Mini PCs are absolutely fascinating devices. You can do tensor parallel compute over USB C to make a frankencluster, you can play games comfortably now, you can throw them in a backpack(!) and make a back-bound cyberdeck…So many silly use cases. I will say I’m less interested in Strix Point ATM, but the upcoming Strix Halo APU seems really interesting to me. If I could get somewhere between 128GB - 256GB of RAM, it actually becomes really interesting as a developer platform for AI models, and like I mentioned you could network it with a second one when end of generation sales get going. Endlessly fascinating.
Uff yessss I am waiting for black friday to see if any zen4 minipcs get down to like $300 or less and will figure out a way to get a fast interconnect between them even if it means buying a load of usb4 add in cards and using an old epyc for it's pcie lanes to get some 40gbps usb4 networking going for the cluster :D
@@isbestlizard Fair warning: While fun, you might be going a bit overkill. A lot of Mini PCs have 10gigabit or 20gigabit USB-C connectors on board natively, and the cables are cheap. If you’re doing tensor parallel compute (ie: matrix multiplication) the interconnect speed isn’t a huge bottleneck (you really only need something like 2 megabytes per layer in a reasonably large Transformer LLM, for instance), you might actually find that you can make a really cost effective cluster without a lot of hassle just using what’s available onboard! I’ve seen people do four mini PCs in a ringbus config with two USB-C connectors of that type each, and it went pretty fast. If you just want to go higher because bigger numbers are fun, do feel free to go nuts, though.
@@tschorsch especially one with so much potential. Just the fact that we’re commenting means they really had the ball going with this one…. But fumbled :(
I think we are waiting for a generational change in NUC's. More package RAM options with Strix Halo (which will end up being more like the Apple Mac Studio) or when LPCAMM becomes available for NUC form factor.
One usb4 port... No thnx. Don't need speakers and microphones. For this price it should have 1*10g Ethernet not just one 2.5. and then no wifi 7? Very underspecced/overpriced
Fair, 10GbE would have been nice, but that is a decent BOM cost adder and also adds more cooling challenges even with something like a Marvell AQC113C.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo true, but if an USB4 to 10g rj45 costs around 100 resale, it would add as much to the bom as removing that microphone array and speakers cost. They could even remove the 2.5gb, though they shouldn't. But 10g would give back for the missing second USB4 port. This one isn't the one for me, probably saving on for strix halo.. a 1500 MSRP mini pc?
I actually love the built in speakers. I run a mini PC as my daily driver desktop and it's just be nice if I didn't have a separate speaker unit plugged into one of my USB2.0 ports. I don't need great sound quality for listening to PC parts reviews on TH-cam.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo true, my cheap monitor doesn't, which I realized after setting everything up. Moving from a laptop as a daily driver there were a lot of peripherals I took for granted.
I'm excited for the growth in this space, especially with what they do with a SER10 with Strix Halo. I hope for future editions, they drop the speakers for more cooling and add more RAM. The price point on this is too high for what you're getting. The dust filter needs to be cleanable without removing any screws.
We did that as part of a video with two machines. Here is the main site one www.servethehome.com/beelink-ser8-review-amd-ryzen-7-8845hs-powered-mini-pc/
Edit: Thermal performance discussed at 11:20. Original: Would have been great to mention thermals in the review alongside performance as to any thermal throttling of cores etc when at 100% load. I wish these AMD mini PC's would support thunderbolt... I don't want an Intel processor but I do want the convenience of thunderbolt docking...
I’ve never liked the acoustics from slot coolers, so I was ready to splurge for a Deskmini x600 with an 8700G and a Noctua cooler. But the HX 370 outperforms the 8700G, and if the Beelink cooler is indeed quiet (not noiseless), I’d be willing to pony up the difference.
Where did u see it goes 96GB ram when the website sells it only with 32GB?🤔Now the UM 890 minisforum has 64GIg out the box ready and uo to 96GiG but it's 8/16 cores threads but u can add the EGPU dock and now we are talking! U can have that bundle for $828 compared to the $1000 and over for the one ur waiting🤷🏽♂️...I'll go with UM890 if u want under $1000 and the bang for ur buck, or go with the New Beelink Ser9 AI 12/24 cores and threads for about $1000 if ur willing to spend over and also it's compatible with the EGPU dock😲...it's up to u but I'd go with the UM890 all day before those
Very cool review👍Beelink can certainly offer lot of value. This tiny box packs lots of power, however as u pointed out GTi version is much better option mainly because of the PCIE expansion slot which can utilize full speed eGPU as well as the internal PSU. I think form factor of the modular "transformer" mini PCs is upon as long as they do not cost more and offer worse value than DIY mini PC builds.
