The power button is not replaced. You can use the fingerprint thingy as a button to turn it on, but there is also still a bigger power button at the front, right next to the CLRCMOS.
@@mijmijrm Hm, I wonder what kind of tranquilizer they use. Is it something trendy like tranq(lol) or just good ol' copium? I'm not sure what is worse, a non-working clear CMOS button when trouble-shooting, or a clear CMOS button that is constantly pressed when *not* troubleshooting? :D I'd maybe tolerate a front-panel clear-cmos button when you'd expect the device to be operated soley from the front(like in a rack or media center console), but it has a power button on the side, and that power connector also doesn't seem great for those use cases.
I love these little beelink boxes they're a crazy good value. I've got one, got my dad one, my buddies got some. Their bios though. Whew. They're like completely raw and unfiltered. It's honestly probably the reference implementation of the bios that comes from whoever makes the logic boards. NOTHING is turned off. You can play with everything and it's very very very easy to make your system not work, or things randomly not work. I was playing with power limits and gpu settings and suddenly my wfi stopped. Could not get it going until I did a bios clear.
which is amazing coming from other places where you can't access anything. It's why I love(d) my Threadripper 2990wx + prime x399a.. it had great BIOS options in 2018, where everyone seems to lock things away now and you needed unlocked BIOS's. I also love discovering hidden BIOS for things like the QNAP switches, where someone found you can make the unmanaged 2.5gb switch "managed", and add things like vlan support. But they didn't expose that, because that's bad for business as people would buy the cheaper models.
I really like this form factor for "general purpose computing". I hooked my old man up with a NUC several years ago, with a Linux Mint install for his front room (VESA mounted to rear of TV) and been spot on. Silent, more than fast enough for his needs and low power (for x86), whilst still having some upgrade/replacement capability. Sure, they're pricey for the performance on offer, but that's for the convenience of its size. I do hope the motherboard size and component placement becomes standardized at some point, so a new one, with soldered SoC can be installed when required.
That's how I use my NUC, Great little HTPC under the tv to stream off my NAS. Actually just replaced mine, Had an old Skull Canyon NUC 6th gen that still works, But decided to upgrade to Phantom Canyon NUC 11th gen that has a built in RTX 2060, Should easily keep me going another 7 years and handle some light 1080p gaming, Glad I got it as a few days later on the news Intel announced they are cancelling their own NUC's but will support 3rd party mini pc's
@@ShaneMcGrath. It's actually his primary machine for browsing and the like too. IIRC it's quicker than his "production" machine (invoicing and accounting), which is probably an FM2 A10 7870K (which had been "HTPC" but replaced maybe a Pentium D 820 maybe). It's surprising how little performance people need when they're slow at using computers and only do "general purpose computing". I get frustrated when I have to wait a several seconds for something to load, he gets startled when things load that fast XD
@@ChrispyNut "It's surprising how little performance people need when they're slow at using computers and only do "general purpose computing"." Sure they might be slow but you overlook how most of old people learned patience with the old computers. I mean, 70-80's PCs were commonly running with cassette, then floppy. The first CD burners were extremely slow as well. And for a long time HDDs were the norm for booting the OS and software came in CD or DVD. Internet was also way slower than today. Even feature phones during the 00's were far from snappy.
@@PainterVierax I was using computers before the old man. I taught him a lot about how to use them, I was the one playing games on Spectrum from cassette, installing DOS from floppies, downloading music tracks @ 40Kbs and eventually burning to CD as well as making copies of CDs so they'd get scratched instead of the originals. E2A: Unlike your comment, I wasn't being agist. There are people who're very comfortable with computers, whose productivity increases the faster and snappier the device throughout the age range, which also applies to people who aren't comfortable and who aren't more productive with snappier machines (though may be with faster machines if rendering, compilling etc).
@@ChrispyNut you're still heavily generalizing a personal case though. On the opposite side, my father made his early career in radio communication, using Morse and Telex with perforated cardboards. Later in office he used fax and terminals then bought a CPC464 and finally get his work computerized in the mid 90's. Though he doesn't care about buying a more performant system than his decade old laptop. Same for my mother who got her office computer a decade earlier than him. They just don't care about the fancy new techs that remind the office and they got used to rather slow computers to not having the need to replace old but still functional devices.
Watching this on my GTR7, I had it imported day one from China, amazing machine running stable now, but I had a few crashes when I just got it.. Reinstalling the RAM fixed all the issues.
I have 2 trigkey units (beelink and trigkey are the same, the ODM is AZW). Was pretty happy with them for the first couple of days but kept finding stupid reasons to dislike them. Even though they are the same model, they are different revisions and lots of things on the board are different. One works fine with Linux, the other needs a kernel module to be able to control the fan. Bios are completely different. One is pretty chill on temps because the fan ramps up, the other gets toasty because the fan barely spins. Have to control it with software. Also, review units always get nice ram and storage. Us plebs get cheap generic Chinese sticks with no xmp and lower frequencies. The unbranded SSD is a joke, smart data is fake. Temp is frozen at 40degs C. Costumer support is a mixed bag. In the beginning they just ignored me. 11 months later one of the ssds died and they sent me another one without me having to send back the broken one. Meh..
A follow-up video on how this computer was repaired. Does customer service have phone access? Is there a US customer service? Did you send it back to the manufacturer? Does Beelink have somewhere in the US where you can return it or do you have to send it to China?
There’s plenty of reasons to shit on Amazon but having that extra bit of protection when buying sus electronics- or even just trying new brands- can be really nice for this reason.
I bought 2 Beelink Mini PC SEI8 W-11 Pro from Amazon for my Plex Server. The first one was Dead out of the box, sent it back and the second one lasted 2 days. Even if you shake the rice out of it before you fire it up, they don't last.
