MAX Fanless 10Gbase-T Mini PC and Router

[@JeffGeerling]

Stop making me upgrade my OPNsense router over and over again! :D

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

To be fair, I gave you your first one :-) Actually, not the easiest for OPNsense since it needs drivers for the Marvell AQC113C NICs

[@bastian775]

hah I was thinking the same, but there is no native support for the drivers, so it would need to be some proxmox vm, or drivers added in some way I can't find yet

[@JeffGeerling]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo Okay, whew... saved me from the 3rd upgrade in 2 years then :)

[@magesnz]

what your current router? and you can send me your first one that sth send you :P

[@mwsmith824]

There's no possibility of keeping up with the Joneses when comparing to people like @JeffGeerling or @ServeTheHomeVideo. The budget only stretches so far!

[@goodcitizen4587]

Props for for these vids starting quick with no intro nonsense. Great content!

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Appreciate the feedback! Still working on it. Extra hard when I am sick like this

[@concinnus]

Nice to see power consumption improvements on 10GbE to the point that fanless doesn't basically require fiber SFP+.

[@jkmicha]

Would still be nice to have an SFP+ option though.

[@concinnus]

@@jkmicha There are other miniPCs for that.

[@jimmay8627]

Nice to see that 10gbE RJ45 parts are finally efficient enough for fanless operation.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

They are still not as low power as SFP+ though.

[@DarkMatter112358]

Thanks for all the great reviews! Hope you feel better soon Patrick 😷

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Appreciate that, still fighting it.

[@kingneutron1]

Thanks!

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Appreciate it! Wow!!! Thank you

[@jrherita]

Get better soon!!

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Thank you! This stinks being congested.

[@jrherita]

Comment on the article - 48GB DDR5 SODIMMs work on Alderlake-N as well. (I'm using one on an ODROID-H4 without issue)

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Super

[@diogoalbuquerque]

really? because even on intel.ark site it says the max ram is 16gb

[@tolpacourt]

moi oci (me too) I chose the Crucial 48G unit.

[@nathanielswanson5730]

Thanks for making the video and pushing through even tho you are sick. Please don't work yourself to death tho!

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Thanks! It's been a rough one, but we will get through it.

[@abavariannormiepleb9470]

Give us an AMD variant with ECC memory support.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

I love this idea.

[@brockwilkie6022]

Seriously, need more AMD love in this catagory

[@tormaid42]

What amd mobile chips even support ecc?

[@craftkiller9627]

This would have been an instant buy with ECC

[@night_h4nter]

what do you need ecc support in a mini pc for, especially at home? i get it for storage, but for a firewall? why?

[@deanhooper1234]

Awesome review - you guys are amazing! ❤

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Thanks so much!

[@SmaugMedia]

intel's N100 chip is actually insane for mini-PC market it blows so many things out the water for a 6w part ubiquiti dream machine pro for context is arm a57 4 cores at 1.7ghz not even half the speed draws 33watts

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Yes, it is great.

[@darknessblades]

if you add a NAS SSD in the mix, its as low as 9W with peaks of 12W

[@fujinshu]

I hope a future iteration will also include small holes for mounting wireless antennas to, which would be great for 5G/4G/LTE WWAN backup.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Good idea

[@zlice0]

this ikool T_T please fanless 4 port and wifi what's with their stock too? is it pre-order only and single batches? the alternative was the cube box which had 3 intel ethernet and 1 realtek and then wifi but with a fan... and it's out of stock now

[@CharlesKirkStudio]

I would love to see a Mac Mini M4 review with the 10Gbe option.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Excellent. We have one.

[@SwissPGO]

As a firewall... ( with 10Gbs WAN) sadly it only has one 10Gbs port, the other nic should be usb-C based, which again has no HW offloading and taxes the CPU.

[@jabiru4995]

You think you're sick now? Wait until your kids get in school! You'll be a subscriber to the "germ of the week.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Yea. I have heard that is a thing. Still a few years until baby STH is in school

[@richardahlquist5839]

If the cpu had a bit more oomph it might be worth replacing my HP T740 pfsense box with the Connectx-4 in it. Mayyyybe. LOL It would be lower power but only a 20%ish increase in cpu ability. Definitely not worth it once you add the driver headache in. Great vid, as always, thank you :)

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

The N-series chips are great for low power, but the CX4 is super

[@jeremyjedynak]

SuperMicro is the gold standard for publicly accessible and detailed hardware documentation for their systems and boards. All other vendors should be compared to them in that regard to help raise the standard across the entire industry.