Add DASH (or an other out of band remote solution ) a second 2,5 gbps port and at least one more USB 3.2 port make it about $700-800 and you got yourself a best seller as is meh only people with money to waste will get it as a toy and then forget it (which doesnt add up to brand loyalty which is also something those manufacturers should think about)
That was somewhat the idea behind bringing in the GTi Ultra 12. There you get dual NICs, $738 with the expansion dock and less without it. I totally agree that price at $999 is a challenge unless it is exactly what you want.
I have very much been looking forward to this review. Looking to pick one up to go with my Minisforum MS-01, which I also purchased thanks to the referral from STH.
This really strains the concept of a mini pc. For $1k you just build a workstation. Mini PCs are interesting because they occupy the cheaper, lower power space.
For speakers: in a different spec (Ryzen 3, 5) these are value for not having to buy/change monitor if not speaker provided or buy the speaker set. Alsocan deliver notification sound in any kind of office environment. For video/phone calls, headset can be used via audio jack, usb A or USB c on front panel. In SER9 series, the biggest ticket to pay by Beelink is... AMD. Which cash in CPU, GPU, NPU and RAM, mostly... 35-40% of BoM. Model delivered to you is close to the flagship, however in less powerful SKU I can easily see a lot of "small computers" for call centers, accountancy, helpdesk, frontdesk/event, cloud-connected clients. Power efficient, small, plenty of connections, versatile and quite good looking. And for spectrum efficienty Wifi 6 is just "good enough", because Wifi6e setup are not snowflakes, but still not that mainstream. Last thing: abysmal the dust maintenance, unrealistic and b*tt covering the term "1 month".
@@LeicaM11 Not at all. I bout 64 GB DDR5 6000Mhz for less than 200 USD. Okay that was deskop RAM, but its they who what chosen that form factor which necessarily increases cost, thermal throttles and limits upgradability.
Any recommendations for mini pcs strictly for console streaming in 4k? I have a 4k elgato. I just need a pc that can run it. Been searching for 3 days btw and don’t have a real answer. I’d greatly appreciate any suggestions.
In the era of Mac Mini 4 does this mini pc's has any places, considering their now elevate prices, iffy drive updates, dodgy warranty coverage and the OS not being an issue for that odd user?
I'm not a fan of the port layout and Wi-Fi issues, but the rest of the mini-PC seems great for Windows/Linux users. Good that the Wi-Fi card can be replaced with Wi-Fi 7 card. It will have tough competition with the M4 Mac Mini. Also, at $700, the Geekom A8 is a good mid-budget option for Windows/Linux users.
That $1000 price is going to have to come down. For $1000 you can get a pretty decent gaming desktop that will run circles around the SER9 in CPU and/or GPU that is a lot more flexible and expandable. The only thing the SER9 has going for it over such a system is being so compact and low power, and while that is certainly interesting I think that for the overwhelming majority of users that is a secondary concern. A mATX or ITX system can be small as well but with better performance.
I tend to agree with you, but then you see how much of the population bought Macs when they were slow and expensive but looked cool. I do not think compactness has zero appeal
With as much grunt as these newest mini PCs have, they need more memory. 64GB at least. 96GB or 128GB would be a LOT better. I run a tiny Topton with a Ryzen 7 5825U, 64GB of memory, and 2TB of mirrored NVMe. It's been rock solid, but more memory would be even better. I run a bunch of VMs on it and am starting to run out of memory to spool up more.
i user beelink ser9 with lpddr5x 7500mhz , i want to ask , why the memory running only max on 900 mhz, not 3000 mhz,i am monitoring with many app like a cpu z. please help me
Does the USB-C port on the back support power delivery? I’m asking because I primarily use a MacBook connected to my monitor via USB-C, which provides charging and video simultaneously. I’d use a mini PC like this mainly for occasional gaming, so it would be incredibly convenient if it could be powered directly by the monitor, like the MacBook.
Beelink should remove their picture logo in the next release, its ok to see a small "Beelink" as branding, but the picture logo destroys the overall aesthetics/
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I personally love the picture logo, this is from someone who hates any writing or pictures on clothing. It's small and is in well taste. The logo is simple and identifiable.
If I remember correctly, the memory on there is $9,600 or 8,000 mega transfers, so there's a reason for that. I don't think so dims come at that speed.
It’s integrated with the APU package to get that performance, which is smart since the faster apus get, the more the memory interface becomes the bottleneck. Apple knows this. AMD knows this, and it’s a smart move. There are plenty of other systems you can get with upgradeable memory if you are willing to forgo the efficiency/performance advantage.
