Just want to say thanks for adding what I assume was voice corrections ("280") rather than popup graphics. For those hard of sight it makes for an easier experience. Thank you good sir. 👍
Agreed! I tend to listen to these video's mostly and don't look at the screen all the time. A subtle sound effenct when a correction graphic is displayed might be a good alternative, without reshooting the whole shot. Thanks for the content!
My big problem with this kind of design is that it only supports 1 slot half height PCIe cards. If it was 2 slot, I'd be more than willing to pay that price for one. Bonus being I could turn it into a multi-task server, with max TDP of just an enterprise CPU.
There are other options for SFF that contain 2-slot configurations. single slot or half-height single slots are so rare now adays especially for those that are looking for an extremely compact system that still allows for PCI-E options.
@@Daxiongmao87 Eh, fair point. I did look into SFF cases in general out of boredom, but 3L/4L w/ GPU are either not restocked or hard to find... It seems. Oh well. I'm not in rush.
Important note for anyone who considering putting a U.2 drive in this system: The height of the U.2 drive must not exceed 7mm, which excludes some of the most popular U.2 drives on the market, such as Kioxia CD6, WD SN640, or Samsung PM1733/1735, which are all 15mm drives. I saw this machine but still got myself a Think Station P3 tiny. I chose an ES motherboard so that I got 3 M.2 slots. I paired the P3 tint with the i5-12400 and it was 1/3 cheaper than the MS-01 with the 12900H option. There seemed to be an i5-12450h option with the MS-01, but it is not available and we don't know when they will start selling this option. I don't really like the i9 CPU that MS-01 provides right now because I don't want to stretch the cooling system too far. I did see the appeal of the dual 10G NIC but for someone who doesn't really need it, it is a piece of hardware that consumes power and does nothing. On the other hand, I can add USB type A, DP, HDMI, or TypeC with video and charging to the Tiny via expansion modules, which makes it very flexible. However, doing this does sacrifice the PCIE cutout. It is also more difficult to install PCIE cards sideways compared to Tiny's riser approach. At least it doesn't require a special PCIE bracket though. All in all, I think both MS-01 and P3 Tiny are both nice SFF machines. It really comes down to whether you prefer the dual 10G SFP port and the USB4 port, (Yes, it is USB4 rather than Thunderbolt, although they are functionally the same.) or more flexibility. I will also provide a quick technical comparison here for anyone interested: P3 Tiny |VS| MS-01 form factor: Standard size |VS| A bit larger than Standard size. (Matters if you want to put it in a server rack.) CPU: Any CPU from Intel 12,13 and 14GEN |VS| 13900H,12900H, or 12450H. (12450H not available yet.) iGPU: MS-01 is always better as mobile chips always get better iGPU compared to their desktop counterpart. NIC: i219-LM 1Gx1 |VS| i226v 2.5G + i226LM 2.5G +x710 10Gx2. (Both machines can support vPRO.) PCIE: Gen4/5 x8 |VS| Gen4/5 x8. (Gen5 is available on 13th Gen CPUs.) PCIE specific: Need custom PCIE bracket |VS| Difficult to install and uninstall. USB Expansion: 4x10G type A + 2x5G type A + 1x10G type C |VS| 3x10G type A + 2x 480 M(2.0) type A + 2x40G USB4. (Tiny can expend 4x 5G type A or 1x10G type C with Video and charging expansion module, by giving up the PCIE cutout.) Video Expansion: DP1.4 + HDMI 2.0 |VS| HDMI 2.0 + 2xUSB4. (Tiny can expend 2xDP, 2xHDMI, or 2xTypeC DPalt via the expansion module, by giving up the PCIE cutout.) Storage Expansion: 2xM.2 |VS| 2xM.2 + 1x M.2/U.2. (Tiny get 3xM.2 on the ES motherboard)
I really appreciate your personal, practical take on this and the in depth look. It may be in a different class than some of the systems that you often review but it can also do a lot more. Thank you!
Taking 2u when in a rack is rough. Adjusting the case to take 1u and possibly some airflow adjustments would be great. Could market it as a bastion/utility server.
Unless racks have gone through recent drastic change, you could double (or even TRIPLE) the depth of this case. That might even make it easier to fit a rear mounting bracket, to hold the weight. Plus, if you place it on a sliding tray, the tray takes up another 1U of rack space anyway.
I bought 3d printed rack mount - 3U for 4 units. Sure you still loose some space, but less is lost and it's actually hold pretty nice! Found it at Hive Tech Solutions from Australia which they sent me to Poland... took a while and actually cost a lot. I don't think I'll ever buy from them again - they (both "they" as people and "they" as device) were great but it's too expensive. With price being 1/6 of 3D printer, I would rather buy a printer and learn how to use it because it'll be useful later in my life.
This is the second video I've watched of yours and I really like how you edit the audio for mistakes instead of just showing it on screen. I like to play BeamNG when I'm watching RUclips and I'll miss the on screen corrections on channels like LTT and GN and etc.
I like that you included the comparison with the N100 since this gives me a good idea of the performance difference to expect for devices with a similar form factor.
I actually bought this air quality sensor a few months ago and immediately integrated it into home assistant. It's great for letting me know when the CO2 levels are getting to high.
Finanly got 3 of them today! I ordered lowest tier with i5-12600H and I tried to fill it with 96GB which as docs says should only works with highest i9-13600H. 96GB Worked flawlessly on that lowest tier! Also, SFP+ ports are based on Intel X710 and has SR-IOV which allows to create up to 64 virtual network interfaces - great for virtualization - I think noone mentioned that ever! Apparently SR-IOV for Xe Graphics should also work but I haven't got it working. It looks like Alma Linux has older kernel which doesn't have drivers latest enough, so I'll be trying later with other distros or maybe just kernel recompiling. With all of that found, the deal is getting better and better each minute... 16-threads of pretty great processing power, 2x SFP+, 2x RJ45 2.5G, 500GB SSD and 96FB RAM for 4000zł (about 1000 USD / 930 EUR) is GREAT DEAL! I found X710 PCIe network cards for 1/4 of that! Unbelievable great deal! I'm supper happy and I got 3 of them :D This wll be great Kubernetes cluster (or maybe even OpenStack?)!
