At 1:32, the caption should read "12V 2A PSU", not "12V 2W PSU". My apologies for this error. Actual power consumption at idle and load is measured later in the video. :)
Another great video! I used this very same computer last year to install Ocotoprint because of the scarcity of the Raspberry Pis. I purchase another B1 to run Klipper/Fluid connected to my Ender3 (and two spares preloaded with Octoprint). These are slow, but perform better than the Pi (IMHO). I purchased other computers from Bmax last year as well, but the upgraded version using AMD Ryzen processors. One to host my Shapeoko and the other to host a dedicated Valheim server. As you may have guessed already, I am a fan of these mini computers. 🙂 Thank-you for creating this awesome video, and I look forward to your next one on how to add GPIO.
Great review. You told me everything I needed to know about this pc. I'll never understand how reviewers can take a low power mini pc like this, run games and say it's rubbish because they are trying to game on it. You tested this pc in a way that the makers intended it to be used. For that I commend you.
There are many kinds of gamers. Anyone trying to run current top of the line new hotness games on such is going to need to turn down a lot of options... but Kerbal Space Program is a good test for the "Economically Challenged Gamer" - turn down the video qualioty a bit, and it runs just fid. (But I still lose Jed on mission 1..._)
It's funny because some people spending way over 1.000 euros just for an graphics card, then ranting mini-pc's like this are crap. Like with cheap android-smartphones they will serve about 90% of normal users daily perfecly fine.
Thank you my dear sir. You gave us what most of us wanted in a review without showboating about how smart you are (when you are indeed highly intelligent), and you mercifully avoided all that gamer nonsense that others bore us with. Look, I love the gaming aspect, but I have PCs and consoles for this, and other PCs and rigs for other stuff like HD video encoding, etc. If you want high end stuff for this you really do have to spend more than $100, which is something too many folks don't want to understand. All I wanted was just another little PC to kick around the house for some smaller tasks without spending much more cash, and wanted a real review of it without having to sludge through seemingly endless footage on fighting or racing games, or whatever. Thanks so much. I picked one up since because of this review, and absolutely love it for what it's meant for.
@@ExplainingComputers Yes indeed. You review what is relevant to the product and I appreciate this. I will continue to watch and benefit from your videos. Thanks again. Subbed.
I picked up an N5105 and am quite impressed with it. It work really well as a basic desktop replacement. It happy runs linux mint, no troubles so far. Some of the specs: 2xHDMI, 4xUSB3.0, microSD, 8gb of ram. I added a 2280 nvme, disabled the emmc to disable win11. I am quite pleased.
The N5105 is actually the performance equivalent of an Intel Core2Quad Q9550 (95w) but at a frugal 10w TDP! we've come along way. you can pick up a mini PC with an N5105 for $120 now. a much better and snappier prospect than a $100 dual core N3350. Interestingly, just upgraded an old socket 775 Q9550 PC to 8GB of DDR3 RAM and an SSD the other day - runs Windows 10 great and is still perfectly good as a daily driver PC, especially after I stuck in an old Radeon HD 7870 dedicated GPU. Streams 4k content, does gaming emulation and even the odd AAA game at lower resolutions pretty well. you aint gonna win any efficiency awards though, as on older manufacturing nodes, this will consume more power. The new alder lake low power Intel N100 is even faster than the N5105 but that is generally around $160 and is locked to single channel memory. The N5105 is still the ultra low power x86 bang for buck king for now.
Mini-pcs are intended for this role (as they usually hang on vesa support of your huge tv and reaching for a button is not a common task), they are your typical media-players and servers (thou there are models ar 750-1000$ price range that can do Cyberpunk 2077 at 50fps at medium settings, way outperforming consoles). In fact, I think Chris will soon realize the main feature all mini-pc reviewers look at first is whether or not bios supports ac power-back option ;-)
modern x86 hardware is definitely not CISC. there's tons of microcode, accelerated paths and co-processing, SIMD, GPU cores and god knows what else inside a modern cpu package. the instruction set no longer has much to do with what the hardware actually looks like.
I've been deploying the Beelink mini-PC's to some of my clients that don't need anything more than a N5095 to web browse and check their email. People really like these and they are easy to set up and maintain. And they sip power which is also a good thing. Thanks Chris for the video on these. I think these mini PC's are the way to go for general computing for non-power users.
B-MAX has some models with that very same processor. It's actually a very easy deployment for having a computer at a very little price. Specially if it has a VGA port so you can use any cheap screen.
They're useful for more than casual users. What they aren't good for is graphics heavy games. Intel UHD isn't bad, but it's not supported well in new games.
They are also great for a media computer. You can use ad block for streaming purposes, and you can plug in an external hard drive, or have a network drive to play videos as well. It also can be used for classic video games.
Thank you for this video. I never know which of the Amazon brands to trust (been burned by no-name hardware in the past), but I can always count on you for a comprehensive review. I’m also very amused by the message on the plastic bag; this is the manufacturer recommending users to bypass setting up with an online Microsoft account!
This is, I think, the supplier trying to avoid complaints in the Amazon comments that the first boot takes so long (because of picking and processing the Windows updates). An issue they have now dealt with in a more dramatic fashion!
@@ExplainingComputers yeah, I think it's to avoid first boot performance issues. A little Celeron takes a LONG time to do all it's updates in the background and the computer is very stuttery during that time. Especially a fanless dual core.
I bought one on Amazon, added a 500gb M2 SATA3, loaded my media. I have a great low power movie and music machine for my RV. It works great and pulls very little power. Thanks for the video.
Iv'e had the B1 for 3 years and the B3 for 2 years. These both play roles as HTPCs(home theater PC), one in my livingroom and one in my bedroom. I am happy with both of these for running media and light duty computer work. I love how quiet they are and using off-grid solar, I love the low power consumption.
I love mini PCs. I have a Beelink GTR6 at the moment. It was kind of expensive I guess, but so far the performance has been fantastic and I love how small the unit is. I am sold on the concept.
I use the GTR6 (32gig mem) to run ProxMox (virtualisation software) and it runs perfectly fine with several virtual instances (including windows 10) - since it has 2 ethernet ports so I also runs opnSense (router/firewall/dns/filtering) without any problems - it's a perfect high end virtualization for in the home to be honest.
My mom needed a new computer, I offered to help her out with that and she was worried I was going to come up with something like my full size ATX case power-gaming behemoth! But I ended up getting her the Beelink U59. The windows updates were a bit slow but after that process was over it works flawlessly for her needs, and she still can't get over the form factor!
Unlike most people (seemingly) on here? I am NOT a computer do-it-yourselfer. So I REALLY appreciate you covering this computer, in particular. And even though I am not a hardcore geek? I love your channel and watch it regularly. ☮
This is a significant improvement on the Chillblast WAP Pro that I purchased for 140 GBP in 2019. RAM is 50% larger and installed MMC drive is twice as big. The main drawback with the WAP Pro was the 32GB MMC drive used for Windows 10 installation. There were constant problems with "feature updates" which led to my using Win2USB to run Win 10 from an external SSD drive. I have recently seen a TH-cam video installing a light-weight version of Win 11 which would probably suit this machine, but by the time Win 10 reaches end-of-life, there may be another inexpensive machine available. As always, a very well explained and useful video from you'
I like tiny PCs like this. Very energy efficient, and easy to work with when you want to upgrade. A lot of the newer ones can also comfortably emulate video games up to the PS2.
Up until now we have favored laptops for their size and portability. But, If I can strap one of these on the back of a monitor, add a wireless trackball and keyboard, I may be making a change. Besides, having to replace HP laptops every couple of years because the right side display hinge ALWAYS seams to break This may be the answer I am looking for.
Can 100% see myself getting one of these for the living room TV as a multimedia device for emulators, TH-cam, and other miscellaneous things. Thanks for the video!
"A few bits of string and a small piece of cheese" - BRILLIANT !! I see they do make a Windows 11 version for $30US more with a slightly beefier Snaileron processor. Thanks again for another informative Sunday morning.
Nice video, thanks Chris. I got one of these small PCs for my Mum after her laptop suffered water (cup of tea!) damage. The nice thing was I could just transpose the M.2 SSD from her laptop to the new PC and it brought everything across nicely for her! As you say perfectly serviceable for some web browsing, email, word processing, etc. and nice and compact sitting behind the monitor :)
You can never have too many computers. Mini PCs are a great option for running game servers, bot servers, filling out a dual or triple PC setup, Discord server, CCTV security systems, stream computer (although not this cheaper one of course), the possibilities are endless 😀
As many have said, I bought one for my father and it is a nice device. For what I do, it is slow. I have the minis forum B550 and it is a montar, several times biguer and very fast without a external graphic card, but for a wroser, check the news, some videos etc is perfect. Very good deal, 77 euros is fair price.