It is like a 50TOPS max NPU. The rough thing is that right now many of the tools to compare are still best on whichever vendor did the last contribution.
What is your opinion on the three different mini PCs in terms of portability? Because ive got a pretty powerfull pc at home but i want to game when i am at my friends house if we do a lan party.
Hi how does this compare to the m4 Mac mini? I do music recording about 5-6 tracks Protools and Cubase…. The rest of my documents will remain on my HP….. that M4 is very expensive. It’s $1500 to get the 32 GB of ram and one terabyte of space. !!!
I cannot wait for this AI bubble to burst. Whether it’s text, images, video or sound it’s simply summarising other people’s work… and that, that is about as much use as an essay.
AI isn't going anywhere. The government level FOMO is just too great. From your description it sounds like you're only a surface level user. You should try to go further with it. You would be surprised.
Presumably they use two speakers to provide stereo? Two little speakers, sitting right next to each other, in the same box, is going to provide absolutely ZERO stereo separation for the listener. Completely defeats the purpose of using two speakers for stereo.
That stupid barrel plug needs to not be on there - give us another USB4 port and enable PD on both so we can power it via a universal power source now :)
I'm have one 32 has been more than fine. I'm using it as an ark ascended game server atm. Dedicated 4 cores per server with 4 gigs ram per server runs great with 6 users.
Honestly not bad people forget how hard it is to make these. Seems like you could toss this into a bag put gpu in box stuff in your backpack and your off. I like small pc but they do come at a cost but people who are mad find a significantly better option it’s hard.
Not sure which one to buy the ser8 or ser9 or gti ultra 14 9 or geekom ae8 or asus nuc pro 14 ultra 5 really just want to use it play emulators ps3 and play stray or god of war any help here thanks.
As for the Intel Wifi 7 BE200 NIC, it is not supported in AMD Ryzen platforms. It doesn't boot. On Newegg, these devices are clearly marked as not working on Ryzen systems. Beelink would have to go with a different vendor.
Thanks for always poking them about not labeling the ports. 2-usb-A2.0 is fine but both in the same duplex & labeled. Big deal to me is I want to see 3-4 usb-C4.0 forget the slow one BEFORE usb-C5.0 has been out for 2 years. There should be indicators if they don't deliver power. It seems like everyone is trying to sell us headless servers. If they want on my desk, I need that capable system to also do I/O as well as 2 VMs.
I think amd's integrated graphics is the way forward. They own the console market and game devs cater to the console then port to the pc. so 9 times out of 10 the game is optimized for the lower end system. Spending money on a setup like the external gpu is wasted money. Unless you are using it for training an ai then you have to go nvidia.
I hate the current desktop trends. One one side are the desktop pimpers who spend more on RGB and cooling than on the actual hardware. On the other extreme are these compact boxes which artificially constrain upgradability while costing just as much and also have poor thermal performance. Why would you put a Ryzen 9 in a tiny box. I'd rather have a functional non RGB tower with a huge fan or maybe a very functional non rgb liquid cooler (what do you mean there are no non-RGB liquid coolers!).
The SER9 is a nice PC for sure but... If money was not the isue, what machine would you buy? the size is not too important as long as is not an old fashion case. Gaming is not a priority.
Switched to a mini-PC a few years ago.. CPU cooling isn't great in these things as it's direct die cooling.. Turbo fan noise, and although not terribly annoying it's a cheap & crappy cooler... and the PC has these random restarts.. So I'm gonna switch back to an IHS socketed CPU with a heat-pipe cooler for higher TDP with silence.. I like the ASRock DeskMini X600 but don't like the VGA/D-SUB video output it has.. If it had dual DP and a HDMI then no problem for my 1440p triple monitor displays.. The VGA kills it for me.. Why ASRock.... why?!!!
@@ServeTheHomeVideo that is Intel based if I remember correctly. Prefer AMD from past experiences and company behaviours. Same goes for Nvidia, of my preferred list since they abandoned their AMD chipset. Been getting AMD whenever is is feasible since k5 or something like that. Oldest system is FM2, about to be retired. Sheesh I am getting old 😎 Besides I have 150€ in AMD stock 🤣🤣🤣
32g is DISSAPOINTING ai pc need more ram and igpu needs 16 g min to run agents and LLM 96g ram ai pc is normal 24 g gpu is the standard for gpu ai workloads
It seems that every time I blink these micro boxes get more powerful. That is a good thing but the idea of a dock and external gfx card is stupid. Size is the reason for getting this. Why limit yourself then buy a dock to make it as big as a normal machine?
