Minisforum MS-01 Review
In the video below, we review the Minisforum MS-01 Workstation
If you want to run a hypervisor like Proxmox VE you’ll want a computer that has plenty of CPU cores and RAM
But if you want to keep your power consumption low as well, things begin to get tricky
There are plenty of thin clients and mini-pcs out there to choose from but chances are they only have up to 8 threads and they might be limited to maybe 16GB or 32GB of RAM
Throw in a need for 10Gb Ethernet as well and you’ll notice that while a USB to 10GE adaptor sounds great, it’s not going to be cheap
And that’s when the Minisforum MS-01 workstation caught my attention
With a mobile CPU offering 20 threads and the potential for 96GB of RAM that should cover all of my VM needs
And with built-in 10Gb SFP+ ports and USB 4.0 ports as well, there’s some interesting network transfer rates on offer
But what is this MS-01 workstation like and is it worth considering?
Packaging:
Now at first glance this box looks as if things are going to be neat and tidy
Slide the lid off and everything seems well protected at first
The computer itself is in a bag and it’s surrounded on the sides by foam packing
However, on closer inspection the computer actually sits above that foam surround
The box is high enough so that computer doesn’t protrude out the top
But why doesn’t the foam fully protect the sides of the computer, especially the corners?
When you check the lid, you’ll see there’s only a very small sliver of foam attached at the top, so that probably rests on top of the case
It’s not offering enough protection from the top and it doesn’t fill the gaps in the side either
So why not have some foam in the lid that closes that gap, so that the case is full protected?
Or why not fully surround the case in the main box to begin with?
Either way the computer should be better protected
Mind you, I do like how they’ve protected the rear section of the computer with some additional foam
That covers up the interfaces there
Now although the computer case is protected from movement, it’s odd to find the parts are loose
I’m particularly concerned about the wiring chord into the power supply
I’d rather see these in cardboard boxes so that they don’t move around either
Some vendors put them in specially designed trays, but you could have separate boxes fill the space and that would also keep these more tightly packed
I understand the need to reduce waste but if something gets damaged you’d have to ship a replacement in another box
I purchased the barebones model and it came with the following:
An external power supply
A UK cable for the power supply
An HDMI cable
U.2 mounting screws
A heatsink for an NVMe
And a U.2 to M.2 adapter
According to the manual, which you find on the website, those are the parts you should receive
What’s missing is the manual that the manual on the website tells you will be included!?!
I’ve noticed what you get these days are basically just pieces of paper to send you to the website
Overall I would say that although there was some effort when into this packing, it’s just not enough
So as a school teacher would say, “Could have done better!”
And that’s particularly important because of my own delivery experience
Delivery Problem:
Normally a review is just be about the item itself but in this case I think I should warn of a problem I ran into when buying directly from the Minisforum website
It took about 2 weeks to be delivered, but at the time it was considerably cheaper than buying this from say Amazon
Now I got a notification from the courier in advance to say what day and in what time window it would be delivered
On that day, the time window passed and there had been no notification from my video doorbell, but I was later sent an email from the courier to say it had been delivered to my house and it had been signed for
But it hadn’t arrived, so it hadn’t been delivered to me or my home
I checked on the website and saw a partial proof of delivery note with a name I still don’t recognise
So I raised a claim
The courier was later in touch to say they would attempt to recover the parcel
The next day was rather odd because at first I was emailed to say they had tried again to recover the parcel and would try again
And then later, a neighbour arrived to tell me they’d found my parcel in another neighbour’s bin
That bin belongs to a neighbour who was away on the day of the delivery and fortunately for me the following day
Because on that day, the bins are collected and emptied
In other words, the bin wasn’t emptied as it hadn’t been put out
As far as I can tell, the parcel had been dumped in a bin and I only received it because another neighbour was looking after the house and decided to check the bin
I really don’t think anyone would sign for a parcel only to throw it in a bin
Nor do I think anyone would sign for a parcel and then bring it to me telling me they found it in a bin
Try as I might, I couldn’t inform the courier as neither me or the online agent could contact the local team, so I had to wait for them to contact me
When they did, I explained the situation but they were adamant the box had been handed to someone that signed for it
Anyway, I still haven’t received any explanation from the delivery company as to:
How the parcel ended up in a bin
What address the driver supposedly delivered it to
Why a calling card wasn’t left if I didn’t answer the door
Why the delivery note says it was delivered to my house when it clearly wasn’t
Who this person was that signed for it
Why there is no proof of acceptance e.g. a photo of the parcel in an open doorway along with the house number
Etc.