@@davidgoodnow269 all 3 running my VMs (via libvirt, no Proxmox) 24/7 attached to EATON UPS. No failures, no random reboots, no storage issues, everything works flawlessly. But they can get loud when there's something more going on (even bigger system updates), so I strongly recommend putting homelab with those in separate room. I'm living in an apartment so I put my rack right next to entrance door - also because that's where I have my fiber coming out of the wall. I didn't tested SFP yet, because I still didn't bought 10G SFP switch. Running on 2x 2.5G NICs with bonding configured on Linux. I have there my Kuberentes cluster, Gitlab, Grafana (dashboards, Mimir, Loki), and I also host there my trainings (I'm a trainer about GitLab and Kubernetes topics), and never had any issues spinning up hundreds/thousands Pods at the same time in a Training Kubernetes cluster... well - maybe except then I hear the computers from other room :D Overall I'm very happy with this purchase. Even tough I invested a lot into this setup, I feel I saved a lot on AWS/GCP because of workloads I am running.
Not practical for actual use but if you want to really stress/test Plex transcoding get a 4k HDR file and transcode it down to 240p or lower it will look like garbage but will stress the heck out of your GPU/APU.
I’m planning to move to a more standardized benchmark process when I can make the time to. In which case I want to test more practical and “synthetic” transcodes. Thanks for the input!
There's currently an option with the Intel i5-12450H for $419 with the early bird special, so it seems like they're open to testing different hardware in this model.
Yeah still prefer my N100 machine with 16GB ram and 512GB SSD that cost me $143. now that's bang/buck. Personally I don't see the point of high performance small computers, if you want performance you'll get more performance with a regular sized machine for the same money. Small performance systems will always be limited by the cooling solution. It's different at the lower end. The form factor really suits the N100, it's just SO good. I'm happy I bought one. The SFP ports are pretty rad though, quite unexpected in such a machine. with all those cores and using a M.2 to SATA adapter it would make for a sweet file server and/or proxmox box. BUT, if I wanted to build something like this I'd just buy some 2nd hand rack server dirt cheap, as you mentioned it's too big/heavy for VESA mounting. It just looks like a really odd hodge podge mix of features, more like a machine you'd use for industrial use.
Another excellent video. Interesting product, and seemingly pretty well targeted. I always enjoy your videos - in a world of shouty tech vids, your quiet and calm approach is a pleasant change. Keep up the good work!
Y'all just earned a sub. Really good overview of this system's build, capabilities, advantages and caveats! I just wish I had the money to throw out to get one. That would be such a great platform to make a home-based cloud setup.
Fortunately it wouldn’t be too hard to just mount them to a rack shelf. I imagine making a front plate would be fairly doable as well if you need it enclosed for airflow
Can you even rack mount top vented cases? Lenovos seem better for this, can tightly pack those in rack as it only draws air from the front and exhaust from the back
That was such a fun and interesting watch! I'm currently on the hunt for some ITX build ideas to put together for my mother, and you've got my noggin rollin'. Thanks a bunch!
While this particular device doesn't tick all the boxes for me it's pretty cool that minisforum is listening to all the people who have been asking for a device like this. I agree that making it that size is kind of a miss, but it's honestly not a bad first effort to iterate from for an 02 in the future.
First, great video and great analysis! I agree with your conclusions. This is a bit expensive at almost $1k, but you're getting a lot of bang for your buck! Having 3x M.2 slots and a PCIe slot to add more, it would make a good home server with a small virtualized high-speed NAS. Second, I didn't realize you had a video production background. BlackMagic should definitely make a half-height DeckLink card! It would make these mini PCs a fantastic option for churches or other small video production teams.
Thanks! And it’s primarily on the audio side, but I worked some with broadcast video. My previous job was overseeing church production, so that’s exactly what my brain went to haha
@@HardwareHaven oh, that's awesome!! Our church is a bit the smaller and more traditional, but I'm responsible for almost all IT-related parts. Sound, presentation, cameras, stream, Internet/network, security cameras..... Probably half of my "home lab" thoughts are about what I could use it for at church 😁
This is basically a server. For me, it's a Supermicro E300 comparison at half the cost. You can get 96 GB of DDR5 SODIMM for $250+ and a 2 TB WD Black M.2 for $130. If you buy the barebone i912, you can build a more powerful server for $1200, fully loaded, over a bare Supermicro E300 at $1700. The downside here is you get 6 real cores and 8 hybrid vs 8Cx16T. I'd pay the extra $200 for a Xeon in this thing. The network and M.2 make it worth it.
This is a great idea for a home lab server, small and has the connections you would want. I wanted a few more cores, so I went with the MinisForum BD790i and a Mellanox 10G SFP+ card and two NVMe's for storage. I like this mini itx board and using it's 16core/32thread CPU for Virtual Machine host. Good video as well! Thanks!
I'm interested in Aranet's cloudless design. According to some info I googled, they support SNMP in their Pro series. I would love to see how to set it up for self hosted environment monitoring. Linking it to Grafana or something would be awesome.
Every. Fcking. Day. 140 new videos like this are uploaded to RUclips. Each one Telling how THIS mini pc is the best perfect marvelous wonderful server.
the market moves incredibly fast, but *this* one literally is a fantastic lab machine. it's like Minisforum actually listened to people, bizarre as that sounds.
and have you bougth the fking 140 mini pcs to put them as servers? that would be a great topic for a channel, this dammmm server, ir this fking mini server i would subscribe expecting to see those reviews
Or they could just build a taller case.. lol I DO want to get into 3D printing for exactly this type of thing though. A far as using a riser goes, at that point you clearly don't need the form factor so just build something you want.
I would have loved to have a machine like this with an I3, or even a pentium, to serve as a router, with the 2 10Gig SFP and 2.5G Base-T network ports Sadly, they only are I9 versions
Yeah I also wish there were some lower end versions. Maybe down the road... For what you're looking for, maybe something like this? ruclips.net/video/AKUTzjA1grE/видео.htmlsi=UrrHqaY8mUNKj4Y6
I can't say anything about the hardware itself because I am still waiting for my order, but If I knew about the long shipping times I would never order the MS-01! At first there were some delays because of chinese new year hollidays, now it seems there are some problems with the power supply at the factory. I'm not sure if to believe anything Minisforum says at this moment Be aware, since they charge you the full amount on day one of your order and you wait MONTHS for the order to arrive.
True. New mini computer should 100% stop you getting sick for sure. Hope you bought it (for the sake of your health) and that you are feeling much better after a month. All the best :).
