This mini pc's board has the most efficient distribution of PCIE lanes that i've seen for a long while...and to pack it all in something so small is impressive.
@@M4XD4B0ZZ CPUs have a finite amount of lanes to share out for various things. These i9's have 28 lanes iirc. Giving 12 to 3x m.2, I assume 2x per SFP+ port, 4x per Thunderbolt port + the internal 8x. There's a bit of sharing and probably a PCIe switch but it's very nicely laid out
No PCIe switch was used on this board. All devices are CPU or Chipset connected. 13900H has a chipset-on-package (PCH), with 8x dedicated lanes (Gen4) between the CPU and PCH. x8 Gen5 -> PCIe Slot x4 Gen4 -> x710 10GbE x2 x4 Gen4 -> m.2 Slot 1 x4 Gen3 -> m.2 Slot 2 x2 Gen3 -> m.2 Slot 3 And an x1 Gen3 for each, WiFi and i226 2.5GbE x2
@@CraftComputingBased on what you illustrate in the video, it seems there are: - (4) “TB40” lanes unused on the CPU HPU? - (2) “PCIe Gen3” lanes unused on the PCH HPU? - (1) “PCIe Gen3 or SATA” lane unused on the PCH HPU? Is this accurate? If so is there any way to take advantage of the unused lanes?
I wish every home lab hardware review came with a PCIe lane breakdown like this. So many home lab products these days ship with insane PCIe configs, and it's very helpful knowing if it's Intel/AMD's fault, or the ODM was just being dumb. In this case, the blame lands fairly squarely on Intel for not integrating enough PCIe bands for an upper-end mobile CPU. Good review, much appreciated.
@@leakyabstraction I'd be extremely curious to see some in depth analysis there. It seems like the system doesn't "sleep" in idle. Laptop cpu should be able to idle at 0.1W, so I don't get how can this thing go up to 20W. I get, the 4 lan nicks and so on will consume power, but 20-30W is very bad. Maybe even try a different power brick could help
@@leakyabstraction It's expected at some degree, only the IO of sfp ports will take around the HP Elite 800. And anyway is impressive. If you don't need IOs then you shall consider other things. This thing is good value/$ while is freaking hot if you push the limits by using every feature of it. For better thermal management, shall be considered a little bigger case
@CraftComputing I've seen ALOT of reviews on this unit and yours was by far the best. STH, L1Tech, Hardware Haven your review was by far the best. Good job and it not always important to be first.
@@HardwareHaven But I love your channel too for its practicality and you more truly reflect the "home" in home labbing. No fancy garage rack for you, just a more homey network closet.
@@HardwareHaven @CraftComputing However, @HardwareHaven didn't fail to warn us about the M.2 vs U.2 switch issue. So you got that one. Well...after you had first hand experience with the consequences. Important testing. In your case it least, the drive seems to have survived, maybe?
@@deechvogt1589 Yeah, it seems to work fine. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort component on it that's fried though. I could smell the magic smoke haha
I doubt you could make the HBA bootable, but it may show up on TrueNAS just fine. Using 2x SSD’s on the internal storage for a mirrored boot would be perfect.
09:40 A2000 Mobile in desktop (AIC) factor is a frankenstein'd product of certain Chinese manufacturers (e.g. JieShuo), paired with a modded driver literally called FrankenDriver to make it function.
Speaking of that brand, for all the heavily customized cards they make, it's odd they don't have their own desktop P40. It's still the best "budget" AI card when it comes to LLMs just due to the obscene VRAM pool.
Awesome board. First 10GbE non-industry miniPC I've yet seen. This is so incredibly close to my perfect miniPC. Please. If any manufacturer releases something like this with ECC (using one of the ECC-supporting AMD chips) I would buy it in a heartbeat.
It's not actual ECC. For all intents and purposes the differentiation is the same between DDR4 and DDR5 with ECC and non-ECC versions. On-die ECC is there not to protect your data from silent corruption but to increase yields as now with DDR5 being shrunk down so much, it's inevitable that you get bad cells. True ECC RAM protects data from silent corruption through the whole chain, from the die to the CPU. My current plan is to build a server around an 8600g that explicitly supports running with ECC memory on a supported board and with the CPU capped at 35W in the bios. If a miniPC comes along that deliver this, I would get that instead. @@livewire98801
I wish they'd make a version with vPro and ECC! The nice thing about vPro instead of IPMI is that it has (A) a real Intel iGPU, and (B) a plain old VNC server you can enable. Also, room for a 15mm U.2 instead of 9.5MM U.2 would be way better!
I have 2 of these from Amazon EU, and another on the way from Minisforum store in EU. One thing to note, bios needs to be updated as the included vPRO firmware is full of security vulnerabilities. Also, bifurification of the x16 PCIe slot is not available in the bios. Also, both Amazon units which included factory installed 1Tb NVME both had the U.2 switch enabled when it should have been set to M.2, this could have potentially resulted in dead NVME drives, luckily I checked before powering on the system. Also, wifi adapater was hanging out, the factory forgot to screw it in, you can clearly see this on the review unit craft computing got sent.
Wow, switch flipped the wrong way absolutely could toast a drive. Good catch. As for the WiFi card, the card is held down by the standoff and screw from the NVMe fan shield. The screw passes through both parts. (Also holds down the u.2 adapter too).
It might be fun to try out one of those Oculink PCIE cards and a cheap doc to add a GPU to this system. Just to give you some idea of what would happen if they made the case just slightly bigger next time.
I know this video is a few months old, but there is a mod for the A2000, A2000 ada, and A4000 ada that makes them into 1-slot cards. They were sold via pre-order on the yocto site that sells some really small 3d printed cases and a couple of other mods for the A2000. That combo would definitely be a super great mini workstation.
I have this unit and it makes zero noise. I literally cannot hear it. About a month bad the fan did start to hum. I opened up the unit pressed things gently back in place and no mouse since. I am using the unit as a digital audio workstation (music probuction hobby) and it offers amazing performance and QUIET operation.