Granted, this behaviour isn’t unique to that one courier but to me, this was a complete breakdown in the delivery process, so I can only assume there isn’t one
And my experience with their customer service leads to me to the conclusion there is no proper process in place for dealing with parcels that haven’t been received
Now I didn’t notice initially but there is slight damage to the corner of the outer box
And it was only when going through the photos I took for the video that I noticed damage to the foam in the top corner of the lid
And that brings me back to my packing concerns
While there are no visible signs of damage to the computer case, the packing around the top of the case could really do with improvement to protect against stronger impacts
And while the computer may work initially, my concern is potential longer term damage
That’s because computers can be susceptible to impact damage
You probably wouldn’t notice a crack in a PCB, a component join, etc
To be fair, Minisforum were very understanding of the situation and even offered to replace this computer
Even the delivery company offered to return it
But I think it would probably take about a month to swap this out given that it took 2 weeks to arrive here in the first place
And I wouldn’t to use this delivery company anyway given their shoddy service
They have a terrible review on Tripadvisor and when you read the reviews you can see it should be lower because you can’t leave a review of zero
The last time I checked though, there is no choice of delivery company when placing an order on the website
At the time of the order it was going to cost me an additional £100 to purchase this from Amazon and that’s why I bought it direct
Frustratingly, at the time of recording, it’s now only an extra £30
But I’m not quite sure who would deliver it through that mechanism
Given my experience, the words “buyer beware” spring to mind if you buy directly from the website
Setup:
I’m not going to go into detail about the specs on this computer as there are content providers out there with much better video equipment than I have that have already explained everything there is to know about this computer in depth
I bought the model with the i9-12900H CPU as it has 14 cores and 20 threads which will make this really useful to run say Proxmox VE on
The reason I opted for this one is because I don’t see any benefit from the more expensive i9-13900H
Yes, it would have more processing power, but I doubt I’ll need that for running VMs
And although that CPU supports PCIE 5.0, the motherboard doesn’t
Now although only the i9-13900H officially supports 96GB RAM, other users have reported the i9-12900H will work with 96GB RAM, albeit at a lower clock speed
And given the price differential, that’s why I chose to purchase the cheaper CPU
In which case, what’s missing is storage and RAM so I had to purchase that separately
The case lid easily slides off by depressing the button at the back, pulling the lower section out and holding the lid
But then you noticed that fingerprints show up all too easily…
On top, all you see is the PCIE slot on the right plus a fan to the left
What’s not so obvious is that underneath the foam is the heatsink and CPU
On the underside, everything is obscured by a metal fitting, but you can just make out 3 NVMe slots
Now I opted for the same RAM as other users have tested with this CPU
Crucial DDR5 RAM 96GB Kit (2x48GB) 5600MHz SODIMM
To fit this we need to have the case the right way up and to remove the 3 screws for the fan
NOTE: These are very small screws
The fan can then be lifted up slightly and slid out of the way
The orientation is rather odd as the slots are back to back, so one stick will be label up while the other is label down
Once fitted though, the fan can be put back and screwed in
For storage I purchased two NVMEs
Crucial T500 1TB SSD PCIe Gen4 NVMe
Crucial T500 2TB SSD PCIe Gen4 NVMe
To me a newer Gen5 NVMe would be wasted in this computer
Given how low the case lid clearance looked when I’d checked on the Internet beforehand, I opted for an NVMe without the heatsink, especially as the heatsink can’t be removed
Based on reviews, this brand and model of NVMe gets a good rating for performance as well as for thermals, even without the heatsink
I was tempted for ones with that can handle more writes, but my main goal is to lower the power consumption and minimise heat
Why two NVMes?
