end gaming PC, it's perfect as a daily driver PC for general purpose use, and plenty fast for office apps, photo editing, and moderate/retro gaming. Awesome unit and it can be had right now for under $600.
I'd argue those "Ryzen 7000 Series" stickers are borderline deceptive. All we can learn from it is "AMD is selling this cpu in 2023", with no clue as to what features or performance to expect.
While i agree that what AMD is doing is a bit scummy, it is my hope that they stick to this naming scheme for years to come so people know what to expect. I know its only wishful thinking, but this may end up helping in the future as those deceptive online/in back alley sellers that just put "latest gaming Ryzen 7 processor" they may actually put the model number in the description instead of leaving it out because its a 2700u and 6000 is newer than 2000 so they have to hide it.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I was.... upset when the athon 3000E series launched. I grumbled to myself 'You're telling me this is a Athon/Ryzen 3000 part, but its Zen1 based, while the 3000G is Zen+ based?' Zen1 isnt supported by Windows 11, but you're launching this part 4 years before Windows 10 becomes EOL? Did you do this to trick Microsoft, because it shows as supported by windows 11, but the R5 Pro 2400GE with TPM 2.0 are not supported, despite being the same architecture.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo They do not rebrand, they underbin the latest parts by disabling new insns, because the manufacturing for this node apparently performed so well.
4:41 Honestly, I'd probably take the SSD out of its protective cover. In my experience, the drive itself is a fraction the size of the 2.5in enclosure and the SATA mount is soldered directly to the PCB. This means you can probably mount the SSD to the provided header and hardly cover the fan at all.
A very solid Mini PC, I got one last week and it's pretty nice. Runs all stress tests flawlessly, I even teste couple of hours gaming on this. In some reviews I also see a version with 1xDP and 1xHDMI but I don't see that version anymore.
Great Review: There are lots of clones in this formfactor thanks to your influence Patrick, I've grabbed some UM690 AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX units and its a solid Machine, the 2.5Gb is nice and I used it as a build slave for cross compiling as its all about CPU and Ram so a dirt cheap almost disposable home office solution, A good low cost "mini server" if you add an external drive for backup... This newer AMD 7735HS is all about low power. If they did a barebones so you could add the NVME and Ram that would be a win.
Great video! Thanks for covering an eGPU dock along with these mini PCs, I think it's a really interesting use case. I agree, though, the Razer dock is comically large. Would love to see you review the OneDock eGPU! FINALLY there's a tiny eGPU dock to match these tiny PCs!!!
Glad to see that AMD boxes are finally shipping with USB4 ports. I do wish that at this point the mini-pc makers just drop the SATA interface. I’d much rather have say a second M.2 port instead, especially on a more expensive kit like this one. And I wish Bee Link would sell these things as barebones or offer more configs on their site. Also, looking forward to the 7745/7840/M780/RDNA3 iGPUs in the mini-PCs.
finally in the last few weeks some sellers started to import those things to turkey (trying to buy them from abroad as a singular person is really hard due to customs), but now the price they are sold domestically is unreasonably high, even after accounting for the embarassing exchange rates we currently have... maybe one day i might buy one... until then, old laptops it is.
I have this miniPC and it's my favorite. Quiet and snappy and still affordable. Make sure you update to the 1.15 firmware to keep it quiet. The 7735HS chip is like 95% as good as the 6900HX but hundreds of dollars cheaper. The 7735HS is just a rebranded 6800H chip from last year.
I just bought this same mini; and tonight when you did this; your points almost mirrored my bullet points about this unit; I am more than satisfied and happy with this unit...
7:40 As a reminder, that 3 in the third digit means that this is a Zen 3/3+ CPU. So this is pretty much literally a 6900HX. For a next gen boost, you're looking for one with a 4 in the 3rd digit.
The 7735HS has very similar specs to the 6900HX but no OC and slightly slower clock speeds. The most important thing: adjustable TDP 35-54W vs fixed 45W which makes it a better choice for those compact minis
does this support 5600mhz memory or overclocking like um690. The 680m GPU will perform %15 better with faster memory. too bad the minisforum box is broken as you pointed in the video.
I bought this and tried it as a Linux pc which worked great. I could not get it working with an external enclosure to get the external gpu working as it was not stable. If you’re on windows this looks like it was not a problem though.
I was ready to buy the GTR6 and couldn't decide against the SEI12 PRO with the i7, due to the lack of thunderbolt, and the format. I think I'll order this one today ! Thanks.
How would you compare this to the new Intel N100 chip-based MINI PCs? I'm starting up an Charitable Organisation - and looking to pick up 10 decent mini PCs to begin with. I know the iGPU is going to be far better with the RDNA based graphics, but is the single and multi-thread CPU performance comparable? Intel always works better for the applications I use (Music Daw's, Photoshop, After Effects, etc...). Cheers from sunny old England (well it was earlier! :P).
Might be worth looking at some of the older 5000 AMD Ryzen Minisforum/Beelink machines. Can still buy new, and should have a reasonable discount on the R5 models.
@@emlyndewar Good shout! I've been looking at the older 6th/7th gen i& Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny models etc... But price to performance wise - these new N100 Intel Mini PCs seem the best bet so far - I'll check out the older Ryzen based Mini PCs.