Biggest generational leap in price too ;)
Certainly right
It'll get a $200 price drop after all the early adopters and enthusiasts get theirs at "full price".
Biggest generational leap in price only.
Mini PCs are absolutely fascinating devices. You can do tensor parallel compute over USB C to make a frankencluster, you can play games comfortably now, you can throw them in a backpack(!) and make a back-bound cyberdeck…So many silly use cases.
I will say I’m less interested in Strix Point ATM, but the upcoming Strix Halo APU seems really interesting to me. If I could get somewhere between 128GB - 256GB of RAM, it actually becomes really interesting as a developer platform for AI models, and like I mentioned you could network it with a second one when end of generation sales get going.
Endlessly fascinating.
Totally agreed.
Uff yessss I am waiting for black friday to see if any zen4 minipcs get down to like $300 or less and will figure out a way to get a fast interconnect between them even if it means buying a load of usb4 add in cards and using an old epyc for it's pcie lanes to get some 40gbps usb4 networking going for the cluster :D
@@isbestlizard Fair warning: While fun, you might be going a bit overkill. A lot of Mini PCs have 10gigabit or 20gigabit USB-C connectors on board natively, and the cables are cheap. If you’re doing tensor parallel compute (ie: matrix multiplication) the interconnect speed isn’t a huge bottleneck (you really only need something like 2 megabytes per layer in a reasonably large Transformer LLM, for instance), you might actually find that you can make a really cost effective cluster without a lot of hassle just using what’s available onboard! I’ve seen people do four mini PCs in a ringbus config with two USB-C connectors of that type each, and it went pretty fast.
If you just want to go higher because bigger numbers are fun, do feel free to go nuts, though.
Patrick has a well developed skill of looking into the camera whilst demonstrating the product without ever looking at the product.
Alex who edits these might disagree since he sees when I miss :)
He uses AI to seem like he is always looking at the camera 😜
Should’ve completely gutted the speakers and mic for more cooling or hardware peripherals.
That would’ve made it a must have 🧍🏽♂️
Agreed
More cooling would have been my pick
More cooling and RAM. 32 GB is ridiculous on a premium machine.
@@phthano2580 I’d take the peripherals considering you can turn it into a beast of a low power server. I’ll strap a case fan to it lol
@@tschorsch especially one with so much potential. Just the fact that we’re commenting means they really had the ball going with this one….
But fumbled :(
I think we are waiting for a generational change in NUC's. More package RAM options with Strix Halo (which will end up being more like the Apple Mac Studio) or when LPCAMM becomes available for NUC form factor.
Yes
One usb4 port... No thnx. Don't need speakers and microphones. For this price it should have 1*10g Ethernet not just one 2.5. and then no wifi 7? Very underspecced/overpriced
Fair, 10GbE would have been nice, but that is a decent BOM cost adder and also adds more cooling challenges even with something like a Marvell AQC113C.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo true, but if an USB4 to 10g rj45 costs around 100 resale, it would add as much to the bom as removing that microphone array and speakers cost. They could even remove the 2.5gb, though they shouldn't. But 10g would give back for the missing second USB4 port.
This one isn't the one for me, probably saving on for strix halo.. a 1500 MSRP mini pc?
just love Patrick's enthusiasm! Very nice box, but as mentioned, the expandability is going to be an issue sooner or later.
srsly? 6 screws? painful to service? 1st world problems right there.
I actually love the built in speakers. I run a mini PC as my daily driver desktop and it's just be nice if I didn't have a separate speaker unit plugged into one of my USB2.0 ports. I don't need great sound quality for listening to PC parts reviews on TH-cam.
Fair point. These feel a bit redundant since many monitors / TVs have built-in speakers and these are similar quality.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo true, my cheap monitor doesn't, which I realized after setting everything up. Moving from a laptop as a daily driver there were a lot of peripherals I took for granted.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo do you think they could've fit anything else substantial in that space if they axed the speakers?
I'm excited for the growth in this space, especially with what they do with a SER10 with Strix Halo. I hope for future editions, they drop the speakers for more cooling and add more RAM. The price point on this is too high for what you're getting. The dust filter needs to be cleanable without removing any screws.
Would love to see a SER8 review. I bought two SER8 with the 8700 series CPU for my nephews.
We did that as part of a video with two machines. Here is the main site one www.servethehome.com/beelink-ser8-review-amd-ryzen-7-8845hs-powered-mini-pc/
Edit: Thermal performance discussed at 11:20.