Just ordered one in the US with a $10 off coupon so tax included it was only $95 US quite a good deal for a low power mini to run pi hole and maybe a few other apps on my home network, thank you for the testing, it is much appreciated especially with the shortage of SBC’s at the moment. I’m guessing they will sell out quickly now that the video is out🤣
Interesting review, I have a couple of similar mini pc's, mine are based on the J4125 cpu and can accept an internal ssd - both with W10 pro installed and activated. A bit more expensive at £150 from Amazon but very reliable, both mine run 24/7 decoding satellite aero data, over a 24 hour period they consume an average of 13 watts/hour so nice and cheap to run
I could see this being really nice for a home Nintendo emualtor for their older systems like the GB, GBC and GBA. Should be able to do DS on it as well and other games like PS1 and the like. Arcade games as well.
I have had my BMax for quite some time! It is on my treadmill desk where I check my email and read Scripture each morning. It seems to run basic things well and the video has always been great! It is ideal for these applications! Thanks for reviewing it!
That thing is priced perfectly considering it's about as powerful as its competition, a used desktop from 2007. It also has the benefit of being much more compact and power efficient. The only downside is inferior I/O, but that's more than acceptable given the form factor.
Marvellous. I have an old XP PC that employs a two bits of string and an old piece of cheese interface but the string has to be wet. Can't wait for the PC + GPIO installment. Thank you.
That little PC did surprisingly well! I think a couple of my favorite things about it is the low power consumption and the fact that it has Windows 10 Pro installed on it. It handles Linux Mint quite nicely too. I think it'd be good as an emergency PC for when the main one goofs up or you're on vacation and need to back up photos of, say, the sunrise or your ice cream getting stolen by an eagar seagull or whatever. As another person commented, it'd also be great for putting retro emulators on there! All in all, a good mini PC with SBC vibes and another solid review.
@@ExplainingComputers Thanks! I thought that one up REAL quick. Just don't get sand on the PC and/or in the ports and hope that the seagull doesn't break in using magic bird powers and try to crap on it. 😅
I believe it was around 2016, when MS made some changes to their license agreement and a bunch of Windows 8.1 microcomputers came into the market, due to the increased leniency that allowed them to essentially sell them with Windows pre-installed for "free", as in, no additional license payments to MS by the manufacturer. This current stock of W10, specifically Pro although they are a specific fork of it, carreis the legacy of that same release program. Their reasoning, well, who can say for certain without breaking an NDA, but generally speaking it's about improving commercial relations with the Chinese consumer market. Quirks of that fork include some specifications to their support program, hiding under the "pro" moniker the fact that they are in some way more of a, buyer beware type of product. Caveat emptor. Somebody might suggest surveillance bloatware, which can't be ruled out, but I think it's mostly to wash their hands from any responsibility for free updates. You have to wonder, why would a small Chinese upstart who jsut want to sell you a neat device, want you to make sure that the first thing you do with the PC, is NOT to let it ping home through the internet. Perhaps so that Windows stock virus defenses get to activate first. Before the Chinese government activates for you.
@@sboinkthelegday3892 - I suspect it's because it'll fire off windows updates for you as part of the initial login (that, and the 'sign in with a microsoft account'). Both will end up dragging out the initial loading by that 3 hours he talked about.
After seeing this video, I went to Amazon to order one. First review said it was loaded with malware. Recommended to wipe the hard drive and reload with a clean copy on windows. The unit I purchased was indeed loaded with malware. I wiped the drive and installed a clean copy of windows and now this mini pc runs great and auto updates as it should. Using it to monitor some sensors and for some ham radio stuff.
None at all. After wiping the hard drive completely, I installed Windows from a copy I downloaded directly from Microsoft. Installed and activated without issue.
It’s now quite astonishing what these cheap computers can do. I remember running 8088 chips many years ago. They were so much more expensive but also it shows how much technology has improved over the intervening years. Thanks for another excellent film.
it never fails to amaze me just how affordable computing power has gotten over the last 40 years. when I started with microcomputers in the late 70s, you could expect to easily pay over $1k for an 8-bit system that you could take out of the box, attach a TV and start "computing," if you could call typing in lines of BASIC code or loading a program from cassette "computing." 😀 Nowadays, for less than $100/£100, you can buy a piece of hardware with an actual operating system and software and do Actual Work. it's amazing. one thing I'd like to point out is that the 12v power this PC uses should be of interest to ham radio enthusiasts and other off-grid or mobile-computing users. coupled with one of those lithium-battery car-jump-start modules, you can have a PC that runs for days w/o having to be plugged in while communing with nature. it's certainly true a Celeron isn't as cutting-edge as the latest ARM or RiscV hardware, but it's hard to argue with the value you get. Assuming you could get your hands on one, by the time you total the cost of a Pi4, a case, a PS, video cable, heatsink (and optionally, M.2 storage) you likely will have invested a bit more coin there than on this mini system and its runs-out-of-the-box experience. Thanks for the video!
I'm glad you covered these Chris. I bought a Beelink Series 3 that's mounted on the back of my monitor and am pretty happy with it. I still love my raspberry pi's though. ☺️ I a appreciate the attention to detail of your videos, like having the pc centered and squared in the video frame! 👌
Looks promising as a nice little FreeBSD machine.... could also be a good little emulation games centre. Cheers Chris, you are providing a valuable and much loved service with your videos.... many thanks.
I replaced my wife’s HP desktop PC with a Beelink Mini S (256GB). I upgraded it to 16GB and added another SSD to the empty 2.5” bay. It meets her needs for social media and crafting with vinyl cutters and 3D printer. Really impressed with these tiny single board x86 computers.
My first time seeing a video of yours. I am very impressed and stunned to see such a thorough explanation presented that even included performance testing and a step-by-step demo on how to install a Linux distro. Amazing and really just excellent.
Chris, I have quite a few of these. The BMAX the Ser5, AK1...I put Linux on them. Thanks for the wonderful videos. I am always happy when I see a new video from you in my feed.
Chris, Not to steal your thunder, but when 4G Pi 4 are running $150 on Amazon, this mini pc with a $7 pi pico seems like a pretty good replacement. Another great video.
Outstanding value for money, especially with that M.2 expansion slot. I work in IT, and 64/128GB is fine to install Windows 10 to begin with, but it won't work for long because Windows will update and grow in size to the point where it just can't update anymore because there isn't enough space left. This is why they have disabled windows update. 128GB is absolute bare minimum and still not enough. 256GB is the best minimum amount. I've repaired several Notebook PCs with this exact issue and the only way around it is to download the latest windows ISO and install from scratch as this newer ISO will contain a lot more updates pre installed. Anyway great video
Bought this machine from this review (as I've mentioned in my earlier comments). I've now had it some 6-9 months, and I still love it. Not one problem so far. Just for the record, I must've dropped it like 10 times. No damage. In fact, it still runs the program or video just fine even though! Well built.
@ExplainingComputers Hey, it's not a "beast" of a machine, and I got it just as a secondary unit, but I can't help but be impressed with it, especially after the abuse it took from me. Still works like new. I was chiming back to highly recommend this for the price to your audience, especially for any that are budget conscious - it can be a decent "main" computer too.
I have two Kodlix mini pcs. They turned my smart tv into a really smart tv, plus I can take it with me on vacation and not skip a beat by using the hotel TVs as a monitor. I have a 65 inch 4k monitor(TV). Good review.
I know this video is a few months old now but I just wanted to say that I bought two of these machines as they were reduced by 20% on Amazon Prime Day. I pretty much agree with everything in the video- they are very usable little Windows 10 machines. The machines would be ideal for normal everyday desktop type applications- emailing, web browsing, word processing etc. They are tiny and very light. I am planning to use one as a kind of IoT gateway device and the other as a light-use general purpose office machine. Pretty good for such a low priced unit.
And when Chris says you can cheaply add GPIO pins, he means it. Amazon prices a GPIO to USB kit for less than $19. Other sites may be cheaper. Unless the SBC people can lower their prices, there is almost no reason to buy one of their ARM-based machines. After all, why pay more for a machine that actually has less capability? Great video.
Thank you. I had always wondered how one of these mini PCs would compare to some of the SBCs you've reviewed. Next to SBCs, I find these mini PCs fascinating. Needless to say, I always enjoy the humor you include in your videos! Appreciated your testing Linux on the mini PC. If you ever run across a mini PC running Windows 11 at this price in the future, I'd be interested to see how it performs and your valued opinion of the thing. Oh yes, looking forward to your video on adding GPIO pins a PC...hopefully this mini PC. As always, looking forward to you next video!
