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An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review
- scottgg 8mo agosite down for me; here's an archive link: https://archive.is/rIAVo https://archive.is/rIAVo
- metadat 8mo agoWhy is the power supply 2x larger than a Macbool Pro PS unit? Cheap? What about GaN?
- neelc 8mo agoMac Mini/Studio has an integrated power supply, but other Mini PCs do not have the same luxury. It doesn't matter if you're Minisforum or HP. Minisforum probably reused the x86 power supply for ARM. The x86 MS-01 and MS-A2 supports GPUs after all. I'm not a hardware engineer, I've failed miserably in software engineering and now run a VPS host.
- metadat 8mo agoI was wondering why the PSU is half the size of the compute unit housing. 15 years ago, sure, but today it just seems cheap and lazy on part of whoever designed it. Caveat: I'm frequently mistaken, always keen to learn and reduce the error between my perception and reality!
- GCUMstlyHarmls 8mo ago> but other Mini PCs do not have the same luxury My Beelink Me Mini has an integrated PSU. Actually same with the EQR6 I got too.
- manbart 8mo ago>I'm not a hardware engineer, I've failed miserably in software engineering and now run a VPS host. I’m curious how hard hosting VPS as a business was to get off the ground? I’ve worked 5 years previously as a Linux sysadmin, but am getting pretty bored at my current job (administering Cisco VOIP systems). Think I’d rather go back to that
- zamadatix 8mo agoI think that's why they were comparing to the MacBook Pro rather than the Mac Mini/Studio.
- wmf 8mo agoIt's just cheap.
- plagiarist 8mo agoI have a personal ban on any hardware that isn't powered by USB-C. (Or if it's large I'll accept a C17 socket.) Either give me a GaN or I will get it myself. Otherwise I'd probably have a few machines from this company.
- zamadatix 8mo agoThis model accepts 100W USB PD input as well.
- jdpedrie 8mo agoFunny, I just bought one of these last week. Agree with the article. Mine came with storage and Debian preinstalled. If you buy one from Amazon, keep an eye on price. I bought, then the next day the price dropped $150. Ordered another one and returned the expensive order.
- some-guy 8mo ago> 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?
- neelc 8mo agoIt's a cutting-edge distro with 6-month release and 13-month support cycles. Whereas Debian/Ubuntu have 5 years and RHEL/Alma/Rocky have 10 years.
- zuntaruk 8mo agoI 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.
- g947o 8mo agoI take it as no more than someone's personal opinion, since there is no reference provided whatsoever.
- p_ing 8mo agoTypically 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, typically. They’re not chasing those quick updates that we expect on desktops.
- zuntaruk 8mo agoYeah, 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.
- walterbell 8mo agohttps://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/minisforum-stuffs-entire-arm-homelab-ms-r1/ 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 even modern Intel and AMD!
- avhception 8mo agoSigh. It's always something...
- hi_hi 8mo agoNot 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?
- geerlingguy 8mo agoMost 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.
- hi_hi 8mo agoThanks 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.
- tiew9Vii 8mo agoIt’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, native docker, ability to run proxmox etc. Mac minis/studio have potential to be great low powered home servers but Apple is not going down that route for consumers. I’d be curious if they are using their own silicon and own server oriented distro internally for some things.
- azov 8mo agoThey fixed unlock in the last release: "On a Mac with Apple silicon with macOS 26 or later, FileVault can be unlocked over SSH after a restart if Remote Login is turned on and a network connection is available." https://support.apple.com/guide/security/managing-filevault-sec8447f5049/web https://support.apple.com/guide/security/managing-filevault-...
- yjftsjthsd-h 8mo ago> There is also one other perk: while the MSRP is $599, I got it for $559 despite a RAM shortage. At that price, why not a mac mini running linux? I think (skimming Asahi docs) the only things that would give you trouble don't matter to the headless usecase here?
- hmry 8mo agoI don't think you can get an M1 or M2 mac mini with 64GB of RAM for $559
- yjftsjthsd-h 8mo agoOh, that's what I missed; you can get a Mac for that, but I missed memory. Yep, that's my mistake thank you for correcting me
- inventor7777 8mo ago$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.
- esseph 8mo agoYou can't get an ARM one though, only X86, which is mostly the point.
- g947o 8mo agoMost 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.
- CharlesW 8mo agoThe 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.
- inventor7777 8mo agoTrue. But as detailed in the Jeff Geerling article that was shared here in the comments, it has (at least at the moment) a rather high idle power draw, which seems to negate that, especially over time.
- g947o 8mo agoThat 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.
- koonweee 8mo agoslight tangent, but anyone had experience with running asahi on a m2 MacBook headless? I have a m2 air with a damaged screen id like to repurpose. Mostly want docker containers or something coolify adjacent
- orion7 8mo agoFor 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
- ninth_ant 8mo agoAnd despite their broadly similar performance, the RK3588s have significantly better power draw. However I’m not sure of any of the rk3588 vendors that support both UEFI and have a full-size PCIe slot like the MS-R1 has.
- JustFinishedBSG 8mo agohttps://github.com/edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588 https://github.com/edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588
- adrian_b 8mo agoRK3588 has many times better power consumption, but their performance is not at all similar. 8 Cortex-A720 vs. 4 Cortex-A76 means at least 3 times better performance for optimized programs. Also for I/O throughput, this computer has far more fast PCIe lanes than RK3588, allowing many fast peripherals.
- nine_k 8mo agoDoes it run a mainline Linux kernel?
- pta2002 8mo agoAs 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!
- tills13 8mo agoSimilarly, a Beelink mini runs one of my Proxmox nodes and it's excellent. Literally sips power, too. I think I measured under 30w while under load. I mainly use it for my Plex instance given the N100 with QuickSync.
- ggm 8mo agoNice 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?
- irusensei 8mo agoMost 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.
- pelasaco 8mo agoanyone using proxmox on that?
- drewg123 8mo agoWhat speed is the PCIe slot? The Minisforum site talks about it being x8, but doesn't mention if its Gen4 or Gen5
- rubatuga 8mo agoNo ECC makes this a show stopper for me.
- eqvinox 8mo agoIt has ECC, you lose 1/8 of RAM capacity if you enable it.
- eqvinox 8mo agoThey claim it's the first ARM mini workstation with UEFI. Which… nope, that would be Solid-run's Clearfog/Honeycomb LX2k (ITX board), several years old at this point.