Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?
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I'm looking at Intel NUC and Beelink for small desktops. Tiny size and non-descript are pretty important for our market. I won't be buying until December, so not quite ready yet. But I've been looking at Beelink for a while because they offer Intel NUC-like form factors with dual HDMI outputs and AMD processors. The NUCs almost always push you to proprietary video stuff that causes issues in this market, so that's a pain to work around and makes them more fragile and expensive. Wondering if anyone has used Beelink and has some experience with them?
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Specific model of interest...
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@scottalanmiller never heard of them, but the Intel nuc's are good
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@scottalanmiller said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
I'm looking at Intel NUC and Beelink for small desktops. Tiny size and non-descript are pretty important for our market. I won't be buying until December, so not quite ready yet. But I've been looking at Beelink for a while because they offer Intel NUC-like form factors with dual HDMI outputs and AMD processors. The NUCs almost always push you to proprietary video stuff that causes issues in this market, so that's a pain to work around and makes them more fragile and expensive. Wondering if anyone has used Beelink and has some experience with them?
Man I would love to see steam decks used for these type of tasks. The specs on these isn't too far from steam deck, actually. Steam deck runs Linux, so it seems like a decent choice for NTG.
I wonder if valve will get more into business small form factor Linux workstations..
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BTW I'm not saying buy steam decks today (you can't even if you wanted, too). I am just saying it would be an interesting play for Valve to make small form factor Linux workstations
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@IRJ said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
@scottalanmiller said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
I'm looking at Intel NUC and Beelink for small desktops. Tiny size and non-descript are pretty important for our market. I won't be buying until December, so not quite ready yet. But I've been looking at Beelink for a while because they offer Intel NUC-like form factors with dual HDMI outputs and AMD processors. The NUCs almost always push you to proprietary video stuff that causes issues in this market, so that's a pain to work around and makes them more fragile and expensive. Wondering if anyone has used Beelink and has some experience with them?
Man I would love to see steam decks used for these type of tasks. The specs on these isn't too far from steam deck, actually. Steam deck runs Linux, so it seems like a decent choice for NTG.
I wonder if valve will get more into business small form factor Linux workstations..
I doubt it. It's a weird place for them to go and there's no money in it.
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I've heard of them, but never actually had hands on one. That said, I'd jump at the opportunity to use anything other than a NUC.
The NUCs are just a pain. Too many warranty claims (like 8-10% of new units out of the ~150 I deployed over 2 years). To make matters even harder, the OEM only warranties RAM/storage. So you have two different companies you have to deal with warranty repair/replace issues with.
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@travisdh1 said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
I've heard of them, but never actually had hands on one. That said, I'd jump at the opportunity to use anything other than a NUC.
The NUCs are just a pain. Too many warranty claims (like 8-10% of new units out of the ~150 I deployed over 2 years). To make matters even harder, the OEM only warranties RAM/storage. So you have two different companies you have to deal with warranty repair/replace issues with.
Good to know. I'm taking these to Central America so no warranty capabilities here. Need something cheap and reliable (and tiny).
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@scottalanmiller FWIW they (BeeLink, don't know model) were being seriously looked at for digital signage controllers at my previous employer. Don't know how far they went with them but if they're competing in that space then the reliability should be decent as they wouldn't get any traction if they were causing issues and warranty claims on signage (boom truck and signage installer calls aren't cheap)
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I bought some refurbished Dell micro form factors (like an Optiplex 7090 micro) and they worked pretty well.
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@scottalanmiller I have an older one that I use as my lab system. So far no complaints; fans are a bit loud. Runs Proxmox with 2 VM's pretty well. Only issue I have is the power supply for mine is a direct plug in (vs a brick) and takes up a couple spaces on the power strip.
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@stacksofplates said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
I bought some refurbished Dell micro form factors (like an Optiplex 7090 micro) and they worked pretty well.
I bought 5 of these off woot for conference room boxes that hook up to a TV and are barely used.