[@indiekiduk]

Shame the same cannot be said for their financials 😉

[@darknessblades]

These N100 mini-PC's are really amazing, especially for smarthomes, since their energyuse is below 12W on normal use, which is around raspberry PI levels, but with nearly 2-5X as much performance I have 2 myself. Minisforum UN100C for home-assistant standalone [Mainly because Zigbee has some issues under proxmox, with a dedicated usb port for the container/VM] Bmax B4 Plus, for Proxmox, with addons/containers running on it. for things like adguard, and a few other things that do not need their own dedicated server/RPI

[@kelownatechkid]

So this is definitely a game changer for home 10gig, even over pppoe (yes, ISPs do this and they aren't gonna change). OpenWRT on this and done!

[@aliendouglas1186]

I bought R2, R2max(With Fan),very like them🥰🥰🥰

[@704Productions]

I’ll add my vote to to see a rundown on the new Mac Mini. You didn’t sound sick to me! Thanks, great video!!

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Thanks. Very congested:(

[@kevinhilton8683]

Ohhhh -- mac mini review --- Mikey likes it!

[@HighlightReel]

I’d actually love a Mac mini breakdown, particularly when it comes to how to best deploy it in a homelab setting.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Trying to figure out if we film Mac Mini or maybe a M1 to M4 video tomorrow, or if we do a new low-cost 10GbE switch video, or if we do another mini PC homelab video. All three are ready to film. Only one will get done before heading to SC24 Saturday night.

[@MarkStewartmiddlingsavant]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo Assuming you bought the 10G Ethernet variant?

[@PeterZin]

ya I wanna know too.

[@TheBigGLL]

Awesome package, can't wait for a version with a intel 200v.

[@neilquinn]

Are intel i226 or realtek considered better nics now for opnsense reliability? Have kind of heard bad things about both. I might be interested in one of these if the AQC 10Gbps ports also would work with opnsense. I'm thinking: - 2.5Gbe port 1: incoming Fios for routing - 2.5Gbe port 2: random slower miniPC/jellyfin server/etc - 10Gbe ports: to a 10Gbps NAS and a future miniPC or mac mini with 10Gbps port

[@ML-ss4yo]

Yes, please do a Mac Mini review!

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Just filmed a 1 min segment for it in the airport before the red eye

[@MthaMenMon]

Dang that thing is just beautiful. Really pricey, but is prob worth every penny.

[@pcislocked]

hi, just a little suggestion: pls test sqm performance when testing openwrt. and also note whether software offload or hardware offload was used or not while testing thpt

[@philiptalbert458]

​@ServeTheHomeVideo Didn't intel update their e-cores recently? Will they update the n305 ecores?

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Eventually. M

[@danagoyette7932]

I'm curious how stable the Marvell/Aquantia NICs are. My current router is a thin client running OpenWRT with an X550 NIC in the PCIe slot. This would probably use less power, but if the Aquantia NICs are no good, then I'd best stick with what I'm already using.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

If you are happy with the X550, that is a higher-end NIC.

[@HHX_H]

Thank you for slipping in that 5GBe about MikroTik

[@TayschrennSedai]

One of the concerns I have had that has kept me from purchasing the units you typically review is the shipping from overseas and lackluster response from some people on the support that those units offer. This one, seems to offer the balance of slightly more expensive for similar hardware and a more portable and perhaps more stable platform. Overall the price might match what you can get something from Ubiquiti but more flexibility by far

[@GeekTechTeam]

This is like an MS-01 but with less features and less powerful processors for the same price. Am I right?

[@TheTastefulThickness]

Wattage draw

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

This is 10Gbase-T, not SFP+. That difference is usually at least $100 alone. Power draw is another huge difference. The N100 is also a passively cooled design.

[@GeekTechTeam]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo you are right I did have to spend a few hundred dollars on cables, modules, etc after I got my MS01

[@nadtz]

If I hadn't recently upgraded my router I'd definitely grab one of these. Mostly for the dual SSD, it's the only thing I wish the topton unit I'm currently using had.

[@kevinhilton8683]

Wonder what topton unit youre using. I have a King Novi unit running dual nvme which I configured proxmox to run with a mirrored zfs configuration.