Why do people complain about the power supply connector? If you need to replace it simply cut an inch or two after the magnetic plug and join it onto ANY brand supply that you wish!
I have an older Beelink mini PC (I think Ryzen 3000 mobile processor). When I was using it as my primary PC I found odd slow performance , doing basic things like opening files, some web browsing hitches, or moving windows around the screen. Yet it could also run PC games surprisingly well. So I don't really trust Beelink to deliver a good basic experience. I worry there are quality issues with either their BIOS or controllers. I did however upgrade the memory myself, but I simply matched the stick they had in their already (the exact memory stick they used in brand and frequency just larger capacity, which they sell as a config themselves) so I don't thin it was my upgrade.
Regarding that crash, I am very curious to know if the bios was applying voltage above spec of the apu, as what occurred with some other pc vendors earlier this year
12:30 Personally what I hear there is that we should seriously consider embracing tiered memory already. It has been a popular area of research for a good decade at this point. We could absolutely have 4-8GB (or something like that) of fast on-module memory directly connected to the main-die and then expandable memory for the rest. This could potentially give us performance close to what unified memory architectures can deliver but while keeping memory somewhat expandable. Again, this isn‘t purely hypothetical, this has been studied quite a lot (though mostly in relation to saving energy but obviously performance was always a consideration). There already exist research memory controllers that can deal with N-tiered storage architectures, meaning it actually sees HDDs, SSDs, DDR, L3 cache and non-volatile RAMs more as a unified whole and mages it accordingly. These have been mostly developed to study possible phase-change-memory implementations and so on but they could absolutely be adapted.
14:55 this is why i respect you Wendle and watch you on floatplane... you she ther good the bad the ugly and true feeling and all and the thing is, your too much of a nerd to even be able to be any other way. im glad you leave the not paying attention pc crashes then you notice and point it out cause i missed it myself. THANKS for being one of the honest nerds
I don't think your device is an isolated case. I've had similar problems with the last two mini PCs. From minisforum and beelink. I don't have the patience to deal with it so I just returned them.
They need to get rid of the giant clear CMOS button. Just make it a paperclip hole like everyone else. That's the one reason why I never recommend Beelink and tell people to use other brands instead. It's a shame, because they do make some great mini-PCs.
Awesome video 👍 Thank you. 12:19 -- That description is 100% the Minisforum HX99G with Ryzen 6900HX mated to RX6650M in a mini PC ($739 barebones as of 2-28-2024). Whereas HX100G has the newer 7840HS ($719 barebones). Kindest regards, friends and neighbours.
This is good. But, I'm waiting for the Ryzen 8050's. Couple extra cores on the base model. 16 CUs of RDNA (3.5) Should be about a 1660 Ti... The behemoth of this series is no joke. 16 cores. & up to 40 CUs of that same RDNA 3.5! 120W TDP.
We almost rolled these out for the workforce but beelink can't guarantee OEM keys and can ship items with VLK's. Such a shame because they are perfect for local workstations.
Yeah they aren't embedding WIndows licenses in the BIOS. I wiped and reloaded the stock install on a Beelink and had no way to activate a license. Beelink wanted me to install some special image of Windows 11 to get me back in compliance. A bit fishy.
I bought a GTR 7 Pro and it died on me after 2 weeks. The unit couldn't be powered on and power through the USB4 port couldn't sustain it through a boot up. Sent it back and they've promised to replace it but I had to foot half of the cost of shipping it back to China...The unit is currently out of stock (even on their own website) and I understand it's going to be a 3 week wait...sigh
It's always seemed to me that these are odd items. A laptop with a cheap screen provides built in UPS which is super handy for a server and a desktop provides expandability
Wait a sec here, first you say it's a weird power connector then you say it's replaceable. While that may be true to a point, trying to find that proprietary power connector is going to be a pain down the road should it get damaged, lost or the dog eats it. Why in the heck would they go with such an unconventional power connector is beyond me, if anyone remembers the old TV series "One Step Beyond". Yeah I'm that old! I wouldn't buy it just for that reason alone, not to mention what else this thing will eventually fail on, as I'm not convinced the cooling is adequate in the long run. BTW Wendel I had seen some testing done on the controllers on NVME drive stating just what you said, cover the controller & give some heat to the NAND was the bottom line, so thanks for the confirmation.
No issues with the c6 on my side. But the box is running rock stable since I de-installed the graphics driver. So really something odd going on with that one. With default VGA driver, local display with 800x600 or RDP is useable - while the latter is indeed much more fun.
I currently have the minisforum UM790 pro. Fantastic unit, performance has been excellent. Especially surprised at the great nintendo switch emulation :) I considered the beelink, but didn't like the proprietary power connection, and it simply wasn't available on amazon yet.
@@manifestoN my use case is a stationary PC for everyday work and light/casual gaming. It's working perfectly for that. This PC is fantastic for emulation and fortnite. Haven't played much other games. I tested with COD, and it runs ok on 1080p low settings.
I have a SER3 (3750H) and it had some weird problems where it the display output would turn into TV static. It also would build up static electricity, so if I tried to plug in a USB stick and touched it... It would hard crash. Black screen. Dead. I've read some reviews of other people having various Beelink PCs die on them... which is concerning. It should not have died after you ran benchmarks. I don't think I'll ever buy another one from them. Though it is cool to see how much power can be crammed into a small form factor compared to my first mid tower build (FX 8350)... I'll just smile and nod from the sidelines.