While the MS-01 isn't something that suits my personal use case, this and your recent videos showcasing Proxmox running on Intel hybrid architectures has me very strongly considering clearing out the cruft of a couple of janky homelab setups using older 5th and 8th gen hardware and building a brand new all-in-one virtualisation host on an Intel Core i5-14500 (same price as a 13500 here)... My homelab might end up with newer, nicer hardware than my main PC!
Thanks for the video. I couldn't resist and ordered an MS-01. I know it sounds strange, I bought an oculink low profile card to be able to run an external graphics card. I hope the oculink card will be recognized correctly.
I absolutely love it, they've done such a good job fitting it into the niche of lab server + workstation, I might still pick one up as a standalone workstation, but I'd love it for home server use as well except for the fact that my main lab environments are work tangential and don't support the heterogeneous cores (yet?) but for a lot of labs, it'll work just fine and faster than much else you can piece together at that price point... it was also announced right after I blew too much money building a cluster, which is awesome, but a cluster of these guys would have been absolutely killer. Maybe an AMD version with the intel NICs if we're lucky and Minisforum hears our pleas.
The only thing that would make me happier, is an XL version thaty has just a massive M.2 array like just 4 rows of tripple stacked M.2 , and then 4 more on the back of the board, using the CPU fan to suck air through the M.2 array before blowing it over the CPU heatsink. Figuring out an intuitive way to mount the M.2 drives might be an issue, but i figure a single tower with 3 rotating sections that are half cresants, drop in the first M.2, turn the tower 180° to spin the locking mechanism around to lock in the first one, and repeat the process until all M.2 drives have been installed Imagine 16*M.2 drives at 1x link speed leaves just enough PCIe lanes for high speed networking. Heck you could probably get away with 18*M.2 drives but that would be squeezing that PCIe bus for the high speed networking.
Just bought three of these bad ass mofos. Getting rid of my 2u and 4u servers! Popping a 4 port SFP+ PCIe card in each, setting up a hybrid mesh for Proxmox and Ceph on different networks. I have questions about the stability of ethernet over USB4 or even using them for attached storage, but the second I saw these machines I knew they were going to be HOT!
@psycl0ptic Make sure to apply the Intel Microcode patch (Featured in my Proxmox BIG/Little Part 2 video). 100% rock solid on the 13900H. I ran stress testing for 3 days on my desk with no issue. Without the patch, if the BIOS doesn't have the latest microcode, BIG/Little can get a little buggy with KVM/Proxmox.
I know Mini is literally in their name, but i'd love to see Minisforum make a full sized workstation or server. They make some of the coolest hardware around, but always with some concessions in the name of size.
They started releasing prepopulated itx motherboards for DIY systems. I'm really interested to see where they go with that, they look really sweet so far.
I would have bought this thing a month ago but I needed a full height pcie slot for a specific card. I was also pretty tempted to go with their mobile on desktop itx motherboard with 16 core ryzen, but I ended up finding a better deal on an asrock z690m itx board with two nics and a 12900k. I know the smaller form factor is popular, but I'd love to see more systems like this that are 1 or 2 u rack mountable systems that are shallow depth (under 13 inches). They would be extremely useful in the audio/video fields.
*Surpassing video* 👍 thank you. MS-O1 looks very interesting. We all want more PCIe lanes. I personally want to keep working towards a vintage threadripper system while not get sidetracked by other opportunities, even highly compelling ones like MS-01. Kindest regards, friends and neighbours.
I've bought two of these, with three more on their way to me. Except now I have some serious concern about them corrupting data. On STH, there's a thread titled "Minisforum MS-01 + QNAP JBOD issues", where the OP, and another person, found that they were getting verify errors out of the badblocks command (with smartctl reporting zero errors) that only went away when they replaced the MS-01 with an entirely different server (they both went to a Lenovo P3 Ultra, I believe). Now I'm having the exact same issue as well (I'm "orinivan" in that thread) except for the fact that I only see it on certain drives, as opposed to all drives, like the OP. If the MS-01 is truly at fault, and is not safe to use as a NAS engine, then I have to wonder if it's safe for any other purpose either. Maybe it comes down to not using ECC RAM. I don't know. I'd really like to get to the bottom of this, though - especially since I have a virtually identical set-up to the OP ... times five.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I see a lot of user reports about absolutely different failures like overheating, sudden deaths, not recognized devices, aspm issues, and now data corruption. Also Minisforum didn’t release a single piece of technical documentation like block schemes or data sheets, how to setup UEFI, hw compatibility list, conformity documents, etc. like other big brands are doing. It very much looks like they don’t give a s**t as they gonna stop support it very soon and there is no sense in making a good documentation. Some googling showed they already have abandoned products right after they have released them. Big discounts on ms-01 after 6 months since start of sales is also suspicious. All that gives a strong taste of cheap devices that wont last long in all means. I’m going to stay away from these device as they seem very much overhyped.
@@o.l.k.s.n Yeah it seems to be the issue with these small-ish companies... innovative approach to hardware, but a complete letdown in terms of software/QC/support 😑
Not quite on topic but the last week I've been testing proxmox as a possible ESXi replacement for my homelab and to have a baseline to discuss whetherat one point it might become viable for a production project at work. MAN is this thing ever OSS and as such PAINFUL. I opted to patch my ESXi to the latest 7.0 branch, get rid of vCenter and be done with it :D.
I just bought one a few weeks ago pre-release based on some other reviews I've seen. Part of the reason I was confident to buy it was your earlier videos on proxmox on the big/little Intel systems, thank you. The only gripe I have about the MS-01 reviews is that they're all of the 13900h. I bought the 12900h because the whole system is overkill for what I want to do with it, but I wanted something 10g capable and future-proof. The prerelease pricing on these isn't much more (and sometimes less) than other 10g/2.5g units out there. I would have actually gone with the 12450h except that it doesn't support vpro. I would love to see some reviews of the 12th-gen unit. If this thing is half as good as it looks like it's going to be, that's going to be a game-changer for this space. I have a couple other minisforum machines, so I have high hopes.
My current homelab server is the NAD9, which has the 12th gen version of the chip, DDR4 based, and only one 2.5G port. It is sufficient for now, but I may consider something like this later on, especially with the dual 10g support.