I almost wish the U.2 carrier board forced the switch to be in one position just by design. Then have a spring loaded switch so that it defaults to M.2 voltage unless the carriage is in place.
It’s very interesting to consider a NAS HBA project using the PCIe Expansion Card 01AJ940 and a SAS PCIe external controller. How many drives can be managed when upgrading to the maximum memory and processor capacity?
I've cut my case so my double slot GPU heat sink and fans stick out. Looks like a super charged V8. But the motherboard wasn't gaming capable and burnt up. Now I have a msi trident x plus.. now that is a sff power house! All OEM and silent air cooling design
Use these as packet capture appliances thanks to the dual 10gb sfp+ and the ability to put a 7450 max 1.6tb ssd U.2 drive that can do 3DWPD. Crazy they designed something like this perfect for a sensor use.
You ALREADY PAYED royalties for CODECS inside of a CPU. So why not use them ? AV1 is only pushed because silicon valley does not want to pay royalties to europe for HEVC....
@@Jamey_ETHZurich_TUe_Rulez Or maybe they just want to use that codec. I've noticed that it provides the best image quality for my recordings compared to hevc and has quite good performance.
Were you able to test with powertop by chance? As I understand it, most Miniforum computers don't have the bios settings necessary to reach low power states. Perhaps that's why it idled at 14w.
WRT your suggestion at 17:35: Be aware, that the Nvidia RTC4000SFF GPU has a PCI-16 interface; the Minisforum MS-01's PCI slot is Gen4, Eight-Lane, so 1/2 throughput.
that is an interesting Mini PC as usual, your videos are well produced and its a great video. If you need someone to do independent testing on that device, i would be happy to help.. lol
Love the inclusion of a Rocket League benchmark. That is my go-to game (yes, i'm a simple man :P) As for Meshcommander/Meshcentral, one thing to note is that the main developer of this project has been laidoff in late 2022 at Intel, and maintaining Meshcentral WAS his main duty at Intel. Now he was hired at Microsoft shortly after, but Meshcentral is in maintenance mode (there has been a few bugfixes over the last year) but is still in control by that same developer.
@@HardwareHaven I couldn't say about MeshCOMMANDER specifically, as I don't use this part. However, for MeshCENTRAL, there are two "competing" meshcentral docker images made by the community, that are still maintained, with a corresponding github project page each (under the name "meshcentral-docker" for both). One is made by Github user gurucomputing (that produces automatically a new docker image when the upstream releases a new build), another by Github user Typhonragewind (which, it looks like, is a wrapper around the the original NPM project from meshcentral). Hope it helps!
I just thought, however, that specifying that Intel axed the main Meshcentral developer should give you an unofficial reason why things has been more slow for the last year or so. :|
I ordered a barebone unit (i9-12900h) last week. My goal, once I outfit it with 64GB of memory and two 2TB NVME drives (Raid 1) and hook it to my Trendnet 10 port switch (which includes two SPF+ ports & eight 2.5Gb ports), is to use it to teach me about Windows server management.
@@HardwareHaven Thanks. I’m hoping to pair it with an Asustor Flashstor 12 Pro (since it also comes equipped with a SPF+ port) and a new roll of CAT6 cable.
@@HardwareHaven Thanks! I was pleasantly surprised I was able to establish 2.5Gbps connection speeds using my existing CAT5E cabling and an inexpensive TP-Link NIC, although I still plan on upgrading to CAT6.
Looking at the comparison of i9-12900h vs i9-13900h, I'd select the 12900h version since the 13900h is a small increase in performance for $130 more. Passmark wise its 28412 (i9-12900h vs 29570 (i9-13900h) or or approximately 4% difference. just my observation on value
Well, there is also a difference in supported RAM. The 12900H supports up to 64G while the 13900H up to 96G. If you need the extra RAM for the VMs then the extra 32GB can make a difference. Servethehome video shows they added 96GB and it worked fine.
@@zag1964 the 13900h was tested with 96gb. I don't see anyone that tested the 12900h unit with 96gb unless I missed it. If 96gb is a need then you are correct the 13900h has that differentiation and would be a better choice if the added ram is needed
@@Tech_for_the_busy_Exec the CPU literature shows that it's a built in limitation of the CPU but you are right until someone tests it it's not for sure
Nice video. Now what I am gonna say is not related to the subject of the video. You could rotate the DELL monitor so the logo is on the left side. It will look much better in your setup.
The DaVinci resolve disparity is likely because the free version does not support hardware codec. So, the quicksync capability was not being used in that test (but nvenc was). Would love to see a transcode speed battle between the two. Also, your color grading is CUDA accelerated (no Intel equivalent). So nvidia wins here no doubt.
I really want one. I'll probably wait a few years though until the price has come down a few hundred bucks and then use it as an awesome little server PC.
The thing I hate about small form factor systems is the severe lack of expandability. I have one of those Lenovo systems that I had hoped to transfer to a bigger case and add a better power supply so that I could put in a decent graphics card. Of course they used a proprietary front panel connector that sits right behind the PCI-x16 slot, so if the card is too long, it will block that connector.
Would you recommend that pc for music production and very light video editing. I'm using Cubase 13 and Sony Vegas pro 22. For Vegas, I'd put (at most) 5 videos and rendered to one video (Brady bunch style). Thanks in advance bud!
If you have a graphics card lying around and a PCI-E Riser, how about you test a high end graphics card with it? could be interesting to see that 8x pci slot performance.
Honestly if they made this full width and a proper 1U short depth, it'd fly off the shelves (pardon the pun). If they made that deeper and 4LFF drives it would be the perfect homelab. 2xSPF+, Quicksync, 4LFF + 3 M.2 would be crazy in 1U
I am missing the PCIe4 M2 slots (so can use the U2 AND 2x M2 with PCIe4 x4), for the rest it is a perfect box (and yes, I want 4 of them). And you can get about 6 of them in a 2U rackspace; I don't need to see the frontplate so you can use a sliding shelve.
While n100 is definitely weak while the the i9 in that Mini PC is probably way overkill for home server. I feel like the sweet spot would be i3-N305, best balance between power and performance. Now if only the Aliexpress sellers could change the JMB585 in their i3 N305 mobo with AsMedia card so it can reach better C state, I would buy that board. This mini PC would definitely be a great candidate for All In One, a very popular method mostly in Asian countries where people use a single PC and run Proxmox and PC serve as NAS, soft router, media server and sometimes even HTPC combined.