Original:
Would have been great to mention thermals in the review alongside performance as to any thermal throttling of cores etc when at 100% load. I wish these AMD mini PC's would support thunderbolt... I don't want an Intel processor but I do want the convenience of thunderbolt docking...
We did. This thing runs at 100% and never down clocks for thermals even after 45 min to an hour.
@ServeTheHomeVideo awesome! Thanks for the information 👍
I’ve never liked the acoustics from slot coolers, so I was ready to splurge for a Deskmini x600 with an 8700G and a Noctua cooler. But the HX 370 outperforms the 8700G, and if the Beelink cooler is indeed quiet (not noiseless), I’d be willing to pony up the difference.
Yea better with upgradeable sodimms or maybe the new ucdimm form factors will show up in a NUC size design; would want to max out to 64/96GB
Agreed
@@ServeTheHomeVideo camm2
I'm going to wait for the Minisforum AI370 with up to 96GB ram, 2x PCIe4x4 M.2 slots and 2x 2.5GbE nics... and it looks really nice!
From what I can tell, it will have the same 32g of soldered in RAM. Maybe they will release other versions.
Where did u see it goes 96GB ram when the website sells it only with 32GB?🤔Now the UM 890 minisforum has 64GIg out the box ready and uo to 96GiG but it's 8/16 cores threads but u can add the EGPU dock and now we are talking! U can have that bundle for $828 compared to the $1000 and over for the one ur waiting🤷🏽♂️...I'll go with UM890 if u want under $1000 and the bang for ur buck, or go with the New Beelink Ser9 AI 12/24 cores and threads for about $1000 if ur willing to spend over and also it's compatible with the EGPU dock😲...it's up to u but I'd go with the UM890 all day before those
M4 Mac mini: Finally, a Worthy Opponent
Bought mine for $400 directly from China, defo with it for that price
Yeah that's the fake one lol
@ It’s a Chinese company you fool.
@@benedictsandhu7372 $400 is less than half the price. There's no way it's the same machine
@@estusflask982 My friend lives in China… I’ve cut out the shipping and taxes.
I wish manufacturers would label USB ports with the type and speed, or use a color scheme (port border or around the pins).
New Mac Mini announcement is rumored to be next week. I’d be interested to see how this compares the Mac Mini.
Very cool review👍Beelink can certainly offer lot of value. This tiny box packs lots of power, however as u pointed out GTi version is much better option mainly because of the PCIE expansion slot which can utilize full speed eGPU as well as the internal PSU. I think form factor of the modular "transformer" mini PCs is upon as long as they do not cost more and offer worse value than DIY mini PC builds.
Add DASH (or an other out of band remote solution ) a second 2,5 gbps port and at least one more USB 3.2 port make it about $700-800 and you got yourself a best seller as is meh only people with money to waste will get it as a toy and then forget it (which doesnt add up to brand loyalty which is also something those manufacturers should think about)
That was somewhat the idea behind bringing in the GTi Ultra 12. There you get dual NICs, $738 with the expansion dock and less without it. I totally agree that price at $999 is a challenge unless it is exactly what you want.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo it doesn't have vPro/amt though does it?
Way too expensive, but I'd also pass at $799. These will be cool in the future when they're $300 on eBay!
These are high end laptop hardware sans the screen/keyboard/battery. You won’t see them at that price for many many years
lmao, go make yourself , then i will buy for $300
If they gat that cheap I'll get 4 of them for server stacking 😂😂
We would understand the price if it was 64gb ram, 10gbe, and wifi7
Exactly.
I have very much been looking forward to this review. Looking to pick one up to go with my Minisforum MS-01, which I also purchased thanks to the referral from STH.
I feel like my Yootoob Subscriptions feed is nothing but sponsored mini PC reviews now...
This really strains the concept of a mini pc. For $1k you just build a workstation. Mini PCs are interesting because they occupy the cheaper, lower power space.
@@schlickit628 with the prices of new parts, 1k is not workstation price anymore
Prices these days are such a rip off for this tech
@@schlickit628 Yeah, for this price and power, why bother making it small? I'd rather a set of much bigger fans
For speakers: in a different spec (Ryzen 3, 5) these are value for not having to buy/change monitor if not speaker provided or buy the speaker set. Alsocan deliver notification sound in any kind of office environment. For video/phone calls, headset can be used via audio jack, usb A or USB c on front panel.
In SER9 series, the biggest ticket to pay by Beelink is... AMD. Which cash in CPU, GPU, NPU and RAM, mostly... 35-40% of BoM. Model delivered to you is close to the flagship, however in less powerful SKU I can easily see a lot of "small computers" for call centers, accountancy, helpdesk, frontdesk/event, cloud-connected clients.
