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Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#3

Post by futuraperdita »

Having bought other systems in the MS-line, these boxes are heavy on cool homelab specs but aren't all that reliable and dealing with Minisforum for support is abysmal. I ended up moving back to old enterprise hardware (TinyMiniMicro or rackmounted gear). I don't recommend purchasing these systems if you're looking for anything more than a novelty; they're not any better than buying one of the random AliExpress mini PCs.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#4

Post by bhouston »

I really like Minisforum in general and the current generation of AMD-powered Mini PCs. I have one as a media PC and I replaced my dad's desktop with one. They are cheap, fast and silent.

I was thinking of getting a high end AMD one as a replacement for my daughter's aging gaming PC, although as of this week I am thinking of waiting for Steam Machine.

This ARM machine seems a bit slow (I would have suggested a new Qualcomm CPU, some of them are crazy fast) but it is nice to see a major Mini PC manufacturer getting into the ARM space.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#6

Post by bhouston »

mcny wrote: post #2

My minisforum mini PC is dead and useless. I will never, ever recommend anyone to buy a minisforum again. Please do not buy a minisforum. And it wasn't just me. https://old.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/1ocvjby/minisforum...

I've owned a couple and Minisforum has generally been amazing.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#8

Post by jauntywundrkind »

futuraperdita wrote: post #3

Having bought other systems in the MS-line, these boxes are heavy on cool homelab specs but aren't all that reliable and dealing with Minisforum for support is abysmal. I ended up moving back to old enterprise hardware (TinyMiniMicro or rackmounted gear). I don't recommend purchasing these systems if you're looking for anything more than a novelty; they're not any better than buying one of the random AliExpress mini…

I still bought my 795s7 (a cheap 16-core MoDT (mobile on desktop) zen4 box) anyways, but accepting that I would probably never get bios updates ever was a hard pill to swallow. I haven't had to deal with support for anything defective, but support as in available bios updates being so so so spotty is really unfortunate.

AMD is talking about replacing closed AGESA BIOS with open OpenSIL bios some day, and maybe perhaps possibly it means end users get some chance to maintain & upgrade bios themselves, eventually, possibly. Given how some vendors seem uninterested in doing the work themselves, this sliver of a hope would be nice to see happen.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#9

Post by porphyra »

bhouston wrote: post #6
mcny wrote: post #2

My minisforum mini PC is dead and useless. I will never, ever recommend anyone to buy a minisforum again. Please do not buy a minisforum. And it wasn't just me. https://old.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/1ocvjby/minisforum...

I've owned a couple and Minisforum has generally been amazing.

Same, I have a fairly positive experience with minisforum.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#10

Post by ndiddy »

The performance on this machine is similar to the Snapdragon 8cx from Microsoft’s first big Windows on ARM push a few years ago (so nowhere near even the 4 year old Apple M1) while the idle power draw is similar to an x86 computer. If they’re not targeting either performance or power efficiency, I’m not sure who would be interested in this computer. I’d say that if you can tolerate Mac OS X for your use case, a used Mac Mini would be a far better choice.
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