Ii bought a Beelink SER 6 PRO MAX several months ago. One thing I noticed about the 2 covers, they have different mesh sizes. If the air in the room has a lot of particulate matter in it I would use the smaller mesh, if the air is cleaned and filtered I would use the large mesh size for better cooling efficiency.
With regards to USB4 and the eGPU box, I wonder how long it will take for the GPU to be an accessory of the monitor, not the PC? That is, you will plug the GPU into the monitor and connect the PC to the monitor with a USB 4 cable.
The PC always talks to the GPU, not the monitor, and the OS needs hardware-specific GPU drivers to do so. Also, it would make the monitor less flexible (since it is tied to a single GPU), so you couldn't use it in a KVM switch.
Having a monitor act as a dock for a graphics card sounds like a very good idea to me, especially if you are keen on saving space as a mini pc suggests
I mainly came to watch to make sure it supports 2.5" drives because i am planning on buying one and i own a old 1tb SSD that i would slap inside of it.
I am a bit late to finding this video but, would something like this be good as a secondary pc for streaming? Specialty if it also has a few programs running in the background like a 3D model and such? I've been searching around for something to become a secondary PC to offload the weight of streaming on my main PC, problem is there isn't much info on these sorts of mini pc's to really run at 1080p 60FPS for OBS.
Thank you for this review! Great video and love it! I think that this is going to be able to finally replace my aging 6700K gaming system. With my RTX 3090, playing F1 22, that system was sucking back something like 413 W of power, with, of course, the bulk majority of it being because of the 3090. But if I got a mini PC like this, then I can turn on the eGPU when I want to play the more graphically intensive games, but then turn that off (without having to open my system, and pull out the entire GPU), and then I have a nice, low powered system, that I can do everything else with. This is fantastic! Just as a head's up -- there's a dark grey option in lieu of the dark green option, shown in this video here.
Yeah, I got the UM690 and the UM773 from MinisForum. They are nice little boxes but servicing sucks. Thermal management isn't the best either - which is what you are seeing in gaming. I only use them for running proxmox so it isn't as apparent. I have to admit - they are pretty darn cheap. The BeeLink boxes are not offered has barebones - but I really wish they were - it feels very wasteful to order one just to toss out the memory and SSD for bigger ones but they don't offer larger sizes either. At least MinisForum offers several configuration options _and_ barebones on most of their systems.
@Patrick - thanks for an another great video. Any idea if this works as a virtualization server? I need something like this for VMWare or Proxmox - 8C/16T with 64G RAM to run some test VMs.
Do you discuss the use of gloves somewhere? I assume fingerprints and static? Does it help? Is there anything to worry about when doing this? Thank you!
I’m totally looking for something like this, but… with the possibility to put a PCIe NIC. I know they already come with a RJ45, but I would need to add another NIC. What should I be looking for that would be like this compact-sized computed while also having the possibility to add a network card ?
By the time the RDNA3 and Zen4 come out the RDNA4 and Zen5 will be on the horizon, it's a never-ending story. Just get what is available now that suits your needs. For the current gen Ryzen APUs they're more than enough for emulation upto PS3/Switch, if that is your thing. Video editing/streaming/office apps etc can be handled easily. 3D modeling/design etc you would need 32GB or 64GB of fast dual channel DDR5 RAM. PC gaming is lacking definitely if you're playing AAA titles, and the next gen RDNA is not going to save it due to progressive improvements, you need to jump at least 2 gens forward to see any meaningful improvements with AAA games running at 1080p/1440p Ultra 60fps etc.
CMOS-Buttons: I had the Beelink SER6 Pro Mini PC.. For 2 Days. Upon receiving it and Trying to set it up, the thing would freeze [100% unresponsive - requiring manual restarts - until' even that failed] More than 50% of the time, when powered on, there was no video out - both wired & wireless.. I could go on and on, but, long story short, when contacting support, all they could tell me was to power the unit off, drain any residual power, and then hit the CMOS button to whipe everything.. After the 5th or 6th time having to do that in ONE DAY, it was set back the very next day. In true Scamazon fashion - Even though I bought it From Them, they refused to swap or refund.. Then tied up My Money while the paperweight was shipped back to the company In China.. The SER6 'appears promising,' but damn it's hard to shake all of the bs that I ranted about above.. [It's still tempting to give another one a try]
You might want to check out the EQ12 PRO N305 which comes with dual 2.5gbe Intel I225 Ethernet ports for a base price of 350 US, which includes 16GB of memory and 500GB SSD.
it's basically the fact the 7735HS powering a Radeon 680m "Rembrandt" iGPU, is equivalent to an NVidia GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon HD7970, which makes this so tantalizing.
I'm looking for a PC in my sound studio. Would you recommend a mini-PC like this one for that? It has to be very silent and run Presonus Studio One with several VST Plugins and some controlling software for the digital interface (Focusrite). I'll be using it for real-time playback and recording on 20 to 60 tracks.
Ah, with the Intel I5 1235U it's 540 Euro's. That is still nice but still have to buy the SSD and RAM. With 32Gb and 1Tb SSD it's 815 Euro's. That is a heck of a bummer when I find out after the 1 July that it doesn't do what I want.