Been waiting for this generation for HTPC replacement. Finally 4k@120. On RAM, default is probably DDR5-5600 CL48 1.1v. Can probably throw some DDR5-5600 CL40 1.1v in. I'd be skeptical whether it could handle DDR5-6000+ with almost guaranteed necessary increased voltage. AMD RAIDing the SSDs is kind of suck with the loss of TRIM (afaik still). It is a crime that MS has not moved the ball forward with their Storage Spaces EFI Driver. The Surface Pro boots from a 2-drive Storage Spaces, but it's not otherwise available.
I love these little small formfactor computers. So much fun to play around with. I just can't bring myself to pay a premium price for one. I'll stick to the cheap used workstation PC's. I doubt I'll see any of these on bargain any time soon.
Yeah tiny PC loses a lot of interest from me when the price is in the high end. For real money I’d rather get a laptop or build a PC … but when tiny PC is cheaper then
My GTR7 immediately had problems with it having random BSODs, random restarts or just shutting down. Tried updating the Bios and re-installing the graphics drivers, but the issues persisted. Besides Windows, all I had installed was Google Chrome and MS Office. Emailed Beelink support and never got a response. Eventually I returned it to Amazon. May try the Minisforum UM790 next.
@@GoonyMclinux I received my GTR7 last week and slapped in two new Samsung 980 Pro (500GB & 2TB) SSD's with a fresh install of Windows 11 Pro. Everything worked great for 24 hours and then the next day, I started to have the same issues with random reboots/shutdowns. From what I found in the Beelink forums and from Beelink themselves, these reboot/crashes are caused by the current supplied AMD drivers as AMD has yet to release any official drivers for the 7X40/780M APU and are basically DEV/OEM testing drivers. The issue is with the CPU/memory C6 state and currently to fix the issue. You have to disable CPU C6 as well as the power setting to allow windows to turn off the devices on the NIC's, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth controller within Windows Device manager (I did this by going into Windows power profile and settings minimum CPU power to 10% as disabling C6 in BIOS is not available/broken). Beelink has acknowledged this issue and supposedly an updated driver from AMD is slated to be released July 26th. They are also working on a BIOS update to address some of the power settings in the current BIOS that are not working as well as an update to the DRAM training function to improve memory stability. Also, anyone that has an issue with the video and audio drivers not working in Windows 11 and showing up in the device manager with yellow triangle. That is also due to the current driver and secure boot being enabled as the drivers are not validated WHQL. Just disable Secure boot for now until AMD releases the official WHQL versions with the proper signatures.
MinisForum has *abysmal* customer service. There are innumerous accounts of people having issues so they return their machine only to get one far worse as a replacement.
@@DaWolfwar I live in China and have a Lenovo laptop with a 7840H + 4060 for my son, has been running excellent even in demanding games, so I doubt the APU is at fault, more likely the implementation of their bios and AGESA that's not right.
@@benjaminsmekens2344 Beelink has already acknowledged that this is a known issue caused partly by the beta drivers for the APU and partly by issues within the current BIOS. The issue is the C6 power state not working properly. They are working on an update for the BIOS and AMD is supposed to release an updated set of drivers around the July 26th.
the gtr 7 is dope but i perfer the gtr6 due to the 4 hdmi ports its amazing for multi screens and work if u guys get any tear off the bottom plate and cooling plate and strap a pc fan to it , u gett better temps and performance
I bought one with a 5560U that runs 25W max and is still snappy on the desktop, can even play games on it. Only cost me $245 for 16GB and 1 GB SSD on super special :)
6000 series processor? 6600m discreet graphics? Sff and low power draw? Excellent cooling? The under appreciated hx99g is the ultimate mini pc. I like the gtr but it's hard to beat the high end minisforums
You can have strain relief / secure power connector with a regular barrel. Aboslutely no need for a proprietary solution. I'd love too see more secure connections but without the bs.
Since it is not meant to be mobile it is hard (for me) to see a (good) reason to cramp all that into such a small case.. (the benefit vs reliability / compatibility factor...) I mean in what situation does one not have enough space to place a normal ATX (or even mini ITX) case with adequate cooling and power supply ? Whats wrong with a raspberry ? Faith no more playing in the back of my head...
It drives me crazy that I could by an i7 10870h with an rtx 2060 mini PC on Ali express but there's no availability of amd cpus with any discrete mobile chip for low power gaming boxes
I have been enjoying my Bee-Link U59 pro for over a year now. As a simple internet/youtube/streaming box it uses far less power than my gamer rig for such simple tasks.
its def cool. But you can get a laptop with discrete 4060, 13th gen cpu for just a 150 more. Im sure the equivalent amd laptop for comparable price too. Hard for me to justify. To bad, cause it's definitely cool.
to be honest 120W brick is both good and bad. as they are 2 types of users of those, either hammer it like its server, or hide it behind TV and forget it exist. second guys are left in the dust, as that massive brick is not always easy to hide. I would love to validation that it can run on some GAN 60-67W brick, so if you need to compress your desktop even further, you can. Maybe even one step further, and have lock on 35W power in bios and some 40W brick if you want. it annoys me with "ultralight" laptops the most. Here's your 1.1kg laptop that had $1000 worth of weight reduction. here's 1kg brick for it, have fun with your portability! A lot of those ultralights charges just fine with 30W phone charger that is like 200grams, with cable.
i225-v ... that shit is broken. I had a board with the "fixed" revision of that hardware and in proxmox it took me a day to realize the chip was stuck doing 100mbit. Just google the chip+ problems, you'll find people complaining about the i226 (newest revision of i225 with new name) even today.
@Level1Techs if I was in the market for something like this, it would be very high on the list. I am working on developing benchmarks for my line of work and I will probably borrow it to test against desktops.
