Beelink Mini PC for Small Efficient Server?

[JrD 22]

I'm currently running my server on a full-sized desktop running off an Intel i5-7400 and a Nvidia GeForce GT 730. Storing all my media on 2 separate 12tb WD My Book external hard drives.

Which for now works perfectly fine as an Emby Server, however I am looking into getting something a bit smaller and efficient. 

As this current setup does require a bit of space and energy. Especially since it pretty much just serves as a Server and Seedbox and nothing else.

Plus, storage is becoming a pressing issue as I don't want to connect and power a 3rd external hard drive. I already have a pretty bad outlet situation because of powering the PC, 2 EHDD & my Router all with huge power bricks.

So, I am looking to simplify my server setup as well as a better storage solution that would allow me to add more storage in the future. And came up with this solution, but just wanted to make sure the specs would hold, and if anybody has had any experience with any of these.

 

PC • Beelink Mini PC, Mini S12 Intel 12th Gen 4-Core N95 (up to 3.4GHz) Mini Computer 16GB DDR4 RAM 500GB SSD

2 (for now) HDD • Seagate Exos X20 20TB SATA HDD SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM

Enclosure • 8 Bay Hard Drive RAID Enclosure for 2.5/3.5" SATA HDD/SSD with USB A/C 3.0

 

This setup would be significantly smaller than my current one, which like I said I feel is a bit of overkill.

As at any given time, there are at most 3-4 simultaneous streams with very little transcoding happening all in 1080p for the most part.

Not to say that some 4K/1080p transcoding may not happen, but likely only one stream at a time if anything.

But I'm also hoping its more power efficient but does fix my growing storage issue with the ability to add more HDDS as is needed.

 

So, would this be a good choice for hardware, or should I go with something else?

As I'm currently working with a budget of ~$1,300

Thanks in advance!

[Luke 42077]

@clarkss12 and @CassTG may have some insight to share on Beelink.

[CassTG 113]

Well i only have experience with their android boxes but i will say this Beelink Support is awful and if they have any bugs in their firmware well they normally just release a new model and you are on your own. Again not had their mini PC but i will say this i will never buy another Beelink product nor would i trust any of the people that review them on youtube and wash over all the negatives so they can keep getting free devices to review

On another note i love me some mini PC's and run several in my homelabs and whilst the cpu in that model is only 15W it hits a benchmark of only 5-6K on cpu benchmark.

May be worth looking at some of the mini PC's from Hp or Lenovo (the tiny 1l boxes) for example:

I have a HP Prodesk 600 G4 Tiny which has a 8500T that has 6 cores and scores between 7-8K on same benchmarks at 35W, As they are all ex business machines you can get dirt cheap i think mine cost me £110 or circa $150 only a few weeks ago. That came with 8GB Ram and a 256GB NVME drive and has space for another NVMe drive so perfect for booting Debian on and running EMBY Server

Also nearly brought the same type of PC a 705 Tiny which had a 2400G chip from AMD that scores nearly 9k on benchmarks and was a little bit more but still less than the beelink, not sure how hardware transcodes perform on AMD Vs Intel (presume quick sync is more efficient)

Any of these tiny 1L with an 8th gen or more would be much better IMHO than the beelink and still get BIOS updates til this day

I quick look on EBAY for example i found this one

9500T HP

Thats 16GB Ram, a Intel 9500t, 512GB SSD and PSU for only $160 or best offer. Obviously only an example of one i looked for so if you go down this route do your due diligance, but i normally buy loads of these and they have always just worked like trojans

or

 

8500T HP

That's an 16gb Machine with an 8500T and 256GB SSD for circa $139 USD

Theres plenty to choose from and if you have some spare ram or NVME/SSD then you can get them for as low as $100 and build your own spec

Edited June 1, 2024 by CassTG

[RanmaCanada 494]

You could also look at a laptop. You can usually get damged ones, ie screen broken, for about the same price as an N95/N100 mini pc, but far more powerful. I paid $120 for an i5-1235u laptop with a smashed screen last year, and I use that as my server.

[JrD 22]

Oooh I didn’t even consider that @CassTG . 
I’m probably going to switch to getting one of these, but since I already ordered the Beelink Mini s12 and I can just return it since I ordered it on Amazon. I’d figure might as well give it a try and see what it can do.

