This Might Be The Perfect Mini PC

Just want to say thanks for adding what I assume was voice corrections ("280") rather than popup graphics. For those hard of sight it makes for an easier experience. Thank you good sir. 👍

I really appreciate your personal, practical take on this and the in depth look. It may be in a different class than some of the systems that you often review but it can also do a lot more. Thank you!

He said "I don't mind burning bridges with companies that send me bad products!" 😂 +1

Taking 2u when in a rack is rough. Adjusting the case to take 1u and possibly some airflow adjustments would be great. Could market it as a bastion/utility server.

This is the second video I've watched of yours and I really like how you edit the audio for mistakes instead of just showing it on screen. I like to play BeamNG when I'm watching YouTube and I'll miss the on screen corrections on channels like LTT and GN and etc.

That was such a fun and interesting watch! I'm currently on the hunt for some ITX build ideas to put together for my mother, and you've got my noggin rollin'. Thanks a bunch!

Important note for anyone who considering putting a U.2 drive in this system: The height of the U.2 drive must not exceed 7mm, which excludes some of the most popular U.2 drives on the market, such as Kioxia CD6, WD SN640, or Samsung PM1733/1735, which are all 15mm drives. I saw this machine but still got myself a Think Station P3 tiny. I chose an ES motherboard so that I got 3 M.2 slots. I paired the P3 tint with the i5-12400 and it was 1/3 cheaper than the MS-01 with the 12900H option. There seemed to be an i5-12450h option with the MS-01, but it is not available and we don't know when they will start selling this option. I don't really like the i9 CPU that MS-01 provides right now because I don't want to stretch the cooling system too far. I did see the appeal of the dual 10G NIC but for someone who doesn't really need it, it is a piece of hardware that consumes power and does nothing. On the other hand, I can add USB type A, DP, HDMI, or TypeC with video and charging to the Tiny via expansion modules, which makes it very flexible. However, doing this does sacrifice the PCIE cutout. It is also more difficult to install PCIE cards sideways compared to Tiny's riser approach. At least it doesn't require a special PCIE bracket though. All in all, I think both MS-01 and P3 Tiny are both nice SFF machines. It really comes down to whether you prefer the dual 10G SFP port and the USB4 port, (Yes, it is USB4 rather than Thunderbolt, although they are functionally the same.) or more flexibility. I will also provide a quick technical comparison here for anyone interested: P3 Tiny |VS| MS-01 form factor: Standard size |VS| A bit larger than Standard size. (Matters if you want to put it in a server rack.) CPU: Any CPU from Intel 12,13 and 14GEN |VS| 13900H,12900H, or 12450H. (12450H not available yet.) iGPU: MS-01 is always better as mobile chips always get better iGPU compared to their desktop counterpart. NIC: i219-LM 1Gx1 |VS| i226v 2.5G + i226LM 2.5G +x710 10Gx2. (Both machines can support vPRO.) PCIE: Gen4/5 x8 |VS| Gen4/5 x8. (Gen5 is available on 13th Gen CPUs.) PCIE specific: Need custom PCIE bracket |VS| Difficult to install and uninstall. USB Expansion: 4x10G type A + 2x5G type A + 1x10G type C |VS| 3x10G type A + 2x 480 M(2.0) type A + 2x40G USB4. (Tiny can expend 4x 5G type A or 1x10G type C with Video and charging expansion module, by giving up the PCIE cutout.) Video Expansion: DP1.4 + HDMI 2.0 |VS| HDMI 2.0 + 2xUSB4. (Tiny can expend 2xDP, 2xHDMI, or 2xTypeC DPalt via the expansion module, by giving up the PCIE cutout.) Storage Expansion: 2xM.2 |VS| 2xM.2 + 1x M.2/U.2. (Tiny get 3xM.2 on the ES motherboard)

Another excellent video. Interesting product, and seemingly pretty well targeted. I always enjoy your videos - in a world of shouty tech vids, your quiet and calm approach is a pleasant change. Keep up the good work!

I love my Aranet! Unexpected but nice to see that they’ve sponsored you, first time I’ve seen them do a sponsorship

I'm interested in Aranet's cloudless design. According to some info I googled, they support SNMP in their Pro series. I would love to see how to set it up for self hosted environment monitoring. Linking it to Grafana or something would be awesome.

My big problem with this kind of design is that it only supports 1 slot half height PCIe cards. If it was 2 slot, I'd be more than willing to pay that price for one. Bonus being I could turn it into a multi-task server, with max TDP of just an enterprise CPU.

Reminds me of the Thinkstation Tiny's from Lenovo, those also have a PCIe slot in a 1L package

I like that you included the comparison with the N100 since this gives me a good idea of the performance difference to expect for devices with a similar form factor.

Really hope they do a few more models similar to this, perhaps with i7 or lower power CPU

I know what to get your for Christmas now 😁

Y'all just earned a sub. Really good overview of this system's build, capabilities, advantages and caveats! I just wish I had the money to throw out to get one. That would be such a great platform to make a home-based cloud setup.

Were you able to test with powertop by chance? As I understand it, most Miniforum computers don't have the bios settings necessary to reach low power states. Perhaps that's why it idled at 14w.

I wouldn't mind 4 of these, in a cluster for ESXi or Proxmox. Dual 10G means having a separate NAS, ah it would be the perfect setup.

Great point on the height. Would love to see a rackmount version of this

While this particular device doesn't tick all the boxes for me it's pretty cool that minisforum is listening to all the people who have been asking for a device like this. I agree that making it that size is kind of a miss, but it's honestly not a bad first effort to iterate from for an 02 in the future.