Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “This packs a PUNCH! – Minisforum at CES 2024”.
We’Re at the minis Forum booth at CES 2024, and I get to show you something. I’Ve been waiting to see for a while. It looks like an ordinary small computer, but on the back we have dual 10 gbit: dual 2.5 gig: dual 40 gig Thunderbolt a core I9 processor, a full pcie slot 96 GB of RAM. This is basically an entire server.
It even has Remote Management. I can’t wait to check it out and don’t even worry, there is even more craziness to see behind me. Let’S take it apart.
Naturally, I think we should start with what I came here for this is the ms01. I’M not really sure how they’re positioning this thing, but as far as I can tell it’s designed to be a mini server, but a Mini Server that packs a serious, serious punch. The front is kind of the boring side power button, combo mic audio, a 10 gig USB type, A and two USB 2.0 type A. But when you move around to the back the business side, let’s say: dual 10 gig SFP plus ports powered by an Intel. X7 710 chipset, which we like to see Intel, makes great Nicks we’ve got dual 2.5 gig L, don’t know the chipset on those. Hopefully it’s decent: dual 40 gig USB 4, two more 10 gig USB ports, an HDMI 2.0 power in, and then this this.
I was not expecting that’s a pcie 16x slot, admittedly, despite it being wired as a 16x slot, which you can see. It’S soldered like that. Apparently it runs at 8 by speed, which is fine. I guess you can fit a GPU. They have this RTX 2,000 that they were showing uh, which actually apparently fits in here totally fine, I mean: let’s try it, I guess it has to be a half height like this. I think.
Maybe you would call this half length, I’m not that familiar with like the length monikers, but it does just slide right in there’s like little foamy bits on the motherboard to make it sit nicely boom. Now you have a GPU now the S so on this system. Does already have Intel IRS, XE, Graphics, it’s it’s a 13900 H yep, which is a 14 core chip with six performance cores and eight efficiency cores a Max boost of 5.4 GHz and a 45 wat base power. I think it turbos all the way up to 115 Watts, potentially I’m not sure what this chassis can handle. They didn’t have it listed on their specs page, but this entire section right here – it’s got kind of foamy bit, so you can’t really see it is heat. Sink now immediately, I don’t think that I would ever put a GPU in this system, but this could be a really awesome place to put something like a network card.
Imagine you could put uh on top of these 10 gig ports. How about you put two 25 gig ports on a like a melanox Nick? There should be plenty enough: CPU horsepower to route at speeds like that hell, you might even be able to go faster. Can you tell that I kind of want one? Yet, let’s look at the other side.
You can purchase this thing as a barebone system. That means it would come with no storage and no Ram, but this system is configured with 32 gigs of ddr5 uh, along with a 1 TB SSD socketed Wi-Fi card 2230. I like that, but what the really interesting thing on this side is the triple m.2 slots.
The top one is a gen 4×4. The second one is Gen 3×4 and then the third one is Gen. 3X. 2. I think I’m not 100 % sure which one is by two out of these two, but one of them is uh.
Again, that’s probably going to come from the fact that they’re using eight Gen 4 Lanes just for that pcie slot. But there is kind of an alternate configuration you can run and something that again kind of goes in line with that server mindset. Let’S say we’ll pop this SSD out with its little included cute little heat sink, and it is this an m.2 to u.2 little board.
I try to ask them if this is like an off-the-shelf part or if it’s something that they made um, he kept saying that it was just an off-the-shelf thing. I don’t know if I believe that it seems is kind of weird but like whatever um it works. It comes with it, so you don’t really have to worry about that it just slots in like that. I just noticed something cool. The Wi-Fi antennas are mounted up front here. So if you were to slide this into like a cabinet or something like that, the Wi-Fi antennas are still able to receive like unobstructed signal, which is a good design choice.
These M two slots, if I didn’t mention, already support full 110 mm m.2, drives, which again leads into that whole Enterprise Vibe. If you were to get ones that have like power loss protection, a lot of the time, they are that full length, not a 2280, which is what you would normally see in a computer or like this one. I did confirm it does come with three of these m.2 heat sinks. So if you upgrade the storage or buy the Bare Bones, you have all you need to keep it cool.
So you don’t have to worry about that. Uh and yeah. There’S a fan back here too, which is nice? Oh right, the ram! They only sell one configuration aside from the Bare Bones, so these are 16 gig, 5600 megat transfer per second crucial dims.
You can get 48 GB dims from crucial micron on. So this the max configuration for this machine would be 96 gigs because it has the two sodm slots: they don’t have heat sinks on them, but I think, since it’s like directly where the fan is spinning, the fan is open on both sides. So I think it’s going to draw a fair bit of air right over it anyways and it’s probably not going to cause any sort of thermal problems.
I don’t know how I feel about these little screws. They screw right into the heat sink and it’s very, very short threads. So I could see how somebody could accidentally strip these out. So if you buy one of these just be careful. Let’S turn it on thanks to B quiet for sponsoring our 2024 CES coverage. If you’re shopping for your next PC or just new components in general, make sure to check out, be quiet, the premium products include PC cases, power supplies, Water and Air, Cooling and fans for desktop PCS with roots in Germany.
They’Ve been in the industry for more than 20 years and specialize in making high quality parts that are nearly inaudible this year at CES, they’re, showcasing new white PC cases, white fans and even white hard drive cages so step into the world of Silent Computing with be Quiet at the link down below this is the power brake. It’S a 180 W power brake. I guess you got the CPU, which is over 100 Watts. The GPU slot could be 75.