Just got my MS-01 with 96 GB Crucial RAM and two WD SN700 2 TB NVMe SSDs together and posting tonight. I was going to install Proxmox, but I hooked it up to a Thunderbolt dock to give it KVM/ethernet, and I couldn't tell which network interface I wanted to use for management lmao. I'll plug the cable directly into the ethernet I want to use tomorrow and hopefully that will make it select the right one.
OK Thx, it has been since Linus' first talk about framework that I wanted to buy a PC (there was not one with a Ryzen tough) . Now I have another one in view because of your presentation. Thx again.
Nice review, nice product. Maybe a ridiculous question, but could a 3D printed case revision for this product enable a 2 slot half height 75 watt video card fit? Or are there other product layout obstructions that would disallow this possible idea?
Gotta tell ya, Jeff, i love your tech content...but what's really strange is that I am a total non-drinker, yet your beer reviews are totally compelling and I'm always curious to watch them as a great "hook" on the end. Here's a good Root Beer backatcha. 👍
That's an insane level of PCIe capability. While, yeah that's not super impressive of a CPU score (given how powerful a full powered 13900H is in a gaming form) it's well more than whatever you're gonna need for this machine's use case. The breakdown you gave was phenomenal too. Please do more of that when you can! :D
ETA Prime reports "21 Watts at idle" however Serve The Home has reviewed the same system and gives a more granular reporting of idle power usage. --something like 9.8 watts for the processor plus whatever else you have attached.
Very keen to see some more SKU's of this model , perhaps with other CPUs, feels like they are onto a winner, but may needs a few more models to fit different needs
I was going to hold out for the MS-01, but ended up going with the UM790 with 64GB DDR5 since it met my needs to deprecate an older sandybridge based supermicro home server. Most of my larger storage requirements are external to the machine anyway. One thing I wanted to call out on Minisforum is the insane quality of the packaging. I was pleasantly surprised at how good the overall quality was from packaging, all the way to hardware. Thanks for the review! Great to see them getting some of the review units out.
@@davidcollins2219 i attempted that. First you need to provide an admin password in the bios, then access security and change to custom configuration. When the bios would still not allow USB boot, I contacted Minisforum and asked about the situation. They confirmed in writing that the UM790 bios does not support booting from external sources. You can install a second SSD drive with a Linux image and configure that way. The earlier miniforum models do allow USB boot and install, and I've purchased several midrange minisforum units for use as Linux boxes. They are little crackers! Love them! Perhaps Miniforum has changed the 790 bios (I hope so, because its a sad dog). I will check with support again, but the statement they provided was pretty clear. I got my unit right at the end of December 23.
@@davidcollins2219 reviewing specs in detail. I may have a slightly earlier model, the Venus 64GB UM790 is on the box. Will revisit this issue with our friends at minisforum, because I would love to run this as botaceta box!
Would be darn interesting seeing basically the same systemboard made to support mass storage devices for a Homelab system of combined Plex media and NAS system Minisforum makes some really interesting mini PC's of both Intel and AMD Solutions.
I just checked the link you have for this pc and the minisforum MS-01 with the Core I9-13900H now lists for $1,039.99.... quite a bit more but it really does look like a good PC.
Ordered the 12450h model on their site mid January, waiting on it to ship at the moment. Thinking of placing in a gpu into it and using it as a high performance nas/media server.
I am also still waiting. The initial promise was that orders before x date/time would be shipped in early February. I have not had any clear response from their very vague and inconsistent support who I conversed with using e-mail. No clue whatsoever when I can expect to receive my MS-01 but this does not inspire confidence to order more of these from their store.
@@PaperReaper When I pressed them with potential legal consequences and involving the creditcard company, they very quickly got their act together and I received an e-mail the next day that my parcel was registered with DHL. Good luck to you and hopefully you will get yours soon.
@@masterTigress96I paid via PayPal so I could easily get my money back if I wanted, esp being an EU citizen, but the I5 version was projected to ship mid march so I ain't bothered by it. It gave me time to source nvmes and ram for reasonable prices XD
Need some people to do more testing of pcie cards that will work, since even some with onboard pcie switches make the machine grumpy. Synology has a card with a 10Gb Ethernet port and two x4 nvme slots, would be very curious if that one works.
I would run machines with CPU=HOST option as it should give all cpu capabilites. The qemu v2 cpu is good for cluster applications so that node would work with live migrations across different hw nodes.
Excellent review as always but I'll definitely have to pass on this one and wait a couple revisions down the line because I need a 2-slot capable case that'll fit my ADA SFF GPU. I think Minisforum will probably do something similar to what Jonsbo have done with their "Jonsbo N3 Mini-ITX NAS PC" which to me is a far superior option over their initial "N1" case that came out in late 2022. A theoretical dual slot capable Minisforum MS-02 coupled with a Jonsbo N3 for bulk storage is indeed... chef's kiss.😘👌
Yes, would be very interesting to know if an small sas card with external connectors could fit in the box, if so i would definitely consider getting one and replacing one or more of my existing proxmox boxes (old leftover computers)
S1390: Intel® Core™ i9-13900H supports up to 96GB of memory S1290: Intel® Core™ i9-12900H supports up to 64GB of memory This can support up to 96GB RAM
Im impressed with the box, but had to send it back because kept having issues with the X710 chipset passthrough from Proxmox to PFsense. If I added a 5th vlan to the trunk, that 5th vlan would get an error in the PFSense CLI saying it was unable to bond a mac address to the vlan interface. I've done this with other systems using an X520 chipset and no issues. Researched on it a bit and couldn't find much help. Had to send it back.
If they took this exact board and put it in a short depth 4xLFF rack encloseure I really don't think you could get any better combo of features, power, and efficiency. Gonna stick a H200e and a disk shelf and replace my R340 (and finally get QSV... Dell disables the circuits on the R340!)
Now, if they make it in a 1u form factor, then "shutup and take my money." bonus points for the chassis to allow the addition of a second unit(mobo) or even more as surely you could fit two in a 1u chassis, even if they have to spread out as clearly its currently too tall for 1u. Extra extra bonus that they put in a low power, stripped feature version with only 2 / 4 SFP+ ports for a router (in said 1u form factor). I'd love to get off my r210ii to something more capable with less power consumption (40w currently on the dell).