Could you use the usb c as network for clustering or storage cluster? A three node cluster with a link to each node with a loop would be great. 40Gbit would be awesome
Hey Guys and Gals. Quick one but at 8.40 ish in this video I start seeing video corruption artifacts on the screen. IS this my setup or others seeing this? Ive also seen this happen in a at least 1 other recent video when Wendal is doing tech promo vids. Not news.....Um links with friends sorry
So they seem really good for workstations, but home users still use hard disks for large media backup. I think USB 4 needs to enter the chat before we talk about replacing home PC's.
its a tad overprices ngl, considering its just a 6800u in zen4/ ddr5 package It doesnt have oculink, which the GPDW2 has, and the tdp should be 12-19w to be interesting imo
Maybe the clear cmos button being on the front is a response to customer feedback. If their customer service is constantly telling folks to clear the cmos, they probably asked the design team to put it on the front panel. 😂
I got a little cheap low power Intel nucbox recently, with windows on it and it struggles terribly so therefore the experience is super annoying... These new AMD systems are so much better... if the price was lower these would actually sell like hotcakes. Good times though as you can have you beast gaming productivity PC that can easily fit into a bag... i.e. you dont have to be tied to one spot which you usually do with a big heavy tower PC. Just need the big folding/scrolling OLED monitors now 😜
Competitive performance to an M2 Mac Mini, nice. Not competitive on efficiency but Apple is on another planet with efficiency so that's to be expected. Interesting product, these mini PC's have a very long way.
Assuming this is an advertisement video, I fully accept and will steer clear from usff products as well as beelink products in general. Thank you for this product warning.
120 watt is way to much for a pc , ik use Intel nuc , very pleased with it, 13 th generation laos use more power , these days less power is cheaper, you can do things with power management
I would've gotten the framework if it was available in Romania, but also the price premium is kind of too much for the framework compared to this and even add in a portable monitor + M&K + maybe a type-C battery and you are still below the laptops' price
I have a question about the performance of using USB 3 (5 of 10gbps) or thunderbird (USB4) ports for adding a 2.5 of 10g ethernet port adapters. Do they work as well as direct attached Intel constollers on the motherboard or a PCI card? I am thinking of using one of these mini PC's for a pfsense firewall and need 3 ethernet ports and most don't even have 2. Will these USB-Ethernet adapters work well on pfsense or TrueNas? Has Anyone done any videos on this?
How does this little box do for live streaming? I use OBS to stream sporting events at the high school where I teach. I have a blackmagic 4hdmi input card in a thunderbolt 3 case that I like using at events. Does this do AV1 encoding? I have heard that recent AMD drivers are much better in the past for encoding/streaming. Is that really the case? I know it is a niche area, but did you happen to do test for this type of workload?
That laugh at "unless you're team blue", I'm dying
What kind deviant puts a clear CMOS button at the front of the case and replaces the power button with a fingerprint reader?!
The power button is not replaced. You can use the fingerprint thingy as a button to turn it on, but there is also still a bigger power button at the front, right next to the CLRCMOS.
The clear CMOS button being on the outside of the case at all has me feeling uncomfortable, being on the front of the case is just wild to me
i suspect the Clear CMOS button is a dummy that applies a strong Tranquillizer when it's pushed.
@@mijmijrm Hm, I wonder what kind of tranquilizer they use. Is it something trendy like tranq(lol) or just good ol' copium?
I'm not sure what is worse, a non-working clear CMOS button when trouble-shooting, or a clear CMOS button that is constantly pressed when *not* troubleshooting? :D
I'd maybe tolerate a front-panel clear-cmos button when you'd expect the device to be operated soley from the front(like in a rack or media center console), but it has a power button on the side, and that power connector also doesn't seem great for those use cases.
I love these little beelink boxes they're a crazy good value. I've got one, got my dad one, my buddies got some.
Their bios though. Whew. They're like completely raw and unfiltered. It's honestly probably the reference implementation of the bios that comes from whoever makes the logic boards.
NOTHING is turned off. You can play with everything and it's very very very easy to make your system not work, or things randomly not work. I was playing with power limits and gpu settings and suddenly my wfi stopped. Could not get it going until I did a bios clear.
where do you think that value comes from? humans spending time putting in any sort of customisation will send the price through the roof
which is amazing coming from other places where you can't access anything. It's why I love(d) my Threadripper 2990wx + prime x399a.. it had great BIOS options in 2018, where everyone seems to lock things away now and you needed unlocked BIOS's. I also love discovering hidden BIOS for things like the QNAP switches, where someone found you can make the unmanaged 2.5gb switch "managed", and add things like vlan support. But they didn't expose that, because that's bad for business as people would buy the cheaper models.
Haven't watch half a year, and half of Wendell is gone! Nice man! Amazing performance!
You'd better not skip another half a year then or there won't be any Wendell left! 🤪
I really like this form factor for "general purpose computing". I hooked my old man up with a NUC several years ago, with a Linux Mint install for his front room (VESA mounted to rear of TV) and been spot on. Silent, more than fast enough for his needs and low power (for x86), whilst still having some upgrade/replacement capability.
Sure, they're pricey for the performance on offer, but that's for the convenience of its size. I do hope the motherboard size and component placement becomes standardized at some point, so a new one, with soldered SoC can be installed when required.
That's how I use my NUC, Great little HTPC under the tv to stream off my NAS.
Actually just replaced mine, Had an old Skull Canyon NUC 6th gen that still works, But decided to upgrade to Phantom Canyon NUC 11th gen that has a built in RTX 2060, Should easily keep me going another 7 years and handle some light 1080p gaming, Glad I got it as a few days later on the news Intel announced they are cancelling their own NUC's but will support 3rd party mini pc's
@@ShaneMcGrath. It's actually his primary machine for browsing and the like too. IIRC it's quicker than his "production" machine (invoicing and accounting), which is probably an FM2 A10 7870K (which had been "HTPC" but replaced maybe a Pentium D 820 maybe).