Anything I should try out while I have it in between the return window?

I believe it comes with windows, so I can test anything there. But I’m considering installing Ubuntu to have more lightweight OS since it is a mini PC anyway.

I mainly curious to see how well it handles multiple streams, including transcoding a 4K file in the mix. As well as the thermals, since I do know that mini PC’s can overheat, and throttle performance. Finally, how well it handles both running Emby, as well as serving as a seedbox. Although it should do that no problem.

if I am genuinely impressed, and it holds up. I might just consider keeping it since it is fairly cheap. See how long it lasts. But will definitely still be buying on of those 1I Boxes.

I’ll post an update once I have a bit more data or information to give.

[CassTG 113]

9 hours ago, JrD said:

Oooh I didn’t even consider that @CassTG . 
I’m probably going to switch to getting one of these, but since I already ordered the Beelink Mini s12 and I can just return it since I ordered it on Amazon. I’d figure might as well give it a try and see what it can do.

Anything I should try out while I have it in between the return window?

I believe it comes with windows, so I can test anything there. But I’m considering installing Ubuntu to have more lightweight OS since it is a mini PC anyway.

I mainly curious to see how well it handles multiple streams, including transcoding a 4K file in the mix. As well as the thermals, since I do know that mini PC’s can overheat, and throttle performance. Finally, how well it handles both running Emby, as well as serving as a seedbox. Although it should do that no problem.

if I am genuinely impressed, and it holds up. I might just consider keeping it since it is fairly cheap. See how long it lasts. But will definitely still be buying on of those 1I Boxes.

I’ll post an update once I have a bit more data or information to give.

Yeah if you are able to still play with it and return is an option then deffo have a play, i just think Long Term updates and bugfixes are unlikely as per my original comment

Those 1L Tiny Mini Micro pc's are great fun and good all rounders, for example i will get the 705 AMD version as they are great emulation devices and not much more than a PI, I have one running VDSM which is my nas (Virtual Synology DSM) and one running various dockers for some HomeLAB fun, i have had them running Proxmox and VMs before and they handle that really well.

Not sure how your going to set up the beelink to test and if its just gonna act as a server then i would just throw Debian 12 Server on it throw up some dockers including Emby and keep the resource use low to give Emby the best shot, thats if you want it headless and not need a desktop.

I  dont run Emby server locally i prefer that in the cloud so to speak so cannot speak to how any of them will handle it tbh

And if you do look at getting one of those 1l pc's well worth checking out this site as they reviewed tonnes of them and also have the reviews on their youtube channel. I pretty much stick to any that have NVME and USB-C although i dont really use the latter but is a nice to have, and the prices they mention in the article below are obviously from when they wrote the guide, for example the one i just brought last month cost me like $150 usd roughly yet they reviewed it at $250

https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution/

Edited June 4, 2024 by CassTG

[JrD 22]

Well here is an update over a month later.

For starters, I actually ended up using none of the components that I had originally proposed.

As I ending up returning everything for the following reasons.

Hard Drive - yeah it was dead on arrival and I didn't notice, but I actually replaced it by not getting a new one but 2 renewed HHD of the same capacity for only $100 more than a 1 new one. So generally a much better deal.

Enclosure - This one probably did work, but I first thought it was to blame for the reason the HHD would not read or register in any capacity for me to do anything. So I returned it and replaced it with the Yottamaster 10Gbps 5 Bay USB C Hard Drive Enclosure which after it also wouldn't read or have the HHD show up is how I realized it was the HHD that was bad not the enclosure. But got a good discount on it and works perfectly with the replacement drives I got.

Beelink PC - this one was all functional, but returned it because I was able to get the Beelink EQ13 Intel 12th Alder Lake-N100 for about $20 cheaper than for what I had bought the other one. With this one being slightly better than the other one.

 

With that being said, here is my actual review of the beelink PC. In terms of support I was actually able to get relatively quick support via their email address listed on their website. Of course because it is in China, I got responses at like three or two in the morning. So there was that time difference. But they usually answer that same day. So I can't fault them there and were able to help with the drivers needed and providing an activation key for windows 10 when I downgraded from windows 11. But I can definitely see how products can be dropped for updates and later on support relatively quickly. As they appear to also pump out new hardware pretty quickly. However, in terms of actual performance. This is where it did not meet my needs or standards. Now don't get me wrong, if you use it to just run Emby. Then performance is phenomenal and was able to transcode 4K content without breaking a sweat. As well as running multiple 1080P streams. So as an efficient and small strictly Emby server, it's a great option. 