Due to this video I bought the Bmax B1 Pro. After seeing I had no control over the Win 11 that was pre-installed I wiped it and installed Linux Mint 21. The machine now works flawlessly for what I use it for which is mostly as a multi-media server for watching TV.
Great video again! What I like about it is that you can boot from the M.2, meaning that when the internal storage starts to fail, the computer it not automatically junk. An 8GB version with 4 or more cores would be fantastic as well.
Look for the Beelink MINI S N5095 on their website. Yes, it costs somewhat more at 159/169 (128/256 Gb storage versions), but it does have 8GB RAM, true SSD storage instead of "SD card soldered to a board eMMC", and a 4-core CPU far superior to the one in this video scoring 3,5 or so times better in PassMark. Both are Celerons, but the N3350 is shockingly old, released in late 2016. The N5095 is not last gen but it is a late '21 model, much more reasonable.
Question : 1 - When you say , can boot from M.2 ,,,, does that mean the Operating System ( in this case ,, Windows 10 Pro ) can be moved / reloaded to the M.2 storage ? 2 - Will then the onboard storage be wiped clean ? 3 - Do you then just change the BOOT menu ,, for it to boot from M.2 drive ? ( Thanks , anybody ,, for added info ,,,,,, kind of new to the computer game ) .
If you want more memory and cores, you should seriously consider just getting a used Micro PC off of eBay. I just picked up a Dell with a 4C i5-7500t, 16GB, 128GB, and W10 Pro, and a 1-yr warranty (a real 1-yr warranty provided from SquareTrade under the "eBay Refurbished" program) for $150 shipped. A lot more power than one of these units for not a lot of additional coin.
I bought a mini pc a couple of years ago to run a hobby cnc and laser . It's been nothing but great these little machines are great for a couple of apps that don't require a lot of horsepower to do things in a dirty environment . This machine seems very impressive for the price. Pity amazon already says no stock 😕
I went and purchased this. This will be good for off-grid use as the power requirements are low. Also it being powered by 12 vdc is a bonus too. Having access to Windows is useful too but for 95% of its use it will be running the new Debian.
Thanks for the great video Chris, and this looks like a good simple, and cheap solution for my Church's library running Solus Linux attached to the back of some budget monitors. We are currently running 4 machines using a mix of old Dell/HP desktops, and I was considering some used Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny systems, but this looks to be an even better solution, as they won't be doing much more than office work, and simple online tasks.
I use similar $100 computers, running Windows 10 Pro, as "harvesters" for Chia. The "Pro" version of Windows allows me to use Remote Desktop to view and run anything on them. No waiting a moment for my monitor to sync up from one box to the next. Similar to the Bmax B1, my $100 boxes are fanless (so no noise, and low power). One thing you did not cover, that I took note of for my $100 PCs, is that a simple file copy would use north of 50% of CPU cycles, according to Task Manager. For me, it does not matter, because of my use case. But I have never seen a PC labor over a file copy. I would think that even a Celeron CPU could handle that as a yawn. But apparently not.
It's a real shame they biffed the deal with only a 64GB drive. You really can't do anything substantial with this device, until you add external drives. Geez. Thanks for showing this.
This is a great computer for my company. I use an online accounting/estimating software and email. I use it to look up parts from my online vendors and that's it. My service manuals are all PDF so this little guy does everything I need and its a lot better to sit at real keyboard over using my table. It works great for it's intended purpose.
Your last 2 videos have been my favorites in the last 3 months of viewing. Great job on keeping the channel dynamic. While I like the raspberry pi videos, that subject doesn’t hold my interest as well as these last 2 topics. Just a little feedback from a long time subscriber. Thanks again Chris!
Wow dude, not what I was expecting at all. Excellent video, great review! I was expecting that this thing would probably be pretty laggy and not useful for much. I'm really glad you used it to test GIMP on it because that would be the the thing I would primarily used it for. This video popped up in my suggestions, I was curious, I was impressed & I subscribed to your channel! Well done ole chap
Thanks for your comments. Sadly, 10 days after week after this video was posted, the Bmax B1 Plus has sold out everywhere. However, look back to the opening of the video where I show an Amazon search, and you will see there are several other mini PCs in the same price range. I've not tested them all, but am confiddent that they will deliver the same kind of user experience. GIMP on a c.$100 Mini PC with a Celeron processor and 4 or 6GB or RAM will not be the faster ever, but as the video showed, will be perfectly usable.
Another great video. I recently ordered something similar from a well known Chinese shopping site & received it this weekend, so it is great that you did this video now. Thanks so much.
Thanks Chris! These mini PCs sure are interesting, I may end up buying one for a mini server. Being able to run garden variety Linux distributions makes an x86 mini PC a much better option for many use cases than some barely supported ARM SBC. Surprised we don't see more running Chrome OS, as I feel it's a good match for some use cases.
Awesome review. To properly test Gimp you need to open a photographic image, add some layers and a few brushstrokes and distortions. This eats massive amounts of memory and you will quickly find the machine's limits
To be honest most people wouldn't. They would throw together a poster for a community group once every couple of months if it was an older/super budget conscious person owning one of these.
This is interesting hardware to run a little home server on. I now run Home Assistant and some other basic server applications on an old Mac Mini with Ubuntu Server, but I think this little computer could be a much more power-efficient solution. Thanks for the great video again!
Yes, they are. I would normally recommend a raspberrypi for such a case, but since those are in short supply right now, these makes great alternatives.
I bought this one last week when i saw your video. I needed a small pc to be used as a router (running linux) in my house. Works great for that! Don't expect this to be a gaming pc or anything else..it's just too small for that. Thanks for the video!
Amazing as always, Chris. In fact I do use the Mini PCs that I got for review. The U59 Pro is a NAS server in our house and the SEi12 Pro is in fact my new production machine 💪🙏
Thank you for being here. You are one of the so very few that I can trust and tell people and my clients to see your site. You are an honest man and I am glad that you can educate people so easily on "Explaining Computers".
Very interesting , it makes me wonder how long it will be before these mini pc's become powerful enough to run high poly renders in 3d software like Blender. Great video as usual.
Good Video. But i would never use this kind of preinstalled Windows. Its a very big security Risk. I dont mind the Volume Activation but you never know what other things have been modified. Reinstall Windows to be safe. (I know it can take ages.) And Keys are not that expensive.
As a non-Windows user, I'm always more interested in Linux compatibility and performance with PC hardware. In the case of this mini PC, with its loose adherence to the spirit and intent of licensing regulations, I'd be erasing that Windows installation right away. That aside, it's nice to see that a perfectly usable system can be obtained so cheaply. I recently swapped my main PC - a self-built Ryzen APU tower system - for a used Asus mini PC built around a more recent Ryzen APU. The power use is dramatically less, as is 'noise'.
@@ExplainingComputers Indeed, and it runs well on the modest hardware. It makes for a cheap computer either way, and you hint at it becoming the basis for SBC-like tinkering. I look forward to future videos with the Bmax.
Yes, that system running MSWin 10 *Pro*, especially with a Volume licensed version, makes me suspicious of the legality of the MSWin version installed on it. The idea of running the first boot into MSWin10 with it OFF the network is also a method of avoiding the requirement of a MS Online account [1], but some of the other steps make me think they're trying to avoid being caught by the MS Licensing Gestapo. But if you're going to be installing some other OS, or you have some KMS solution in place, it isn't a problem anyway. [1] if you're creating a local account on a MSWin10 install, create it *without* a password, and it won't ask for the "security" questions. You can add a password later.
If you're a non windows user, this computer will be a waste of money, because it comes with a windows license that you paid for & won't use. I bet the same number of dollars will go further in a different machine
@@eitantal726 I don't think anyone actually 'paid' for the license. Compared to the price of ARM SBCs right now, I would say it's not a bad machine for the price.
@ExplainingComputers: I want to thank you so much for your channel in general and for this video in particular. I had been looking for a way to control my homebrew CNC mill with a compact computer, instead of my ancient tower PC. I had settled on RPi 4B and LinuxCNC, but the shortage of RPi SBCs was becoming a major headache for me. But thanks to you, I can pick up a mini PC with much better specs than the RPi, and run Windows 11, with Mach3/Mach4 for the best CNC experience by far. I connected my mini PC to an old 1080P tv that fell out of use, and I couldn't be happier. My mini PC had Windows 11 Pro pre-installed, and also came with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. I paid only $125 for it (after $25 off on the big evil online retail site). Thanks for showing us this possibility 😊!
Bonjour Chris, Thank you for including the Dual Boot configuration, as it's a great option if one needs both systems. I wonder how tiny 11 will run on this configuration compare to an ARM based chip. Looking forward to you GPIO extension presentation.