I have a beelink 4000 AMD Ryzen 7 4800U with Radeon Graphics running Studio One v6 and a focusrite 6i6. I have had no problems after 1 approx. 1 year. I can't comment on 60 tracks as I don't do that many.
@@PatFleck Thanks for the reply Pat. That sounds promising. I regularly do about 10 - 20 tracks but there might come a time I will do more. I have a Focusrite 18i20 in my Studio. Still have to learn to work with that too. Learning is part of the journey. What about the noise? I don't see the Beelink 4000 anywhere. Guess it's no longer sold?
DDR5 overheats and throttles because they do not have cooling on the bottom side of their chassis. We showed this in this video and in the UM690 video.
That's insane. Also, League is the only game I play besides that, I only need it for game development and general programming just wished it had more cores 😥
thank you for the review. got a question which is out of your scope. how would i connect active speakers to a mini PC? there's no line-out, headphones only. this is a thing which stops me buying a mini PC of any kind. by 'active speakers' i mean just desktop ones like people use with PCs, nothing fancy. appreciate your answer.
@@redbaron7582 thank you for your reply. these two outputs are different. as far as I know, the one for the phones is amplified, the line-out is not. the impedance is also different. speakers have its own amplifier. generally, it's not recommended to use the phones port for speakers and vice versa. if it works for you, you're lucky then.
If your PC demand is not too high can check out the SER5 Pro wirh Ryzen 5800H, it has a 65W PSU that is much smaller than this 120W PSU which means even better for travelling.
By the time i went to buy this after @ing you it had gone up from the $550, to $679, still a good deal relative to similarly specked laptops, but less than half the price of a similar laptop is a great deal for this class of hardware, traditionally these things either come out years later, or are about the same price as a laptop, but you dont get the screen, keyboard, or battery
I replaced 5 Raspberry Pi 4 with Beelink SER 5 5800H and still I have lots of power to use on something else if needed. However 1 thing I cannot manage: pass GPU on Proxmox - no way to do it with latest Proxmox ;-( So only headless servers there - but plenty Few problems though: 1- no 2.5Gbps NIC 2- not all USB ports can power external SSD 3- when maxed out it can only have: - 64GB RAM - 2x 2TB SSD so not really to be used as NAS
@@zyghom to do it the system needs to have been designed so the the igpu is on its own pci bus, which they are not on these mini PC's I tired my minisforum b550 and no, and no bios update to fix issues either
@@StephenDail my hypervisor is headless. It just will not work as soon as you pass it though the system locks up as the igpu is connected to the same iommu group as the main system. It works if you can get the iommu split. If you can't get it spot your screwed you maybe lucky that your Chinese be for has split the iommu properly minisforum haven't
How long would this realistically last? As a high school student that does lots of video editing projects, y’all think it would last till at least my second year of college (just ending grade 11). Or should I get a Acer swift X Laptop Im really new to this topic new it comes to technology so I really need the help!
I bought this first, but am returning it. For context, I have an egpu the same as this guy does, and was hoping for one single cable to power the beelink and provide it with the egpu capability, without the need for the external PSU. It unfortunately doesn't work like that on the USB4.0 of this device, but my caldigit ts4 dock and egpu both are capable of charging and working from the beelink sei12 pro due to to its superior thunderbolt 4 port.
I love my 4 Arc cards :-) Also i love little PC´s, but they are so expensive and older ones are good for work, but not so good for multimedia and a little bit gaming sometimes. Their is a lack in adaption of the marcet. But i think in the future thoose little pc´ s will get a better adoption. I am Arch Linux User Now, BTW :.-D
I'm working on my classic car doing a resomod. It's a 64 bug that had seen some better days. Not worth doing a full resto because of all the mods from other and rust. To the point I'm going to be putting one of these(or similar) as the infotainment unit.
I got minisforum UM773, which looks better internally than this beelink. Much improved from UM690, works fine with a m.2 nvme and sata ssd together. And check that out, you can get it in pink! :D
How does the um773 perform? Ive heard that after running it for half an hour or so it starts throttling and the frames tank like 20-30 %. Is it true? Looking to buy it.
@@pushparajrahevar9974 from what i have heard, it was true cuz of the ddr5 ram throttling. Minis forum started including a upgraded heatsink that pretty mich fixes the issue, atleast in the newer models. If you buy a um773lite/se now it should have the new heatsink.
I had a beelink once. At start it was great but after 6 months it’s true quality began to show up as an unreliable web browser pc that gets little use now.
The power supply brick is ridiculous. Why in the world would vendors give these massive bricks instead of just a USB-C small 65 watt charger? That's a deal killer for anyone who wants to travel with the device instead of a laptop. Also, having USB-C should be mandatory for both interoperability & easy replacement of power bricks. Why some reviewers overlook this obvious feature or drawback (as in the case of this one) is beyond me. Clearly a larger percentage of users buy these for their ability to be transported easily to different locations unlike a desktop PC with a tower.
Generally the bigger wattage the PSU the bigger the size. My 250W laptop PSU is like 4 times bigger than my miniPC's 65W PSU. And this model uses a 120W PSU so naturally is bigger than a 65W PSU.
SER 5 Pro is using the Ryzen 7 5800H APU which means no 680M so PC gaming will suffer quite a bit, although emulation upto PS2/GC/WiiU will be fine. Some PS3/Switch games may even run decently.