I mean that’s, basically, all the power budget right. There doesn’t look like the USB 4 type- C ports do any sort of PD out which makes this power brick make a lot more sense. You can at least use them for display output, but not for power delivery. Is that a minis Forum in your pocket, or are you happy to see me it’s both what we’re waiting for cine bench to run on the ms01? Let’S talk about this little guy now I kind of at first I’m like what is the use case for this.
The answer is digital signage and apparently education. You know you could put this like at somebody’s desk. As like a small PC, you don’t need to run like a whole power – cable, it’s just Poe, so it’s a 2.5 gig in which would help if you’re using this. As a Thin Client, you can actually get some decent throughput. It has PD in as well. If you want to power it that way, and this can be used as a display output got two 10 gig USBS on the side and an HDMI 2.0 on the end.
Specs Wise, It’s not the most powerful thing in the world, as you can imagine it it’s about the size of a big USB hub, so there’s only so much CPU you can fit in here. It’S an Intel Core n100, which is a CPU you’ll, commonly see in those like little Nas units or the little small router boxes. Um, it’s only a four core. I believe it’s a 6 wat TDP. So definitely not a performance Monster by any stretch of the imagination. But but it is still enough to run Windows, they ship these things with Windows, 11 pre-installed uh. I don’t think you can get this as a Bare Bones, because I don’t know it’s definitely soldered memory 8 GB of it lpddr5 and then there’s a 256 GB uh ufs 2.1 storage chip in here. Look at that.
It’S so cute got two Wi-Fi antennas there. The cutest of fans, that’s a pretty pretty sizable heat syn. You can see the little n100 SSC end there, just peeking its head up, whoa, there’s a lot more going on on this side. There would be that looks to be our little Ram chip. I think there’s a little Wi-Fi chip set that might actually be the storage. They don’t have pricing on this one. Yet they’re expecting this to come out in the coming months, but seems to be kind of filling the role of like a raspberry pie. Just you don’t have to screw around with any of the stuff like trying to figure out how to Poe power it with a hat or any of that sort of stuff.
It’S just kind of a One-Stop shop, pretty cool little computer, hey cinat, is done. It scored. 800, so about 20 % slower than the 155h core Ultra.
I can’t wait to get our hands on one of these in the office. Imagine a cluster of these. You could connect them all with 10 gig.
You don’t need any sort of external NY. You could connect them all with 25 Gig if you put 25 gig n or 100 Gig, if you’re insane. If you’re wondering pricing for this one you’re looking at $ 680 us for the Bare Bones, which is it’s kind of getting up there for Min Forum compared to some of the other other ones or 830, with the 32 gigs of RAM and 1 TB SSD sure It is more expensive, but you are getting some stuff for that money. That x710 Intel chipset is not going to be that cheap.
You know, there’s three m.2 slots, there’s a pcie slot. There’S you know just the raw material cost of making a bigger device like this. I would be thrilled if something like this was 450 500 bucks. Maybe we’ll get there at some point. Still very cool still want one.
Let’S boot up this Mini PC. I just want to see this boot into windows. I don’t need to run cin bench on this.
We’Ll be here all day, it’s working, I think, booting into Windows is going to take a little bit longer on this one. Just is just a moment. It’S like come on really you. You got to wait for this. One. Look at that performance. The CPU is just sitting at 100 %. It’S A8 GHz base clock. Just the Windows like boot. Up setup, that’s still happening is using 100 % of the CPU.
I I just want to see if it will play a YouTube video like reasonably. They do know how much it’s going to cost. Apparently it will be around $ 100, maybe 99 bucks uh, which sounds like, maybe a lot for it, but also like a Ras pie. If you get one from a scalper is like a 100 bucks, maybe even more so considering that it’s got Poe 8 gigs of RAM 256 gigs of storage. That’S seems pretty reasonable to me. Look at that! It’S playing back a 720p YouTube video.
Let’S try! 1440! That seems to be playing at full speed. Let’S try! 4K. I don’t know that this is playing at full. Ah, no, it’s lagging a bit.
I think 1440p is the best you’re going to get out of something like this. I suspect once all of the windows fresh startup is done. You might be able to play 4K, like Windows update still using 20 % of the CPU diagnostic policy. Another 20 %, like almost half of our CPU performance, is being used by random crap.
That Windows is doing in the background, so this one also pretty cool these mini for un boxes. They just keep getting crazier at some point, they’re going to run out of weird use cases to fill like this. I I really really like this one. This is this is basically everything I’ve been asking for in a Mini PC, proper networking, it’s even SFP. So if you want to plug right into your switch, you can plug right into your switch. If you were to run this as a router, let’s say even in a hypervisor install proxmox on this thing have a fairly substantial amount of storage and virtualize your router.
Maybe you have two of these things or three of these things in a cluster in proxmox or X, cpng. It really wouldn’t be that much money if you put it in perspective of something like the um 790 Pro, which has a kind of similar CPU uh, with a thunderbolt 10 gig Nick you’re kind of in the same price point – and this is not a thunderbolt Nick. This is proper Intel, proper, dual Port 10 gig and still have all the rest of the expansion left over to boot, not to mention pcie. So if you like this video and you like the craziness that min’s Forum keeps putting out, get subscribed like the video and let me know what would you like to see from Min Forum, what would you do differently about this box? I would personally ax these 10 gig ports and I’ll just put my own card in a little bit cheaper price point, but pretty cool .