Well my first thought was that I’d buy three; one for the OS and two for data redundancy
The only trouble is that the NVMe slots are very different
The left one, which can support M.2 and U.2, is a PCIE 4.0 x 4 slot
The middle one, is a PCIE 3.0 x 4 slot
And the right one, is a PCIE 3.0 x 2 slot
To me this is disappointing, especially as we’re now into PCIE 5.0
I don’t see any use for the right slot
Aside from being PCIE 3.0, it only has two lanes and the NVMes being bought today are typically Gen4 ones
And I don’t think it would practical to pair the left and middle slots for redundancy as PCIE 4.0 has twice the bandwidth of PCIE 3.0
The alternative I suppose is to buy a PCIE to NVMe adapter that can do bifurcation itself
Realistically, there are several single points of failure in a computer and this type of storage has no moving parts so it should be less likely to fail
The plan is to make it part of a cluster with high availability, so any outage should be minimal
After turning the computer upside down, the first thing to do is to remove the 3 screws
Fortunately these screws are quite long and so much easier to handle than the other 3 for the fan
The good news is you do get standoffs and a screw to keep the NVMes in place
But I found the middle screw so tight that when I tried to remove it it removed the standoff as well
So I then had to hold the standoff with some pliers while trying to remove the screw
No such problem with the left one though
But I thought it worth mentioning as you need to make sure you have more than just a screwdriver
NOTE: The left slot can support both M.2 and U.2
As others have pointed out there is a switch in the upper left corner to control the voltage depending on what’s attached
I’m using an M.2 NVMe and noticed the switch was already set to the right to support M.2, but you should always check
As the warning label says, if this is set to U.2, it could damage an M.2 SSD
Given the slots available, I opted to put the 1TB NVMe in the middle slot and this will have the OS installed on it
Yes, it is overspecced for the slot, but I don’t see any point buying Gen3 NVMes now and this could always be repurposed at a later date
The 2TB NVMe goes in the left slot and I’ll use PVE later to configure that for ZFS as I want to do replication between nodes
I might add heatsinks to the NVMes later
I’ve no plans to use the Wi-Fi that comes with this but it should support Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2
Fitting the fan and metal casing back in place was rather fiddly mind
With the computer upright again, it was easy enough to slide the case lid back into place
Aside from the number of CPU threads, the main appeal for me is this computer has SFP+ interfaces
This is ideal for me because I have a 10GE switch and only need to purchase a 10GE SFP to get this level of network throughput
Copper does generate more heat and uses more energy, so I’ll add a 10GE fibre SFP and use fibre cabling to connect this to my switch
Intel E10GSFPSR Compatible SFP+ SR Multimode Transceiver
FLYPROFiber 1m/3ft OM3 LC to LC Fiber Patch Cable
As with my existing servers, the interface will be configured as a trunk to support multiple VLANs
It also has built-in 2.5GE copper interfaces with the potential to be used for remote management using Intel vPRO
And with two of these it might be worthwhile looking into dedicating one to inline management and another to vPRO
What’s particularly interesting though is the computer has 2 x USB 4 ports at the front, each capable of 20Gbps
I only have one of these computers, but if I bought another I could potentially use a USB 4 port to pair two servers together for higher throughput of migration/replication traffic and free up the 10GE interface for user and backup data only. I don’t have enough switch ports for a dedicated 10GE backup port and backups run at night anyway
And while it sounds tempting to create a 3 node cluster of these and setup Ceph using these USB 4 ports, the advice is to have a minimum of 5 nodes in a Cepth cluster
So for me I’ll only be using 2 nodes and a qdevice
Basic Testing:
First thing to do was to cable this up to a keyboard and monitor just to see if it would at least power on
While the LED came on it felt like it took too long to POST…
I’d heard in forums of others saying they had to wait 4 minutes for it to POST when using 96GB of RAM
Although I think that only happens if the computer had been powered up before with different RAM in it
To be fair it was quick for this to POST, it was just the trepidation that it may not work that made it feel it took so long
In any case, it then went into the BIOS menu
But it still felt like a long wait…
From what I could see, the CPU and RAM seemed fine
You can read the thermals in the BIOS and I could also see both fans were running
Now the initial temperatures I saw were 51C/123F for the CPU and 44C/111F for the system and that to me seemed a bit high given the computer isn’t actually doing anything