I recently purchased a SER5 with a 5600U to serve as a media PC for my camper during the summer months that I host for the US Forest Service. Living off the grid, power consumption is important and this little box rocks and is doing a fantastic job at everything I have asked it to do.
Great feedback!
Also considering getting the SER6 Pro for my desk at school after summer is over and I return to my classroom.
Just wondering why you didn't opt for a 5500U or even lower TDP, an N100 ?
oh,nice man and you also watch shows and movies with it too
@@zigziar namely because I didn't come across a 5500 U and I'm an AMD fan (and I didn't come across an N100). The 5600U isn't exactly a high TDP and the power draw off the inverter and battery banks isn't terrible. It isn't like I watch a lot of TV, and the machine goes to sleep when I don't watch it which lowers the power even more. TDP is definitely something to keep in mine, but my experience with this little machine tells me that when it's just playing a video, it really doesn't use all that much power, the CPU is largely idle when I'm watching.
I have been using this mini-PC for a couple of months now. Excellent, silent, capable of gaming on an ultrawide monitor without a sweat (even if not at ultra settings). And it's really cheap compared to many other PCs, including the Intel NUCs. Only a small flaw, it's not as easy as on a NUC to upgrade firmware and BIOS.
I ended up my buying this exact mini pc last week after going back and forth with the Intel NUC12i5. This ended up being the cheaper option with arguably better performance. The selling point for me over lower end Beelink mini PCs was the USB 4 on the front. I work from home and have my work setup with dual monitors to my work laptop via a USB-C dock. When I’m done working I simply unplug a single USB-C cable from my work laptop and plug it into the mini pc to swap my whole setup over to my personal computer
Has there been booting issues or crashes.
Patrick, after watching all of STH videos on micro PCs. I bought a Beelink tiny PC. Imaged her old hard drive on a ssd, installed it and she is happy and amazed with her little PC. We travel to AZ for the winter and the Beelink is in her suitcase. Fast, reliable, quiet, portable and powerful.
Unfortunately she doesn’t give me credit. Many thanks for the reviews. Now I’m looking to retire my tower PC.
Did I say she loves her mini Bee PC. 🎉🎉🎉
I agree, the AMD SER6 Pro is one of the best bangs for the buck out there. While it's by no means a high-end gaming PC, it's perfect as a daily driver PC for general purpose use, and plenty fast for office apps, photo editing, and moderate/retro gaming. Awesome unit and it can be had right now for under $600.
I'd argue those "Ryzen 7000 Series" stickers are borderline deceptive. All we can learn from it is "AMD is selling this cpu in 2023", with no clue as to what features or performance to expect.
Well the stickers are accurate, but I do not like essentially re-naming existing parts into a new series just to make them sound new
While i agree that what AMD is doing is a bit scummy, it is my hope that they stick to this naming scheme for years to come so people know what to expect. I know its only wishful thinking, but this may end up helping in the future as those deceptive online/in back alley sellers that just put "latest gaming Ryzen 7 processor" they may actually put the model number in the description instead of leaving it out because its a 2700u and 6000 is newer than 2000 so they have to hide it.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I was.... upset when the athon 3000E series launched.
I grumbled to myself 'You're telling me this is a Athon/Ryzen 3000 part, but its Zen1 based, while the 3000G is Zen+ based?'
Zen1 isnt supported by Windows 11, but you're launching this part 4 years before Windows 10 becomes EOL?
Did you do this to trick Microsoft, because it shows as supported by windows 11, but the R5 Pro 2400GE with TPM 2.0 are not supported, despite being the same architecture.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo They do not rebrand, they underbin the latest parts by disabling new insns, because the manufacturing for this node apparently performed so well.
This one in particular is a rebranded 6800H. In fairness the 6800H came out in like nov/dec 2022 so still pretty recent
4:41 Honestly, I'd probably take the SSD out of its protective cover. In my experience, the drive itself is a fraction the size of the 2.5in enclosure and the SATA mount is soldered directly to the PCB. This means you can probably mount the SSD to the provided header and hardly cover the fan at all.
Good tip, might do that when I get an internal SSD.
A very solid Mini PC, I got one last week and it's pretty nice. Runs all stress tests flawlessly, I even teste couple of hours gaming on this. In some reviews I also see a version with 1xDP and 1xHDMI but I don't see that version anymore.
Great Review: There are lots of clones in this formfactor thanks to your influence Patrick, I've grabbed some UM690 AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX units and its a solid Machine, the 2.5Gb is nice and I used it as a build slave for cross compiling as its all about CPU and Ram so a dirt cheap almost disposable home office solution, A good low cost "mini server" if you add an external drive for backup... This newer AMD 7735HS is all about low power. If they did a barebones so you could add the NVME and Ram that would be a win.
3:16 "We get a LAN port."
That much is obvious, but what is the speed of said port? 1Gbps? 2.5 (hopefully)?
The Beelink Ser5 I got for $380 has been absolutely fantastic!😁
pls buy from me next time ，i can give your best competitive price ，dear😄
Yooo. It's been 11 months, how is it going so far?
Great video! Thanks for covering an eGPU dock along with these mini PCs, I think it's a really interesting use case. I agree, though, the Razer dock is comically large. Would love to see you review the OneDock eGPU! FINALLY there's a tiny eGPU dock to match these tiny PCs!!!