But notice that I said strictly as an Emby server, as pretty much trying to run anything else that needs the CPU, or in my case a seed box along with it. Would sporadically tap out the CPU at 100%, with this usually causing my torrent client (qbittorrent) to crash. Hell even opening Task manager would show the CPU temporarily jumping to 100% before going down. Well not sporadically, but if any Emby task used the CPU, or another program needed to do so, such as Windows Defender running check. Then this would cause issues.

So I will also return this one in favor of getting an HP or Lenovo mini PC, as hopefully it will provide a bit more power or generally better management in order for me to run these two tasks simultaneously. @CassTGgot any Intel recommendation for a budget of ~$220, as I'm still looking to get something smaller as comparison to the old full tower pc that I was using. 

Thanks in advance!

[RanmaCanada 494]

For your budget you can easily get a used i3-1215u laptop. It might need a usb nic adapter, but it will handle everything you want with no problem. The benefit of a laptop, no need to buy an extra mouse, keyboard or monitor. The 1215-u has a passmark score of 10965, which makes it far faster than the original N100 you wanted. A laptop is also fairly easy to just tuck away.

[CassTG 113]

On 17/07/2024 at 08:41, JrD said:

Well here is an update over a month later.

For starters, I actually ended up using none of the components that I had originally proposed.

As I ending up returning everything for the following reasons.

Hard Drive - yeah it was dead on arrival and I didn't notice, but I actually replaced it by not getting a new one but 2 renewed HHD of the same capacity for only $100 more than a 1 new one. So generally a much better deal.

Enclosure - This one probably did work, but I first thought it was to blame for the reason the HHD would not read or register in any capacity for me to do anything. So I returned it and replaced it with the Yottamaster 10Gbps 5 Bay USB C Hard Drive Enclosure which after it also wouldn't read or have the HHD show up is how I realized it was the HHD that was bad not the enclosure. But got a good discount on it and works perfectly with the replacement drives I got.

Beelink PC - this one was all functional, but returned it because I was able to get the Beelink EQ13 Intel 12th Alder Lake-N100 for about $20 cheaper than for what I had bought the other one. With this one being slightly better than the other one.

 

With that being said, here is my actual review of the beelink PC. In terms of support I was actually able to get relatively quick support via their email address listed on their website. Of course because it is in China, I got responses at like three or two in the morning. So there was that time difference. But they usually answer that same day. So I can't fault them there and were able to help with the drivers needed and providing an activation key for windows 10 when I downgraded from windows 11. But I can definitely see how products can be dropped for updates and later on support relatively quickly. As they appear to also pump out new hardware pretty quickly. However, in terms of actual performance. This is where it did not meet my needs or standards. Now don't get me wrong, if you use it to just run Emby. Then performance is phenomenal and was able to transcode 4K content without breaking a sweat. As well as running multiple 1080P streams. So as an efficient and small strictly Emby server, it's a great option. 

But notice that I said strictly as an Emby server, as pretty much trying to run anything else that needs the CPU, or in my case a seed box along with it. Would sporadically tap out the CPU at 100%, with this usually causing my torrent client (qbittorrent) to crash. Hell even opening Task manager would show the CPU temporarily jumping to 100% before going down. Well not sporadically, but if any Emby task used the CPU, or another program needed to do so, such as Windows Defender running check. Then this would cause issues.

So I will also return this one in favor of getting an HP or Lenovo mini PC, as hopefully it will provide a bit more power or generally better management in order for me to run these two tasks simultaneously. @CassTGgot any Intel recommendation for a budget of ~$220, as I'm still looking to get something smaller as comparison to the old full tower pc that I was using. 

Thanks in advance!

I would just see what you can get in that form factor on ebay at time, there are always deals to be had, possibly a 10th GEN in that price range, but it all depends on what transcodes etc, i know Intel QS is okay for it but if mainly direct play the it does not matter. NVME only for Boot OS and Emby DB will add to responsivness. I will Say there are pros/cons to any of the tiny devices

Lenovo - Cant recall any firmware updates on the 8th Gen model not 100% sure - Would be my 3rd Choice

HP - Still giving firmware updates probably the best BIOS for tinkering with - NO OS level Linux Firmware updates, better spec for the money 

DELL - Still giving firmware and can initiate from headless device via Linux as they partake in that scheme. BIOS is a pain in the backside but gets the job done.