It's surprising how little performance people need when they're slow at using computers and only do "general purpose computing".
I get frustrated when I have to wait a several seconds for something to load, he gets startled when things load that fast XD
@@ChrispyNut "It's surprising how little performance people need when they're slow at using computers and only do "general purpose computing"."
Sure they might be slow but you overlook how most of old people learned patience with the old computers. I mean, 70-80's PCs were commonly running with cassette, then floppy. The first CD burners were extremely slow as well. And for a long time HDDs were the norm for booting the OS and software came in CD or DVD. Internet was also way slower than today. Even feature phones during the 00's were far from snappy.
@@PainterVierax I was using computers before the old man. I taught him a lot about how to use them, I was the one playing games on Spectrum from cassette, installing DOS from floppies, downloading music tracks @ 40Kbs and eventually burning to CD as well as making copies of CDs so they'd get scratched instead of the originals.
E2A: Unlike your comment, I wasn't being agist. There are people who're very comfortable with computers, whose productivity increases the faster and snappier the device throughout the age range, which also applies to people who aren't comfortable and who aren't more productive with snappier machines (though may be with faster machines if rendering, compilling etc).
@@ChrispyNut you're still heavily generalizing a personal case though. On the opposite side, my father made his early career in radio communication, using Morse and Telex with perforated cardboards. Later in office he used fax and terminals then bought a CPC464 and finally get his work computerized in the mid 90's. Though he doesn't care about buying a more performant system than his decade old laptop. Same for my mother who got her office computer a decade earlier than him. They just don't care about the fancy new techs that remind the office and they got used to rather slow computers to not having the need to replace old but still functional devices.
Watching this on my GTR7, I had it imported day one from China, amazing machine running stable now, but I had a few crashes when I just got it.. Reinstalling the RAM fixed all the issues.
By that you mean with new ram? Or just reseating the same ram?
Do you mean replacing the RAM or removing and putting it back in?
I have 2 trigkey units (beelink and trigkey are the same, the ODM is AZW). Was pretty happy with them for the first couple of days but kept finding stupid reasons to dislike them. Even though they are the same model, they are different revisions and lots of things on the board are different. One works fine with Linux, the other needs a kernel module to be able to control the fan. Bios are completely different. One is pretty chill on temps because the fan ramps up, the other gets toasty because the fan barely spins. Have to control it with software. Also, review units always get nice ram and storage. Us plebs get cheap generic Chinese sticks with no xmp and lower frequencies. The unbranded SSD is a joke, smart data is fake. Temp is frozen at 40degs C. Costumer support is a mixed bag. In the beginning they just ignored me. 11 months later one of the ssds died and they sent me another one without me having to send back the broken one. Meh..
Prior to it blue screening, the output video was flickering a bit with random artifacts throughout the video.
A spanish channel had the same model, too. And he also did find the crashes and stuff. So he did reset the BIOS and it was doing pretty fine after it
A follow-up video on how this computer was repaired. Does customer service have phone access? Is there a US customer service? Did you send it back to the manufacturer? Does Beelink have somewhere in the US where you can return it or do you have to send it to China?
lol good luck with the geocities inspired beelink website.
There’s plenty of reasons to shit on Amazon but having that extra bit of protection when buying sus electronics- or even just trying new brands- can be really nice for this reason.
I bought 2 Beelink Mini PC SEI8 W-11 Pro from Amazon for my Plex Server. The first one was Dead out of the box, sent it back and the second one lasted 2 days. Even if you shake the rice out of it before you fire it up, they don't last.
" It's a pretty solid System ... It just died fairly quickly ... " - LOL
lol
Why do people complain about the power supply connector? If you need to replace it simply cut an inch or two after the magnetic plug and join it onto ANY brand supply that you wish!
I have an older Beelink mini PC (I think Ryzen 3000 mobile processor). When I was using it as my primary PC I found odd slow performance , doing basic things like opening files, some web browsing hitches, or moving windows around the screen. Yet it could also run PC games surprisingly well.
So I don't really trust Beelink to deliver a good basic experience. I worry there are quality issues with either their BIOS or controllers.
I did however upgrade the memory myself, but I simply matched the stick they had in their already (the exact memory stick they used in brand and frequency just larger capacity, which they sell as a config themselves) so I don't thin it was my upgrade.
I disabled mouse suspend options and changed the polling rate and mine was snappy again, seems more a windows issue than amd.
It's Windows being pissy as usual
Regarding that crash, I am very curious to know if the bios was applying voltage above spec of the apu, as what occurred with some other pc vendors earlier this year
12:30 Personally what I hear there is that we should seriously consider embracing tiered memory already. It has been a popular area of research for a good decade at this point. We could absolutely have 4-8GB (or something like that) of fast on-module memory directly connected to the main-die and then expandable memory for the rest.
This could potentially give us performance close to what unified memory architectures can deliver but while keeping memory somewhat expandable. Again, this isn‘t purely hypothetical, this has been studied quite a lot (though mostly in relation to saving energy but obviously performance was always a consideration).
There already exist research memory controllers that can deal with N-tiered storage architectures, meaning it actually sees HDDs, SSDs, DDR, L3 cache and non-volatile RAMs more as a unified whole and mages it accordingly. These have been mostly developed to study possible phase-change-memory implementations and so on but they could absolutely be adapted.