GTR7 with the 7940HS is what we oughta be lookin' at.
Hopefully soon. I want to make sure we get a retail version not a reviewer version since sometimes there is a difference with mini PC companies
Glad to see that AMD boxes are finally shipping with USB4 ports. I do wish that at this point the mini-pc makers just drop the SATA interface. I’d much rather have say a second M.2 port instead, especially on a more expensive kit like this one. And I wish Bee Link would sell these things as barebones or offer more configs on their site. Also, looking forward to the 7745/7840/M780/RDNA3 iGPUs in the mini-PCs.
SATA SSD's have been wayyyy cheaper for a while so thats a bonus to stuff a huge drive in here for secondary storage
finally in the last few weeks some sellers started to import those things to turkey (trying to buy them from abroad as a singular person is really hard due to customs), but now the price they are sold domestically is unreasonably high, even after accounting for the embarassing exchange rates we currently have... maybe one day i might buy one... until then, old laptops it is.
I have this miniPC and it's my favorite. Quiet and snappy and still affordable. Make sure you update to the 1.15 firmware to keep it quiet. The 7735HS chip is like 95% as good as the 6900HX but hundreds of dollars cheaper. The 7735HS is just a rebranded 6800H chip from last year.
hey, how do u update?
Hello! What temperatures this thing shows in league of legends? Is there any possibility to lower temperatures?
I just bought this same mini; and tonight when you did this; your points almost mirrored my bullet points about this unit; I am more than satisfied and happy with this unit...
Great to hear! We try to be thorough
7:40 As a reminder, that 3 in the third digit means that this is a Zen 3/3+ CPU. So this is pretty much literally a 6900HX. For a next gen boost, you're looking for one with a 4 in the 3rd digit.
The 7735HS has very similar specs to the 6900HX but no OC and slightly slower clock speeds. The most important thing: adjustable TDP 35-54W vs fixed 45W which makes it a better choice for those compact minis
does this support 5600mhz memory or overclocking like um690. The 680m GPU will perform %15 better with faster memory. too bad the minisforum box is broken as you pointed in the video.
no ram overclocking support. would be nice to have
I bought this and tried it as a Linux pc which worked great. I could not get it working with an external enclosure to get the external gpu working as it was not stable. If you’re on windows this looks like it was not a problem though.
Did the audio work on Linux as well?
I was ready to buy the GTR6 and couldn't decide against the SEI12 PRO with the i7, due to the lack of thunderbolt, and the format. I think I'll order this one today ! Thanks.
Why did you pick ser6 pro over SEi12 Pro?
Why on Earth would they put the Thunderbolt port on the front?
How would you compare this to the new Intel N100 chip-based MINI PCs?
I'm starting up an Charitable Organisation - and looking to pick up 10 decent mini PCs to begin with. I know the iGPU is going to be far better with the RDNA based graphics, but is the single and multi-thread CPU performance comparable? Intel always works better for the applications I use (Music Daw's, Photoshop, After Effects, etc...).
Cheers from sunny old England (well it was earlier! :P).
Alder Lake-N is a lower performing E-cores. Still much better than older generations. This uses more power but is faster
Might be worth looking at some of the older 5000 AMD Ryzen Minisforum/Beelink machines. Can still buy new, and should have a reasonable discount on the R5 models.
@@emlyndewar Good shout! I've been looking at the older 6th/7th gen i& Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny models etc... But price to performance wise - these new N100 Intel Mini PCs seem the best bet so far - I'll check out the older Ryzen based Mini PCs.
Please do review the virtualization for home server
Ii bought a Beelink SER 6 PRO MAX several months ago. One thing I noticed about the 2 covers, they have different mesh sizes. If the air in the room has a lot of particulate matter in it I would use the smaller mesh, if the air is cleaned and filtered I would use the large mesh size for better cooling efficiency.
Good feedback.
Looking forward to seeing the Radeon 780M miniPCs from both minisforum and beelink!
I think we will have a few inbound. We also have one more 6900HX system that just arrived
@@ServeTheHomeVideo so cool! You guys are one of the best mini PC channels
geez, would it kill them to include 10Gb interfaces ?
With regards to USB4 and the eGPU box, I wonder how long it will take for the GPU to be an accessory of the monitor, not the PC? That is, you will plug the GPU into the monitor and connect the PC to the monitor with a USB 4 cable.
The PC always talks to the GPU, not the monitor, and the OS needs hardware-specific GPU drivers to do so. Also, it would make the monitor less flexible (since it is tied to a single GPU), so you couldn't use it in a KVM switch.
Having a monitor act as a dock for a graphics card sounds like a very good idea to me, especially if you are keen on saving space as a mini pc suggests
Have one. Love it
Super feedback
I thought this looked interesting. Clicked your link, and... Amazon showed me a Dell Optiplex i5 4 core. Not available in UK or the wrong link?
Thanks first for the review. Will you be looking at the GTR7 Pro when it becomes available?
Yes. We will purchase it as soon as we can.
I have the ser5 . Amazing device
I mainly came to watch to make sure it supports 2.5" drives because i am planning on buying one and i own a old 1tb SSD that i would slap inside of it.
the green looks good
I am a bit late to finding this video but, would something like this be good as a secondary pc for streaming? Specialty if it also has a few programs running in the background like a 3D model and such?