Power efficient, small, plenty of connections, versatile and quite good looking. And for spectrum efficienty Wifi 6 is just "good enough", because Wifi6e setup are not snowflakes, but still not that mainstream.
Last thing: abysmal the dust maintenance, unrealistic and b*tt covering the term "1 month".
The price is insane. 999$ is to much.
I think there is a $100 coupon, but still too much
Don‘t forget, that 32GB LPDDR5 RAM is at about $300 alone😅
@@LeicaM11 Not at all. I bout 64 GB DDR5 6000Mhz for less than 200 USD. Okay that was deskop RAM, but its they who what chosen that form factor which necessarily increases cost, thermal throttles and limits upgradability.
Any recommendations for mini pcs strictly for console streaming in 4k? I have a 4k elgato. I just need a pc that can run it. Been searching for 3 days btw and don’t have a real answer. I’d greatly appreciate any suggestions.
Closest thing I got to buying is the beelink i3-1220p mini pc for about $280. I just don’t know if there’s anything better for a similar price?
In the era of Mac Mini 4 does this mini pc's has any places, considering their now elevate prices, iffy drive updates, dodgy warranty coverage and the OS not being an issue for that odd user?
era of mac mini lol when is the era gonna come? download ark survival and you already run out of storage 😂😂😂😂😂
Really just need an AMD GTi12 style box.
I'm not a fan of the port layout and Wi-Fi issues, but the rest of the mini-PC seems great for Windows/Linux users. Good that the Wi-Fi card can be replaced with Wi-Fi 7 card.
It will have tough competition with the M4 Mac Mini. Also, at $700, the Geekom A8 is a good mid-budget option for Windows/Linux users.
That $1000 price is going to have to come down. For $1000 you can get a pretty decent gaming desktop that will run circles around the SER9 in CPU and/or GPU that is a lot more flexible and expandable. The only thing the SER9 has going for it over such a system is being so compact and low power, and while that is certainly interesting I think that for the overwhelming majority of users that is a secondary concern. A mATX or ITX system can be small as well but with better performance.
I tend to agree with you, but then you see how much of the population bought Macs when they were slow and expensive but looked cool. I do not think compactness has zero appeal
With as much grunt as these newest mini PCs have, they need more memory. 64GB at least. 96GB or 128GB would be a LOT better. I run a tiny Topton with a Ryzen 7 5825U, 64GB of memory, and 2TB of mirrored NVMe. It's been rock solid, but more memory would be even better. I run a bunch of VMs on it and am starting to run out of memory to spool up more.
i user beelink ser9 with lpddr5x 7500mhz , i want to ask , why the memory running only max on 900 mhz, not 3000 mhz,i am monitoring with many app like a cpu z.
please help me
Does the USB-C port on the back support power delivery? I’m asking because I primarily use a MacBook connected to my monitor via USB-C, which provides charging and video simultaneously. I’d use a mini PC like this mainly for occasional gaming, so it would be incredibly convenient if it could be powered directly by the monitor, like the MacBook.
Hello what is the comparable regular gpu to this
Roughly a GTX 1650 or so.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo what's the comparable regular gpu to the 680m
Good day! Thanks for the review! How do you rate the likelihood of such a product appearing - a mini PC on Ryzen AI+ Max 395 with 96-128 GB of RAM?
Beelink should remove their picture logo in the next release, its ok to see a small "Beelink" as branding, but the picture logo destroys the overall aesthetics/
Totally. I get the reason. But if it is at the expense of labeling ports well, then I would rather have well labeled ports.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I personally love the picture logo, this is from someone who hates any writing or pictures on clothing. It's small and is in well taste. The logo is simple and identifiable.
Just speaking for the case, I think I like the older SER7 better.
Fair, but the cooling is better in the SER8/SER9.
Plex transcode performance??? Would love to see a follow up comparing AMD 890m iGPU to Lunarlake / Arrowlake iGPU.
Should I upgrade from SER6 Max?
I wonder if using the BEELink a router with pfsense would improve my internet experience on dial up. What about gig fiber?
We have reviewed better boxes for that purpose and some that have SFP/ SFP+ cages.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo They need to advertise ai that improves your aim, lol.
Nice!
Going the apple way with unupgradable memory I see, Blech.
If I remember correctly, the memory on there is $9,600 or 8,000 mega transfers, so there's a reason for that. I don't think so dims come at that speed.
It’s integrated with the APU package to get that performance, which is smart since the faster apus get, the more the memory interface becomes the bottleneck. Apple knows this. AMD knows this, and it’s a smart move. There are plenty of other systems you can get with upgradeable memory if you are willing to forgo the efficiency/performance advantage.