If anybody is willing to send me drawings of the dimensions for how that top panel mounts, or ideally the entire top panel, I will model out a top panel that is whatever extra height you want. I'm looking at the i7 version myself, but would like to drop in a dual-slot A380 if possible.
@@livewire98801 and in a slightly larger chassis the PSU could be internal. You could have a neat little dual pve box in 1 (or 2)U. Add in an N100 NAS and you could have one heck of a low power homelab setup.
Will this SSD fit in the U2 slot of the Minisforum MS-01 and function without any issues? It's a Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN650, U.3, 15MM, 15,360GB, 2.5-inch, PCIe.
my 13900h ES board i recently deployed is so much fun, its nice to see a 5.4 all core @ 1.24v... but then agian it pulls 125w, but its sure as hell fun to see this laptop chip destroy desktop chips
Maybe its just me, but once you cross the $600 price barrier for mini pc's; I feel you can build an ITX PC in a smallish factor for the same price and have much more compute and expendability power.
Seeing that the 12900H model is 150-200$ cheaper (in my region) than the 13900H model, would you say that the performance upgrade is worth that much? I think in this situation the 12th gen is a better price/performance choice as it is not far.
You are right, coolers in laptops are not so great. Most laptops lack the space for a good cooler. The thinner it is the less room there is for cooling.
I think the most disappointing thing here is that there isn't occulink or thunderbolt. I get it cause it has PCIe internally, but if you could hook in a GPU externally you could for PCIe pass through and have a n inferencing server for AI/ML. That said if you're trying to make an SMB homelab It makes sense to just get one of these and build it up over time than getting, say, a GMKtec M7 Pro. It'd also be outrageously expensive from the storage perspective but it would be cool to make one of these a dedicated rack-mount Plex Server on a 10" rack
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.
![PASULOL รามเกียรติ์ ตอนที่ 4 นนทกพบรัก [Ramakien Ep.4: Nonthok in love]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUQgmZzf_A/mqdefault.jpg)
This mini pc's board has the most efficient distribution of PCIE lanes that i've seen for a long while...and to pack it all in something so small is impressive.
@@M4XD4B0ZZ CPUs have a finite amount of lanes to share out for various things. These i9's have 28 lanes iirc. Giving 12 to 3x m.2, I assume 2x per SFP+ port, 4x per Thunderbolt port + the internal 8x. There's a bit of sharing and probably a PCIe switch but it's very nicely laid out
No PCIe switch was used on this board. All devices are CPU or Chipset connected. 13900H has a chipset-on-package (PCH), with 8x dedicated lanes (Gen4) between the CPU and PCH.
x8 Gen5 -> PCIe Slot
x4 Gen4 -> x710 10GbE x2
x4 Gen4 -> m.2 Slot 1
x4 Gen3 -> m.2 Slot 2
x2 Gen3 -> m.2 Slot 3
And an x1 Gen3 for each, WiFi and i226 2.5GbE x2
I wonder if this why the audio processing on it is so smooth. I am very impressed with it as a DAW
@@CraftComputingBased on what you illustrate in the video, it seems there are:
- (4) “TB40” lanes unused on the CPU HPU?
- (2) “PCIe Gen3” lanes unused on the PCH HPU?
- (1) “PCIe Gen3 or SATA” lane unused on the PCH HPU?
Is this accurate?
If so is there any way to take advantage of the unused lanes?
@@docjoesweeney what DAW for music are u using on this one? is running good?
I wish every home lab hardware review came with a PCIe lane breakdown like this. So many home lab products these days ship with insane PCIe configs, and it's very helpful knowing if it's Intel/AMD's fault, or the ODM was just being dumb. In this case, the blame lands fairly squarely on Intel for not integrating enough PCIe bands for an upper-end mobile CPU. Good review, much appreciated.
It's a small market, but a rack mount option with 1 or 2 of these would be nice.
looks like someone already made one on Printables!
Hey Jeff,
could you please include idle power consumption in the future? It's one of the most important factors for me.
Thanks!
Reading some forums it looks to be 20W or less. Depends on what’s plugged in and if you’re running VMs, Dockers etc.
They don't mention it because it's pretty bad. 25-30W, supposedly. Meanwhile an HP Elite 800 consumes like 5 watts idling.
@@leakyabstraction The HP Elite 800 is hot garbage in comparison. Are you fucking blind?
@@leakyabstraction I'd be extremely curious to see some in depth analysis there. It seems like the system doesn't "sleep" in idle. Laptop cpu should be able to idle at 0.1W, so I don't get how can this thing go up to 20W. I get, the 4 lan nicks and so on will consume power, but 20-30W is very bad. Maybe even try a different power brick could help
@@leakyabstraction It's expected at some degree, only the IO of sfp ports will take around the HP Elite 800. And anyway is impressive. If you don't need IOs then you shall consider other things. This thing is good value/$ while is freaking hot if you push the limits by using every feature of it. For better thermal management, shall be considered a little bigger case
@CraftComputing I've seen ALOT of reviews on this unit and yours was by far the best. STH, L1Tech, Hardware Haven your review was by far the best. Good job and it not always important to be first.
Rude...
Kidding. I agree!
@@HardwareHaven But I love your channel too for its practicality and you more truly reflect the "home" in home labbing. No fancy garage rack for you, just a more homey network closet.
@@deechvogt1589 I probably moreso reflect the complete noob haha. And thanks!
@@HardwareHaven @CraftComputing However, @HardwareHaven didn't fail to warn us about the M.2 vs U.2 switch issue. So you got that one. Well...after you had first hand experience with the consequences. Important testing. In your case it least, the drive seems to have survived, maybe?
@@deechvogt1589 Yeah, it seems to work fine. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort component on it that's fried though. I could smell the magic smoke haha
If you could get a HBA card working in that it would make a great Truenas box connected to a disk shelf.
Am doing precisely this when my MS01 turns up
The erratic PCIe compatibility is a concern though. Might be no guarantee the HBA will work. Hopefully it does.
My main concern is the temps. A 9200/9300 is gonna need a fan in there. With room for a fan, this would be a perfect truenas box.
That 9305-16e would be perfect but may be too long
I doubt you could make the HBA bootable, but it may show up on TrueNAS just fine. Using 2x SSD’s on the internal storage for a mirrored boot would be perfect.