I've been searching around for something to become a secondary PC to offload the weight of streaming on my main PC, problem is there isn't much info on these sorts of mini pc's to really run at 1080p 60FPS for OBS.
Thanks for review!
Thank you for this review! Great video and love it!
I think that this is going to be able to finally replace my aging 6700K gaming system.
With my RTX 3090, playing F1 22, that system was sucking back something like 413 W of power, with, of course, the bulk majority of it being because of the 3090.
But if I got a mini PC like this, then I can turn on the eGPU when I want to play the more graphically intensive games, but then turn that off (without having to open my system, and pull out the entire GPU), and then I have a nice, low powered system, that I can do everything else with.
This is fantastic!
Just as a head's up -- there's a dark grey option in lieu of the dark green option, shown in this video here.
Strong disagree regarding the colour! The subtle blue and green makes it stand out from the crowd. GREAT job Beelink. Black is boring. 😁
Very fair
It is a mini pc, it isn't meant to stand out, for the right, or wrong reasons
Yeah, I got the UM690 and the UM773 from MinisForum. They are nice little boxes but servicing sucks. Thermal management isn't the best either - which is what you are seeing in gaming. I only use them for running proxmox so it isn't as apparent. I have to admit - they are pretty darn cheap. The BeeLink boxes are not offered has barebones - but I really wish they were - it feels very wasteful to order one just to toss out the memory and SSD for bigger ones but they don't offer larger sizes either. At least MinisForum offers several configuration options _and_ barebones on most of their systems.
How are performance and temps when you put a 2.5" SSD into it? Can you do a follow-up with the data? That would be great!
@Patrick - thanks for an another great video. Any idea if this works as a virtualization server? I need something like this for VMWare or Proxmox - 8C/16T with 64G RAM to run some test VMs.
Do you discuss the use of gloves somewhere? I assume fingerprints and static? Does it help? Is there anything to worry about when doing this? Thank you!
Ha! Bryan wears gloves to avoid fingerprints. If you see gloves it is him doing the work
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Thank you.
I’m totally looking for something like this, but… with the possibility to put a PCIe NIC. I know they already come with a RJ45, but I would need to add another NIC. What should I be looking for that would be like this compact-sized computed while also having the possibility to add a network card ?
I'll just wait for the new ones with rdna 3 and zen4
but this is a nice review
By the time the RDNA3 and Zen4 come out the RDNA4 and Zen5 will be on the horizon, it's a never-ending story.
Just get what is available now that suits your needs. For the current gen Ryzen APUs they're more than enough for emulation upto PS3/Switch, if that is your thing.
Video editing/streaming/office apps etc can be handled easily. 3D modeling/design etc you would need 32GB or 64GB of fast dual channel DDR5 RAM.
PC gaming is lacking definitely if you're playing AAA titles, and the next gen RDNA is not going to save it due to progressive improvements, you need to jump at least 2 gens forward to see any meaningful improvements with AAA games running at 1080p/1440p Ultra 60fps etc.
CMOS-Buttons: I had the Beelink SER6 Pro Mini PC.. For 2 Days. Upon receiving it and Trying to set it up,
the thing would freeze [100% unresponsive - requiring manual restarts - until' even that failed]
More than 50% of the time, when powered on, there was no video out - both wired & wireless..
I could go on and on, but, long story short, when contacting support, all they could tell me
was to power the unit off, drain any residual power, and then hit the CMOS button to whipe everything..
After the 5th or 6th time having to do that in ONE DAY, it was set back the very next day.
In true Scamazon fashion - Even though I bought it From Them, they refused to swap or refund..
Then tied up My Money while the paperweight was shipped back to the company In China..
The SER6 'appears promising,' but damn it's hard to shake all of the bs that I ranted about above..
[It's still tempting to give another one a try]
Thank you for a great video. Do you think this can run Flight Simulator 2020?
Good video but did not demonstrate the stats with external gpu and only one game tested was lazy I guess
Which BIOS are you using to get 55W? I had to contact support just to get from 35W to 45W.
You might want to check out the EQ12 PRO N305 which comes with dual 2.5gbe Intel I225 Ethernet ports for a base price of 350 US, which includes 16GB of memory and 500GB SSD.
Ours just arrived. I am at AMD today testing Pensando so I will work on that with the team next week
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Great! Looking forward to the review.
Oh mini pc I used one as a day to day computer for a year or two while traveling.
This was the type of system I wish existed 10 years ago.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I agree 100% I forget what mine was that I had years ago it was around 7 or 8 years ago now I am guessing.
it's basically the fact the 7735HS powering a Radeon 680m "Rembrandt" iGPU, is equivalent to an NVidia GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon HD7970, which makes this so tantalizing.
Yes
hi there thanks for the great review.Bought mine from Amazon France the Gray colour.Some batches coming with one DP and one HDMI instead of 2 HDMI
Wait...when you showed the graphs the NUC 13 i7 outperformed this on all 3 charts. So how can you say this is the best one???
I don't get why so many of these lack USB-C DP on the back as well as the front. Plugging it into the front is messy if you want to do it permanently.
the future Beelink GTR7 is even better
I have been buying these up, can't beat the price for a capable (and quiet) office workstation or boardroom/entertainment PC!