14:55 this is why i respect you Wendle and watch you on floatplane... you she ther good the bad the ugly and true feeling and all and the thing is, your too much of a nerd to even be able to be any other way. im glad you leave the not paying attention pc crashes then you notice and point it out cause i missed it myself. THANKS for being one of the honest nerds
Lmao your editors crack me up! The Lionel Richie the funeral for the computer. Loving it all
fingerprint reader is so nice, really cool to see built in to a desktop!!! I love it on my laptop, so fast and convenient
I don't think your device is an isolated case. I've had similar problems with the last two mini PCs. From minisforum and beelink. I don't have the patience to deal with it so I just returned them.
They need to get rid of the giant clear CMOS button. Just make it a paperclip hole like everyone else. That's the one reason why I never recommend Beelink and tell people to use other brands instead. It's a shame, because they do make some great mini-PCs.
I am considering this for a mini home lab with the dual 2.5G NICs.
Awesome video 👍 Thank you.
12:19 -- That description is 100% the Minisforum HX99G with Ryzen 6900HX mated to RX6650M in a mini PC ($739 barebones as of 2-28-2024). Whereas HX100G has the newer 7840HS ($719 barebones).
Kindest regards, friends and neighbours.
The AC adapter is actually 100W not 120W, just received mine.
This is the confirmation of decency that I needed to see. Thanks for the excellent video, Wendell!
This is good. But, I'm waiting for the Ryzen 8050's. Couple extra cores on the base model. 16 CUs of RDNA (3.5) Should be about a 1660 Ti...
The behemoth of this series is no joke. 16 cores. & up to 40 CUs of that same RDNA 3.5! 120W TDP.
We almost rolled these out for the workforce but beelink can't guarantee OEM keys and can ship items with VLK's. Such a shame because they are perfect for local workstations.
Yeah they aren't embedding WIndows licenses in the BIOS. I wiped and reloaded the stock install on a Beelink and had no way to activate a license. Beelink wanted me to install some special image of Windows 11 to get me back in compliance. A bit fishy.
I bought a GTR 7 Pro and it died on me after 2 weeks. The unit couldn't be powered on and power through the USB4 port couldn't sustain it through a boot up. Sent it back and they've promised to replace it but I had to foot half of the cost of shipping it back to China...The unit is currently out of stock (even on their own website) and I understand it's going to be a 3 week wait...sigh
It's always seemed to me that these are odd items. A laptop with a cheap screen provides built in UPS which is super handy for a server and a desktop provides expandability
They’re quite cool if mounted to the back of a monitor, if you’re somehow who cares about keeping things compact.
I wish they had a black model. It looked so clean in the memorial portion.
Wait a sec here, first you say it's a weird power connector then you say it's replaceable.
While that may be true to a point, trying to find that proprietary power connector is going to be a pain down the road should it get damaged, lost or the dog eats it.
Why in the heck would they go with such an unconventional power connector is beyond me, if anyone remembers the old TV series "One Step Beyond". Yeah I'm that old!
I wouldn't buy it just for that reason alone, not to mention what else this thing will eventually fail on, as I'm not convinced the cooling is adequate in the long run.
BTW Wendel I had seen some testing done on the controllers on NVME drive stating just what you said, cover the controller & give some heat to the NAND was the bottom line, so thanks for the confirmation.
the issue is c6 idle sleep and the terrible drivers for the 780m drivers its running. mine crashes all the time.
No issues with the c6 on my side. But the box is running rock stable since I de-installed the graphics driver. So really something odd going on with that one. With default VGA driver, local display with 800x600 or RDP is useable - while the latter is indeed much more fun.
I currently have the minisforum UM790 pro. Fantastic unit, performance has been excellent. Especially surprised at the great nintendo switch emulation :) I considered the beelink, but didn't like the proprietary power connection, and it simply wasn't available on amazon yet.
I'm interested in this model as well, what is your use case? I'm considering it as an entertainment center PC for some light steam gaming/streaming.
@@manifestoN my use case is a stationary PC for everyday work and light/casual gaming. It's working perfectly for that. This PC is fantastic for emulation and fortnite. Haven't played much other games. I tested with COD, and it runs ok on 1080p low settings.
Did u upgrade the ram and M.2 drive or went barebone?.
Their Kingston ram stick lacks behind in latencies which I think holds back Igpu performance
Having not tuned in to this channel for a hot minute, I nearly didn't recognize Wendell! You are looking so healthy mate!
I have a SER3 (3750H) and it had some weird problems where it the display output would turn into TV static. It also would build up static electricity, so if I tried to plug in a USB stick and touched it... It would hard crash. Black screen. Dead.
I've read some reviews of other people having various Beelink PCs die on them... which is concerning. It should not have died after you ran benchmarks. I don't think I'll ever buy another one from them. Though it is cool to see how much power can be crammed into a small form factor compared to my first mid tower build (FX 8350)... I'll just smile and nod from the sidelines.
Been waiting for this generation for HTPC replacement. Finally 4k@120.
On RAM, default is probably DDR5-5600 CL48 1.1v. Can probably throw some DDR5-5600 CL40 1.1v in. I'd be skeptical whether it could handle DDR5-6000+ with almost guaranteed necessary increased voltage.
AMD RAIDing the SSDs is kind of suck with the loss of TRIM (afaik still). It is a crime that MS has not moved the ball forward with their Storage Spaces EFI Driver. The Surface Pro boots from a 2-drive Storage Spaces, but it's not otherwise available.
I love these little small formfactor computers. So much fun to play around with. I just can't bring myself to pay a premium price for one. I'll stick to the cheap used workstation PC's. I doubt I'll see any of these on bargain any time soon.