No ECC and only 32GB RAM.. i'm happy with my tiny Supermicro E300-9D Servers with a huge ammount of ECC RAM ⭐️
New at least you're looking at 2x+ the cost.
09:40 A2000 Mobile in desktop (AIC) factor is a frankenstein'd product of certain Chinese manufacturers (e.g. JieShuo), paired with a modded driver literally called FrankenDriver to make it function.
Speaking of that brand, for all the heavily customized cards they make, it's odd they don't have their own desktop P40. It's still the best "budget" AI card when it comes to LLMs just due to the obscene VRAM pool.
Awesome board. First 10GbE non-industry miniPC I've yet seen. This is so incredibly close to my perfect miniPC. Please. If any manufacturer releases something like this with ECC (using one of the ECC-supporting AMD chips) I would buy it in a heartbeat.
Same here.
Doesn't DDR5 have ECC functionality built-in? I thought I saw that mentioned in a recent review of something.
It's not actual ECC. For all intents and purposes the differentiation is the same between DDR4 and DDR5 with ECC and non-ECC versions. On-die ECC is there not to protect your data from silent corruption but to increase yields as now with DDR5 being shrunk down so much, it's inevitable that you get bad cells. True ECC RAM protects data from silent corruption through the whole chain, from the die to the CPU. My current plan is to build a server around an 8600g that explicitly supports running with ECC memory on a supported board and with the CPU capped at 35W in the bios. If a miniPC comes along that deliver this, I would get that instead.
@@livewire98801
@@livewire98801DDR5 has some error correction built-in, but it is far from the same as ECC. As per Patrick at ServeTheHome.
@@livewire98801 it has on-die ECC but that is not the same as full chip ECC.
I wish they'd make a version with vPro and ECC! The nice thing about vPro instead of IPMI is that it has (A) a real Intel iGPU, and (B) a plain old VNC server you can enable.
Also, room for a 15mm U.2 instead of 9.5MM U.2 would be way better!
it has vPro
@@Reckless5040 Nice, so it's just missing ECC. And room for taller U.2 drives, but maybe altering the cover could fix that.
I have 2 of these from Amazon EU, and another on the way from Minisforum store in EU. One thing to note, bios needs to be updated as the included vPRO firmware is full of security vulnerabilities. Also, bifurification of the x16 PCIe slot is not available in the bios. Also, both Amazon units which included factory installed 1Tb NVME both had the U.2 switch enabled when it should have been set to M.2, this could have potentially resulted in dead NVME drives, luckily I checked before powering on the system. Also, wifi adapater was hanging out, the factory forgot to screw it in, you can clearly see this on the review unit craft computing got sent.
Do these Chinese boxes have built in malware much like the cheap tv boxes sold all over containing malware.
yea, the BIOS updates is something why I would not buy this, even it's a great machine
@@bodomnight63Regular computers need BIOS updates, heck so do servers from time to time, a bit confused why this would be a deal breaker for you?
@@gtech66 No, the os is clean and is running Oct Windows 11 Updates.
Wow, switch flipped the wrong way absolutely could toast a drive. Good catch.
As for the WiFi card, the card is held down by the standoff and screw from the NVMe fan shield. The screw passes through both parts. (Also holds down the u.2 adapter too).
It might be fun to try out one of those Oculink PCIE cards and a cheap doc to add a GPU to this system. Just to give you some idea of what would happen if they made the case just slightly bigger next time.
I like this mini workstation but I'd like it more if there was TB4/USB4 on the front instead of loads three regular USB's
I know this video is a few months old, but there is a mod for the A2000, A2000 ada, and A4000 ada that makes them into 1-slot cards. They were sold via pre-order on the yocto site that sells some really small 3d printed cases and a couple of other mods for the A2000. That combo would definitely be a super great mini workstation.
Great video! 😁
What's the idle power consumption with 2 NVME drives?
How loud ist it at idling?
Do the SFP-slots Support 1 GBit/s modules?
I have this unit and it makes zero noise. I literally cannot hear it.
About a month bad the fan did start to hum. I opened up the unit pressed things gently back in place and no mouse since.
I am using the unit as a digital audio workstation (music probuction hobby) and it offers amazing performance and QUIET operation.
While the MS-01 isn't something that suits my personal use case, this and your recent videos showcasing Proxmox running on Intel hybrid architectures has me very strongly considering clearing out the cruft of a couple of janky homelab setups using older 5th and 8th gen hardware and building a brand new all-in-one virtualisation host on an Intel Core i5-14500 (same price as a 13500 here)...
My homelab might end up with newer, nicer hardware than my main PC!
The rtx A2000 mobile was an addin card option for the Lenovo P360 ultra, a compact workstation that is somewhat but not much larger than this one.
Thanks for the video. I couldn't resist and ordered an MS-01. I know it sounds strange, I bought an oculink low profile card to be able to run an external graphics card. I hope the oculink card will be recognized correctly.
Any updates on oculink compatibility?
How’s your minisforum running?
Bump
This is the most in-depth tech review I've watched so far about this device and its hurting my brain.
I absolutely love it, they've done such a good job fitting it into the niche of lab server + workstation, I might still pick one up as a standalone workstation, but I'd love it for home server use as well except for the fact that my main lab environments are work tangential and don't support the heterogeneous cores (yet?) but for a lot of labs, it'll work just fine and faster than much else you can piece together at that price point... it was also announced right after I blew too much money building a cluster, which is awesome, but a cluster of these guys would have been absolutely killer. Maybe an AMD version with the intel NICs if we're lucky and Minisforum hears our pleas.
Boost algorithm engagement comment.
Snarky counterargument with obvious logic flaw.
@@TheFrantic5random bot comment here
@@WeatherWX Unhinged anti-ai rant about spam comments
9:19 Random timestamp
Completely agree, very poignant and insightful.
@10:28 or thickening it up a bit would mean Optane Drives would fit (15mm) not just 7mm U.2 drives...
The only thing that would make me happier, is an XL version thaty has just a massive M.2 array like just 4 rows of tripple stacked M.2 , and then 4 more on the back of the board, using the CPU fan to suck air through the M.2 array before blowing it over the CPU heatsink.