But I decided to leave it there overnight on the thermals page
This was meant as a basic check of the electrics and thermals, to see if the computer goes to sleep, resets or preferably is still on the same BIOS page
Well I checked the next morning and the computer was still on the same BIOS page so that was good to see
What’s interesting though is the temperatures are higher, the CPU is at 56C/133F and the system at 48C/118F
There are two fans and they’re running at about 2100 and 2200 rpm
The BIOS gives you control over the CPU, M.1 and M.2 fans
Oddly enough though there is no M.2 fan reported as present in the BIOS, which makes sense as there’s only one fan on that side of the motherboard so I can only assume the BIOS wasn’t built specifically for this
The BIOS version of the computer I’ve received is v1.26 so I checked the website https://www.minisforum.cn/new/support?lang=en#/support/page/download/108
At the time of recording, that version was released on 22nd October 2024
A new version was released on the 29th April 2025, oddly enough the day I finally received the computer
There’s no description on the website about what this is for so I downloaded the zip file
There are release notes provided which mentions various BIOS settings changes for instance
Oddly enough the notes say v1.27 was released on 4th April 2025
Although the release date mentioned for v1.26 doesn’t match up with what’s on the website either mind
Now I’ve no idea why some settings are being changed for the 12800H or 270H (12700H?) as you can’t buy the computer with those CPUs…
So I think we’ll be leaving this computer on v1.26 for now as I don’t see a need to upgrade it, and this release is too new
While I was there I also downloaded the Windows drivers as I’ll be using that for my next testing
https://www.minisforum.cn/new/support?lang=en#/support/page/download/108
One thing I noticed in the BIOS mind is that Wake on LAN is enabled by default
So I disabled it as it draws more power if the computer is powered down
Now I’m not really liking these high temperatures so in the BIOS I set the fan speeds to full, saved the changes and rebooted
After a while the BIOS was reporting temperatures of 45C/113F for the CPU and 39C/102F for the system
So the extra cooling does help a bit but it doesn’t seem practical to be running this with the fans at full speed all the time
In which case, I reverted the fans back to automatic but set them to run faster if the temperatures get much higher
I reported this to Minisforum who told me the only concern is if the temperature goes about 90C/190F when running an FPU stress test for instance
I did some searching and the idea of removing the insulation from the heatsink and applying better thermal paste does drop the temperatures by quite a bit it seems, and it’s something I’ll consider
There are mixed opinions about voiding the warranty in forums but in my own feedback I was told I could remove the heatsink and reapply silicone grease to the CPU myself if I wanted
Another suggestion I saw is to disable Turbo Boosting for the CPU so I did that
This time, the temperatures in the BIOS showed around 45C/113F for the CPU and 45C/113F for the system
CPU performance isn’t all that critical for what I have in mind for a hypervisor as it’s mostly to run infrastructure servers
But because I want to do more testing I re-enabled Turbo Boosting, but at least I know it’s another option
But I am concerned if there’s any thermal throttling
Windows 11 Installation:
As much as I’d prefer not to be using Windows, there are Windows applications out there that are more popular for system testing
There isn’t a download option for Windows 11 from the Minisforum website for this computer, but I prefer to create my own installation drives anyway
After going through several questions on the Microsoft website, it then had a hissy fit and I couldn’t download an ISO file. I suspect it was because my web browser doesn’t give out my location
In which case I used the creation tool on an older gaming computer I have to create a USB drive
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11
Never thought I’d still be stuck with Windows for gaming in 2025
At this stage I don’t connect a computer to the network, either with an RJ-45 cable and I won’t point Windows to a Wi-Fi either; I don’t want an online Microsoft account
I had a problem trying to plug the USB drive into the front USB port so I used a rear one and rebooted the computer
One thing I noticed is there’s quite a lot of heat being exhausted at the back and the USB drive did heat up as a result because it uses metal
I have another USB drive that fits the front port mind, so the original one for some reason is just too high for that front port
Which then begs the question, why does it work in all my other computer ports plus a rear one of this mini-pc?