I'm wondering what kind of preformance the ai cores get
It is like a 50TOPS max NPU. The rough thing is that right now many of the tools to compare are still best on whichever vendor did the last contribution.
I prefer thew external power supply. Way easier to replace if it goes faulty.
Very fair. We get a lot of folks that prefer internal ones for when they work
What is your opinion on the three different mini PCs in terms of portability? Because ive got a pretty powerfull pc at home but i want to game when i am at my friends house if we do a lan party.
if you want portability, you should unify the monitor with the case feeding it off 1 cable.
Is this mini pc a overkill mainly for 4k plex streaming? Thanks
Hi how does this compare to the m4 Mac mini? I do music recording about 5-6 tracks Protools and Cubase…. The rest of my documents will remain on my HP….. that M4 is very expensive. It’s $1500 to get the 32 GB of ram and one terabyte of space. !!!
This is a step above the base M4 GPU wise. We did a M4 mini review and used this in the comparison
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I will buy the 32/1tb if I go with m4….expensive!
Hi, thanks for the great video!
Is the WiFi card on this device upgradeable? I would like to upgrade to a WiFi 7 card in the future.
I cannot wait for this AI bubble to burst. Whether it’s text, images, video or sound it’s simply summarising other people’s work… and that, that is about as much use as an essay.
I would agree for now, but some of the demos I have seen of agents are simply awesome
AI isn't going anywhere. The government level FOMO is just too great.
From your description it sounds like you're only a surface level user. You should try to go further with it. You would be surprised.
@ Sounds legit from the look of your AI generated user name.
Presumably they use two speakers to provide stereo?
Two little speakers, sitting right next to each other, in the same box, is going to provide absolutely ZERO stereo separation for the listener. Completely defeats the purpose of using two speakers for stereo.
True. But they are also not pleasant to listen to
I don't know why people are complaining about price. Those ser8s about to be real cheap!
They already are much less expensive
I would choose the Minisforum version. It has better cooling and can be bought barebones.
mac mini review. you gotta do it. :)
What are the gaps in one side of it for? I couldnt' figure that out.
Derp, didn't we just see this last night on Level1?
Wait, but the rear bottom left usb port has usb3 pins, so are they just non-functional then if it's just usb 2?
What version display port please?
HDMI 2.1 and DP 1.4
Can you use dock to connect external graphics card?
is there a mobile ups/battery bank solution?...I want a homebrew steamdeck
There's these things called paper clips which are very handy for poking into little holes. That's if you don't have a LTT driverset ;)
Believe it or not… in the 2500ish sq ft studio we did not have a paper clip.
@@ServeTheHomeVideono sim card removal thingies? That should work too
Sim card remover pin thing? Does that have a real name? Should work for reset
@@ServeTheHomeVideo There's never one around when you need one.
Can you raid 0 those nvme?
Which would you pick and why? Minisforum UM880Pro or Beelink Ser8? Both rocking the AMD 8845HS, which would perform better?
The 890m is the best chip atm
That stupid barrel plug needs to not be on there - give us another USB4 port and enable PD on both so we can power it via a universal power source now :)
Great comparison, especially considering pricing of sister-models
. Hope the price falls
Thanks!
why is the ram stuck at 32gb? powerful cpu but ram is limited and not upgradable?
Minisforum or Beelink, which one offers better software support like drivers and BIOS updates?
32GB of RAM is way too little when you can't upgrade it, 64GB should be the mininum. It's also too little for the price charged.
Agreed on 64GB+
I'm have one 32 has been more than fine. I'm using it as an ark ascended game server atm. Dedicated 4 cores per server with 4 gigs ram per server runs great with 6 users.
For $999 id go for the Mac mini m4….my opinion at that price it’s 24/512….more you have to pay pig apple….maybe not go for it 😊
Mini Pcs will pay out in time with savings on the electrical bill.
Honestly not bad people forget how hard it is to make these. Seems like you could toss this into a bag put gpu in box stuff in your backpack and your off. I like small pc but they do come at a cost but people who are mad find a significantly better option it’s hard.
Hmm, the L1 cache seems kind of small.
Those microphones are for talking with your ai assistant.
Not sure which one to buy the ser8 or ser9 or gti ultra 14 9 or geekom ae8 or asus nuc pro 14 ultra 5 really just want to use it play emulators ps3 and play stray or god of war any help here thanks.
