Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “A Quick look at the Minis Forum UM 450”.
I hold in my hand an entire machine memory, storage, the whole nine yards, it’s a Mini’s Forum machine, but this is the um 450 16 gigabytes of memory, 512 gigabytes of storage. This is one of the least expensive small form factor machines that you can get on. The Mini’s Forum website complete with a ryzen 5 4500u 6 core CPU, but even though this is one of the most modest machines that you can get from minis Forum, this is the one that I’ve gotten the most questions about, probably because it’s the least expensive, but It does actually make a good Media Center PC guest room PC, something like that. You don’t need. A really high-end system could also Build a Home Server with it, which I’ll talk more about in just a second, let’s unbox.
There’S a lot to like about this platform. For one inexpensive ddr4, you know, ddr5 is coming in Vogue, even ddr5 for notebooks, which means the ddr4 is basically on fire sale right now: everybody’s trying to get rid of their old ddr4 inventory so 32, even 64 gigabytes of ddr4 notebook memory. It’S not too hard to come by design might look familiar, two USB 2 ports, two five gigabit ports and then at the front we’ve got our combination, type c plus display, as well as our super speed. 10 gigabit combination, headphone microphone, Port, our Hardware reset button and our physical power switch.
Also in the Box, you get your stand, won’t stand for this. If you bother to set up your stand correctly, you get a stand. We’Ve also got a power brick, a short HDMI, cable, your adapter, so you can use a two and a half inch sated device, some extra rubber feet in case you have to disassemble it for an upgrade or something like that and a Visa mounting bracket. Let’S do some performance testing now it does have dual HDMI out on the back and if you want to use DisplayPort you’re going to have to use a type c to display port adapter from the front.
That’S just the thing that you have to do and the input is the standard laptop 19 volt. You know DC power, brick, nothing special going on there, let’s get out the old kilowatt, so we can be impressed by the lack of the lack of Watts that this thing is going to use now remember this is basically a notebook processor that minisforum has packaged in A small form factor machine, and certainly, if you want more performance mini form, has got a lot of options for more performance. But me I think, in the low power use now you can’t fit two sated devices in here, and I’ve got to admit for a Home Server.
Multiple, two and a half gigabit ports might be kind of nice, but it’s pretty awesome. You could use a combination, m.2 plus two and a half inch sated device, two and a half inch seated devices up to four terabytes. Those are the thing: 16 Watts nominal. Now you can go in Linux and you can enable some bells and tunables and blah blah blah and get it down to more, like 12 Watts, which is a lot more reasonable now, in a worst case scenario on our Plucky little kilowatt meter here, we’re talking about 50 Watts power usage for the system. The power brick itself is only rated for 65 Watts, so you can’t push it 50 Watts with basically nothing connected.
Nothing, that’s going to consume any power anyway, that’s pretty good! All of our power budget is going to the CPU. If we needed to – and we have onboard graphics and everything else there as well so 50 Watts – you know, 15 watts doesn’t leave a lot of room for charging peripherals or anything else like that. But still our nominal power usage being about 15 watts, 16 Watts or something like that, and our heaviest power usage at 50 watts and that’s for a perfectly reasonable, desktop experience, whether you’re on Linux or Windows, pretty darn good. But you know again. This is a part that was designed for laptop use. That Mini’s form has stuffed into a tiny small form factor desktop. Like I say, I like this for a Home Server, proxmox gon na run Docker containers, it’s only six cores, but you know if you’re going to run home assistant, maybe some light duty Internet connected or network connected. I should say security cameras, maybe two and a half inch: SATA storage. Okay, maybe that’s fine yeah! That’S not that one’s not valid, because I did bad things, I’m one of this level one. This has been a quick look at the um 450, which is a good low power, both in terms of watts and computational horsepower, given the landscape of other things available, even from just Mini’s form available in the market, I would probably personally go with something higher end, Because it would have a little bit more longevity and it’s only marginally more expensive, but for the under 300 category and maybe even a little bit less on fire sale.
It’S you can really accomplish a lot with this platform. My personal favorite for expandability is still the minis Forum that has the pcie slot. So if you want something, that’s am4, 65 Watts for the CPU, but the power supplies a little bit higher, plus also the storage plus.
Also hey. You can throw in a pcie graphics card and an ATX power supply, even though it’s a small form factor yeah. There’S a pcie dock check out that video something a little bit more higher end.
If you want something, that’s built in I’ve got something with a lot more horsepower coming up, be sure to check that out all right, I’m one of this level, one I’m signing out. You can find me in the level one forums, foreign .