 

 

[Herkkusuu 2]

Hi,
I have the similar situation as JrD, that I need to run qbittorrent as well on the same device.

currently I have separate (Lenovo Z50-70)laptop that handles media, and Emby server on Nvidia Shield.. and it is sometimes bit frustrating to have 2 devices instead of one.

Regarding to those Lenovo Mini-PCs...

Do you think if this would be able to run 4K-streams and 1080p streams simultaneously?

Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q Mini-PC

i5-7500T
12GB DDR4
256GB M.2 SSD
Intel HD Graphics 630

I'd rather have a mini-PC over laptop, unless you can convince me that laptop is the way to go. (my main workstation is near, so I can connect all to my main display and KB/M)

I have the files on  external 10TB HDD and have pretty capable LAN (1gbit) and internet (1gbit/400mb).

As I live in Europe, the postage and tolls are insane from US, so I would try to buy it from my country or within Amazon.de. (so that's one that I found used, and they would have warranty)

I'm new here, so please guide/put me to right place if this is not proper place to ask this. I tried to search, but this was the only string I found.

Thanks, your answers have been awesome so far

 

[RanmaCanada 494]

22 hours ago, Herkkusuu said:

Hi,
I have the similar situation as JrD, that I need to run qbittorrent as well on the same device.

currently I have separate (Lenovo Z50-70)laptop that handles media, and Emby server on Nvidia Shield.. and it is sometimes bit frustrating to have 2 devices instead of one.

Regarding to those Lenovo Mini-PCs...

Do you think if this would be able to run 4K-streams and 1080p streams simultaneously?

Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q Mini-PC

i5-7500T
12GB DDR4
256GB M.2 SSD
Intel HD Graphics 630

I'd rather have a mini-PC over laptop, unless you can convince me that laptop is the way to go. (my main workstation is near, so I can connect all to my main display and KB/M)

I have the files on  external 10TB HDD and have pretty capable LAN (1gbit) and internet (1gbit/400mb).

As I live in Europe, the postage and tolls are insane from US, so I would try to buy it from my country or within Amazon.de. (so that's one that I found used, and they would have warranty)

I'm new here, so please guide/put me to right place if this is not proper place to ask this. I tried to search, but this was the only string I found.

Thanks, your answers have been awesome so far

 

This will do the job, but ideally you would want to get as powerful for as little money as possible I'd look a little higher to 8th gen or maybe an N100 mini system. it will be capable to do maybe 3 4k transcodes. You can always check eBay as there are European sellers of these machines.

[Ahole 17]

Wondering about an update on this topic -- 

I have been using Synology NAS for my Emby Server AND mulitple .arr Docker installs on Portainer

Been toying with the idea of moving the Emby Server and the Docker installs off the Synology 

I have a spare laptop but the built in NIC is not working properly so I have to use the a USB ethernet adapter.

Wondering what you guys have done as far as the server -- did you wipe Windows from your mini-pc's or laptops and use Ubuntu or CasaOS?   Seems like that might be the way to go ?? Thoughts

[Herkkusuu 2]

I ended up with MinisForum Elitemini TH80 ( https://minisforumpc.eu/en/products/elitemini-th80?_pos=1&_psq=th80&_ss=e&_v=1.0 ).

I installed Ubuntu there as a dual boot, but as I am very new to unix/linux based OS I removed that partition within a few months and just keep rocking modified Windows, with all bloatware removed. I also had a side affair with Jellyfin, but that ended badly and now  I have lifetime Emby premium .

It just works fantastic with my current setup. The only downside is the Jet engine that the elite mini has. It does not come very often, but when it does, you have no doubt it has a lift off.

Second downside (Ok, there was another, but this one is on me) is, that I have all my arrs on my main PC, so I need to transfer all the data to the external HDD that is connected to the Mini Elite. But as I have 2.5GB home LAN, even the biggest files sails very fast. I had to do this because my current ISP provides only 50mb upload and I do not want to connect Emby from internet when I am at home. If I would have VPN on Emby PC, then I just would have to do that, (right?)