I greatly enjoyed your video while tearing up a bit. Almost 30 years ago I used to pay $100 for a TimexSinclair 1000 (ZX81). I impress on my children when it comes to all electronic devices - SMALLER, CHEAPER, FASTER as time goes by.
I love how you just casually gloss over the 3 hour update process that windows took!!! That's enough time to test out several linux distros and settled on the one that you really like!!! This would be a beast of a Chromebox running ChromeOS Flex. This is exactly the sort of machine that I would buy if I was after a cheap computer in a small form factor. It possible to repurpose "old" hardware and have an excellent computing experience (there's so MUCH of it around!!) but that old kit really finds it hard to compete with the low power consumption that these modern boards have. And fanless as well! Thanks for the excellent review.
Windows update has most likely been disabled with the Group Policy Editor, which is available on all versions of Win10 Pro, not just volume licenses. I used GPE to disable automatic updates on my system, which has a retail license.
I bought Win10 Pro key from scdkeys and go figure it does this same thing about auto updates disabled by Group Policy. Is there an easy way to change that?
@@utp216 Open Group Policy Editor and go to the folder indicated below. Change any setting listed as Enabled to Not configured, and then restart. Local Computer Policy --> Computer Configuration --> Administrative Templates --> Windows Components --> Windows Update
It’s strange that it has a volume lic and some pre installed browser. It probably explains why it asked you not to connect the network on first boot. I would be suspicious of malware on the box.
Seems like this could be a quite decent file server. What we need is some sort of USB based GPIO board so we could do many of the things the PI4 does now. With GPIO control but using one of these mini-pc's instead of a PI.
finally someone remembered to use cell-phone tech in a right way... i never understood why those crappy pc components need to be so enormous, for watching video content and mails and stuff, one hardly needs more than this... i still have 700wats psu!!! while nowadays it should be more like 22wats tops
Bought this mini pc before 6 months (cost me only 85 euros), I'm using it sometimes for quick testing other hardware purposes, trying different systems on it and still working fine.
Fantastic work! I recently bought a very similar box - a SOYO M2 with an Intel N4000 - and this was the most useful review I could find of such hardware. My use case is a low-power writing and general browsing machine that can handle Obsidian and run off solar and batteries. Most people seem to be trying to turn these little boxes into game stations and failing at it. I really appreciate your approach here.
You could make a neat little low-power homelab cluster/kubernetes playground with a few of these. But for just a bit more you can buy secondhand TinyMiniMicro PC's that have a lot more power. Last time I tried dual booting I did it the way you showed, but Windows would trash the Linux bootloader every Windows Update ran so now Windows has been banned completely from my PC. Microsoft just can't play nice with others, can they?
I'm very surprised to hear that a Windows update interfered with a bootloader another drive, formatted with a non-Windows file system. I've never had this problem when Windows and Linux are on seperate drives, with the other drive not present when each OS was installed. But as you say, Microsoft does not always play nice.
I've actually had the opposite issue, i've had a GRUB2 corruption wipe out the Windows bootloader on another drive, for me it's Linux that can't play well with Windows, but that aside, I will be looking into TinyMiniMicro for either Kubernetes or Proxmox clustering, while second hand Enterprise gear can be cheap to buy (other than the HDDs and Caddies... why ebay sellers you scalp on Caddies?), they're not so cheap to run, oh and they're noisy
Given that it would take an Argon One case to bring a Raspberry Pi up to these specs; it is competitive. Raises the possibility of an interesting business model: Charge $200 or $300 for a training course and participants can take the computer home with them complete with an environment of configured software and worked examples. Another use case would be as a "burner computer" to use while traveling overseas as long as one has a command to wipe it (factory reset) when you are done you can leave it overseas and don't have to take it through customs.
I watch these videos mostly because you have a real likability factor. Very British and very knowledgeable - but in a wonderfully unassuming and amusing way. Keep being you Christopher and I shall keep watching!
I just picked up the Intel Celeron N3350 B20 Smart mini PC 6GB+64GB OS. I was extremely happy. It plays my Pinball Arcade 2 games wonderfully but can't keep up with all of part 3 very well. I think I paid $115.27 shipped from Ali-Express. I loved how you could add storage and how it had VGA as well as HDMI. I like VGA personally.
Good morning Chris! As always a pleasure to start my Sunday off with one of your videos. This is an amazing little box. Two questions come to mind: 1. Would this be appropriate for a home automation set up such as running home assistant or, perhaps node-red w MQTT? 2. Well I was about to comment about wanting GPIO pins and associated support, but you just suggested that you will address this shortly. Good. Thanks!
Its a 2016 celeron computer in 2023, your $100 would be better spent putting it towards a newer system. Would be nice to see a review of a 12th gen celeron system rather than that ancient tack
@@ExplainingComputers As long as the old hardware is up to the job. Testing it with MS Word isn't really relevant. You need to be testing it with Software like MS Teams and Zoom to see does the hardware cope in a modern office environment as so many of us are in work form home or hybrid work situations that a lot of PCs now have to handle. Can the hardware handle filesharing during a live meeting etc
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At 1:32, the caption should read "12V 2A PSU", not "12V 2W PSU". My apologies for this error. Actual power consumption at idle and load is measured later in the video. :)
The letters A & W are indeed very close on the keyboard and could easily be mistaken
I also had same thought how could something consume 2W at 12V 😅
Thanks for the correction, but it's all good, as we are all only human, and humans are imperfect.
Another great video! I used this very same computer last year to install Ocotoprint because of the scarcity of the Raspberry Pis. I purchase another B1 to run Klipper/Fluid connected to my Ender3 (and two spares preloaded with Octoprint). These are slow, but perform better than the Pi (IMHO). I purchased other computers from Bmax last year as well, but the upgraded version using AMD Ryzen processors. One to host my Shapeoko and the other to host a dedicated Valheim server. As you may have guessed already, I am a fan of these mini computers. 🙂
Thank-you for creating this awesome video, and I look forward to your next one on how to add GPIO.
What´s that Ampmeter/Wattmeter model? Any amazon links? Thanks.
Great review. You told me everything I needed to know about this pc. I'll never understand how reviewers can take a low power mini pc like this, run games and say it's rubbish because they are trying to game on it. You tested this pc in a way that the makers intended it to be used. For that I commend you.
a Celeron 3XXX is good for nothing. not even chrome os flex. maybe Lubuntu. definitely not windows 10
@@giorgio5789 my Celeron mini PC is going 3 years strong with Fedora 37. What exactly do you want to do with it that is so lacking for you?
There are many kinds of gamers. Anyone trying to run current top of the line new hotness games on such is going to need to turn down a lot of options... but Kerbal Space Program is a good test for the "Economically Challenged Gamer" - turn down the video qualioty a bit, and it runs just fid. (But I still lose Jed on mission 1..._)
If it can't run 16gb ram minimum spec AAA games, its not a computer. =p
It's funny because some people spending way over 1.000 euros just for an graphics card, then ranting mini-pc's like this are crap. Like with cheap android-smartphones they will serve about 90% of normal users daily perfecly fine.
Thank you my dear sir. You gave us what most of us wanted in a review without showboating about how smart you are (when you are indeed highly intelligent), and you mercifully avoided all that gamer nonsense that others bore us with.
Look, I love the gaming aspect, but I have PCs and consoles for this, and other PCs and rigs for other stuff like HD video encoding, etc. If you want high end stuff for this you really do have to spend more than $100, which is something too many folks don't want to understand.
All I wanted was just another little PC to kick around the house for some smaller tasks without spending much more cash, and wanted a real review of it without having to sludge through seemingly endless footage on fighting or racing games, or whatever.
Thanks so much. I picked one up since because of this review, and absolutely love it for what it's meant for.
Thanks for this -- great to hear. It seems that we are on the same page with this hardware.
@@ExplainingComputers Yes indeed. You review what is relevant to the product and I appreciate this. I will continue to watch and benefit from your videos. Thanks again. Subbed.
Love how Chris doesn't beat around the bush.
Clear, concise, just the important facts.
I rarely miss a video from him.
I picked up an N5105 and am quite impressed with it. It work really well as a basic desktop replacement. It happy runs linux mint, no troubles so far. Some of the specs: 2xHDMI, 4xUSB3.0, microSD, 8gb of ram. I added a 2280 nvme, disabled the emmc to disable win11. I am quite pleased.
@filleswe91 I got a MeLE mini PC.
The N5105 is actually the performance equivalent of an Intel Core2Quad Q9550 (95w) but at a frugal 10w TDP! we've come along way. you can pick up a mini PC with an N5105 for $120 now. a much better and snappier prospect than a $100 dual core N3350.