Booting this up was quite disconcerting mind because it sounded like all power was cut to the computer and then it booted up with the Minisforum logo and presented a blue background only to then turn off after a while
Not a BSOD, just a light blue screen
So I powered it back up and Windows Boot Manager reported an error relating to EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD, 0xc0000185
I tried searching for suggestions on the error but couldn’t find anything in the BIOS to relate to this
So I powered it off and on, and this time it went straight into the BIOS
I checked the BIOS, it recognised the USB drive so I rebooted it from there and this time it gave me a purple background and the dialogue window to start installing Windows
So I’ve no idea what happened on that first attempt, especially as it powered off without any indication of the installation starting. And all I did was a warm reboot within the BIOS to get the install process working
And I’m not sure why it went into the BIOS instead of booting from the USB drive on another power up
During the installation it recognised both NVMe drives and it references the left slot as disk 0, the middle is 1 and presumably the right is disk 2 although in this case the right slot is empty and the USB drive is referenced as disk 2
So I opted to use the slower disk 1 to install Windows on
Now maybe the computer is too quick, but it was rather unnerving when there felt like a sudden pause and then the next screen appeared to say it was ready. The mouse was responsive but it felt like the install had frozen as all you had was everything greyed out and no progress indicator
But it then carried on and the install of Windows 11 Pro began
Microsoft, being Microsoft, they want you to have an online account but we’ll be having none of that nonsense so I skipped over the Wi-Fi setup
Having said that, it did ask for a driver to be installed in order to be able to do that
At which point it carried on with the installation and preparing the computer
With the installation complete, I thought it was unusual that Windows didn’t recognise the Intel adapter
So I extracted the drivers I’d downloaded to a USB drive
This time I used one that fits in the front USB slot so I could check that port was working
After running those through a virus checker it was then a matter of installing them all on the computer
One of the things I’ve liked about some motherboard manufacturers I’ve used in the past is you install an application on the computer
This then goes through a process of installing all the necessary drivers, reboots as and when necessary, picks up the process when you log back in and continues on until completed
You get to watch the progress and status allowing you to know what is and more importantly what isn’t installed
So I think Minisforum could do with putting more effort into these drivers
Doing this manually, I went through these in the ordering of the folders, beginning with the chipset drivers
Only the chipset ones suggested a reboot so I did that then carried on installing the rest
I must admit, I don’t like this use of batch files
I ran them as the Administrator since we’re installing drivers, but the feedback is non-existent
The one for the graphics drivers for instance just sat at the same line telling me they were being installed
On an occasion the monitor flashed, but it took quite a while before it finally exited and you’ve no idea what’s going on, any indication as to how long it’s going to take or if the process has stuck
But once these were all installed I rebooted the computer
I checked Device Manager and it didn’t show any unknown hardware, so that’s always good to see
So I plugged an RJ-45 cable into one of the 2.5GE ports and now it was connected to the network
With remote desktop enabled and tested it was good to go
Now you’ve got to love Windows Update
At this stage, the computer hasn’t been connected to the Internet and when I checked Windows Update it said there were no updates to install
But after a refresh, wow, there were lots and I mean lots of updates to apply to this computer
I don’t remember this happening before, but it immediately started downloading and installing all these updates without asking for permission
In any case, it was time to sit back and let it update itself
By the way, there were quite a few Intel drivers being updated during this process so that’s good to see as it probably saves going back to Minisforum to download and install manual updates
Windows and Power Testing:
To help with testing I downloaded and installed HWiNFO
https://www.hwinfo.com/
It provides useful diagnostic information but I’m mostly looking to monitor the temperatures
For a simple test I downloaded and installed Cinebench
https://www.maxon.net/en/downloads/cinebench-2024-downloads
The computer doesn’t have a GPU as such but the i9-12900H does have an iGPU
So we’ll run a multi-core test and once it’s finished we’ll check the results
