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

sour.coffee

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

#61

Post by thebruce87m »

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.

I just picked up a NAS - a ugreen dxp2800 - for £300. It has 2x nvme slots and 2x 3.5 bays. It’s x86 so if you don’t like the ugreen os you can change it.

It runs docker (supports docker compose) and vms and has the usual raid stuff.

They also do an arm version for half the price but I wanted the intel gpu for transcoding.

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

#62

Post by throwaway27448 »

g947o wrote: post #29
esseph wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Most people don't care about nominal difference in x86 vs arm. They care about cost, performance, efficiency, noise etc. Which applications run on the machine does matter. The article never explained why the author wanted an ARM setup. I can only consider this a spiritual thing, just like how the author avoids Debian without providing any concrete explanations.

> Most people don't care about nominal difference in x86 vs arm.

That's rubbish; even the people who don't care about ISA will care about stuff like power draw and software availability (although ironically arm seems distinctly worse in terms of power draw here).

But, I hope there are other people like me who will take a premium to avoid reading x86 core dumps, which is sort of like getting nails driven through your eyes. Yes, there's more software optimized for the chips; it is still bad code.

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

#63

Post by g947o »

CharlesW wrote: post #34
g947o wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't care about nominal difference in x86 vs arm. They care about cost, performance, efficiency, noise etc. Which applications run on the machine does matter. The article never explained why the author wanted an ARM setup. I can only consider this a spiritual thing, just like how the author avoids Debian without providing any concrete explanations.

The usual reason to prefer ARM is efficiency, and the author's mention of replacing "power-hungry HPE towers" seeems to support that as a primary motivating factor.

That is meaningful only if there is evidence to support that.

Mobile x86 processors used in mini PCs these days (as in 2026) are very competitive in terms of power efficiency. I wouldn't go for ARM just for that factor alone, especially without side-by-side comparisons of benchmarks.

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

#64

Post by taskforcegemini »

trvz wrote: post #56
sgt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

559 vs 720? That's literally like a few coffees. I went to Amsterdam (assuming you're dutch) and I paid 5 euro for a coffee. Go for the Mac Mini, the hardware incl thermal is also built exceptionally well. That's why you still have 20 year old Mac Minis still running as home servers etc.

And ironically, a special part failing and there being no replacement parts is more likely to happen on one of these NUCloids than a Mac mini. So over the span of 20 years they’ll pay a multitude on these crappy computers than what the Mac mini costs once. May as well get a specced out Mac.

Isn't Apple also famous for not offering replacement parts other than replacing the whole thing and charging you accordingly?

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

#65

Post by irusensei »

ggm wrote: post #39

Nice device but the experience write up is more about distro choices than anything. It's quieter than the older units and it's harder to run 2 disk ssd raid because of some design choices. Is it faster? How many virtuals? What's the throughput if you use it for complex network related roles not offloaded to the microtik switching/routing kit? Does FreeBSD work better?

Most likely not. This CPU has 3 types of cores. Heterogenous core is still a work in progress in FreeBSD and AFAIK they are targeting the Intel implementation first.

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

#66

Post by irusensei »

sgt wrote: post #52
jeroenhd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 €…

559 vs 720? That's literally like a few coffees. I went to Amsterdam (assuming you're dutch) and I paid 5 euro for a coffee. Go for the Mac Mini, the hardware incl thermal is also built exceptionally well. That's why you still have 20 year old Mac Minis still running as home servers etc.

Depends on what you need it for. Love Mac minis but feature by feature the MS-R1 has more memory, ECC support and dual 10Gbe.

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

#67

Post by adrian_b »

esseph wrote: post #25
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.

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

This is the only thing at a reasonable price with an Armv9.2-A CPU that is not a smartphone, but this Chinese CPU has various quirks.

An older but better ARM CPU with quadruple Cortex-A78 cores (Armv8.2-A ISA) is available for use in embedded computers from Qualcomm, rebranded from Snapdragon to Dragonwing. There are a few single-board computers of credit-card size with it, which are much faster than Raspberry Pi and the like.