Interestingly, just upgraded an old socket 775 Q9550 PC to 8GB of DDR3 RAM and an SSD the other day - runs Windows 10 great and is still perfectly good as a daily driver PC, especially after I stuck in an old Radeon HD 7870 dedicated GPU.
Streams 4k content, does gaming emulation and even the odd AAA game at lower resolutions pretty well. you aint gonna win any efficiency awards though, as on older manufacturing nodes, this will consume more power.
The new alder lake low power Intel N100 is even faster than the N5105 but that is generally around $160 and is locked to single channel memory.
The N5105 is still the ultra low power x86 bang for buck king for now.
That power consumption is impressive for a CISC processor. Perfect for use as a 24/7 PC where you don't want to worry about the power bill.
It is really impressive for a full system draw including AC adapter. The SOC itself is probably using
Mini-pcs are intended for this role (as they usually hang on vesa support of your huge tv and reaching for a button is not a common task), they are your typical media-players and servers (thou there are models ar 750-1000$ price range that can do Cyberpunk 2077 at 50fps at medium settings, way outperforming consoles). In fact, I think Chris will soon realize the main feature all mini-pc reviewers look at first is whether or not bios supports ac power-back option ;-)
@@cokeforever What’s AC power-back?
modern x86 hardware is definitely not CISC. there's tons of microcode, accelerated paths and co-processing, SIMD, GPU cores and god knows what else inside a modern cpu package. the instruction set no longer has much to do with what the hardware actually looks like.
@@bfapple electrical power-out, then restored, should your pc start with power restore or stay shut? this one
I've been deploying the Beelink mini-PC's to some of my clients that don't need anything more than a N5095 to web browse and check their email. People really like these and they are easy to set up and maintain. And they sip power which is also a good thing. Thanks Chris for the video on these. I think these mini PC's are the way to go for general computing for non-power users.
B-MAX has some models with that very same processor. It's actually a very easy deployment for having a computer at a very little price. Specially if it has a VGA port so you can use any cheap screen.
They're useful for more than casual users. What they aren't good for is graphics heavy games. Intel UHD isn't bad, but it's not supported well in new games.
I've had my Beelink for just over 1 year and I am very happy. I mainly use it for Video Streaming in 1080P and it works great.
They are also great for a media computer. You can use ad block for streaming purposes, and you can plug in an external hard drive, or have a network drive to play videos as well. It also can be used for classic video games.
@@WilliamHostman Will it work okay for doing work in Adobe Lightroom?
Thank you for this video. I never know which of the Amazon brands to trust (been burned by no-name hardware in the past), but I can always count on you for a comprehensive review.
I’m also very amused by the message on the plastic bag; this is the manufacturer recommending users to bypass setting up with an online Microsoft account!
This is, I think, the supplier trying to avoid complaints in the Amazon comments that the first boot takes so long (because of picking and processing the Windows updates). An issue they have now dealt with in a more dramatic fashion!
@@ExplainingComputers yeah, I think it's to avoid first boot performance issues. A little Celeron takes a LONG time to do all it's updates in the background and the computer is very stuttery during that time. Especially a fanless dual core.
I bought one on Amazon, added a 500gb M2 SATA3, loaded my media. I have a great low power movie and music machine for my RV. It works great and pulls very little power. Thanks for the video.
Sounds like a good result. :)
Iv'e had the B1 for 3 years and the B3 for 2 years. These both play roles as HTPCs(home theater PC), one in my livingroom and one in my bedroom. I am happy with both of these for running media and light duty computer work. I love how quiet they are and using off-grid solar, I love the low power consumption.
I love mini PCs.
I have a Beelink GTR6 at the moment.
It was kind of expensive I guess, but so far the performance has been fantastic and I love how small the unit is.
I am sold on the concept.
I use the GTR6 (32gig mem) to run ProxMox (virtualisation software) and it runs perfectly fine with several virtual instances (including windows 10) - since it has 2 ethernet ports so I also runs opnSense (router/firewall/dns/filtering) without any problems - it's a perfect high end virtualization for in the home to be honest.
@@Vampier
Sounds good.
I just use mine as an everyday PC - for a little work, media and gaming.
@@JB.zero.zero.1 it's a very capable computer for the size :)
My mini PC is pretty capable but it does have a 12th gen i7 and 32GB of RAM.
My mom needed a new computer, I offered to help her out with that and she was worried I was going to come up with something like my full size ATX case power-gaming behemoth! But I ended up getting her the Beelink U59. The windows updates were a bit slow but after that process was over it works flawlessly for her needs, and she still can't get over the form factor!
Unlike most people (seemingly) on here?
I am NOT a computer do-it-yourselfer.
So I REALLY appreciate you covering this computer, in particular.
And even though I am not a hardcore geek?
I love your channel and watch it regularly.
☮
Thanks for watching. And I don't think that you are alone here. :)
@@ExplainingComputers Cool.
And please give my regards to Mr. Scissors.
☮
This is a significant improvement on the Chillblast WAP Pro that I purchased for 140 GBP in 2019. RAM is 50% larger and installed MMC drive is twice as big. The main drawback with the WAP Pro was the 32GB MMC drive used for Windows 10 installation. There were constant problems with "feature updates" which led to my using Win2USB to run Win 10 from an external SSD drive. I have recently seen a TH-cam video installing a light-weight version of Win 11 which would probably suit this machine, but by the time Win 10 reaches end-of-life, there may be another inexpensive machine available. As always, a very well explained and useful video from you'
I like tiny PCs like this. Very energy efficient, and easy to work with when you want to upgrade. A lot of the newer ones can also comfortably emulate video games up to the PS2.
Up until now we have favored laptops for their size and portability.
But, If I can strap one of these on the back of a monitor, add a wireless trackball and keyboard, I may be making a change. Besides,
having to replace HP laptops every couple of years because the right side display hinge ALWAYS seams to break This may be
the answer I am looking for.
Can 100% see myself getting one of these for the living room TV as a multimedia device for emulators, TH-cam, and other miscellaneous things. Thanks for the video!
"A few bits of string and a small piece of cheese" - BRILLIANT !! I see they do make a Windows 11 version for $30US more with a slightly beefier Snaileron processor. Thanks again for another informative Sunday morning.
Screw Windows!
You get better response if the string is wet, and the cheese is Wensleydale.
Personally I'd consider the inability to load MSWin 11 as a *FEATURE*, not a bug.
Hah, snailaron. Surprizingly some celerons now feature L3 cache. Not this one, though.
I couldn't find this? What's the model name 🙂
Nice video, thanks Chris. I got one of these small PCs for my Mum after her laptop suffered water (cup of tea!) damage. The nice thing was I could just transpose the M.2 SSD from her laptop to the new PC and it brought everything across nicely for her! As you say perfectly serviceable for some web browsing, email, word processing, etc. and nice and compact sitting behind the monitor :)
'infusion ingress'!
Its insane that these mini PC's are so cheap and perform so well, I'm thinking about getting one.
Im seeing alot of these N3350 mini PCs popping up now. I wondered what happened for manufactures to bring out such a old CPU to SBCs.
totally bro. Welcome to the master PC race. KEKW
This seems like an ideal “Mom and Dad need a new desktop” computer. Everything they need in a small and silent package.
Omg 😳 good point! mum needs a new computer. Has ancient HP hooked up to external using Mint. This is Perrrrrrfect
Ageist, never feel bad about being none PC. Maybe get one they can attach to a watermill or windmill.
Ah yes small package, something I’m very familiar with
Very true. In fact my dad now uses a BeeLink U59 Pro as his daily. 😁
You can never have too many computers. Mini PCs are a great option for running game servers, bot servers, filling out a dual or triple PC setup, Discord server, CCTV security systems, stream computer (although not this cheaper one of course), the possibilities are endless 😀
As many have said, I bought one for my father and it is a nice device. For what I do, it is slow. I have the minis forum B550 and it is a montar, several times biguer and very fast without a external graphic card, but for a wroser, check the news, some videos etc is perfect. Very good deal, 77 euros is fair price.
Just ordered one in the US with a $10 off coupon so tax included it was only $95 US quite a good deal for a low power mini to run pi hole and maybe a few other apps on my home network, thank you for the testing, it is much appreciated especially with the shortage of SBC’s at the moment. I’m guessing they will sell out quickly now that the video is out🤣
Yes, I imagine these may now go out of stock . . .