As an aside, one thing I was reading not too long ago, was that Intel CPUs received a firmware update through BIOS upgrades due to problems
Users have since mentioned this drastically reduced the performance on their CPUs
Now I believe that was for 13th and 14th generation CPUs and I’ve got a 12th generation CPU so I’m probably not affected by this
But I think it’s something you might need to bear in mind if you decide to go with the i9-13900H
Now checking HWiNFO we can see thermal throttling kicked in because the core and package temperatures got too high
And that does lower the computer’s performance
This isn’t good because it means the CPU can’t perform as well as it potentially could
Now while I could run other performance tests, I don’t run a review channel comparing lots and lots of computers so I haven’t really got anything to benchmark against
I could run a disk performance test for instance, but no matter the results, I can’t improve on that by replacing an NVME with a Gen 5 one for instance
The best slot available is PCIE 4.0 x 4 and so an NVMe like that would be wasted
And the Crucial NVMes I’m using got a good performance and thermal review anyway
In which case, my next test is about the power draw of the computer
At this stage I’m running Windows and I’ll need to do more long term testing with Proxmox VE to compare this computer to my existing servers
But for the most part the power is ticking along at about 25W, when the computer goes to sleep it’s down to 3W and when it’s shut down it’s about 1.5W
During our Cinebench testing it spiked as high as 120W and that’s because it’s using the CPU or rather iGPU for rendering
So as long as there isn’t much use of the iGPU, at this stage I think this should do well compared to my existing servers which run at 50W and 70W when running a few VMs without interaction
But the concern for me remains the thermal throttling so I’ll try adjusting the fan speeds to see if that can help
Replace Thermal Paste:
Thermal throttling is something new to me as I’ve built desktop PCs with high end CPUs and GPUs for gaming, but they’ve got plenty of cooling and air flow
To me this a safety mechanism to protect the CPU from overheating, but it results in the performance being capped
And you can run into it if there’s bad thermal conductivity between the CPU and heatsink
Now if you check the forums, there are folks out there reporting issues with the thermal paste so it made sense to check what was going on with this computer
Since others have asked about voiding the warranty if you remove the heatsink, I asked Minisforum about this and they told me it wouldn’t be an issue
For this mini-pc, the CPU is built into the motherboard, and it has a passive heatsink that can be removed
First though you’ll have to remove the CPU fan that actually sits above the RAM
You’ll then need to remove the thermal insulation as well to get to the screws that hold the heatsink in place
For whatever reason, my own photos turned out bad
But feel free to check out this other video from TheDexogen which shows how they did this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9DjGTc5gNY
Bear in mind, they used liquid metal and I’d prefer to stick to thermal paste
Yes users are reporting temperature drops of 10C, but there’s a risk here of electrical conductivity and others seem concerned about the heatsink materials
In any case, the thermal paste already there seemed fine to me
But I thought I’d try Arctic MX-4 thermal paste and a spreader to see if it did any better
Arctic MX-4 Thermal Paste
Unfortunately I couldn’t get the insulation back on because it wouldn’t stick
Anyway, while I there was there I added the heatsink that came with the case to the NMVe drive in the left slot
I had been thinking about adding one to the other NVMe but the M.2 fan gets in the way so it won’t be practical
With the heatsink and fan back in place it’s then a matter of comparing the temperatures
I checked the BIOS, but unfortunately I didn’t see any improvement
But the results from Cinebench were now slightly worse
This time I was seeing thermal throttling of 3% instead of 1%
That thermal insulation will probably help the fan remove heat from the heatsink better and either reduce heat from the heatsink getting into the case and vice versa
At first, Minisforum seemed very helpful when I asked about this insulation
They offered to send a replacement for the insulation and I said I’d like that
But thinking longer term, I also asked if they could suggest what else I could use and where I could buy this from
I’ve never had to use insulation on a heatsink before, so I’ve no idea what to get or where to get it from
Now after about a month, we’re just going round and round in circles with me asking those two same questions and them asking if I would like a replacement of the insulation sent
Although at one point I got a reply suggesting to be careful not to tear the insulation before I remove it?!?
