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An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

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Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#41

Post by hi_hi »

tiew9Vii wrote: post #19
hi_hi wrote: post #17

Not sure I understand this distinction. > I’ve always wanted an ARM server in my homelab. But earlier, I either had to use an underpowered ARM system, or use Asahi... What is stopping you using Mac with MacOS?

It’s not great as a headless server. With full disk encryption enabled you need a keyboard and display attached at boot to unlock it. You then need to sign in to your account to start services. You can use an IP based KVM but that’s another thing to manage. If you use Docker, it runs in a vm instead of native. With a Linux based ARM box you can use full disk encryption, use drop bear to ssh in on boot to unlock disks…

Thanks for the reply. I'm looking to replace my aging mini pc with a mac mini, so I'm quite interested in any limitations here.

The full disk encryption I can live without. I'm assuming these limitations don't apply if it's disabled. [Ah, I just saw the other reply that this has now been fixed]

I was aware of the Docker in a VM issue. I haven't tested this out yet, but my expectation is this can be mitigated via https://github.com/apple/container ?

I appreciate any insights here.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#42

Post by hi_hi »

geerlingguy wrote: post #18
hi_hi wrote: post #17

Not sure I understand this distinction. > I’ve always wanted an ARM server in my homelab. But earlier, I either had to use an underpowered ARM system, or use Asahi... What is stopping you using Mac with MacOS?

Most likely wanting to run Linux natively. Only M1/M2 can fill that role with Asahi, and still not with 100% hardware compatibility. On the flip side, an M4 mini is cheaper, faster, much smaller (with built in power supply) and much more efficient. Plus for most applications, they can run in a Linux container just as well.

Thanks for the reply Jeff. This aligns with my understanding too. I'm close to purchasing a mac mini to replace my aging media pc. The core feature I want is to run microK8s natively, which I'm assuming the newish Mac containers will support.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#43

Post by zuntaruk »

p_ing wrote: post #36
zuntaruk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel like this really answers the question thought, right? At least not at face value. I could see the side of maintenance burden being a potential point, meaning that one would be "pushed" to update the system between releases more often than something else.

Typically you want stability and predictability in a server. A platform that has a long support lifecycle is often more attractive than one with a short lifecycle. If you can stay on v12.x for 10 years versus having to upgrade yearly yo maintain support, that’s ideal. 12.x should always behave the same way with your app where-as every major version upgrade may have breaking changes. Servers don’t need to change, typi…

Yeah, and that's the take I assumed to hear based on what was said.

However, for something like ARM and the use case this particular device may have, in reality you would _want_ (my opinion) to be on a more rolling release distros to pick up the updates that make your system perform better.

I'd take a similar stance for devices that are built in a homelab for running LLMs.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#44

Post by cromka »

inventor7777 wrote: post #32
esseph wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get an ARM one though, only X86, which is mostly the point.

True. However, I've always noticed that ARM has less Linux support than x86, and the main benefits ARM is known for are typically performance/watt, running cooler, and less legacy support. Since this server seems to have pretty average performance/watt and cooling, I can't really see much advantage to ARM here, at least for typical server use cases. Unless you're doing ARM development, but I feel like a Pi 4/5 is bet…

Linux support for ARM is inferior for end users of desktop 3rd party software. Everything else is provided by the repos. I doubt this person runs Signal or Spotify on those servers.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#45

Post by nottorp »

jacquesm wrote: post #14
jdpedrie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did not. The rep told me to return it and buy another. :/

And fuck the planet, your time and the time of the logistics people. This is so incredibly inefficient. Multiply by how many times this happens every day...

It's efficient ... for amazon ... because most people won't bother.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#46

Post by avhception »

walterbell wrote: post #12

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/minisforum-stuffs-ent... > The strange CPU core layout is causing power problems; Radxa and Minisforum both told me Cix is working on power draw, and enabling features like ASPM. It seems like for stability, and to keep memory access working core to core, with the big.medium.little CPU core layout, Cix wants to keep the chip powered up pretty high. 14 to 17 watts idle is beyond…

Sigh. It's always something...

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#47

Post by jeroenhd »

inventor7777 wrote: post #21

$599 seems like a lot to me. You can get numerous older, much more powerful Mini PCs (e.g older ThinkCentre Tiny series) or even a base brand new M4 Mac Mini for that kind of money. Admittedly, the 10G interfaces and fast RAM make up for some of it, but at least for a normal homelab setup, I can't think of an application needing RAM faster than even DDR3, especially at this power level.

> even a base brand new M4 Mac Mini

A base Mac Mini (256GB/16GB) would cost me €720 while a Minisforum MS-R1 (1TB/32GB) would cost me €559 (minus a 25 euro discount for signing up to their newsletter if you accept that practice).

Price to performance the Apple solution may be better, but the prices aren't similar at all.

Upgrading the Mac to also feature 1TB of storage and 32GB of RAM, the price rises by a whopping €1000 to €1719.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#48

Post by avhception »

zuntaruk wrote: post #15
some-guy wrote: post #7

> Yes, while I use Fedora on my laptop, I also know Fedora is generally not a good option for a server. Why is Fedora not considered good for a server?

I'd also love to hear what folks have to say about this. For myself I've had nothing but positive experiences running Fedora on my servers.

I think it's highly circumstantial. For example, my personal servers run a lot of FreeBSD and even though I could stay on major releases for a rather long time, I usually upgrade almost as soon as new releases are available.

For servers at work, I tried running Fedora. The idea was that it would be easier to have small, frequent updates rather than large, infrequent updates. Didn't work. App developers never had enough time to port their stuff to new releases of underpinning software, so we frequently had servers with unsupported OS version. Gave up and switched to RockyLinux. We're in the process of upgrading the Rocky8-based stuff to Rocky9. Rocky9 was released 2022.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#50

Post by pta2002 »

nine_k wrote: post #38
orion7 wrote: post #27

For those who don't need quite that much power I recently added an Orange Pi 5 to my own homelab, the RK3588 SoC packs an impressive punch for what it is

Does it run a mainline Linux kernel?

As of this past year (6.15+), most stuff you’d need for a regular desktop is upstreamed. Collabora has been working pretty hard on getting the chip mainlined, so it’s on a very good place compared to something like the Pi 5, which is not at all what the experience used to be in the past!
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