Amazon UK 7 left in stock, I want one but cannot afford one lol
Interesting review, I have a couple of similar mini pc's, mine are based on the J4125 cpu and can accept an internal ssd - both with W10 pro installed and activated. A bit more expensive at £150 from Amazon but very reliable, both mine run 24/7 decoding satellite aero data, over a 24 hour period they consume an average of 13 watts/hour so nice and cheap to run
Im seeing alot of these N3350 mini PCs popping up now. I wondered what happened for manufactures to bring out such a old CPU to SBCs.
I could see this being really nice for a home Nintendo emualtor for their older systems like the GB, GBC and GBA. Should be able to do DS on it as well and other games like PS1 and the like. Arcade games as well.
This thing can easily emulate Gamecube and PSP. I use a convertible laptop with the same CPU for that very purpose.
just like that he was never heard from again
Still pales in comparison with the Orange Pi 5, which is just a little more expensive and can do Saturn, PS2, GC, Wii and even Switch.
I have had my BMax for quite some time! It is on my treadmill desk where I check my email and read Scripture each morning. It seems to run basic things well and the video has always been great! It is ideal for these applications! Thanks for reviewing it!
That thing is priced perfectly considering it's about as powerful as its competition, a used desktop from 2007. It also has the benefit of being much more compact and power efficient. The only downside is inferior I/O, but that's more than acceptable given the form factor.
Marvellous. I have an old XP PC that employs a two bits of string and an old piece of cheese interface but the string has to be wet.
Can't wait for the PC + GPIO installment. Thank you.
You never disappoint with your unboxing videos. This mini PC looks quite interesting.
That little PC did surprisingly well! I think a couple of my favorite things about it is the low power consumption and the fact that it has Windows 10 Pro installed on it. It handles Linux Mint quite nicely too.
I think it'd be good as an emergency PC for when the main one goofs up or you're on vacation and need to back up photos of, say, the sunrise or your ice cream getting stolen by an eagar seagull or whatever. As another person commented, it'd also be great for putting retro emulators on there!
All in all, a good mini PC with SBC vibes and another solid review.
Thanks for your support, most appreciated. I love the idea of a PC for holiday photo backup activities. :)
@@ExplainingComputers Thanks! I thought that one up REAL quick. Just don't get sand on the PC and/or in the ports and hope that the seagull doesn't break in using magic bird powers and try to crap on it. 😅
Great review, as always. I look forward to the video covering addition of GPIO to such a device.
I believe it was around 2016, when MS made some changes to their license agreement and a bunch of Windows 8.1 microcomputers came into the market, due to the increased leniency that allowed them to essentially sell them with Windows pre-installed for "free", as in, no additional license payments to MS by the manufacturer.
This current stock of W10, specifically Pro although they are a specific fork of it, carreis the legacy of that same release program. Their reasoning, well, who can say for certain without breaking an NDA, but generally speaking it's about improving commercial relations with the Chinese consumer market.
Quirks of that fork include some specifications to their support program, hiding under the "pro" moniker the fact that they are in some way more of a, buyer beware type of product. Caveat emptor. Somebody might suggest surveillance bloatware, which can't be ruled out, but I think it's mostly to wash their hands from any responsibility for free updates.
You have to wonder, why would a small Chinese upstart who jsut want to sell you a neat device, want you to make sure that the first thing you do with the PC, is NOT to let it ping home through the internet. Perhaps so that Windows stock virus defenses get to activate first. Before the Chinese government activates for you.
@@sboinkthelegday3892 - I suspect it's because it'll fire off windows updates for you as part of the initial login (that, and the 'sign in with a microsoft account'). Both will end up dragging out the initial loading by that 3 hours he talked about.
After seeing this video, I went to Amazon to order one. First review said it was loaded with malware. Recommended to wipe the hard drive and reload with a clean copy on windows. The unit I purchased was indeed loaded with malware. I wiped the drive and installed a clean copy of windows and now this mini pc runs great and auto updates as it should. Using it to monitor some sensors and for some ham radio stuff.
Did you have any issues with a clean install?
None at all. After wiping the hard drive completely, I installed Windows from a copy I downloaded directly from Microsoft. Installed and activated without issue.
@@photog12345 Thanks
It’s now quite astonishing what these cheap computers can do. I remember running 8088 chips many years ago. They were so much more expensive but also it shows how much technology has improved over the intervening years. Thanks for another excellent film.
it never fails to amaze me just how affordable computing power has gotten over the last 40 years. when I started with microcomputers in the late 70s, you could expect to easily pay over $1k for an 8-bit system that you could take out of the box, attach a TV and start "computing," if you could call typing in lines of BASIC code or loading a program from cassette "computing." 😀 Nowadays, for less than $100/£100, you can buy a piece of hardware with an actual operating system and software and do Actual Work. it's amazing.
one thing I'd like to point out is that the 12v power this PC uses should be of interest to ham radio enthusiasts and other off-grid or mobile-computing users. coupled with one of those lithium-battery car-jump-start modules, you can have a PC that runs for days w/o having to be plugged in while communing with nature.
it's certainly true a Celeron isn't as cutting-edge as the latest ARM or RiscV hardware, but it's hard to argue with the value you get. Assuming you could get your hands on one, by the time you total the cost of a Pi4, a case, a PS, video cable, heatsink (and optionally, M.2 storage) you likely will have invested a bit more coin there than on this mini system and its runs-out-of-the-box experience.
Thanks for the video!
My computer is cheaper than my vacuum cleaner!
>
Seems like that was a lot more convenient than loading from paper tape.
I'm glad you covered these Chris. I bought a Beelink Series 3 that's mounted on the back of my monitor and am pretty happy with it. I still love my raspberry pi's though. ☺️
I a appreciate the attention to detail of your videos, like having the pc centered and squared in the video frame! 👌
Three hours for an initial Windows update! I sure have been spoilt by Linux Mint.
Terrific review. Thank you.
All the best everyone.
Once again Chris gives one of the best hardware reviews on TH-cam, and I love that he doesn't put the Franks red Hot of gaming on it.
Looks promising as a nice little FreeBSD machine.... could also be a good little emulation games centre.
Cheers Chris, you are providing a valuable and much loved service with your videos.... many thanks.
I'm sure it would have no problems running FreeBSD. :)
Still pales in comparison with the Orange Pi 5, which is just a little more expensive and can do a lot more emulation.
I replaced my wife’s HP desktop PC with a Beelink Mini S (256GB). I upgraded it to 16GB and added another SSD to the empty 2.5” bay. It meets her needs for social media and crafting with vinyl cutters and 3D printer. Really impressed with these tiny single board x86 computers.
As always, nice presentation -- it's very nice to see the trade-offs made for SBC and $100 PC computers. Looking forward to the GPIO episode!
My first time seeing a video of yours. I am very impressed and stunned to see such a thorough explanation presented that even included performance testing and a step-by-step demo on how to install a Linux distro. Amazing and really just excellent.
Chris, I have quite a few of these. The BMAX the Ser5, AK1...I put Linux on them. Thanks for the wonderful videos. I am always happy when I see a new video from you in my feed.
Chris, Not to steal your thunder, but when 4G Pi 4 are running $150 on Amazon, this mini pc with a $7 pi pico seems like a pretty good replacement. Another great video.
This is a single board PC, no Pi in sight.
@@johndododoe1411 Well both pico and mini have usb ports. Maybe the mini can use pico gpio. Say with Python?
Outstanding value for money, especially with that M.2 expansion slot. I work in IT, and 64/128GB is fine to install Windows 10 to begin with, but it won't work for long because Windows will update and grow in size to the point where it just can't update anymore because there isn't enough space left. This is why they have disabled windows update. 128GB is absolute bare minimum and still not enough. 256GB is the best minimum amount. I've repaired several Notebook PCs with this exact issue and the only way around it is to download the latest windows ISO and install from scratch as this newer ISO will contain a lot more updates pre installed. Anyway great video
This was great. I hope you add "cheap PCs" to the SBC rotation in the future.
Bought this machine from this review (as I've mentioned in my earlier comments). I've now had it some 6-9 months, and I still love it. Not one problem so far.
Just for the record, I must've dropped it like 10 times. No damage. In fact, it still runs the program or video just fine even though! Well built.
Good to hear that things are still going well. My unit also has no issues. :)
@ExplainingComputers Hey, it's not a "beast" of a machine, and I got it just as a secondary unit, but I can't help but be impressed with it, especially after the abuse it took from me. Still works like new.
I was chiming back to highly recommend this for the price to your audience, especially for any that are budget conscious - it can be a decent "main" computer too.
I have two Kodlix mini pcs. They turned my smart tv into a really smart tv, plus I can take it with me on vacation and not skip a beat by using the hotel TVs as a monitor. I have a 65 inch 4k monitor(TV). Good review.