You realize the N305 only has 9 lanes of PCIe Gen 3 right? It wouldn't be able to have the 3 NVMe slots, not to mention the multitude of NICs, TB, etc.. I do wish they had this in a lower spec and hope they do down the road. If not that's a bummer.
Not overkill for a packet capture appliance especially for a box that offers 2 10gb sfps+ I can hook them up to switch span ports using SR Fibre SFPs. Its a great product and never expected to find something like this.
Man if they made a little bigger to fit the A2000 or A4000(Ada version) sff versions and made the PCIE slot to be x16 instead of x8 that would've been awesome. It would've been a little worstation beast.
With the diversity in the network connectivity embedded and unless you really need the PCIE for graphics, I'd use the PCIS to add 2 additional NVMe drives.
Well, I ordered one of Miniforum’s barebone MS-01 systems (based on the i9-12900H) on January 13, 2024. Given the website’s very clear warning, I thought it wouldn’t ship until March 29th. To my very pleasant surprise, however, it arrived today (January 24, 2024)! Now I have to scramble to pick up some memory and NVMEs!
Just a question from someone new to pc builds….would this mini pc + a rtf a2000 a good first pc for design and 3d modeling(solidworks, fusion 360, etc)???
If you still have this MS-01, what are you doing with it? Running some VM's? or something else. I really want one of these but I really don't need one of these but I can get rid of a full size desktop computer is 6 years old and I am sure not power efficient.
So maybe wait for the MS-02? I would love to see someone put it through it's paces as an AIO Proxmox server. virtualized pfsense/opnsense firewall, virtualized TruNAS with a passthrough 4 slot pcie nvme card. graphics passthrough for a Plex server. Maxed out with 96gb RAM. I want to be able to sell around 3 hardware devices in my house and replace it with this one...then, it would be worth it. If it can't be done, please let us know!
I know everyone says this is a workstation but this is a really nice gaming system with nice storage features great networking. The half height single slot gpu is really only downside with a2000 being like your only real choice.
It doesn't ship until March 15th if you take their word for it. I'm trying very hard to find a compact chassis or mini pc that can fit a single slot full height pcie card. This could work for that with a riser cable and some improvised mounting, but I'd rather have a high core count ryzen with a better igpu and I don't need all the networking. That coupled with the March ship date and that this isn't the final revision of the product makes this a pass for, especially at a higher price.
good review .......as some one that has worked it IT. for 30 yrs as a tech.......you my friend are most certainly an "IT. guy" you may not do it for a living. However, I have watched enough of your channel to know that you could definitely get a job in IT. assuming you have certs.
i donno if you give a crap still , but the answer is, bridge is normally gonna throttle at 1gb the virtio to virtio is not even a real network, its a fake network basically copy paste from the drive to the same drive. (in your case) if you use mtu 9000 that does not always work you also have to set that in proxmox windows linux and the switch to make this work properly. but what do i know.
Just want to say thanks for adding what I assume was voice corrections ("280") rather than popup graphics. For those hard of sight it makes for an easier experience. Thank you good sir. 👍
Agreed! I tend to listen to these video's mostly and don't look at the screen all the time. A subtle sound effenct when a correction graphic is displayed might be a good alternative, without reshooting the whole shot. Thanks for the content!
@@RoozenB or just dub in a recording like he did, it was good enough for Godzilla
My big problem with this kind of design is that it only supports 1 slot half height PCIe cards. If it was 2 slot, I'd be more than willing to pay that price for one. Bonus being I could turn it into a multi-task server, with max TDP of just an enterprise CPU.
There are other options for SFF that contain 2-slot configurations. single slot or half-height single slots are so rare now adays especially for those that are looking for an extremely compact system that still allows for PCI-E options.
@@Daxiongmao87 Eh, fair point. I did look into SFF cases in general out of boredom, but 3L/4L w/ GPU are either not restocked or hard to find... It seems. Oh well. I'm not in rush.
@@wojtek-33Cheers on directing me towards that one, I'll keep it in mind
@@wojtek-33 Right, thanks again
It may be an incomplete product, but there's nothing technically preventing you from casemodding a PCI-e riser or using an PCIe OCuLink card.
Important note for anyone who considering putting a U.2 drive in this system:
The height of the U.2 drive must not exceed 7mm, which excludes some of the most popular U.2 drives on the market, such as Kioxia CD6, WD SN640, or Samsung PM1733/1735, which are all 15mm drives.
I saw this machine but still got myself a Think Station P3 tiny. I chose an ES motherboard so that I got 3 M.2 slots. I paired the P3 tint with the i5-12400 and it was 1/3 cheaper than the MS-01 with the 12900H option.
There seemed to be an i5-12450h option with the MS-01, but it is not available and we don't know when they will start selling this option. I don't really like the i9 CPU that MS-01 provides right now because I don't want to stretch the cooling system too far.
I did see the appeal of the dual 10G NIC but for someone who doesn't really need it, it is a piece of hardware that consumes power and does nothing. On the other hand, I can add USB type A, DP, HDMI, or TypeC with video and charging to the Tiny via expansion modules, which makes it very flexible. However, doing this does sacrifice the PCIE cutout.
It is also more difficult to install PCIE cards sideways compared to Tiny's riser approach. At least it doesn't require a special PCIE bracket though.
All in all, I think both MS-01 and P3 Tiny are both nice SFF machines. It really comes down to whether you prefer the dual 10G SFP port and the USB4 port, (Yes, it is USB4 rather than Thunderbolt, although they are functionally the same.) or more flexibility.
I will also provide a quick technical comparison here for anyone interested:
P3 Tiny |VS| MS-01
form factor: Standard size |VS| A bit larger than Standard size. (Matters if you want to put it in a server rack.)
CPU: Any CPU from Intel 12,13 and 14GEN |VS| 13900H,12900H, or 12450H. (12450H not available yet.)
iGPU: MS-01 is always better as mobile chips always get better iGPU compared to their desktop counterpart.
NIC: i219-LM 1Gx1 |VS| i226v 2.5G + i226LM 2.5G +x710 10Gx2. (Both machines can support vPRO.)
PCIE: Gen4/5 x8 |VS| Gen4/5 x8. (Gen5 is available on 13th Gen CPUs.)