I'm looking for a PC in my sound studio. Would you recommend a mini-PC like this one for that? It has to be very silent and run Presonus Studio One with several VST Plugins and some controlling software for the digital interface (Focusrite). I'll be using it for real-time playback and recording on 20 to 60 tracks.
We do not benchmark that software, but what about something like this that is fanless? ruclips.net/video/6rtRwKlJTgU/видео.html
Ah, with the Intel I5 1235U it's 540 Euro's. That is still nice but still have to buy the SSD and RAM. With 32Gb and 1Tb SSD it's 815 Euro's. That is a heck of a bummer when I find out after the 1 July that it doesn't do what I want.
I have a beelink 4000 AMD Ryzen 7 4800U with Radeon Graphics running Studio One v6 and a focusrite 6i6. I have had no problems after 1 approx. 1 year. I can't comment on 60 tracks as I don't do that many.
@@PatFleck Thanks for the reply Pat. That sounds promising. I regularly do about 10 - 20 tracks but there might come a time I will do more. I have a Focusrite 18i20 in my Studio. Still have to learn to work with that too. Learning is part of the journey. What about the noise? I don't see the Beelink 4000 anywhere. Guess it's no longer sold?
minis do not tend to be quiet, unless you get one with a passive cooling chassis
I really don't like the fabric cloth on top... Why can't they stick to the old designs? I own SER4 and SER6 Pro, and I like the look of SER4 most.
Very fair. Hoping we have the GTR7 review up in the next week or two. They removed that feature
What do you mean that UM690 wasn't good
DDR5 overheats and throttles because they do not have cooling on the bottom side of their chassis. We showed this in this video and in the UM690 video.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo That's weird I never experienced overheating on the ram
That's insane. Also, League is the only game I play besides that, I only need it for game development and general programming just wished it had more cores 😥
thank you for the review. got a question which is out of your scope. how would i connect active speakers to a mini PC? there's no line-out, headphones only. this is a thing which stops me buying a mini PC of any kind. by 'active speakers' i mean just desktop ones like people use with PCs, nothing fancy. appreciate your answer.
You just plug the speakers into the same port as the headphones port, it doesnt make a difference. It can do both speakers or headphones.
@@redbaron7582 thank you for your reply. these two outputs are different. as far as I know, the one for the phones is amplified, the line-out is not. the impedance is also different. speakers have its own amplifier. generally, it's not recommended to use the phones port for speakers and vice versa. if it works for you, you're lucky then.
I really like this channel’s views on mini-PCs. Not so keen on these kinds of intros though.
Can u do it as a travel mini pc?
Yes, very easily.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo thank you im planing to buy this one so i can bring it anywhere thanks bro. Subs for you
If your PC demand is not too high can check out the SER5 Pro wirh Ryzen 5800H, it has a 65W PSU that is much smaller than this 120W PSU which means even better for travelling.
What is that external monitor?
Fortnight might be a meaningful test for the iGPU in addition to League of Legends.
We typically do not do gaming since we are mostly focused on servers. Good idea though.
Did you get those FPS on LoL with maxed out settings?
Can you run Ethernet over USB4 like you can with TB3? I mean p2p and not an adapter!
We did not test it on this one, but I know the feature you are talking about. We have a TB QNAP NAS that can use this feature
@@ServeTheHomeVideo thanks! Would you mind doing an article about it. I'm sure a lot of people aren't even aware of this feature!
Waiting for 7x40xx series for better iGPU
Yes.
By the time i went to buy this after @ing you it had gone up from the $550, to $679, still a good deal relative to similarly specked laptops, but less than half the price of a similar laptop is a great deal for this class of hardware, traditionally these things either come out years later, or are about the same price as a laptop, but you dont get the screen, keyboard, or battery
There was a $100 off coupon this morning.
i need a very reliable minipc with 2 nic for pfsense. i don’t need high performance.
what minipc do you advice?
Check out our fanless PC series. Fanless is good for reliability
Hey Patrick and team, would you guys take a look at Acer's 1L TinyMiniMicro PC? They're modular in design with gpu and storage add-ins
Btw why is the speed for the wifi and RJ45
Hopefully 2.5Gb or better?
I'd honestly go for the minisforum 773 because it's the same CPU for $360 right now
It all depends on how the fans are. There reports that many of the Minisforum models overheats very easily and then just shutdown
I replaced 5 Raspberry Pi 4 with Beelink SER 5 5800H and still I have lots of power to use on something else if needed.
However 1 thing I cannot manage: pass GPU on Proxmox - no way to do it with latest Proxmox ;-(
So only headless servers there - but plenty
Few problems though:
1- no 2.5Gbps NIC
2- not all USB ports can power external SSD
3- when maxed out it can only have:
- 64GB RAM
- 2x 2TB SSD
so not really to be used as NAS
You can't pass the igpu over to a vm
@@damiendye6623 are you sure? I read on PVE forum that someone did it with 5600
@@zyghom to do it the system needs to have been designed so the the igpu is on its own pci bus, which they are not on these mini PC's I tired my minisforum b550 and no, and no bios update to fix issues either
@@damiendye6623 very, very bad news ;-(
@@StephenDail my hypervisor is headless. It just will not work as soon as you pass it though the system locks up as the igpu is connected to the same iommu group as the main system. It works if you can get the iommu split. If you can't get it spot your screwed you maybe lucky that your Chinese be for has split the iommu properly minisforum haven't
How can you talk about size without mentioning the power supply?