Yeah tiny PC loses a lot of interest from me when the price is in the high end. For real money I’d rather get a laptop or build a PC … but when tiny PC is cheaper then
My GTR7 immediately had problems with it having random BSODs, random restarts or just shutting down. Tried updating the Bios and re-installing the graphics drivers, but the issues persisted. Besides Windows, all I had installed was Google Chrome and MS Office. Emailed Beelink support and never got a response. Eventually I returned it to Amazon. May try the Minisforum UM790 next.
What did the crash data say? Logging?
@@GoonyMclinux I received my GTR7 last week and slapped in two new Samsung 980 Pro (500GB & 2TB) SSD's with a fresh install of Windows 11 Pro. Everything worked great for 24 hours and then the next day, I started to have the same issues with random reboots/shutdowns.
From what I found in the Beelink forums and from Beelink themselves, these reboot/crashes are caused by the current supplied AMD drivers as AMD has yet to release any official drivers for the 7X40/780M APU and are basically DEV/OEM testing drivers. The issue is with the CPU/memory C6 state and currently to fix the issue. You have to disable CPU C6 as well as the power setting to allow windows to turn off the devices on the NIC's, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth controller within Windows Device manager (I did this by going into Windows power profile and settings minimum CPU power to 10% as disabling C6 in BIOS is not available/broken).
Beelink has acknowledged this issue and supposedly an updated driver from AMD is slated to be released July 26th. They are also working on a BIOS update to address some of the power settings in the current BIOS that are not working as well as an update to the DRAM training function to improve memory stability.
Also, anyone that has an issue with the video and audio drivers not working in Windows 11 and showing up in the device manager with yellow triangle. That is also due to the current driver and secure boot being enabled as the drivers are not validated WHQL. Just disable Secure boot for now until AMD releases the official WHQL versions with the proper signatures.
MinisForum has *abysmal* customer service. There are innumerous accounts of people having issues so they return their machine only to get one far worse as a replacement.
@@DaWolfwar I live in China and have a Lenovo laptop with a 7840H + 4060 for my son, has been running excellent even in demanding games, so I doubt the APU is at fault, more likely the implementation of their bios and AGESA that's not right.
@@benjaminsmekens2344 Beelink has already acknowledged that this is a known issue caused partly by the beta drivers for the APU and partly by issues within the current BIOS. The issue is the C6 power state not working properly. They are working on an update for the BIOS and AMD is supposed to release an updated set of drivers around the July 26th.
the gtr 7 is dope
but i perfer the gtr6 due to the 4 hdmi ports
its amazing for multi screens and work
if u guys get any tear off the bottom plate and cooling plate and strap a pc fan to it , u gett better temps and performance
I would love the same form-factor but with a lower TDP in the 15-35W range, as an always-on homelab.
Fairly certain you can tune a system to ~ the desired range.
They make 15w celeron systems
the SER5 was a 35w 5600h, used it for a while and was great for its price.
I'm sure they must've updated the SER line, you could check those out.
I bought one with a 5560U that runs 25W max and is still snappy on the desktop, can even play games on it. Only cost me $245 for 16GB and 1 GB SSD on super special :)
6000 series processor? 6600m discreet graphics? Sff and low power draw? Excellent cooling? The under appreciated hx99g is the ultimate mini pc. I like the gtr but it's hard to beat the high end minisforums
AAAAAAND dual m.2 slots
I bought 2, both died. Looking for another brand.
You can have strain relief / secure power connector with a regular barrel. Aboslutely no need for a proprietary solution. I'd love too see more secure connections but without the bs.
Since it is not meant to be mobile it is hard (for me) to see a (good) reason to cramp all that into such a small case.. (the benefit vs reliability / compatibility factor...) I mean in what situation does one not have enough space to place a normal ATX (or even mini ITX) case with adequate cooling and power supply ? Whats wrong with a raspberry ? Faith no more playing in the back of my head...
My GTR5 was great too... til it broke.
It drives me crazy that I could by an i7 10870h with an rtx 2060 mini PC on Ali express but there's no availability of amd cpus with any discrete mobile chip for low power gaming boxes
@3:28 where does that place the fingerprint scanner?
What is the preferred way to create/manage RAM disks in Windows?
8:44 screen cap corruption?
I have been enjoying my Bee-Link U59 pro for over a year now. As a simple internet/youtube/streaming box it uses far less power than my gamer rig for such simple tasks.
Interested to see how this would perform as firewall or gateway solution (pfsense, etc.)?
I was SOOO excited before getting my Mini PC, but sadly it was DOA unit, so I do not trust it anymore and will buy another brand instead.
its def cool. But you can get a laptop with discrete 4060, 13th gen cpu for just a 150 more. Im sure the equivalent amd laptop for comparable price too. Hard for me to justify. To bad, cause it's definitely cool.
They don’t compete w/ laptops.
to be honest 120W brick is both good and bad.
as they are 2 types of users of those, either hammer it like its server, or hide it behind TV and forget it exist.
second guys are left in the dust, as that massive brick is not always easy to hide.
I would love to validation that it can run on some GAN 60-67W brick, so if you need to compress your desktop even further, you can. Maybe even one step further, and have lock on 35W power in bios and some 40W brick if you want.
it annoys me with "ultralight" laptops the most. Here's your 1.1kg laptop that had $1000 worth of weight reduction. here's 1kg brick for it, have fun with your portability! A lot of those ultralights charges just fine with 30W phone charger that is like 200grams, with cable.
i225-v ... that shit is broken. I had a board with the "fixed" revision of that hardware and in proxmox it took me a day to realize the chip was stuck doing 100mbit. Just google the chip+ problems, you'll find people complaining about the i226 (newest revision of i225 with new name) even today.
Can we get another video on the status of VFIO on Linux? It's been 2 years since the last one.
Hey, working on a video now. Should be out in a week or two
@@Level1Techs That just made my week. Cheers!