Figuring out an intuitive way to mount the M.2 drives might be an issue, but i figure a single tower with 3 rotating sections that are half cresants, drop in the first M.2, turn the tower 180° to spin the locking mechanism around to lock in the first one, and repeat the process until all M.2 drives have been installed
Imagine 16*M.2 drives at 1x link speed leaves just enough PCIe lanes for high speed networking.
Heck you could probably get away with 18*M.2 drives but that would be squeezing that PCIe bus for the high speed networking.
Just bought three of these bad ass mofos. Getting rid of my 2u and 4u servers! Popping a 4 port SFP+ PCIe card in each, setting up a hybrid mesh for Proxmox and Ceph on different networks. I have questions about the stability of ethernet over USB4 or even using them for attached storage, but the second I saw these machines I knew they were going to be HOT!
How stable?
Thinking the same for my replacement servers for ProxMox. Let us know how it's working for you.
@@psycl0ptic if you run the intel microcode update, they are pretty stable see the big/little linked videos for the patch info.
@psycl0ptic Make sure to apply the Intel Microcode patch (Featured in my Proxmox BIG/Little Part 2 video). 100% rock solid on the 13900H. I ran stress testing for 3 days on my desk with no issue. Without the patch, if the BIOS doesn't have the latest microcode, BIG/Little can get a little buggy with KVM/Proxmox.
Could go for 10/25G NIC, 25G for storage, 10G for VMs
I would add an SAS HBA and connect to my KTN-STL3.. would save me quite a bit of power compared to my 2011-3 system I have today.
I know Mini is literally in their name, but i'd love to see Minisforum make a full sized workstation or server. They make some of the coolest hardware around, but always with some concessions in the name of size.
They started releasing prepopulated itx motherboards for DIY systems. I'm really interested to see where they go with that, they look really sweet so far.
I would have bought this thing a month ago but I needed a full height pcie slot for a specific card. I was also pretty tempted to go with their mobile on desktop itx motherboard with 16 core ryzen, but I ended up finding a better deal on an asrock z690m itx board with two nics and a 12900k. I know the smaller form factor is popular, but I'd love to see more systems like this that are 1 or 2 u rack mountable systems that are shallow depth (under 13 inches). They would be extremely useful in the audio/video fields.
*Surpassing video* 👍 thank you.
MS-O1 looks very interesting.
We all want more PCIe lanes.
I personally want to keep working towards a vintage threadripper system while not get sidetracked by other opportunities, even highly compelling ones like MS-01.
Kindest regards, friends and neighbours.
I've bought two of these, with three more on their way to me. Except now I have some serious concern about them corrupting data. On STH, there's a thread titled "Minisforum MS-01 + QNAP JBOD issues", where the OP, and another person, found that they were getting verify errors out of the badblocks command (with smartctl reporting zero errors) that only went away when they replaced the MS-01 with an entirely different server (they both went to a Lenovo P3 Ultra, I believe). Now I'm having the exact same issue as well (I'm "orinivan" in that thread) except for the fact that I only see it on certain drives, as opposed to all drives, like the OP. If the MS-01 is truly at fault, and is not safe to use as a NAS engine, then I have to wonder if it's safe for any other purpose either. Maybe it comes down to not using ECC RAM. I don't know. I'd really like to get to the bottom of this, though - especially since I have a virtually identical set-up to the OP ... times five.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I see a lot of user reports about absolutely different failures like overheating, sudden deaths, not recognized devices, aspm issues, and now data corruption. Also Minisforum didn’t release a single piece of technical documentation like block schemes or data sheets, how to setup UEFI, hw compatibility list, conformity documents, etc. like other big brands are doing. It very much looks like they don’t give a s**t as they gonna stop support it very soon and there is no sense in making a good documentation. Some googling showed they already have abandoned products right after they have released them. Big discounts on ms-01 after 6 months since start of sales is also suspicious. All that gives a strong taste of cheap devices that wont last long in all means. I’m going to stay away from these device as they seem very much overhyped.
@@o.l.k.s.n Yeah it seems to be the issue with these small-ish companies... innovative approach to hardware, but a complete letdown in terms of software/QC/support 😑
Not quite on topic but the last week I've been testing proxmox as a possible ESXi replacement for my homelab and to have a baseline to discuss whetherat one point it might become viable for a production project at work.
MAN is this thing ever OSS and as such PAINFUL. I opted to patch my ESXi to the latest 7.0 branch, get rid of vCenter and be done with it :D.
I just bought one a few weeks ago pre-release based on some other reviews I've seen. Part of the reason I was confident to buy it was your earlier videos on proxmox on the big/little Intel systems, thank you.
The only gripe I have about the MS-01 reviews is that they're all of the 13900h. I bought the 12900h because the whole system is overkill for what I want to do with it, but I wanted something 10g capable and future-proof. The prerelease pricing on these isn't much more (and sometimes less) than other 10g/2.5g units out there. I would have actually gone with the 12450h except that it doesn't support vpro. I would love to see some reviews of the 12th-gen unit.
If this thing is half as good as it looks like it's going to be, that's going to be a game-changer for this space. I have a couple other minisforum machines, so I have high hopes.
My current homelab server is the NAD9, which has the 12th gen version of the chip, DDR4 based, and only one 2.5G port. It is sufficient for now, but I may consider something like this later on, especially with the dual 10g support.
Just got my MS-01 with 96 GB Crucial RAM and two WD SN700 2 TB NVMe SSDs together and posting tonight. I was going to install Proxmox, but I hooked it up to a Thunderbolt dock to give it KVM/ethernet, and I couldn't tell which network interface I wanted to use for management lmao. I'll plug the cable directly into the ethernet I want to use tomorrow and hopefully that will make it select the right one.
OK Thx, it has been since Linus' first talk about framework that I wanted to buy a PC (there was not one with a Ryzen tough) .
Now I have another one in view because of your presentation.
Thx again.
A PC as opposed to... a Mac?
Nice review, nice product. Maybe a ridiculous question, but could a 3D printed case revision for this product enable a 2 slot half height 75 watt video card fit? Or are there other product layout obstructions that would disallow this possible idea?
