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This is great! The one thing I'd say is that the market is rife with non-mainstream brands. As an example "Beelink" [0] and "Minisforum" [1] are very commonly

This is great! The one thing I'd say is that the market is rife with non-mainstream brands. As an example "Beelink" [0] and "Minisforum" [1] are very commonly referred to and have a lot of great models, but they're not well represented here and often times offer better value depending on what the buyer is looking for. My recommendation would be to expand the vendors into the popular non-mainstream brands. Easy ask, but harder to execute on your side - so I get it. Also, AMD is crushing this market - but AMD is pretty under-represented here. There are also some great N-series Intel machines that are highly popular and you can get on AliExpress [2]. Or even more US focused brands under this umbrella like Protecli [3] [0] https://www.bee-link.com/ https://www.bee-link.com/ [1] https://www.minisforum.com/ https://www.minisforum.com/ [2] https://www.servethehome.com/fanless-intel-n200-firewall-and-virtualization-appliance-review/ https://www.servethehome.com/fanless-intel-n200-firewall-and... [3] https://protectli.com/ https://protectli.com/

tonymet 2y ago
I took a risk on a Beelink and so far it's been the best piece of hardware I've owned. Affordable, quiet, reliable, excellent performance, versatile for development & light gaming. I did a thorough audit for bloat- spam- & mal-ware due to their reputation, and it came up much cleaner IMO than my HP. Given that they compete in price with Raspberry pi with far more capability, everyone should have one.
- rfoo 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dangus 2y ago
    It’s interesting to me how when a Chinese company makes a great product at a great price they get accused of being too incompetent to rip their customers off with customer-hostile features like their Western brand counterparts. But when Western companies load up their hardware with spyware and adware they are smart and savvy at business. Isn’t this a little bit backwards? The correct statement is that Dell and HP too incompetent to make money off their computers without spying on their customers. Maybe at some point we have to just drop the dogwhistling and admit that the Chinese hardware market is a dynamic, competitive market that seems to focus on delivering useful products to their customers rather than trying to make public shareholders happy by squeezing every last time out of them to the edge of their tolerance for such inconveniences.
    - Handprint4469 2y ago
      > But when Western companies load up their hardware with spyware and adware they are smart and savvy at business. I have never met anybody (online or otherwise) that believes this.
      - dangus 2y ago
        It's not as overt as I describe it. It's often a subtle bias. A great example in my own life: people have expressed concern to me when I tell them how I own a Chinese robot vacuum that can map my house. They think it's Chinese spyware. And yet, iRobot, an American company now owned by Amazon, was the one caught in a privacy and data collection scandal related to test units that leaked interior photos of homes. [1] [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuum-beta-product-testers-consent-agreement-misled/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-i...
  - tonymet 2y ago
    chinese phones do. beelink has the opportunity. they deserve credit
- sam2426679 2y ago
  Agreed! Using a beelink as an htpc, and its been phenomenal.
- biomcgary 2y ago
  The daily driver I am using to write this post is a Beelink with Linux installed. Very happy with it. Switched out the original 128GB SSD with a 1TB SSD. FFMPEG and light gaming run fine. My only minor regret is not starting with more memory, but I could probably switch that if I was motivated enough.
  - windexh8er 2y ago
    I've got both Beelink and Minisforum units running Linux as daily drivers. Great platform for my kids to learn Linux on as the hardware is well supported. Also great for SFF gaming rigs and platform emulation - especially with the graphics horsepower native to the newer AMD procs. But, yes - smart to just max these systems out right away. Most easily support 64GB which is more than enough for almost all use cases. I'm hoping that AMD continues to develop for optimizing local model usage. Currently that's the only area that Apple's Unified architecture really shines over these. If I could run reasonably sized models on these that would open a number of additional use cases.
- pks016 2y ago
  I'm using Beelink SER 6 pro from the last couple of years. It has been great; no issues so far. Got it for cheap in one of the sales.
- snowAbstraction 2y ago
  Two months in and I'm a happy Beelink customer too. My kids mostly use it for Minecraft.
- astrostl 2y ago
  I use a Beelink N100 as a local Docker Compose host for various doodads, inc. and esp. smart home software. I am blown away by what a high-quality value it is. My only complaint is that it defaults to stay off after a power loss, and the setting to reverse that is confusing in the BIOS - quite the nit pick.
squarefoot 2y ago
> The one thing I'd say is that the market is rife with non-mainstream brands. Brands in the far east are quite different and less important than in western markets; to me it seems there are say 5 manufacturers that build OEM products that 30 will relabel with their brand and put into their box, then give to 1000 sellers, each one running like 30 shops on Aliexpress, Ebay and Amazon. Numbers are totally made up of course, the point is that the name isn't that important over there as the very same product can be (and often is) rebranded in many different ways.
kjs3 2y ago
I have a Protecli 4-port firewall. It's the second one I've bought for this. It's really been excellent from a cost/performance standpoint.
- windexh8er 2y ago
  It is! I manage a bunch of these running Proxmox with virtualized firewall and edge compute via containers and LXC. Great platforms for the job and can manage them effectively via Tailscale without having to open anything up or leverage legacy VPN.
  - aynyc 2y ago
    You run proxmox on protecli? What firewall are you using? I'm always afraid of mixing different stack on my firewall (OpnSense) because of potential cascade failure.
    - kjs3 2y ago
      I don't mix stacks that way because I tend to use OpenBSD for firewalls and I think it's a really bad idea to run my FW on the same physical box as my VM infrastructure, but I'm an old skool infosec wonk and we have ideas kids these days find antiquated & weird. But if you want to run with scissors most all the major virtualization stuff runs fine on a Protecli and so should anything that runs on top of them.
- transpute 2y ago
  With coreboot?
JamesSwift 2y ago
Had good experiences with a few beelinks, but recently picked up a minisforum and have had a bunch of weird BIOS issues (and their BIOS is a really bizarre custom UEFI thing). Waiting to RMA now, but I've seen a lot of similar "weird BIOS bugs" after searching for help on my issue.
internet101010 2y ago
Love my Minisforum MS-01. 3x m.2 slots, supports 96gb ram, 2x 10g ports, 2x 2.5g ports, and has a pcie slot for things like external hba or small gpu. A lot of people buying mini pcs would rather go with AMD but are stuck with Intel due to the need for Quick Sync in order to transcode Plex.
- windexh8er 2y ago
  Exactly this. I'm stuck on Intel QuickSync for home media and local NVR. The N200 is also packaged up nice for home firewall / edge compute. I'm running Proxmox on one with hardware passthru of NICs for OpnSense firewalling. Supports 32GB of RAM and allows for a ton of containers or LXC on the edge.
- metadat 2y ago
  Does AMD really not have anything comparable? This is the first I've heard of Quick Sync (and admittedly I could always be clueless, I'm surprised to only encounter it now).
- newdee 2y ago
  Don’t forget the dual Thunderbolt/USB 4.0 ports which can also do point-to-point networking at about 40Gbps. Planning on building a 3 node Proxmox cluster using TB as the fabric for Ceph and cluster traffic. Truly fantastic machines.
- aynyc 2y ago
  Might be nitpicking, but that's a $600 piece of equipment. Most people think of mini-pcs as low cost system. Yes, beelink makes very good product. They actually listen to consumers. They iterate fast and release product lines very fast. I just worry about long term support.
LeoPanthera 2y ago
I have a Beelink and the build quality is impressively good, but my word their website is terrible. They recently redesigned it and it somehow actually got worse. They make no attempt to explain the difference between the various model names, leaving to you go through them one by one until you figure things out. It's so bad.
vlasky 2y ago
I can also suggest Morefine. I bought a couple of AMD Ryzen 5900HX mini PCs from them: https://morefine.com/ https://morefine.com/

