Beelink ME Mini 6-slot NAS mini PC assessment

Introduction and unboxing

That is our second run-in with Beelink’s mini PCs, and the formulation hasn’t modified – Beelink makes transportable and handsome mini PCs with nice specs for an affordable value.

At present we’re trying on the Beelink ME Mini, a mini PC that is equally suited to every day workplace duties, in addition to being your own home (or work) Community Hooked up Storage (NAS) system for these treasured reminiscences (or vital work information). It might even be used as a localized server answer.

Made in collaboration with Essential, the ME mini pairs the favored Intel N150 processor with 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM with an optionally available dual-storage answer – you will have a built-in 64 GB eMMC and 6 M.2 SSD slots (with one crammed by a 2 TB Essential P3 Plus). This lets you run a light-weight NAS system, akin to FNOS, NRAID, or TrueNAS, on the eMMC and make the most of the sooner SSDs for information storage, for instance.

The Beelink ME mini is accessible in Midnight Grey, Peacock Blue, and Pearl White. The mini PC ships in a field with a 100cm HDMI cable and an AC cable.

The ME Mini begins from $209 with a 64 GB eMMC and 12 GB of RAM and goes as much as $329 when you add the two TB Essential SSD (costs from Beelink’s web site, however it’s additionally obtainable on Amazon US). There will even be an choice with a 4TB Essential SSD within the close to future.

Design and ports

The Beelink ME mini is a sq. mini PC that measures 99 mm on all sides and weighs simply 750g.

It has an attention-grabbing design with Beelink’s brand on the high, surrounded by a dot sample air vent with the phrases “Archive your moments” inscribed on the facet in six completely different languages. There are six rubber ft on the underside, alongside one other air vent, and there are additionally vents on the left and proper sides of the PC.

There is a built-in fan on the high of the machine that sucks cool air from the highest (and backside) and expels the nice and cozy air from the edges. Beelink says it emits simply 33dB when working at its common 1500 rpm velocity.

There are many ports on the ME Mini. Upfront is a ten Gbps USB-C and one other 10 Gbps USB-A 3.2. Across the again is the AC Energy port (100- 240V), a USB-A 2.0 (with At all times-On help), two LAN 2.5G (with an Intel i226-v controller) ports, and an HDMI-A port (with 4K @ 60Hz help).

Ports – USB-C, USB-A on the entrance, AC, USB-A, two LAN, and an HDMI out again

To open the Beelink ME Mini and acquire entry to its six M.2 SSD slots, it is advisable first take away the 4 rubber ft and the underside and unscrew the 4 screws. You then raise off the plastic outer cowl upwards, and also you’re in.

Inside, you may see the top-mounted fan, the built-in 45W energy provide, and the six M.2 SSD slots, labeled and with thermal pads put in. 5 of the six are PCIe 3.0 X1, however slot quantity 4 is a sooner X2 (that is the place the built-in Essential SSD is).

The ME mini helps as much as 4 TB SSDs per drive for a complete of 24 TB of information. You possibly can select between 2230/2242/2280 M.2 sort SSDs. The Intel N150 is predicated on the Intel Twin Lake structure, which is extra of a tweak of the outdated Alder Lake than a brand new setup. It is primarily based on Intel’s 7 lithography, which means it is a 10nm processor.

Being bodily similar to the N100, the N150 has 4 Effectivity-focused cores and 4 threads. The utmost Turbo clock velocity is 3.6 GHz – up from 3.4 GHz – whereas the cache is similar 6 MB. On the GPU facet, you get the identical Intel Graphics with 24 compute models, however the peak clock has gone up from 750 MHz to 1000 MHz.

The N150 has a peak TDP of 25W (the everyday TDP is 6W). We ran a myriad of assessments on the machine, however the N150 is a well known commodity within the trade at this level. Apparently, regardless of utilizing the identical N150 because the Beelink EQ14 we examined late final 12 months, the ME mini scored barely decrease in some assessments. This might be all the way down to the distinction in RAM (the EQ14 has 16GB, the ME mini has 12GB).

As an illustration, in Geekbench 6, the Me mini scored 16% worse within the single-core and 40% worse within the multi-core take a look at. It was the identical within the Geekbench AI take a look at. Passmark’s CPU analysis of the N150 contained in the ME mini was 14% worse than within the EQ14, whereas reminiscence was predictably worse too, at 45% worse.

Efficiency and fan noise

The Beelink ME Mini makes use of Intel’s standard N150 processor. It is the successor to the N100 and is a higher-clocked variant of that processor.

Nonetheless, for the reason that EQ14 got here with a SATA III SSD, the ME mini’s PCIe 3.0 Essential P3 Plus ran circles round it – it is 70% higher in Passmark. And certainly, whereas the 512GB unit contained in the EQ14 supplied a learn velocity of round 530 MB/s and write of round 525 MB/s, the Essential P3 Plus within the ME mini affords 1,740 MB/s and 1,687 MB/s, respectively.

And that is the principle thought of the ME mini: it is best suited to use as a house server or a NAS.

We ran a three-hour stress take a look at on the ME mini. The processor shortly dropped its peak 3.6 GHz in favor of round 2.5 GHz. It seldom dipped all the way down to round 500 MHz and again as much as 2.2-2.5 GHz. The processor confirmed a studying of 65°, and the outside of the PC was heat to the contact.

Nonetheless, we won’t say we ever heard the fan spinning, even at arm’s size. We measured under 30 dB. This mini PC would not be a hassle in most workplace or family environments.

Conclusion

As configured, the Beelink ME mini (12GB of RAM, 64GB eMMC, 2TB Essential SSD) is $329 on Beelink’s web site and $409 on Amazon US. Nonetheless, Amazon US affords a $80 coupon, successfully matching Beelink’s personal value.

Contemplating you get Home windows 11 as a part of the deal, we would say the ME mini is a stable first step in direction of your personal house server to maintain your cherished reminiscences secure and inside arm’s attain. The optionally available as much as 24 TB of storage is greater than sufficient house for storing your photographs and movies for years on finish.

We’ll be utilizing the ME mini as our new workplace server, to drive issues like our cameras, and most of the instruments we’d like on daily basis to make our articles and critiques.

For anyone questioning precisely what our workplace server setup appears to be like like, with out going into an excessive amount of element, we’ve an FTP server, Apache and MySQL for 3 or so inner instruments like battery log and audio pattern evaluation, a digital camera monitoring and recording utility and a few information supply for testing instruments. It’s nothing too intensive, however on the similar time, we do have a number of screens with statistics always hitting the server and digital camera processing for movement detection isn’t too mild both. Certain, the Intel N150 isn’t a powerhouse by any means, however it’s doing simply fantastic for our use case, which is frankly form of spectacular.

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