As for the Intel Wifi 7 BE200 NIC, it is not supported in AMD Ryzen platforms. It doesn't boot. On Newegg, these devices are clearly marked as not working on Ryzen systems. Beelink would have to go with a different vendor.
We have already seen AMD/Mediatek RZ717 systems on STH for WiFi 7 support
Thanks for always poking them about not labeling the ports. 2-usb-A2.0 is fine but both in the same duplex & labeled. Big deal to me is I want to see 3-4 usb-C4.0 forget the slow one BEFORE usb-C5.0 has been out for 2 years. There should be indicators if they don't deliver power. It seems like everyone is trying to sell us headless servers. If they want on my desk, I need that capable system to also do I/O as well as 2 VMs.
Agreed.
Do AMD mini pcs still bad for plex servers? for hw encoding?
Just got one. Looks amazing and is a little beast that makes macMini and even the Pro look slow.
I think amd's integrated graphics is the way forward. They own the console market and game devs cater to the console then port to the pc. so 9 times out of 10 the game is optimized for the lower end system. Spending money on a setup like the external gpu is wasted money.
Unless you are using it for training an ai then you have to go nvidia.
I hate the current desktop trends. One one side are the desktop pimpers who spend more on RGB and cooling than on the actual hardware. On the other extreme are these compact boxes which artificially constrain upgradability while costing just as much and also have poor thermal performance. Why would you put a Ryzen 9 in a tiny box. I'd rather have a functional non RGB tower with a huge fan or maybe a very functional non rgb liquid cooler (what do you mean there are no non-RGB liquid coolers!).
Why do all these manufactures only include a speaker jack on the front. It kills ascetics.
There's 2, one on the front and back
Creo que para que sea perfecta le haría falta un puerto Oculink y quitar los parlantes integrados.
He totally missed the boat on the speakers andmics.This thing is set up to be an AI assistant like Alexa
The SER9 is a nice PC for sure but... If money was not the isue, what machine would you buy? the size is not too important as long as is not an old fashion case. Gaming is not a priority.
ugh, why can't they make a single AMD board with 10GbE? I don't want to buy Intel JUST for networking...
Mystery wrapped up in an enigma.
Switched to a mini-PC a few years ago.. CPU cooling isn't great in these things as it's direct die cooling.. Turbo fan noise, and although not terribly annoying it's a cheap & crappy cooler... and the PC has these random restarts.. So I'm gonna switch back to an IHS socketed CPU with a heat-pipe cooler for higher TDP with silence.. I like the ASRock DeskMini X600 but don't like the VGA/D-SUB video output it has.. If it had dual DP and a HDMI then no problem for my 1440p triple monitor displays.. The VGA kills it for me.. Why ASRock.... why?!!!
Imagine what they are gonna price a strix halo mini pc at.. 😞
Kinda scary, but the ROG NUC is very good.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo that is Intel based if I remember correctly. Prefer AMD from past experiences and company behaviours. Same goes for Nvidia, of my preferred list since they abandoned their AMD chipset. Been getting AMD whenever is is feasible since k5 or something like that. Oldest system is FM2, about to be retired. Sheesh I am getting old 😎
Besides I have 150€ in AMD stock 🤣🤣🤣
32g is DISSAPOINTING
ai pc need more ram and igpu needs 16 g min to run agents and LLM
96g ram ai pc is normal 24 g gpu is the standard for gpu ai workloads
Use your old pc and ChatGPT 4o, you’ll really get the AI advantage.
What if my home server needs even more AI ?
It seems that every time I blink these micro boxes get more powerful. That is a good thing but the idea of a dock and external gfx card is stupid. Size is the reason for getting this. Why limit yourself then buy a dock to make it as big as a normal machine?
Every tech channel is pushing this. Can’t imagine why 😂
I think Wendell and I are clearing a similar backlog after the big server CPU launches
Tech reviews on YT have become pretty monolithic. Same products across all popular channels at the same time.
this ai apu is a lower version of strix halo?
Strix Point
At $1,380.37 it's cheaper to buy a 9800X3D which comes out in 2 weeks and stick it in an ITX box.
Has "AI" in the title and "NPU" in the hardware. Doesn't show ollama benchmarks.
SER 9 seems impressive. Pity you are stuck with 32 Gb or ram.
😂😂 we got wifi 7 before GTA 6
Ha!
looks like the speaker assembly can just be pulled out.
How many minipc in your house 😂.. i love taking about power consum
Very few actually. They are all in the studio so the team can work on them
there's no excuse to not put lpcamm2 OTHER THAN BEING ANTI REPAIR!!!!
Also the cost of LPCAMM2 at Beelink scale may not be great.
i wish they had a 64gb option