[@nadtz]

@@kevinhilton8683 Don't know the model off hand but it's the fanless N100 unit that for a while was selling on amazon for ~$180 by a couple sellers. To be fair having dual nvme is more a want than need as I have opnsense backed up and could restore it pretty quickly if the SSD did die.

[@killuhbyte]

Qotom is still king of homelab firewalls

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

The C3758 one is great.

[@joesligo1516]

So is trying OPNSense on this a bad idea? This is the dream spec for me, is it possible to get OPNSense running on this?

[@jungy537]

Use Proxmox without hardware passthrough for the 10Gbit ports. Expect around half of full speed (for the N305 version)...

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Yes you can, but you will need to install drivers.

[@jaskij]

When it comes to the device, I'd like to see a locking/screwed barrel jack. Or a different power connector which isn't as easy to disconnect accidentally. Other than that, a general question: could you explain how strict Intel's maximum supported RAM size is? I see people all over using 32 GB (or even 48 GB in the other comment), but Intel officially only supports 16 GB. What's going on with that?

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Totally on the screw barrel jack. On the limit, Intel has had a delta in “supported” and working for over a decade in e-core CPUs

[@jaskij]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo There are screwed barrel jacks which also accept regular plugs, so it's not like it would stop people from using regular ones too. A nice improvement I noticed earlier is accepting 12V - that's standard voltage, and much more common than 19V. I never truly dug into the low-power stuff until I needed to for work last year, so good to know.

[@MelroyvandenBerg]

Get well soon!

[@GCTWorks]

I really like the fanless mini PCs. I use a MINIX Z100-0db with an N100 CPU. It works great. For someone just web browsing, consuming media like youtube and whatnot, and general word processing and email, it is more than enough as long as you use Linux. My experience with the N100 on Windows was abysmal.

[@iankester-haney3315]

I went the DIY route and added a X540-t2 and quad i226 to an old i5-4xxx quad core with 32GB. Running pfsense with no issues. Got a sweet deal on an old Cisco 3800 series switch (24port 10Gbe POE+) for $100 as a bonus it's RJ445.

[@owlstead]

That's a very good deal, you won't find that usually. X540-t2 is pricey and probably uses more power than the AQC113.

[@meccu19]

what about power consumption?

[@ChrisJackson-js8rd]

at least i can tell it apart from the 50 gazillion other minipc units for sale online without my glasses on

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

There is that too

[@vasyna007]

Why are there never any network bandwidth tests? For example, how many boxes with n100 were there, how they were told about their use as firewalls. But in practice it turned out that none of them can pull through the same 2.5 Gb/s in the same pefsense/opensense. So maybe here too, there are 10 Gb/s ports, but there is no use.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

There are but we used Linux and OpenWRT

[@vasyna007]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo Oh, there is info on this hardware on the site. But I couldn't find any about the others. Thank you very much for your reviews.

[@Haldi4803]

Wait what? PCI-E Allocation at 11:10 The N100 only has 9 Lanes. How do they get 12?

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Where are 4,5,7?

[@popejohnny5]

There was a decent priced SFP+ model a few weeks ago, but the ram and ssd were a full rip apart to swap. This with the size and ease of access would be great to replace my mATX makeshift router. However using the ATT fiber xpon bypass SFP+ module. So something decent and SPF+ is a requirement to swap to a smaller/lower power router.

[@johnvillalovos]

How good is the history of support by this manufacturer? Especially in regards to BIOS updates?

[@dakisback]

From the website: Please note: The two AQC113C NICs are not recognized or natively supported by pfSense, OPNsense, and ESXi.

[@ManojV80]

I started watching this video and some other related videos because I got 2 spare 2.5" SATA SSDs and was looking for a budget option to use them as a NAS storage, as a backup storage and media server. Could you recommend few h/w options for that pls? Basically I want to connect whatever h/w I use for this and connect it to 10Gbps port on my router which is full fibre boradband.

[@Moukrea]

This might be the thing I'd get to make a power efficient home Kubernetes cluster with three of theses, insane value even at 299$, tried the DIY route with N100 motherboard (either Asus or ASRock) but when you add 10G card, PSU, case... It gett janky and in the end, more costly! Add an MS-01 to the mix for power hungry tasks and services and I'd be golden Only thing remaining, is what do use for NAS, I wish there was a similar product where we could add a bunch of drives, but seems I'd have to go the DIY route, which will end up much more costly unfortunately

[@meccu19]

But can you install drivers yourself to opensense or pfsense?