Any notes on HBA compatibility? As another commenter said, this could make a killer pairing with a DAS.
Gotta tell ya, Jeff, i love your tech content...but what's really strange is that I am a total non-drinker, yet your beer reviews are totally compelling and I'm always curious to watch them as a great "hook" on the end. Here's a good Root Beer backatcha. 👍
I love a good root beer :-)
I'm not a varietous drinker of alcohol, but I love trying craft sodas, so that would be awesome on the Patreon.
That's an insane level of PCIe capability. While, yeah that's not super impressive of a CPU score (given how powerful a full powered 13900H is in a gaming form) it's well more than whatever you're gonna need for this machine's use case. The breakdown you gave was phenomenal too. Please do more of that when you can! :D
Wonder if a self powered 4090 or two would work on the PCIE slot
What's idle power?
ETA Prime reports "21 Watts at idle" however Serve The Home has reviewed the same system and gives a more granular reporting of idle power usage. --something like 9.8 watts for the processor plus whatever else you have attached.
I wonder if someone will come up with a PCIe expansion box (with an external power supply? That would some of the issues with using that PCIe slot 🙂
That PCIe slot seems great for a SAS controller with an external 4 or 8 drive enclosure
A slightly taller chassis? Or perhaps a 3D printed solution? I am thinking a hole cut and a hood scoop like a car OR a fully printed side panel.
Very keen to see some more SKU's of this model , perhaps with other CPUs, feels like they are onto a winner, but may needs a few more models to fit different needs
I was going to hold out for the MS-01, but ended up going with the UM790 with 64GB DDR5 since it met my needs to deprecate an older sandybridge based supermicro home server. Most of my larger storage requirements are external to the machine anyway.
One thing I wanted to call out on Minisforum is the insane quality of the packaging. I was pleasantly surprised at how good the overall quality was from packaging, all the way to hardware.
Thanks for the review! Great to see them getting some of the review units out.
I also got the 790. A great box. How did you get Linux running on it?
@@docjoesweeney I downloaded a Debian iso, wrote it to a USB thumb drive, changed the boot order in the bios and installed it
@@davidcollins2219 i attempted that. First you need to provide an admin password in the bios, then access security and change to custom configuration. When the bios would still not allow USB boot, I contacted Minisforum and asked about the situation. They confirmed in writing that the UM790 bios does not support booting from external sources. You can install a second SSD drive with a Linux image and configure that way. The earlier miniforum models do allow USB boot and install, and I've purchased several midrange minisforum units for use as Linux boxes. They are little crackers! Love them!
Perhaps Miniforum has changed the 790 bios (I hope so, because its a sad dog). I will check with support again, but the statement they provided was pretty clear. I got my unit right at the end of December 23.
@@davidcollins2219 reviewing specs in detail. I may have a slightly earlier model, the Venus 64GB UM790 is on the box. Will revisit this issue with our friends at minisforum, because I would love to run this as botaceta box!
Ok. Checked. I do have the latest venus um790 pro and reconfirmed it cannot boot from external USB. Checking with minisforum again re bios settings.
Would be darn interesting seeing basically the same systemboard made to support mass storage devices for a Homelab system of combined Plex media and NAS system Minisforum makes some really interesting mini PC's of both Intel and AMD Solutions.
I just checked the link you have for this pc and the minisforum MS-01 with the Core I9-13900H now lists for $1,039.99.... quite a bit more but it really does look like a good PC.
They have a barebones one for a lot less through Minsiforum web site.
This is awesome. This will also works great with my 7 slots PCIe Magma expansion chassis, if I need to do some heavier lifting.
Ordered the 12450h model on their site mid January, waiting on it to ship at the moment. Thinking of placing in a gpu into it and using it as a high performance nas/media server.
I am also still waiting. The initial promise was that orders before x date/time would be shipped in early February. I have not had any clear response from their very vague and inconsistent support who I conversed with using e-mail. No clue whatsoever when I can expect to receive my MS-01 but this does not inspire confidence to order more of these from their store.
@@wojtek-33 yes, but I might game on it , we will see.
@@masterTigress96in my case they straight up said when I ordered that it will ship mid march so I am waiting smile.
@@PaperReaper When I pressed them with potential legal consequences and involving the creditcard company, they very quickly got their act together and I received an e-mail the next day that my parcel was registered with DHL. Good luck to you and hopefully you will get yours soon.
@@masterTigress96I paid via PayPal so I could easily get my money back if I wanted, esp being an EU citizen, but the I5 version was projected to ship mid march so I ain't bothered by it. It gave me time to source nvmes and ram for reasonable prices XD
Need some people to do more testing of pcie cards that will work, since even some with onboard pcie switches make the machine grumpy. Synology has a card with a 10Gb Ethernet port and two x4 nvme slots, would be very curious if that one works.
I'm glad to see something like this. So tired of Intel and their artificial blocking of bifurcation.
I would run machines with CPU=HOST option as it should give all cpu capabilites. The qemu v2 cpu is good for cluster applications so that node would work with live migrations across different hw nodes.
Nice little machine - perfect for my audio work, too - why --> i put a Dante-Card inside and use this for my live-DAW or for the Waves PlugsIns.
Wondering if I could install my 3090 w/ a riser...
I really wish it was a little taller. I would LOVE to put my RTX 4000 SFF in it
Excellent review as always but I'll definitely have to pass on this one and wait a couple revisions down the line because I need a 2-slot capable case that'll fit my ADA SFF GPU. I think Minisforum will probably do something similar to what Jonsbo have done with their "Jonsbo N3 Mini-ITX NAS PC" which to me is a far superior option over their initial "N1" case that came out in late 2022. A theoretical dual slot capable Minisforum MS-02 coupled with a Jonsbo N3 for bulk storage is indeed... chef's kiss.😘👌
Something like a 1/2 height sas card connected to external storage sounds like an interesting storage solution.
Thats not a mini PC, that's a TrueNAS head unit when you add a HBA for that PCI-e slot and a tiny little DAS box.
If you include a PCI-E M.2 expansion card with room for 16+ cards. you can make it into a ULTIMATE SSF server/NAS
This is almost perfect for me, but I need more memory - roughly 192-256GB would be ideal, to build a small cluster…. Any recommendations?