I know this video is a few months old now but I just wanted to say that I bought two of these machines as they were reduced by 20% on Amazon Prime Day. I pretty much agree with everything in the video- they are very usable little Windows 10 machines. The machines would be ideal for normal everyday desktop type applications- emailing, web browsing, word processing etc. They are tiny and very light. I am planning to use one as a kind of IoT gateway device and the other as a light-use general purpose office machine. Pretty good for such a low priced unit.
And when Chris says you can cheaply add GPIO pins, he means it. Amazon prices a GPIO to USB kit for less than $19. Other sites may be cheaper. Unless the SBC people can lower their prices, there is almost no reason to buy one of their ARM-based machines. After all, why pay more for a machine that actually has less capability? Great video.
SBCs only suffer on the GPU side thanks to shitty (closed source) drivers 😞
Thank you. I had always wondered how one of these mini PCs would compare to some of the SBCs you've reviewed. Next to SBCs, I find these mini PCs fascinating. Needless to say, I always enjoy the humor you include in your videos! Appreciated your testing Linux on the mini PC. If you ever run across a mini PC running Windows 11 at this price in the future, I'd be interested to see how it performs and your valued opinion of the thing. Oh yes, looking forward to your video on adding GPIO pins a PC...hopefully this mini PC. As always, looking forward to you next video!
Greetings Perry! Here we are again. How the weeks fly by.
@@ExplainingComputers The older we get, the shorter the weeks become. If I get much older, I’ll begin to miss a few here and there!
Due to this video I bought the Bmax B1 Pro. After seeing I had no control over the Win 11 that was pre-installed I wiped it and installed Linux Mint 21. The machine now works flawlessly for what I use it for which is mostly as a multi-media server for watching TV.
Great video again! What I like about it is that you can boot from the M.2, meaning that when the internal storage starts to fail, the computer it not automatically junk. An 8GB version with 4 or more cores would be fantastic as well.
Look for the Beelink MINI S N5095 on their website. Yes, it costs somewhat more at 159/169 (128/256 Gb storage versions), but it does have 8GB RAM, true SSD storage instead of "SD card soldered to a board eMMC", and a 4-core CPU far superior to the one in this video scoring 3,5 or so times better in PassMark. Both are Celerons, but the N3350 is shockingly old, released in late 2016. The N5095 is not last gen but it is a late '21 model, much more reasonable.
Question :
1 - When you say , can boot from M.2 ,,,, does that mean the Operating System ( in this case ,, Windows 10 Pro ) can be moved / reloaded to the M.2 storage ?
2 - Will then the onboard storage be wiped clean ?
3 - Do you then just change the BOOT menu ,, for it to boot from M.2 drive ?
( Thanks , anybody ,, for added info ,,,,,, kind of new to the computer game ) .
Wow thanks for the information. I never thought about that.👍
If you want more memory and cores, you should seriously consider just getting a used Micro PC off of eBay. I just picked up a Dell with a 4C i5-7500t, 16GB, 128GB, and W10 Pro, and a 1-yr warranty (a real 1-yr warranty provided from SquareTrade under the "eBay Refurbished" program) for $150 shipped. A lot more power than one of these units for not a lot of additional coin.
Looks like a perfect platform for my Jellyfin project without messing with SBCs and their accessories. Impressive power draw.
I bought a mini pc a couple of years ago
to run a hobby cnc and laser . It's been nothing but great these little machines are great for a couple of apps that don't require a lot of horsepower to do things in a dirty environment . This machine seems very impressive for the price. Pity amazon already says no stock 😕
I went and purchased this. This will be good for off-grid use as the power requirements are low. Also it being powered by 12 vdc is a bonus too. Having access to Windows is useful too but for 95% of its use it will be running the new Debian.
Mini-pc are becoming more and more popular. I sold my laptop a year ago and bought a mini-pc, it was a very good choice
Great video, thanks
Thanks for the great video Chris, and this looks like a good simple, and cheap solution for my Church's library running Solus Linux attached to the back of some budget monitors. We are currently running 4 machines using a mix of old Dell/HP desktops, and I was considering some used Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny systems, but this looks to be an even better solution, as they won't be doing much more than office work, and simple online tasks.
They really are ideal for that use case.
I use similar $100 computers, running Windows 10 Pro, as "harvesters" for Chia.
The "Pro" version of Windows allows me to use Remote Desktop to view and run anything on them. No waiting a moment for my monitor to sync up from one box to the next.
Similar to the Bmax B1, my $100 boxes are fanless (so no noise, and low power).
One thing you did not cover, that I took note of for my $100 PCs, is that a simple file copy would use north of 50% of CPU cycles, according to Task Manager.
For me, it does not matter, because of my use case. But I have never seen a PC labor over a file copy. I would think that even a Celeron CPU could handle that as a yawn. But apparently not.
Ah Sunday my favorite day of the week because of you new Video day! I love mini pc related video have a nice day and week
Greetings! Have a great week.
It's a real shame they biffed the deal with only a 64GB drive. You really can't do anything substantial with this device, until you add external drives. Geez. Thanks for showing this.
This is a great computer for my company. I use an online accounting/estimating software and email. I use it to look up parts from my online vendors and that's it. My service manuals are all PDF so this little guy does everything I need and its a lot better to sit at real keyboard over using my table. It works great for it's intended purpose.
A Sunday morning Chris Barnatt video! What a treat!
Your last 2 videos have been my favorites in the last 3 months of viewing. Great job on keeping the channel dynamic. While I like the raspberry pi videos, that subject doesn’t hold my interest as well as these last 2 topics. Just a little feedback from a long time subscriber.
Thanks again Chris!
Thanks for this feedback, very useful. :)
Wow dude, not what I was expecting at all. Excellent video, great review! I was expecting that this thing would probably be pretty laggy and not useful for much. I'm really glad you used it to test GIMP on it because that would be the the thing I would primarily used it for.
This video popped up in my suggestions, I was curious, I was impressed & I subscribed to your channel! Well done ole chap
Oh snap‼️ I just checked the link and it's currently unavailable 😢. Any idea why?
Thanks for your comments. Sadly, 10 days after week after this video was posted, the Bmax B1 Plus has sold out everywhere. However, look back to the opening of the video where I show an Amazon search, and you will see there are several other mini PCs in the same price range. I've not tested them all, but am confiddent that they will deliver the same kind of user experience. GIMP on a c.$100 Mini PC with a Celeron processor and 4 or 6GB or RAM will not be the faster ever, but as the video showed, will be perfectly usable.
Another great video. I recently ordered something similar from a well known Chinese shopping site & received it this weekend, so it is great that you did this video now. Thanks so much.
Chris, you knocked this one out of the park. A VERY great review. Got me thinking about getting one of these now. Thank you for the review.
Thanks Chris! These mini PCs sure are interesting, I may end up buying one for a mini server. Being able to run garden variety Linux distributions makes an x86 mini PC a much better option for many use cases than some barely supported ARM SBC.
Surprised we don't see more running Chrome OS, as I feel it's a good match for some use cases.
Awesome review. To properly test Gimp you need to open a photographic image, add some layers and a few brushstrokes and distortions. This eats massive amounts of memory and you will quickly find the machine's limits
To be honest most people wouldn't. They would throw together a poster for a community group once every couple of months if it was an older/super budget conscious person owning one of these.
@@wozzablog I'm older and super budget conscious and I do this all the time.
This is interesting hardware to run a little home server on. I now run Home Assistant and some other basic server applications on an old Mac Mini with Ubuntu Server, but I think this little computer could be a much more power-efficient solution. Thanks for the great video again!
Yes, they are. I would normally recommend a raspberrypi for such a case, but since those are in short supply right now, these makes great alternatives.
What sorts of basic applications?
I bought this one last week when i saw your video. I needed a small pc to be used as a router (running linux) in my house. Works great for that! Don't expect this to be a gaming pc or anything else..it's just too small for that. Thanks for the video!
Result!
Amazing as always, Chris. In fact I do use the Mini PCs that I got for review. The U59 Pro is a NAS server in our house and the SEi12 Pro is in fact my new production machine 💪🙏
The scathing assessment of the SD card interface had me laughing 😂👍
That intro is an absolute banger
I love this guy’s videos
Thanks. :)
@@ExplainingComputers ❤️
Thank you for being here. You are one of the so very few that I can trust and tell people and my clients to see your site. You are an honest man and I am glad that you can educate people so easily on "Explaining Computers".
Very interesting , it makes me wonder how long it will be before these mini pc's become powerful enough to run high poly renders in 3d software like Blender. Great video as usual.
Good Video. But i would never use this kind of preinstalled Windows. Its a very big security Risk. I dont mind the Volume Activation but you never know what other things have been modified. Reinstall Windows to be safe. (I know it can take ages.) And Keys are not that expensive.