Not sure why as I keep telling them I’ve removed it, that the throttling is worse, and the pieces aren’t sticking because the adhesive has worn off
All I can do now is keep pressing them for a solution and hopefully this will get resolved
Although if you know what can be used I’d really appreciate a comment on the video about that as I’m not the only person that’s asked this question
Proxmox VE:
The reason I bought this mini-pc was to use it as a hypervisor running Proxmox VE and try and lower my energy bills
It was easy enough to install the OS on the 1TB drive
TIP: If you go into the BIOS, in the Save & Exit section there’s an option to override the boot order and boot from a USB drive
The 2TB drive is for VMs, so I set that up for ZFS as assuming things go to plan this will replace one of my Dell servers and I’ll be using ZFS replication
But, it won’t be going into my cluster just yet because there have been reports of stability problems when running PVE on this mini-pc
In which case, the plan is to continue running this as a standalone server for a while, running similar VMs and I’ll monitor things like the stability and power draw
For initial testing, the mini-pc only used one 2.5GE NIC, and the power peaked at about 74W when I was creating VMs and so on
With a few VMs running it’s been hovering at about 30W when I’m not interacting with it
What I’m finding though is VMs are much quicker to build
And the desktop VM feels much snappier and responsive
That’s probably because the disk storage, memory and CPU are more powerful
10GE Testing:
One of the main reasons for buying this mini-pc was because it has built in 10GE SFP+ ports
The cost of a USB to 10GE adapter is still quite expensive, so to me that’s one of the main appeals of this computer
I purchased some 10GE fibre SFPs and a cable for it and wired it up to my switch
Intel E10GSFPSR Compatible SFP+ SR Multimode Transceiver
FLYPROFiber 1m/3ft OM3 LC to LC Fiber Patch Cable
To test the throughput I used iperf3
It was already installed on another node so I ran that in server mode
iperf3 -sFor the mini-pc I had to install it
apt update
apt install iperf3 -yThen I can run a simple network test
iperf3 -c <server_ip_address>TIP: If the throughput looks to be lower than expected, test against another computer if possible. Because what I’ve since found out is that one of my Dell servers may have a problem as it maxes out at about 8Gb/s
Bear in mind, the results only indicate theoretical transfer rates
Applications rarely achieve that level of throughput and something as simple as a slow hard drive can seriously reduce the transfer rate
As for the power load, this is expected to go up when you use 10GE
In my case, the power load is now varying between lows of 28W and highs of about 42W without interaction
And it seems to be averaging about 31W so even with a 1GE and a 10GE link the power doesn’t seem to have changed much
I reverted the mini-pc back to the default fan curve but I didn’t see any notable difference; I’d assumed the fans would be running more aggressively and so drawing more power
I then disabled the Turbo Boosting option because CPU performance won’t be super important on this hypervisor
This time the power load was averaging around 25W once the VMs were up and running
Interaction with the web GUI and desktop VM pushed the power up to about 37W but after I exited out of both, the load was back down to 27W
The desktop has a web browser now open so there’s some extra work compared to before when there was nobody logged in
So I’m inclined to leave Turbo Boosting disabled and the fan curve at the default settings because the temperatures should have dropped as well
Summary:
Now I must admit the video ended up being a lot longer than I was planning
And although this computer plus parts, seems quite expensive, with the built-in 10GE connectivity and the amount of threads and RAM I do still think it has potential
But as others have been pointed out, it could really benefit from better cooling
In terms of raw cost, I think a refurbished Enterprise server still looks to be the cheaper solution
For me though, the longer term goal is reducing energy consumption as I’m interested in battery storage
And the less power you need, the cheaper that storage will be
Now without a choice of couriers and the time taken for returns, I don’t think I’ll be buying direct from Minisforum again
This courier has a terrible rating on Trustpilot and it should be a lot lower still because as those customers have pointed out, you can’t give companies a rating of zero
As for Minisforum’s customer service…
Initially it looked to be promising, but I’m still trying to get them to send me replacement insulation or at least tell me what I can purchase
Any other decent company would have resolved that in just a few days, but this email conversion has been going on for almost a month and I’m no further forward
For now, I need to do more testing of this workstation and I’ll report back on my findings at a later date
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