PCIE specific: Need custom PCIE bracket |VS| Difficult to install and uninstall.
USB Expansion: 4x10G type A + 2x5G type A + 1x10G type C |VS| 3x10G type A + 2x 480 M(2.0) type A + 2x40G USB4. (Tiny can expend 4x 5G type A or 1x10G type C with Video and charging expansion module, by giving up the PCIE cutout.)
Video Expansion: DP1.4 + HDMI 2.0 |VS| HDMI 2.0 + 2xUSB4. (Tiny can expend 2xDP, 2xHDMI, or 2xTypeC DPalt via the expansion module, by giving up the PCIE cutout.)
Storage Expansion: 2xM.2 |VS| 2xM.2 + 1x M.2/U.2. (Tiny get 3xM.2 on the ES motherboard)
I really appreciate your personal, practical take on this and the in depth look. It may be in a different class than some of the systems that you often review but it can also do a lot more. Thank you!
Thanks!
Taking 2u when in a rack is rough. Adjusting the case to take 1u and possibly some airflow adjustments would be great. Could market it as a bastion/utility server.
maybe it could be transplanted into 1u?
i was thinking about running 3 of them vertically, next to some other > 1u machine i already have on a shelf
Unless racks have gone through recent drastic change, you could double (or even TRIPLE) the depth of this case. That might even make it easier to fit a rear mounting bracket, to hold the weight.
Plus, if you place it on a sliding tray, the tray takes up another 1U of rack space anyway.
double 2 u is more realistic. Mikrotik has a range of 2u half width that can snap together into the same 2u mounting brackets
I bought 3d printed rack mount - 3U for 4 units. Sure you still loose some space, but less is lost and it's actually hold pretty nice! Found it at Hive Tech Solutions from Australia which they sent me to Poland... took a while and actually cost a lot. I don't think I'll ever buy from them again - they (both "they" as people and "they" as device) were great but it's too expensive. With price being 1/6 of 3D printer, I would rather buy a printer and learn how to use it because it'll be useful later in my life.
This is the second video I've watched of yours and I really like how you edit the audio for mistakes instead of just showing it on screen. I like to play BeamNG when I'm watching RUclips and I'll miss the on screen corrections on channels like LTT and GN and etc.
I like that you included the comparison with the N100 since this gives me a good idea of the performance difference to expect for devices with a similar form factor.
He said "I don't mind burning bridges with companies that send me bad products!" 😂 +1
I actually bought this air quality sensor a few months ago and immediately integrated it into home assistant. It's great for letting me know when the CO2 levels are getting to high.
wich air sensor?
@@nickgames1892the one he talked about in the beginning of the video
@@nickgames1892 Tell me you didn't watch the ad spot with saying you didn't watch the ad spot.
@@camerontgore yeah you right.
Finanly got 3 of them today!
I ordered lowest tier with i5-12600H and I tried to fill it with 96GB which as docs says should only works with highest i9-13600H. 96GB Worked flawlessly on that lowest tier! Also, SFP+ ports are based on Intel X710 and has SR-IOV which allows to create up to 64 virtual network interfaces - great for virtualization - I think noone mentioned that ever! Apparently SR-IOV for Xe Graphics should also work but I haven't got it working. It looks like Alma Linux has older kernel which doesn't have drivers latest enough, so I'll be trying later with other distros or maybe just kernel recompiling. With all of that found, the deal is getting better and better each minute...
16-threads of pretty great processing power, 2x SFP+, 2x RJ45 2.5G, 500GB SSD and 96FB RAM for 4000zł (about 1000 USD / 930 EUR) is GREAT DEAL! I found X710 PCIe network cards for 1/4 of that! Unbelievable great deal! I'm supper happy and I got 3 of them :D
This wll be great Kubernetes cluster (or maybe even OpenStack?)!
I'm just seeing this five months after your comment on this video, how's your experience at this point?
@@davidgoodnow269 all 3 running my VMs (via libvirt, no Proxmox) 24/7 attached to EATON UPS.
No failures, no random reboots, no storage issues, everything works flawlessly. But they can get loud when there's something more going on (even bigger system updates), so I strongly recommend putting homelab with those in separate room. I'm living in an apartment so I put my rack right next to entrance door - also because that's where I have my fiber coming out of the wall.
I didn't tested SFP yet, because I still didn't bought 10G SFP switch. Running on 2x 2.5G NICs with bonding configured on Linux.
I have there my Kuberentes cluster, Gitlab, Grafana (dashboards, Mimir, Loki), and I also host there my trainings (I'm a trainer about GitLab and Kubernetes topics), and never had any issues spinning up hundreds/thousands Pods at the same time in a Training Kubernetes cluster... well - maybe except then I hear the computers from other room :D
Overall I'm very happy with this purchase. Even tough I invested a lot into this setup, I feel I saved a lot on AWS/GCP because of workloads I am running.
im interested as well to know your experience
@@verosmuhamed1053 I replied with long comment… but YT just hates me and hides many my comments, so… this is worst social platform ever!
Your custom sound tracks are my one of favorite parts of your videos. Hoping we can get a mixtape on Spotify to add to my playlist.
Maybe one day!
Not practical for actual use but if you want to really stress/test Plex transcoding get a 4k HDR file and transcode it down to 240p or lower it will look like garbage but will stress the heck out of your GPU/APU.
I’m planning to move to a more standardized benchmark process when I can make the time to. In which case I want to test more practical and “synthetic” transcodes. Thanks for the input!
Really hope they do a few more models similar to this, perhaps with i7 or lower power CPU
There's currently an option with the Intel i5-12450H for $419 with the early bird special, so it seems like they're open to testing different hardware in this model.
Yeah still prefer my N100 machine with 16GB ram and 512GB SSD that cost me $143. now that's bang/buck. Personally I don't see the point of high performance small computers, if you want performance you'll get more performance with a regular sized machine for the same money. Small performance systems will always be limited by the cooling solution. It's different at the lower end. The form factor really suits the N100, it's just SO good. I'm happy I bought one. The SFP ports are pretty rad though, quite unexpected in such a machine. with all those cores and using a M.2 to SATA adapter it would make for a sweet file server and/or proxmox box. BUT, if I wanted to build something like this I'd just buy some 2nd hand rack server dirt cheap, as you mentioned it's too big/heavy for VESA mounting. It just looks like a really odd hodge podge mix of features, more like a machine you'd use for industrial use.