As a non-Windows user, I'm always more interested in Linux compatibility and performance with PC hardware. In the case of this mini PC, with its loose adherence to the spirit and intent of licensing regulations, I'd be erasing that Windows installation right away. That aside, it's nice to see that a perfectly usable system can be obtained so cheaply. I recently swapped my main PC - a self-built Ryzen APU tower system - for a used Asus mini PC built around a more recent Ryzen APU. The power use is dramatically less, as is 'noise'.
I do run Linux later in the video! :)
@@ExplainingComputers Indeed, and it runs well on the modest hardware. It makes for a cheap computer either way, and you hint at it becoming the basis for SBC-like tinkering. I look forward to future videos with the Bmax.
Yes, that system running MSWin 10 *Pro*, especially with a Volume licensed version, makes me suspicious of the legality of the MSWin version installed on it. The idea of running the first boot into MSWin10 with it OFF the network is also a method of avoiding the requirement of a MS Online account [1], but some of the other steps make me think they're trying to avoid being caught by the MS Licensing Gestapo.
But if you're going to be installing some other OS, or you have some KMS solution in place, it isn't a problem anyway.
[1] if you're creating a local account on a MSWin10 install, create it *without* a password, and it won't ask for the "security" questions. You can add a password later.
If you're a non windows user, this computer will be a waste of money, because it comes with a windows license that you paid for & won't use. I bet the same number of dollars will go further in a different machine
@@eitantal726 I don't think anyone actually 'paid' for the license. Compared to the price of ARM SBCs right now, I would say it's not a bad machine for the price.
@ExplainingComputers: I want to thank you so much for your channel in general and for this video in particular. I had been looking for a way to control my homebrew CNC mill with a compact computer, instead of my ancient tower PC. I had settled on RPi 4B and LinuxCNC, but the shortage of RPi SBCs was becoming a major headache for me. But thanks to you, I can pick up a mini PC with much better specs than the RPi, and run Windows 11, with Mach3/Mach4 for the best CNC experience by far. I connected my mini PC to an old 1080P tv that fell out of use, and I couldn't be happier. My mini PC had Windows 11 Pro pre-installed, and also came with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. I paid only $125 for it (after $25 off on the big evil online retail site). Thanks for showing us this possibility 😊!
Bonjour Chris, Thank you for including the Dual Boot configuration, as it's a great option if one needs both systems.
I wonder how tiny 11 will run on this configuration compare to an ARM based chip. Looking forward to you GPIO extension presentation.
Benchmark comparison: tiny11 vs W10 Pro vs W10 LTSC
I love these machines.
I've been tinkering with an old windows xp box, just because I found it...
It's amazing what you can get now.
Although tbf, I got a 5 year old ThinkPad for 100, which is a proper computer.
God...Imagine having one of these in 1999. It would blow their minds.
Quite!
I greatly enjoyed your video while tearing up a bit. Almost 30 years ago I used to pay $100 for a TimexSinclair 1000 (ZX81). I impress on my children when it comes to all electronic devices - SMALLER, CHEAPER, FASTER as time goes by.
I love how you just casually gloss over the 3 hour update process that windows took!!! That's enough time to test out several linux distros and settled on the one that you really like!!! This would be a beast of a Chromebox running ChromeOS Flex. This is exactly the sort of machine that I would buy if I was after a cheap computer in a small form factor. It possible to repurpose "old" hardware and have an excellent computing experience (there's so MUCH of it around!!) but that old kit really finds it hard to compete with the low power consumption that these modern boards have. And fanless as well! Thanks for the excellent review.
Windows update has most likely been disabled with the Group Policy Editor, which is available on all versions of Win10 Pro, not just volume licenses. I used GPE to disable automatic updates on my system, which has a retail license.
I bought Win10 Pro key from scdkeys and go figure it does this same thing about auto updates disabled by Group Policy. Is there an easy way to change that?
@@utp216 Open Group Policy Editor and go to the folder indicated below. Change any setting listed as Enabled to Not configured, and then restart.
Local Computer Policy --> Computer Configuration --> Administrative Templates --> Windows Components --> Windows Update
It’s strange that it has a volume lic and some pre installed browser. It probably explains why it asked you not to connect the network on first boot. I would be suspicious of malware on the box.
Seems like this could be a quite decent file server. What we need is some sort of USB based GPIO board so we could do many of the things the PI4 does now. With GPIO control but using one of these mini-pc's instead of a PI.
GPIO on a server? What a joke.
And for gpio just use any arduino board.
finally someone remembered to use cell-phone tech in a right way... i never understood why those crappy pc components need to be so enormous, for watching video content and mails and stuff, one hardly needs more than this... i still have 700wats psu!!! while nowadays it should be more like 22wats tops
Bought this mini pc before 6 months (cost me only 85 euros), I'm using it sometimes for quick testing other hardware purposes, trying different systems on it and still working fine.
That moment when mini pcs are like half price SBCs, feels bad man.
I'd be curious to see how well Win 11 runs.
I'd like to see it compared next to something just a little better, next price point like $150 or $200 miniPC
Fantastic work! I recently bought a very similar box - a SOYO M2 with an Intel N4000 - and this was the most useful review I could find of such hardware. My use case is a low-power writing and general browsing machine that can handle Obsidian and run off solar and batteries. Most people seem to be trying to turn these little boxes into game stations and failing at it. I really appreciate your approach here.
i like your no-nonsense approach with reviews. the british accent is a nice touch. thx.
You could make a neat little low-power homelab cluster/kubernetes playground with a few of these. But for just a bit more you can buy secondhand TinyMiniMicro PC's that have a lot more power.
Last time I tried dual booting I did it the way you showed, but Windows would trash the Linux bootloader every Windows Update ran so now Windows has been banned completely from my PC. Microsoft just can't play nice with others, can they?
I'm very surprised to hear that a Windows update interfered with a bootloader another drive, formatted with a non-Windows file system. I've never had this problem when Windows and Linux are on seperate drives, with the other drive not present when each OS was installed. But as you say, Microsoft does not always play nice.
I've actually had the opposite issue, i've had a GRUB2 corruption wipe out the Windows bootloader on another drive, for me it's Linux that can't play well with Windows, but that aside, I will be looking into TinyMiniMicro for either Kubernetes or Proxmox clustering, while second hand Enterprise gear can be cheap to buy (other than the HDDs and Caddies... why ebay sellers you scalp on Caddies?), they're not so cheap to run, oh and they're noisy
Windows 11 on one drive and manualy install linux with efi partition and grub on the other drive and you should have no problems from my experience.
John Lennon Tech Tips
🍻 cheers to you sir
Given that it would take an Argon One case to bring a Raspberry Pi up to these specs; it is competitive.
Raises the possibility of an interesting business model: Charge $200 or $300 for a training course and participants can take the computer home with them complete with an environment of configured software and worked examples.
Another use case would be as a "burner computer" to use while traveling overseas as long as one has a command to wipe it (factory reset) when you are done you can leave it overseas and don't have to take it through customs.
I watch these videos mostly because you have a real likability factor. Very British and very knowledgeable - but in a wonderfully unassuming and amusing way. Keep being you Christopher and I shall keep watching!
Thank you very much - as per usual very thorough testing. Great machine for talking to a Sunsynk inverter via Home Assistant.
How soon will it be integrated into a keyboard ? ...We'll see.
I just picked up the Intel Celeron N3350 B20 Smart mini PC 6GB+64GB OS. I was extremely happy. It plays my Pinball Arcade 2 games wonderfully but can't keep up with all of part 3 very well. I think I paid $115.27 shipped from Ali-Express. I loved how you could add storage and how it had VGA as well as HDMI. I like VGA personally.
Good morning Chris!
As always a pleasure to start my Sunday off with one of your videos. This is an amazing little box. Two questions come to mind:
1. Would this be appropriate for a home automation set up such as running home assistant or, perhaps node-red w MQTT?
2. Well I was about to comment about wanting GPIO pins and associated support, but you just suggested that you will address this shortly. Good.
Thanks!
Adafruit USB to GPIO breakout boards?
Its a 2016 celeron computer in 2023, your $100 would be better spent putting it towards a newer system. Would be nice to see a review of a 12th gen celeron system rather than that ancient tack
Putting money towards a newer system would not help anybody who needs a PC now. :) There is absolutely nothing wrong with older hardware.
@@ExplainingComputers As long as the old hardware is up to the job. Testing it with MS Word isn't really relevant. You need to be testing it with Software like MS Teams and Zoom to see does the hardware cope in a modern office environment as so many of us are in work form home or hybrid work situations that a lot of PCs now have to handle. Can the hardware handle filesharing during a live meeting etc