[@EmrahUrhan]

This is the 100th CPU benchmark of N100 CPU. Now the only meaningful video parts of N100 CPUs are power consumption and different features like 10GigE...

[@Ozz465]

Hope Patrick Feels Better .

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Thanks. Getting there

[@duckietm]

Thanks for all the great review! @ServeTheHome what would be amazing if you did a review for the UISP - Console. I would love to see your comment and theardown of this device :)

[@milohoffman274]

NOTE: The 10gb network ports are NOT SUPPORTED on pfsense,opensense etc.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Yes. Noted the Marvell AQC113C drivers are not in FreeBSD, so OPNsense and pfSense. For folks using legacy OSes/ hypervisors like VMWare too. Linux works out of the box and you can virtualize pfSense and run that way too.

[@ferdinandbardamu3945]

Do these people know there’s an N300 8 core for fanless? Also does Intel know Arrow Lake N would be their best product?

[@Cam.Klingon]

looks like the n305 is sold out on their website

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

I think the main site article went live a few minutes before this video (time change!) Hopefully they restock tomorrow after the STH Effect

[@LA-MJ]

how come intel claims n305 goes to 16 GB RAM only? 🤔

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Not really sure on this one. E-core/ Atom processors have under-spec'd memory capacity for more than a decade

[@DmitriWeissman]

For me, performance metric is "can it do a witeguard client at full speed". Though after some time with openwrt, I switched to per device clients.

[@mmx4000]

This is exactly what I've been looking for! Low powered, 2.5gig and 10gig copper ports. This will be perfect to upgrade my fanless J4125 based system that can't quite keep up with my proxmox setup that includes pfsense, HA, and essential docker containers. I pulled the trigger and will be excited to add this into my proxmox cluster as my first step towards a 10gig home upgrade. Thanks!

[@DmitriWeissman]

You might want to consider fiber . Less power and more reliability, especially In long runs. Not to mention that it's way easier to put the fiber cables in the wall. I have a mix of 2.5g copper and 10g fiber. The former sometimes syncs at 1g or even less while later always flawless 10G

[@CRCinAU]

If only these things had 10Gbit SFP instead of copper RJ45s.... Would be so much more flexible...

[@Flimzes]

There are other options with sfp cages, I think RJ45 is a rather unique selling point for this device

[@ReikiWind]

Will Windows 10/11 LTSC on these as a server a good idea?

[@gg.youlubeatube6249]

Fanless, boxes designed as heatsink is the proper style for home / small businesses IT devices. Routers, NAS, switches etc. ZERO noise is important parameter as long as dedicated server room is overkill.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Generally I agree, but the Terramaster F8-SSD NAS we covered a few videos ago has virtually silent fans which I think also work.

[@gg.youlubeatube6249]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo "Silent" fans are dangerous to place them in your working or living area. Human ear has amazing adaptability to suppress repeating sound, so we are not disturbed continuously. Which means, silent fans has massive potential to build up a frequency gap in your hearing. Once the hearing adaptation is done, it can not be undone. Basically you build up selective deafness.

[@kelownatechkid]

@@gg.youlubeatube6249 Running a fan isn't going to hurt your hearing unless it is extremely loud

[@bluegizmo1983]

They also state the two 10gb ports are on a pcie 3.0 x2 lane, which means a max theoretical bandwidth of 16 gigabits per second, so if both 10gb ports are saturated they won't reach full speed, assuming the rest of the system could even handle that anyway.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Check the diagram. Each AQC113C gets its own x2

[@bluegizmo1983]

@ServeTheHomeVideo oh ok, thanks!

[@MichaelTilton]

Looking for AMD mini with dual 10GB nics. Any ideas/suggestions?

[@SwissPGO]

10Gbs hardware offloading would be helpful however - I wonder want IPSEC performance would be.

[@minigpracing3068]

I was interested in this right to the point of seeing there warning about the 10gbe chips not supported it a lot of things. Needed like 3 of them for my hypervisor lab which could need VMware, XCP-NG, Nutanix, etc. So very close.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

VMware is the one that would scare me most there. I do not think there is an in-box ESXi AQC113C driver

[@TemplePate01]

Welp, i know what i'm getting the moment opnsense/bsd comes out with driver support.. :D

[@BR0KK85]

No mac mini doesnt fit the tiny mini micro server shtik 😅

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Fair

[@rolis.j]

how they work on unraid nass?