Interested in trying GEEKOM mini PCs?😉
Hi geekom :D
No
I love my Aranet! Unexpected but nice to see that they’ve sponsored you, first time I’ve seen them do a sponsorship
Theyre very expensive though...
Another excellent video. Interesting product, and seemingly pretty well targeted.
I always enjoy your videos - in a world of shouty tech vids, your quiet and calm approach is a pleasant change. Keep up the good work!
Thanks!
Y'all just earned a sub. Really good overview of this system's build, capabilities, advantages and caveats! I just wish I had the money to throw out to get one. That would be such a great platform to make a home-based cloud setup.
I would love to see someone get iGPU passthrough to work to a Proxmox VM (Linux guest) so the PCIe slot could be used for extra M.2 storage.
@@manitoba-op4jx Thanks for the suggestion, but I want full iGPU passthrough for a 24/7 Linux desktop.
Great point on the height. Would love to see a rackmount version of this
Fortunately it wouldn’t be too hard to just mount them to a rack shelf. I imagine making a front plate would be fairly doable as well if you need it enclosed for airflow
Can you even rack mount top vented cases? Lenovos seem better for this, can tightly pack those in rack as it only draws air from the front and exhaust from the back
That was such a fun and interesting watch! I'm currently on the hunt for some ITX build ideas to put together for my mother, and you've got my noggin rollin'. Thanks a bunch!
While this particular device doesn't tick all the boxes for me it's pretty cool that minisforum is listening to all the people who have been asking for a device like this. I agree that making it that size is kind of a miss, but it's honestly not a bad first effort to iterate from for an 02 in the future.
I wouldn't mind 4 of these, in a cluster for ESXi or Proxmox. Dual 10G means having a separate NAS, ah it would be the perfect setup.
First, great video and great analysis! I agree with your conclusions. This is a bit expensive at almost $1k, but you're getting a lot of bang for your buck! Having 3x M.2 slots and a PCIe slot to add more, it would make a good home server with a small virtualized high-speed NAS.
Second, I didn't realize you had a video production background. BlackMagic should definitely make a half-height DeckLink card! It would make these mini PCs a fantastic option for churches or other small video production teams.
Thanks! And it’s primarily on the audio side, but I worked some with broadcast video. My previous job was overseeing church production, so that’s exactly what my brain went to haha
@@HardwareHaven oh, that's awesome!! Our church is a bit the smaller and more traditional, but I'm responsible for almost all IT-related parts. Sound, presentation, cameras, stream, Internet/network, security cameras..... Probably half of my "home lab" thoughts are about what I could use it for at church 😁
This is basically a server. For me, it's a Supermicro E300 comparison at half the cost.
You can get 96 GB of DDR5 SODIMM for $250+ and a 2 TB WD Black M.2 for $130. If you buy the barebone i912, you can build a more powerful server for $1200, fully loaded, over a bare Supermicro E300 at $1700. The downside here is you get 6 real cores and 8 hybrid vs 8Cx16T.
I'd pay the extra $200 for a Xeon in this thing. The network and M.2 make it worth it.
I know what to get your for Christmas now 😁
Another Netgear NAS???
This is a great idea for a home lab server, small and has the connections you would want. I wanted a few more cores, so I went with the MinisForum BD790i and a Mellanox 10G SFP+ card and two NVMe's for storage. I like this mini itx board and using it's 16core/32thread CPU for Virtual Machine host. Good video as well! Thanks!
I wish the ARM processors were as powerful. I have a 1200 Watt power supply and do not want to go bigger!
Reminds me of the Thinkstation Tiny's from Lenovo, those also have a PCIe slot in a 1L package
model with a bunch of M.2 on x2, 1x SFP+, 1x RJ45 NIC, no PCI-E slot, slimmed down, maximizing the number of NVMe drives would be super cool as well.
I'm interested in Aranet's cloudless design. According to some info I googled, they support SNMP in their Pro series. I would love to see how to set it up for self hosted environment monitoring. Linking it to Grafana or something would be awesome.
Every. Fcking. Day. 140 new videos like this are uploaded to RUclips. Each one Telling how THIS mini pc is the best perfect marvelous wonderful server.
the market moves incredibly fast, but *this* one literally is a fantastic lab machine. it's like Minisforum actually listened to people, bizarre as that sounds.
and have you bougth the fking 140 mini pcs to put them as servers?
that would be a great topic for a channel, this dammmm server, ir this fking mini server
i would subscribe expecting to see those reviews
Since the internals slide out easily maybe you could just 3D print a taller shell for a double height card.
Exactly, or you can just use 90 d angle riser card or just ribbon type extender...
Or they could just build a taller case.. lol
I DO want to get into 3D printing for exactly this type of thing though. A far as using a riser goes, at that point you clearly don't need the form factor so just build something you want.
I would have loved to have a machine like this with an I3, or even a pentium, to serve as a router, with the 2 10Gig SFP and 2.5G Base-T network ports
Sadly, they only are I9 versions
Yeah I also wish there were some lower end versions. Maybe down the road...
For what you're looking for, maybe something like this? ruclips.net/video/AKUTzjA1grE/видео.htmlsi=UrrHqaY8mUNKj4Y6
I can't say anything about the hardware itself because I am still waiting for my order, but If I knew about the long shipping times I would never order the MS-01!
At first there were some delays because of chinese new year hollidays, now it seems there are some problems with the power supply at the factory.
I'm not sure if to believe anything Minisforum says at this moment
Be aware, since they charge you the full amount on day one of your order and you wait MONTHS for the order to arrive.
Perfect add, thank you I’ll probably buy one. I’ve been getting sick recently. For real maybe it’s the air.
True. New mini computer should 100% stop you getting sick for sure.
Hope you bought it (for the sake of your health) and that you are feeling much better after a month. All the best :).
@@funbucket09 lmao!
Best add i saw in 2 decades that Aranet is mind blowing i did not knew something like this exist
wish they’d make a PCB that could be in a typical PC case and a rack mount enviroment so it could be used as a NAS.
I almost wish the U.2 carrier board forced the switch to be in one position just by design. Then have a spring loaded switch so that it defaults to M.2 voltage unless the carriage is in place.