The 120W PSU is pretty big, suprisingly much bigger than the 65W PSU that they ship with the SER5 Pro.
How long would this realistically last? As a high school student that does lots of video editing projects, y’all think it would last till at least my second year of college (just ending grade 11). Or should I get a Acer swift X Laptop Im really new to this topic new it comes to technology so I really need the help!
I would personally get a laptop so you can bring it to class
@@ServeTheHomeVideo alr bet
How does this compare with SEi12 Pro
I bought this first, but am returning it. For context, I have an egpu the same as this guy does, and was hoping for one single cable to power the beelink and provide it with the egpu capability, without the need for the external PSU. It unfortunately doesn't work like that on the USB4.0 of this device, but my caldigit ts4 dock and egpu both are capable of charging and working from the beelink sei12 pro due to to its superior thunderbolt 4 port.
Waiting for a version with 780M then I will pull the trigger.
I love my 4 Arc cards :-) Also i love little PC´s, but they are so expensive and older ones are good for work, but not so good for multimedia and a little bit gaming sometimes. Their is a lack in adaption of the marcet. But i think in the future thoose little pc´ s will get a better adoption.
I am Arch Linux User Now, BTW :.-D
> "... you also get two USB type A ports _and those are always kind of fun_" ... ?
?? what kind of fun activities involve USB type A ports ??
This one or NUC 13 gen, please advise
NUC 13 Pro we did the Intel and ASRock versions a few videos ago. Intel better quality and a second USB4. Beelink faster iGPU and quieter
I'm working on my classic car doing a resomod. It's a 64 bug that had seen some better days. Not worth doing a full resto because of all the mods from other and rust. To the point I'm going to be putting one of these(or similar) as the infotainment unit.
I got minisforum UM773, which looks better internally than this beelink. Much improved from UM690, works fine with a m.2 nvme and sata ssd together. And check that out, you can get it in pink! :D
How does the um773 perform? Ive heard that after running it for half an hour or so it starts throttling and the frames tank like 20-30 %. Is it true? Looking to buy it.
@@pushparajrahevar9974 I run it on 15w tdp so fan never even spins up. More than plenty of performance for my moderate desktop usage with a few VMs.
@@pushparajrahevar9974 from what i have heard, it was true cuz of the ddr5 ram throttling. Minis forum started including a upgraded heatsink that pretty mich fixes the issue, atleast in the newer models. If you buy a um773lite/se now it should have the new heatsink.
Does a mini-pc with dual DVI exist?
Probably not new ones. Maybe someone makes an industrial PC with that
@@ServeTheHomeVideo searching everywhere... no luck.. wonder if one ever existed. Converters sometimes do not work.
Finally a 32GB Ram Mini Pc at an affordable price!
£700 isn't that affordable for a minipc..
Got mine for around US$470 (32GB RAM & 500GB M.2 SSD).
Does it Hackintosh?
I had a beelink once. At start it was great but after 6 months it’s true quality began to show up as an unreliable web browser pc that gets little use now.
Do you know what generation it is? I still use my GTR5 daily for my living room OLED TV
The power supply brick is ridiculous. Why in the world would vendors give these massive bricks instead of just a USB-C small 65 watt charger? That's a deal killer for anyone who wants to travel with the device instead of a laptop. Also, having USB-C should be mandatory for both interoperability & easy replacement of power bricks.
Why some reviewers overlook this obvious feature or drawback (as in the case of this one) is beyond me. Clearly a larger percentage of users buy these for their ability to be transported easily to different locations unlike a desktop PC with a tower.
Generally the bigger wattage the PSU the bigger the size.
My 250W laptop PSU is like 4 times bigger than my miniPC's 65W PSU. And this model uses a 120W PSU so naturally is bigger than a 65W PSU.
Is the beelink ser 5 good for ganing
SER 5 Pro is using the Ryzen 7 5800H APU which means no 680M so PC gaming will suffer quite a bit, although emulation upto PS2/GC/WiiU will be fine. Some PS3/Switch games may even run decently.
What is the screen that he's using?
Can't wait what ryzen 7x40u/h can bring
I actually like the color of this unit. Im tired of black....
Very Fair
@@ServeTheHomeVideo keep your eye out for the new GTR7 coming down the pipe. Ryzen 780M on board likely to make it a real beast for gaming.
@@davefroman4700 Hopefully soon, been looking for a mini pc for gaming specifically.
@@astro-ooz Minisforum UM 790 is available now. redesign for better cooling and two NVME M.2 drives.
Beelink software and firmware support leave a bit to be desired.
Only a 1 year warranty while Minisforum is two years and Geekom and Ace Magic are three years.
Is there gome be unit with Ryzen Zen 4, 7840U keep us posted pleaseeee
Anyway I can get 10 gbps networking on these already awesome units?
Hi, is this better than the minisforum HX99G?
I would have bought this but the cost differential due not being barebones ruled in favor of a nuc.
I got mine at around $470 few days back (32GB RAM & 500GB M.2 SSD)
Gotta have VGA and HDMI. It's a must for me.
Will it play Starfield?