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Probably not ideal since you have room for only two drives and less storage bandwidth than networking bandwidth.

[@PKConnolly1]

2:55 “the Apple Mac mini is definitely a little bit taller but it’s also a little bit shorter” what?

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Yea, super sick. Less deep maybe

[@disklamer]

"-T"? It has coax connectors?

[@spewp]

Wouldn't labelling the ports be part of the licensing? Something this device seems light on if they're not even willing to pay for SD card licensing.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Different than that. Some of these ports and such have crazy licensing behind them. I once worked with a guy who had to figure out how to get a CD-ROM in the original XBOX and his stories were fun.

[@Apex180]

The DC jack would be handy if it was the screw in type....and dangit i don't need a new firewall :D

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Agree that would be better

[@zxcvb_bvcxz]

I wonder if it's technically a GPL violation for them not to publish the (OpenWrt) SDK/config alongside the OpenWrt images.

[@sjoer]

I just want a mini PC with an exposed 16x PCI-Express slot on the side that fits on a PSU ;)

[@matthewdaley7535]

Comparing this to the Mac mini in size without including the volume power brick is misleading.

[@whette_fahrtz]

now all it needs is ECC memory even unbuffered, im not picky

[@OzDeaDMeaT]

Pretty disappointing that its only got a single SODIMM slot. Connectivity is awesome, but maxing out at 48GB of RAM limits the amount of virtualization you can do with it. I wish there was a NUC style PC with 2x 10GBe, 2x 2.5Gbe and be able to mount over 128GB of RAM (or more). Hopefully one day someone will make it, and who ever does can have ALL of my money

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Well you also have 8x E-cores only so :-)

[@12gark]

The limitation is on the cpu: it's a single channel chip. If you want you can look for the ms-01 (but 10g nic are sfp+) or I've seen boxes with an i5-1240p (4×2.5 base-T+2×10g spf+) that max out at 96gb. 128 as far as I know is out of the picture at the moment. Nobody's supporting 4 slots. I have an SFF HP pc, which is much larger than this but still pretty small, and there you can have 4 slots, and also up to 4 pcie cards, a couple of HDDs and so on. Honestly, if you want to go and put a lot of stuff on, I'd rather have the full expandability, and not be limited by the form factor too much. An elitedesk 800 is still small enough for most homelabs imho.

[@v0ldy54]

I'm still pissed by how expensive and power hungry things get as soon as you go above 1Gbps, lately prices are coming down but it still seems like networking is lagging behind. It's kinda crazy how much faster an USB connection is in comparisons.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Well to be fair, USB is not designed to travel 100 meters

[@v0ldy54]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo I still find weird tho how for a 1Gbps switch you have stuff like the Mercusys 5 port switch which is 9€ ( 8 port is 14€, both with power included!) and sips such a low amount of current my smart plug can barely measure it (it literally idles at less than 1W!), but if you want to go to 2.5 you're at least spending 4 or 5 times that much if not more for an 8 port. And I don't even pretend (nor need) to have a blazing fast NVME NAS at home running at native speed, but damn a single HDD can saturate a Gbps connection. Wondering how stuff will go in the future, especially now that multi Gbps connections at home are starting to become a thing, some people are already in a situation where the WAN is faster than the LAN.

[@LockonKubi]

Huh, TIL about the whole TF/MicroSD card labeling thing.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Always like to get little nuggets in for folks

[@Superkuh2]

It's too bad we can't get features like that on actual desktop PC motherboards.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

What will make you mad is when you realize that the dual 10G NICs are in the $299 base system including the SoC, yet there are $500 motherboards out there without 10G.

[@coffeefingies]

Now if I could just find something like this with built-in or expandable WiFi...

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

I think the option here is USB sadly.

[@AkTheQ]

should be -150e cheaper and with more pcie3 lanes for ssd:s so the 10gbps ports could be even properly used for like, LAN-cache or similar purpose. nyeh. even as a router, it's wayyyyyyyy too expensive

[@autohmae]

Great to see a fanless device, but I think I'll stick with my fanless NUC, I don't need more than 1Gbps at the moment

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Totally fair.