Such SBCs are cheaper than the one from TFA and they are better for the purpose of software development.

The computer described in this article has the advantage of better I/O interfaces, the SoC has much more PCIe lanes, which allows the computer to have more and faster network interfaces.

If you want for an ARM computer to be a true high-throughput network server, then this one is the best choice. Nevertheless, for a true network server, a mini-PC with an Intel or AMD CPU will have a much, much better performance, at the same price or even at a lower price.

Using ARM is justifiable only for the purpose of software development, or if you want a smaller volume and a lower power consumption than achievable by a NUC-sized computer. For these purposes, one of the SBCs with Qualcomm QCM6490 is a better choice.

While a credit-card-sized SBC has only one Ethernet port, you can connect as many Ethernet interfaces as you desire to it (by using an USB hub and USB Ethernet interfaces), as long as the network throughput is not important and you just want to test some server software.

The Minisforum computer from the parent article has only 2 advantages for software development, the Armv9 ISA and being available with more memory, i.e. 32 GB or 64 GB, while the smaller ARM SBCs are available with 8, 12 or 16 GB.

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

#68

Post by adrian_b »

CharlesW wrote: post #34
g947o wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't care about nominal difference in x86 vs arm. They care about cost, performance, efficiency, noise etc. Which applications run on the machine does matter. The article never explained why the author wanted an ARM setup. I can only consider this a spiritual thing, just like how the author avoids Debian without providing any concrete explanations.

The usual reason to prefer ARM is efficiency, and the author's mention of replacing "power-hungry HPE towers" seeems to support that as a primary motivating factor.

This ARM computer has a much higher (3 to 4 times higher) idle power consumption than a mini-PC with an Intel or AMD CPU (e.g. an ASUS NUC), while having the same price and a much lower performance.

So in this case, the only valid reason to choose it is to have the ARM ISA for the purpose of software development.

This Chinese CPU is the only Armv9 CPU that is available in anything else than smartphones or expensive computers from Apple, Qualcomm or NVIDIA (or in even more expensive big servers). So there may be cases when it is desirable for software development, even if it has some quirks.

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

#69

Post by sgt »

jeroenhd wrote: post #58
sgt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

559 vs 720? That's literally like a few coffees. I went to Amsterdam (assuming you're dutch) and I paid 5 euro for a coffee. Go for the Mac Mini, the hardware incl thermal is also built exceptionally well. That's why you still have 20 year old Mac Minis still running as home servers etc.

If you're spending 170 euros on coffee then you're either abnormally rich or abnormally bad with money for a Dutchman. Without the ability to upgrade either storage or RAM, a 256GB SSD with 16GB RAM is quite useless for a home server. Minisforum doesn't offer any options with that little RAM and storage it seems (you can pick between barebones and 1TB models). The bare minimum spec for the Mac Mini sits at an interes…

I spend about ZAR 1200 (or 60 EUR per month) on coffee at home but who knows with all my cappuccinos. It's not really cheaper here in South Africa. But thanks, you made me look at my own coffee consumption now and it's always good to know!

Indeed macOS is a bit memory hungry but... unified memory, the sheer speed those chips can move data around is ridiculous. And macOS is a proper workstation Unix.

You're right - it's not ideal for headless. But there are ways. Still less painful than running Windows as as server.

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

#70

Post by sgt »

irusensei wrote: post #66
sgt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

559 vs 720? That's literally like a few coffees. I went to Amsterdam (assuming you're dutch) and I paid 5 euro for a coffee. Go for the Mac Mini, the hardware incl thermal is also built exceptionally well. That's why you still have 20 year old Mac Minis still running as home servers etc.

Depends on what you need it for. Love Mac minis but feature by feature the MS-R1 has more memory, ECC support and dual 10Gbe.

The ECC is cool. I don't need that for homelab servers though. But it's good to know and Minisforum is certainly a great offering.
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