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@scottalanmiller said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
Specific model of interest...
During the initial website load I wasn't a big fan of the graphics and appearance - but after allowing the page to load completely it seemed to settle down and smooth out.
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Would any micro form factor pc work? While I would never suggested Lenovo,.. their micro is about that size with 65w power supply... I'd go Dell or ANYONE else over Lenovo!
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@travisdh1 said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
The NUCs are just a pain. Too many warranty claims (like 8-10% of new units out of the ~150 I deployed over 2 years). To make matters even harder, the OEM only warranties RAM/storage. So you have two different companies you have to deal with warranty repair/replace issues with.
That's a lot. Intel usually know what they're doing when designing PCs.
I've never had to RMA any of them but I've not deployed as many as you have.
Is it just one kind of failure or is it different?
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@gjacobse said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
Would any micro form factor pc work? While I would never suggested Lenovo,.. their micro is about that size with 65w power supply... I'd go Dell or ANYONE else over Lenovo!
You have to look carefully at the specific CPU chosen when buying micro form factor PCs.
There are two main series of CPUs in use in the MFF:
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U-series CPUs which are what you see in laptops. Ultra low power. Low base frequency, lower amount of cores.
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T-series CPUs which you won't see in laptops because they are more powerful and use more power. Higher base frequency and more cores.
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@Pete-S said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
@travisdh1 said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
The NUCs are just a pain. Too many warranty claims (like 8-10% of new units out of the ~150 I deployed over 2 years). To make matters even harder, the OEM only warranties RAM/storage. So you have two different companies you have to deal with warranty repair/replace issues with.
That's a lot. Intel usually know what they're doing when designing PCs.
I've never had to RMA any of them but I've not deployed as many as you have.
Is it just one kind of failure or is it different?
All types. Some storage/ram, some motherboard/cpu. What makes it such a pain is that Intel doesn't actually sell a complete system, which means playing vendor roulette whenever something does go wrong.
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@gjacobse said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
Would any micro form factor pc work? While I would never suggested Lenovo,.. their micro is about that size with 65w power supply... I'd go Dell or ANYONE else over Lenovo!
In theory, but Lenovo is typically 300% or more cost for the same thing. Lenovo we can get in country easily (they are about the only ones), but the cost is absurd. For these, in the US, prices are like $250!
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@Pete-S said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
@gjacobse said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
Would any micro form factor pc work? While I would never suggested Lenovo,.. their micro is about that size with 65w power supply... I'd go Dell or ANYONE else over Lenovo!
You have to look carefully at the specific CPU chosen when buying micro form factor PCs.
There are two main series of CPUs in use in the MFF:
-
U-series CPUs which are what you see in laptops. Ultra low power. Low base frequency, lower amount of cores.
-
T-series CPUs which you won't see in laptops because they are more powerful and use more power. Higher base frequency and more cores.
We actually want the lower power options (laptop style) normally because power and heat are bigger issues than performance for us in nearly all cases.
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@scottalanmiller said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
@Pete-S said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
@gjacobse said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
Would any micro form factor pc work? While I would never suggested Lenovo,.. their micro is about that size with 65w power supply... I'd go Dell or ANYONE else over Lenovo!
You have to look carefully at the specific CPU chosen when buying micro form factor PCs.
There are two main series of CPUs in use in the MFF:
-
U-series CPUs which are what you see in laptops. Ultra low power. Low base frequency, lower amount of cores.
-
T-series CPUs which you won't see in laptops because they are more powerful and use more power. Higher base frequency and more cores.
We actually want the lower power options (laptop style) normally because power and heat are bigger issues than performance for us in nearly all cases.
Yeah I figured that.
The difference is not insignificant.A typical i5 would be:
- Desktop: 6-core @ 2.8Ghz, 65W TDP or more
- T-series: 6-core @ 2.5GHz, 45W TDP
- U-series: 4-core @ 1.7Ghz, 15W TDP
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