[@autohmae]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo the reason is also: I think the NUC has more CPU power than the N100

[@MainelyElectrons]

Time to finally replace my R720!

[@djordje1999]

It's nice but everything depents on final price..

[@owlstead]

I'm wondering about the Intel I225-V 2.5 gbit ports in there. My motherboard has this chip and I hate it with passion. Intel leaves all support on the vendor and actually go out of their way to have their firmware update utility *not* work with the Asus motherboard. It sometimes falls back to 1 gbps or even 100 gpps on the MicroTik switch (short cat 7 cable), takes forever to wake up from sleep and is generally unstable as hell under Linux. Now going to Windows just to upgrade the firmware, hopefully, because Asus. Will not buy Intel in the coming years. Would be nice to test the 2.5 gbps ports in combination with other network devices and OS and see how it operates.

[@Badg0r]

Too bad pfsense doesn't support this yet. I'm doing my research right now. 2.5gb is more than enough for home users in the upcoming 5 years.

[@bluegizmo1983]

I'd buy one immediately if it had driver support in PfSense or OPNsense... Until then, I'll wait.

[@jonathanmatthew5631]

Oh it doesnt? Im a beginner and was considering this for opnsense. Do you mean this wont work with opensense? Thanks

[@bluegizmo1983]

@jonathanmatthew5631 Everything except the 10 gigabit ports will work. The 10 gigabit ports won't work until PfSense or OPNsense adds driver support for it, if that ever happens.

[@hankhulator5007]

Hi, the bad thing is, apart HardKernel, nobody (AFAIK) is using the possibility of the N series to do ECC-IB (grills 1/32 th of the memory for parity + takes a speed toll, but a light one), which is bad as these machines can make quite good servers with low consumption, especially with 2× 10 Gb Ethernet I/F.

[@EkiToji]

Every time I see these N100 and N305 computers makes me sad. I think I would honestly pay the premium for a similar new Atom chip that has more PCIe lanes and ECC support. Shouldn't have to go back to 2017 Denverton chips for something like the Atom C3758 with 2 channels of ECC and 16 PCIe lanes all at 25W.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

There is the Atom C5000/ P5000 series. We have reviewed some on the STH main site.

[@kozlovskyi]

It's paniful to see so much hardware on a background, not being used.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Lots of fun bits.

[@linearburn8838]

rackmount version preety please

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Yes

[@autohmae]

But you are not Frank, you are Patrick. 🙂

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Ha!

[@RVail623]

Off topic: is it possible to configure a cell phone with USB-C port to function as a bootable "Windows to Go" external boot drive? So that one could potentially resolve a non-bootable Windows PC by instead booting into Windows (or Linux) from a properly configured cell phone, but while also still retaining the basic cell phone functionality. Thanks.

[@efimovv]

On some models of android smartphones - yes.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

You can use a phone as external bootable media and there are apps to do this conveniently (like the ventoy does for conventional external media). Requires your phone to be rooted though.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

it's not worth the effort, get a decent usb SSD

[@AkshayDadhwal0]

no labels gang

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Needs labels!

[@t1merickson]

How am I just now realizing that the background is a green screen??

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

It depends on if we film in Austin or Scottsdale but want to use that same set.

[@kreaweb-be]

When you believe the Apple dudes, the new iMac Mini beats all available Windows Mini PC...

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

In some ways, it is really good. In others, not so great. On the other hand, the 14" MPB M4 Max is like 2x the perf of the M1 Max version which is crazy impressive.

[@affieuk]

$399 is crazy when you can get a minisforum ms-01 for the same amount, which a much better CPU i5-12600H.

[@TheTastefulThickness]

Power draw

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

The MS-01 uses significantly more power and if you want 10Gbase-T you end up needing SFP+ to 10Gbase-T adapters as well. Feel free to check out our MS-01 video for more on the power draw of that one.

[@affieuk]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo Yeah I've seen that, really disappointed by the MS-A1. I agree on the power consumption, I want something low power at idle and low loads but can ramp up if I need, considering the BD790i SE motherboard with a bifurcation board for NVMe drives. That or the proart-b550-creator board because it has thunderbolt too. Decisions. Yes I realise they are all very different products.

[@RadAlzyoud]

They lost me with no OPNsense compatibility.

[@techgamer4489]

I don't need it. I don't need it. I don't need it.