I think that’s roughly what they did in the final design
It’s very interesting to consider a NAS HBA project using the PCIe Expansion Card 01AJ940 and a SAS PCIe external controller. How many drives can be managed when upgrading to the maximum memory and processor capacity?
Next version Minisforum MS-A1 is also good. It has a replaceable processor on AM5, but lacks a PCI slot. However, it has an Oculink port.
I've cut my case so my double slot GPU heat sink and fans stick out. Looks like a super charged V8. But the motherboard wasn't gaming capable and burnt up.
Now I have a msi trident x plus.. now that is a sff power house! All OEM and silent air cooling design
it's upsetting just how much better that thing is compared to my main m-atx pc
Use these as packet capture appliances thanks to the dual 10gb sfp+ and the ability to put a 7450 max 1.6tb ssd U.2 drive that can do 3DWPD. Crazy they designed something like this perfect for a sensor use.
0:24 this what i came for
It could be interesting to check if there's any arc A310 that could fit in hit so you could do AV1 encoding in a very small home server.
Sparkle has an A310 Eco that should fit. Encode on those cards is a beast but don't count on them for lots of render power.
You ALREADY PAYED royalties for CODECS inside of a CPU. So why not use them ? AV1 is only pushed because silicon valley does not want to pay royalties to europe for HEVC....
@@Jamey_ETHZurich_TUe_Rulez Or maybe they just want to use that codec. I've noticed that it provides the best image quality for my recordings compared to hevc and has quite good performance.
@@Jamey_ETHZurich_TUe_Rulez I don't want to pay royalties to Europe, either!
@@DigitalJedi Netflix is not doing what youre doing.
External sas card and your golden for jelly fin. This is a neat mini
Great professional review, I gained alot of info. Thank you!
Were you able to test with powertop by chance? As I understand it, most Miniforum computers don't have the bios settings necessary to reach low power states. Perhaps that's why it idled at 14w.
WRT your suggestion at 17:35: Be aware, that the Nvidia RTC4000SFF GPU has a PCI-16 interface; the Minisforum MS-01's PCI slot is Gen4, Eight-Lane, so 1/2 throughput.
that is an interesting Mini PC as usual, your videos are well produced and its a great video. If you need someone to do independent testing on that device, i would be happy to help.. lol
Thanks Johnny! And you'll have to ask REALLY nicely. lol
I still cannot decide on buying this because the pcie slot doesn't support full x16 bandwidth, only x8...
Love the inclusion of a Rocket League benchmark. That is my go-to game (yes, i'm a simple man :P)
As for Meshcommander/Meshcentral, one thing to note is that the main developer of this project has been laidoff in late 2022 at Intel, and maintaining Meshcentral WAS his main duty at Intel. Now he was hired at Microsoft shortly after, but Meshcentral is in maintenance mode (there has been a few bugfixes over the last year) but is still in control by that same developer.
Hmmm... is there any word on when/if there will be a download available again?
@@HardwareHaven I couldn't say about MeshCOMMANDER specifically, as I don't use this part. However, for MeshCENTRAL, there are two "competing" meshcentral docker images made by the community, that are still maintained, with a corresponding github project page each (under the name "meshcentral-docker" for both). One is made by Github user gurucomputing (that produces automatically a new docker image when the upstream releases a new build), another by Github user Typhonragewind (which, it looks like, is a wrapper around the the original NPM project from meshcentral). Hope it helps!
I just thought, however, that specifying that Intel axed the main Meshcentral developer should give you an unofficial reason why things has been more slow for the last year or so. :|
I ordered a barebone unit (i9-12900h) last week. My goal, once I outfit it with 64GB of memory and two 2TB NVME drives (Raid 1) and hook it to my Trendnet 10 port switch (which includes two SPF+ ports & eight 2.5Gb ports), is to use it to teach me about Windows server management.
Good luck with it!
@@HardwareHaven Thanks. I’m hoping to pair it with an Asustor Flashstor 12 Pro (since it also comes equipped with a SPF+ port) and a new roll of CAT6 cable.
That sounds like a pretty sick setup!
@@HardwareHaven Thanks! I was pleasantly surprised I was able to establish 2.5Gbps connection speeds using my existing CAT5E cabling and an inexpensive TP-Link NIC, although I still plan on upgrading to CAT6.
0:40 I DO! Great little sensor.
Thanks for giving your personal thoughts on the MS-01. I wonder if Minisforum will come out with some enhancements soon. I’m in need of a new PC.
Looking at the comparison of i9-12900h vs i9-13900h, I'd select the 12900h version since the 13900h is a small increase in performance for $130 more. Passmark wise its 28412 (i9-12900h vs 29570 (i9-13900h) or or approximately 4% difference. just my observation on value
to me, this is why i ordered the 12900
Well, there is also a difference in supported RAM. The 12900H supports up to 64G while the 13900H up to 96G. If you need the extra RAM for the VMs then the extra 32GB can make a difference. Servethehome video shows they added 96GB and it worked fine.
@@zag1964 the 13900h was tested with 96gb. I don't see anyone that tested the 12900h unit with 96gb unless I missed it. If 96gb is a need then you are correct the 13900h has that differentiation and would be a better choice if the added ram is needed
@@Tech_for_the_busy_Exec the CPU literature shows that it's a built in limitation of the CPU but you are right until someone tests it it's not for sure
Nice video. Now what I am gonna say is not related to the subject of the video. You could rotate the DELL monitor so the logo is on the left side. It will look much better in your setup.
The DaVinci resolve disparity is likely because the free version does not support hardware codec. So, the quicksync capability was not being used in that test (but nvenc was). Would love to see a transcode speed battle between the two.
Also, your color grading is CUDA accelerated (no Intel equivalent). So nvidia wins here no doubt.
I really want one. I'll probably wait a few years though until the price has come down a few hundred bucks and then use it as an awesome little server PC.
Yeah these will be awesome a few years down the road
The thing I hate about small form factor systems is the severe lack of expandability.
I have one of those Lenovo systems that I had hoped to transfer to a bigger case and add a better power supply so that I could put in a decent graphics card. Of course they used a proprietary front panel connector that sits right behind the PCI-x16 slot, so if the card is too long, it will block that connector.
Would you recommend that pc for music production and very light video editing.
I'm using Cubase 13 and Sony Vegas pro 22. For Vegas, I'd put (at most) 5 videos and rendered to one video (Brady bunch style).