Now this in my Homelab would be a nice upgrade
I want one of those laser engravers just to watch it do stuff!
Do you think a LSI 9300 8e would fit in there? That would be an answer to big storage...like a NAS
Dude I love how this guy is his own sponsor. Nice
I assume you could stack
3x next to each other into 1ru? If yes it would be the perfect cluster. Or a stacked Tower to keep in the corner on a desk.
There's an Intel Arc video card from Sparkle that will fit in that expansion slot.
you can get a pcie with 2x ethernet and 2xnvme slots with onboard bifurcation switch (QNAP QM2-2P2G2T QM2 Card M.2 SSD x2 2.5 GBE x2)
Would love to see if a ESAS card would work in that slot to use a disk shelf for a nas vm
Yes, would be very interesting to know if an small sas card with external connectors could fit in the box, if so i would definitely consider getting one and replacing one or more of my existing proxmox boxes (old leftover computers)
ServeTheHome tested the MS-01 with the QNAP TL-D400s DAS Box and it worked flawlessly.
Want to use it as a NAS as well.
S1390: Intel® Core™ i9-13900H supports up to 96GB of memory
S1290: Intel® Core™ i9-12900H supports up to 64GB of memory
This can support up to 96GB RAM
Im impressed with the box, but had to send it back because kept having issues with the X710 chipset passthrough from Proxmox to PFsense. If I added a 5th vlan to the trunk, that 5th vlan would get an error in the PFSense CLI saying it was unable to bond a mac address to the vlan interface.
I've done this with other systems using an X520 chipset and no issues.
Researched on it a bit and couldn't find much help. Had to send it back.
If they took this exact board and put it in a short depth 4xLFF rack encloseure I really don't think you could get any better combo of features, power, and efficiency. Gonna stick a H200e and a disk shelf and replace my R340 (and finally get QSV... Dell disables the circuits on the R340!)
Now, if they make it in a 1u form factor, then "shutup and take my money." bonus points for the chassis to allow the addition of a second unit(mobo) or even more as surely you could fit two in a 1u chassis, even if they have to spread out as clearly its currently too tall for 1u. Extra extra bonus that they put in a low power, stripped feature version with only 2 / 4 SFP+ ports for a router (in said 1u form factor). I'd love to get off my r210ii to something more capable with less power consumption (40w currently on the dell).
You could even run standalone openshift on it. It needs at least 8 physical cores.
There are mxm to pci e adapters. But the gpus often come at a hefty upcharge compared to desktop models from what I've seen. If it would even work
If anybody is willing to send me drawings of the dimensions for how that top panel mounts, or ideally the entire top panel, I will model out a top panel that is whatever extra height you want. I'm looking at the i7 version myself, but would like to drop in a dual-slot A380 if possible.
Unless intel has changed a lot, I imagine Throttlestop would go a long way to unlocking power limits for a windows installation.
Id love to see this in a 1U case with 6 SAS bays in front
Pre-ordered mine in December, hoping it would get somewhat good reviews! Still waiting to see it!!! Proxmox soon! Thanks!
How’s your minisforum running?
I'd love to see 2 of these smushed together into a pizza box sized 1u or even 2u enclosure. A man can dream...
I was also thinking they should make a rack-mount case for it. Since it slides out of the case for assembly, it shouldn't be hard at all to design...
@@livewire98801 and in a slightly larger chassis the PSU could be internal. You could have a neat little dual pve box in 1 (or 2)U. Add in an N100 NAS and you could have one heck of a low power homelab setup.
Looks great except like you'd need to run it inside of a refrigerator.
Will this SSD fit in the U2 slot of the Minisforum MS-01 and function without any issues? It's a Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN650, U.3, 15MM, 15,360GB, 2.5-inch, PCIe.
Been hearing about this mini pc...but now I know about this pc...great review and information...💯👍
Is this a good buy for folks who just want a tiny pc and aren’t running a home lab?
Minisforum needs to make a NAS. This in a NAS chassis would be pretty much perfect.
my 13900h ES board i recently deployed is so much fun, its nice to see a 5.4 all core @ 1.24v... but then agian it pulls 125w, but its sure as hell fun to see this laptop chip destroy desktop chips
Nice, I saw a few videos about this awesome mini pc, and was looking out for your review of it!
10:32 I'd actually prefer they toss out the PCIe to make the device thinner so it's 1U in height.
Still waiting for that MinisForum S100 rocking a N100/8GB/256GB/POE in
Jeff, the U.2/2.5” spot will accommodate a 15 mm high drive or only 9.5 mm & 7 mm?
Maybe its just me, but once you cross the $600 price barrier for mini pc's; I feel you can build an ITX PC in a smallish factor for the same price and have much more compute and expendability power.
Seeing that the 12900H model is 150-200$ cheaper (in my region) than the 13900H model, would you say that the performance upgrade is worth that much? I think in this situation the 12th gen is a better price/performance choice as it is not far.
Might be a bit overkill but if the 10gb are sfp+ could be a good use for pfsence box for direct attach fiber internet?
I wonder if the PCIe could be used for a HBA with external SAS connected to a JBOD enclosure?
You are right, coolers in laptops are not so great. Most laptops lack the space for a good cooler. The thinner it is the less room there is for cooling.
I think the most disappointing thing here is that there isn't occulink or thunderbolt. I get it cause it has PCIe internally, but if you could hook in a GPU externally you could for PCIe pass through and have a n inferencing server for AI/ML. That said if you're trying to make an SMB homelab It makes sense to just get one of these and build it up over time than getting, say, a GMKtec M7 Pro. It'd also be outrageously expensive from the storage perspective but it would be cool to make one of these a dedicated rack-mount Plex Server on a 10" rack
The only thing I don’t like about the ms01 is that it’s just too thick to fit in 1U
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.
What would be the optimal SSD setup for this? If I'm understanding going for for 3 of the SSDs will seriously tank the performance for all of them?
where do i get this hdd enclosure at 00:01:25, found only small ones and only for 3d printing (i own one, but the effort appears to be to big)?
Any way to run a JBOD through this for more storage? Or would that just be silly?
Use one VM for running a NAS and additional VMs for other services.