My dad bought his the hour they went on sale. He loves it.
It really is amazing how powerful it is, and how tiny. And how much better this gen is
@Level1Techs if I was in the market for something like this, it would be very high on the list. I am working on developing benchmarks for my line of work and I will probably borrow it to test against desktops.
Died so young, 1 day old. Now what colour to get?
Dual 2.5gbe nic's for FIREWALL action !!
This form factor is not reliable. Desktop Zen 4 APU, when then?
I personally have vowed not to incorporate anything with proprietary power.
I don't understand the appeal. What market is Beelink targeting with this machine?
Keeping an eye out for an AMD Ryzen system with Intel Arc for grfx.
Could you use the usb c as network for clustering or storage cluster? A three node cluster with a link to each node with a loop would be great. 40Gbit would be awesome
Hey Guys and Gals. Quick one but at 8.40 ish in this video I start seeing video corruption artifacts on the screen. IS this my setup or others seeing this? Ive also seen this happen in a at least 1 other recent video when Wendal is doing tech promo vids. Not news.....Um links with friends sorry
For the memory it looks like a tight space, but does this space have enough room for memory with heat sinks?
So they seem really good for workstations, but home users still use hard disks for large media backup. I think USB 4 needs to enter the chat before we talk about replacing home PC's.
the mobile variants end in U not HS.
its a tad overprices ngl, considering its just a 6800u in zen4/ ddr5 package
It doesnt have oculink, which the GPDW2 has, and the tdp should be 12-19w to be interesting imo
Like Yer mini PC di sections, this GTR is year old now, Im watching, impressive lil box! keep it cool>)) Greets
What about eGPU support?
I couldn't tell what this was from the title or thumbnail. Adding mini pc to the title may get you more clicks!
IRQL not less or equal? I feel like that's the one I always got when messing with TRFC
no ECC RAM support?
I am so excited for the day when we can AAA game at high FPS on these mini PCs.
type-c pd works too
Epic vid! As always
Wendell leans over CPU and romantically whispers "You are breathtaking"
That custom power cable really kills this for me. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me
IIRC ServeTheHome said the beelink could also be powered via one of the USB-C connectors. I would check the manual to confirm though!
No USB-PD?
Whattttt?....who puts "clear CMOS" at the front of the outside of a computer case??
BeeLink, it’s not a new thing for them.
Jeez. Possibly because I rarely run windows on real hardware, it's been a long time since I've seen IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. RIP.
Mini pc's will only make sense to me... if they have external pcie slot.
i dont know about tuning in this case/cooler
I nope'd out on the DC adapter. not interested in paying a premium when that dies.
Great title. It must have cost Beelink Millions in sales.
I've read somewhere that you can run your own tensorflow models on the built in FPGA, can anyone with one of these confirm or refute this?
Sorry for the late response but yes you can. Look up Ryzen AI for more information
@@jeevejavari8461I dove into the documentation for the FPGAs at the time, do they have some clearer instructions now?
can it handle crucial p5 plus. pcie.4.0 660 mb/s ?? or it will run too hot for this mini pc ?????
Maybe the clear cmos button being on the front is a response to customer feedback. If their customer service is constantly telling folks to clear the cmos, they probably asked the design team to put it on the front panel. 😂
I would love to see some more server-like boards using very low-powered embedded CPUs. Fanless operation FTW.
This unit has a fan, the RAM and M.2 gets too hot
I got a little cheap low power Intel nucbox recently, with windows on it and it struggles terribly so therefore the experience is super annoying... These new AMD systems are so much better... if the price was lower these would actually sell like hotcakes. Good times though as you can have you beast gaming productivity PC that can easily fit into a bag... i.e. you dont have to be tied to one spot which you usually do with a big heavy tower PC. Just need the big folding/scrolling OLED monitors now 😜
Competitive performance to an M2 Mac Mini, nice. Not competitive on efficiency but Apple is on another planet with efficiency so that's to be expected. Interesting product, these mini PC's have a very long way.
I looked at one as an option compared to this. Decided to get a GTR for the gaming performance.
Assuming this is an advertisement video, I fully accept and will steer clear from usff products as well as beelink products in general. Thank you for this product warning.
120 watt is way to much for a pc , ik use Intel nuc , very pleased with it, 13 th generation laos use more power , these days less power is cheaper, you can do things with power management
Thinking about preordering a Framework 16 and im not sure if the 7940HS is worth the $200 upgrade with how well this performs.
I would've gotten the framework if it was available in Romania, but also the price premium is kind of too much for the framework compared to this and even add in a portable monitor + M&K + maybe a type-C battery and you are still below the laptops' price
great post, i think the fan could have been a bit bigger
NUCs are starting to die at my company, intel saw the writing on the wall and dosen't want the liability for new products!
I have a question about the performance of using USB 3 (5 of 10gbps) or thunderbird (USB4) ports for adding a 2.5 of 10g ethernet port adapters. Do they work as well as direct attached Intel constollers on the motherboard or a PCI card? I am thinking of using one of these mini PC's for a pfsense firewall and need 3 ethernet ports and most don't even have 2. Will these USB-Ethernet adapters work well on pfsense or TrueNas? Has Anyone done any videos on this?
Hello there. I am wondering if this unit can be used with 12 volt DC?
No but USBC PD can work in some scenarios
How does this little box do for live streaming? I use OBS to stream sporting events at the high school where I teach. I have a blackmagic 4hdmi input card in a thunderbolt 3 case that I like using at events. Does this do AV1 encoding? I have heard that recent AMD drivers are much better in the past for encoding/streaming. Is that really the case? I know it is a niche area, but did you happen to do test for this type of workload?