Thanks in advance bud!
If you have a graphics card lying around and a PCI-E Riser, how about you test a high end graphics card with it? could be interesting to see that 8x pci slot performance.
I'll wait for this to release on amazon and will use Affirm of course ;)
Honestly if they made this full width and a proper 1U short depth, it'd fly off the shelves (pardon the pun). If they made that deeper and 4LFF drives it would be the perfect homelab. 2xSPF+, Quicksync, 4LFF + 3 M.2 would be crazy in 1U
I am missing the PCIe4 M2 slots (so can use the U2 AND 2x M2 with PCIe4 x4), for the rest it is a perfect box (and yes, I want 4 of them). And you can get about 6 of them in a 2U rackspace; I don't need to see the frontplate so you can use a sliding shelve.
While n100 is definitely weak while the the i9 in that Mini PC is probably way overkill for home server. I feel like the sweet spot would be i3-N305, best balance between power and performance. Now if only the Aliexpress sellers could change the JMB585 in their i3 N305 mobo with AsMedia card so it can reach better C state, I would buy that board. This mini PC would definitely be a great candidate for All In One, a very popular method mostly in Asian countries where people use a single PC and run Proxmox and PC serve as NAS, soft router, media server and sometimes even HTPC combined.
You realize the N305 only has 9 lanes of PCIe Gen 3 right? It wouldn't be able to have the 3 NVMe slots, not to mention the multitude of NICs, TB, etc..
I do wish they had this in a lower spec and hope they do down the road. If not that's a bummer.
@@HardwareHaven oops I did not take PCIe lanes into consideration, there are definitely gaps to be filled between low power N100 and this mini PC
Not overkill for a packet capture appliance especially for a box that offers 2 10gb sfps+ I can hook them up to switch span ports using SR Fibre SFPs. Its a great product and never expected to find something like this.
I'm surprised this doesn't have rack mount capabilities, I could see 2 on a 1U shelf or 1 with a special rackmount adapter being pretty useful
Great exclusive access disclaimer! @2:00
Man if they made a little bigger to fit the A2000 or A4000(Ada version) sff versions and made the PCIE slot to be x16 instead of x8 that would've been awesome. It would've been a little worstation beast.
It support A2000, but you need to change cooler for 1 slot. There are conversion kits for $80
it would be a good render station when we put Intel Arc A380 LP
As an Air Quality Specialist I recommend having device like the Aranet4
You can build your own 2u rack mount case with similar specs for basically the same price without being tied to proprietary case, fan, etc.
With the diversity in the network connectivity embedded and unless you really need the PCIE for graphics, I'd use the PCIS to add 2 additional NVMe drives.
I don't like when mini PCs don't take up specifically 1u or specifically 2u. Form factor isn't everything, but is something I seriously consider.
Hey that Arenet device is 20$ cheaper on Amazon.
I wonder how this would compare to the Beelink SER8…
Great video!
4:56 bridge status:
BURNED
just a heads up for those interested: there's now an i5 version available barebones for $419(!). I have three on order.
I just got this the cooling leaves something to be desired but being to able to use a server ssd card and 3x m.2 is great
Nice thing for diy-router. With DPDK it could route 10GE at wire speed with NAT, I think.
I reconized that 4 port NIC. its the NIC! I returned mine.
Note: The MS-01 does not come with memory and HD. You do have to choose the option to include it at an additional cost.
ServeTheHome had the same U.2/M.2 switch... yeah, that's a long-term dealbreaker.
Low that you post current draw, amazing. Looking at that for amateur radio use cases.
This is basically a laptop mobo without the external aceesories. So awesome! But I prefer Ryzen, they are just better and thougher!!
Well, I ordered one of Miniforum’s barebone MS-01 systems (based on the i9-12900H) on January 13, 2024. Given the website’s very clear warning, I thought it wouldn’t ship until March 29th. To my very pleasant surprise, however, it arrived today (January 24, 2024)! Now I have to scramble to pick up some memory and NVMEs!
I need several of these.. I'll figure out why later. 😂
Nice machine. I would like to see a cheaper version that drops the sfp, and adds a forth m.2.
Im using ssds for everything moving forward
Just a question from someone new to pc builds….would this mini pc + a rtf a2000 a good first pc for design and 3d modeling(solidworks, fusion 360, etc)???
If you still have this MS-01, what are you doing with it? Running some VM's? or something else. I really want one of these but I really don't need one of these but I can get rid of a full size desktop computer is 6 years old and I am sure not power efficient.
idea: put it in a suitcase with a monitor, keyboard and some kind of mouse
I want something just like this but as a computer for just handling streaming/recording. would be awesome.
So maybe wait for the MS-02? I would love to see someone put it through it's paces as an AIO Proxmox server. virtualized pfsense/opnsense firewall, virtualized TruNAS with a passthrough 4 slot pcie nvme card. graphics passthrough for a Plex server. Maxed out with 96gb RAM. I want to be able to sell around 3 hardware devices in my house and replace it with this one...then, it would be worth it. If it can't be done, please let us know!
Did you try and test one of the USB4 ports for an external graphics card?
I know everyone says this is a workstation but this is a really nice gaming system with nice storage features great networking. The half height single slot gpu is really only downside with a2000 being like your only real choice.
It doesn't ship until March 15th if you take their word for it. I'm trying very hard to find a compact chassis or mini pc that can fit a single slot full height pcie card. This could work for that with a riser cable and some improvised mounting, but I'd rather have a high core count ryzen with a better igpu and I don't need all the networking. That coupled with the March ship date and that this isn't the final revision of the product makes this a pass for, especially at a higher price.
His settings are for installing network cards or hard disk expansion cards rather than high-power GPUs.
What is the lowest power possible CPU that can transcode (>60fps) 4k HDR with tonemapping in Jellyfin?
good review .......as some one that has worked it IT. for 30 yrs as a tech.......you my friend are most certainly an "IT. guy" you may not do it for a living. However, I have watched enough of your channel to know that you could definitely get a job in IT. assuming you have certs.
i donno if you give a crap still , but the answer is, bridge is normally gonna throttle at 1gb the virtio to virtio is not even a real network, its a fake network basically copy paste from the drive to the same drive. (in your case)
if you use mtu 9000 that does not always work you also have to set that in proxmox windows linux and the switch to make this work properly.
but what do i know.