tonymet 2y ago

I took a risk on a Beelink and so far it's been the best piece of hardware I've owned. Affordable, quiet, reliable, excellent performance, versatile for development & light gaming. I did a thorough audit for bloat- spam- & mal-ware due to their reputation, and it came up much cleaner IMO than my HP. Given that they compete in price with Raspberry pi with far more capability, everyone should have one.

rfoo 2y ago
[flagged]
- dangus 2y ago
  It’s interesting to me how when a Chinese company makes a great product at a great price they get accused of being too incompetent to rip their customers off with customer-hostile features like their Western brand counterparts. But when Western companies load up their hardware with spyware and adware they are smart and savvy at business. Isn’t this a little bit backwards? The correct statement is that Dell and HP too incompetent to make money off their computers without spying on their customers. Maybe at some point we have to just drop the dogwhistling and admit that the Chinese hardware market is a dynamic, competitive market that seems to focus on delivering useful products to their customers rather than trying to make public shareholders happy by squeezing every last time out of them to the edge of their tolerance for such inconveniences.
  - Handprint4469 2y ago
    > But when Western companies load up their hardware with spyware and adware they are smart and savvy at business. I have never met anybody (online or otherwise) that believes this.
    - dangus 2y ago
      It's not as overt as I describe it. It's often a subtle bias. A great example in my own life: people have expressed concern to me when I tell them how I own a Chinese robot vacuum that can map my house. They think it's Chinese spyware. And yet, iRobot, an American company now owned by Amazon, was the one caught in a privacy and data collection scandal related to test units that leaked interior photos of homes. [1] [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuum-beta-product-testers-consent-agreement-misled/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-i...
- tonymet 2y ago
  chinese phones do. beelink has the opportunity. they deserve credit
sam2426679 2y ago
Agreed! Using a beelink as an htpc, and its been phenomenal.
biomcgary 2y ago
The daily driver I am using to write this post is a Beelink with Linux installed. Very happy with it. Switched out the original 128GB SSD with a 1TB SSD. FFMPEG and light gaming run fine. My only minor regret is not starting with more memory, but I could probably switch that if I was motivated enough.
- windexh8er 2y ago
  I've got both Beelink and Minisforum units running Linux as daily drivers. Great platform for my kids to learn Linux on as the hardware is well supported. Also great for SFF gaming rigs and platform emulation - especially with the graphics horsepower native to the newer AMD procs. But, yes - smart to just max these systems out right away. Most easily support 64GB which is more than enough for almost all use cases. I'm hoping that AMD continues to develop for optimizing local model usage. Currently that's the only area that Apple's Unified architecture really shines over these. If I could run reasonably sized models on these that would open a number of additional use cases.
pks016 2y ago
I'm using Beelink SER 6 pro from the last couple of years. It has been great; no issues so far. Got it for cheap in one of the sales.
snowAbstraction 2y ago
Two months in and I'm a happy Beelink customer too. My kids mostly use it for Minecraft.
astrostl 2y ago
I use a Beelink N100 as a local Docker Compose host for various doodads, inc. and esp. smart home software. I am blown away by what a high-quality value it is. My only complaint is that it defaults to stay off after a power loss, and the setting to reverse that is confusing in the BIOS - quite the nit pick.

squarefoot 2y ago

> The one thing I'd say is that the market is rife with non-mainstream brands. Brands in the far east are quite different and less important than in western markets; to me it seems there are say 5 manufacturers that build OEM products that 30 will relabel with their brand and put into their box, then give to 1000 sellers, each one running like 30 shops on Aliexpress, Ebay and Amazon. Numbers are totally made up of course, the point is that the name isn't that important over there as the very same product can be (and often is) rebranded in many different ways.

kjs3 2y ago

I have a Protecli 4-port firewall. It's the second one I've bought for this. It's really been excellent from a cost/performance standpoint.

windexh8er 2y ago
It is! I manage a bunch of these running Proxmox with virtualized firewall and edge compute via containers and LXC. Great platforms for the job and can manage them effectively via Tailscale without having to open anything up or leverage legacy VPN.
- aynyc 2y ago
  You run proxmox on protecli? What firewall are you using? I'm always afraid of mixing different stack on my firewall (OpnSense) because of potential cascade failure.
  - kjs3 2y ago
    I don't mix stacks that way because I tend to use OpenBSD for firewalls and I think it's a really bad idea to run my FW on the same physical box as my VM infrastructure, but I'm an old skool infosec wonk and we have ideas kids these days find antiquated & weird. But if you want to run with scissors most all the major virtualization stuff runs fine on a Protecli and so should anything that runs on top of them.
transpute 2y ago
With coreboot?

JamesSwift 2y ago

Had good experiences with a few beelinks, but recently picked up a minisforum and have had a bunch of weird BIOS issues (and their BIOS is a really bizarre custom UEFI thing). Waiting to RMA now, but I've seen a lot of similar "weird BIOS bugs" after searching for help on my issue.

internet101010 2y ago

Love my Minisforum MS-01. 3x m.2 slots, supports 96gb ram, 2x 10g ports, 2x 2.5g ports, and has a pcie slot for things like external hba or small gpu. A lot of people buying mini pcs would rather go with AMD but are stuck with Intel due to the need for Quick Sync in order to transcode Plex.

windexh8er 2y ago
Exactly this. I'm stuck on Intel QuickSync for home media and local NVR. The N200 is also packaged up nice for home firewall / edge compute. I'm running Proxmox on one with hardware passthru of NICs for OpnSense firewalling. Supports 32GB of RAM and allows for a ton of containers or LXC on the edge.
metadat 2y ago
Does AMD really not have anything comparable? This is the first I've heard of Quick Sync (and admittedly I could always be clueless, I'm surprised to only encounter it now).
newdee 2y ago
Don’t forget the dual Thunderbolt/USB 4.0 ports which can also do point-to-point networking at about 40Gbps. Planning on building a 3 node Proxmox cluster using TB as the fabric for Ceph and cluster traffic. Truly fantastic machines.
aynyc 2y ago
Might be nitpicking, but that's a $600 piece of equipment. Most people think of mini-pcs as low cost system. Yes, beelink makes very good product. They actually listen to consumers. They iterate fast and release product lines very fast. I just worry about long term support.

LeoPanthera 2y ago

I have a Beelink and the build quality is impressively good, but my word their website is terrible. They recently redesigned it and it somehow actually got worse. They make no attempt to explain the difference between the various model names, leaving to you go through them one by one until you figure things out. It's so bad.

vlasky 2y ago

I can also suggest Morefine. I bought a couple of AMD Ryzen 5900HX mini PCs from them: https://morefine.com/ https://morefine.com/