Minisforum, Gmktec, Beelink

Ill throw some other things I have read around the net and reddit and over on servethehome forums and my own personal experiences with those 3 big brands over the last 7 years of mini pcs.

Miniforums = poor product support at times, rejecting warranty claims, asking customers to pay to ship item back to china which cost too much, or attempting to offer lower spec replacement parts.

GMKTec = poor support, ignored support emails and warranty claims.

Beelink = ok to good support, they respond and they tend to honour warranty claims. Typically much higher QC and build but can still have their fair share of issues.

Overall anything from china, I like to think of it as products without warranty. And if you get warranty or support its luck. GMKTec and miniforums have questionable engineering skills, I recently got the GMKTEC G9 nas, omg the amount of hardware issues with it. Check Jeffs GMKTEC G9 nas review on YT he goes into it a lot more, you would think a company releasing 100s of mini pcs after several years would know how to get basic cooling right but nope. Mini forums tech support also tell fibs a lot, I have emailed them over the last few years with product suggestions which they always claim are coming.

Id recommend buying from Amazon direct any mini pc, this way you have a retailer that has no choice but to refund/exchange when things go wrong. But I understand its more expensive so if you go the aliexpress or manufacturer direct route just remember you may not get any warranty claim or support.
 
Yeah I'm surprised the hype for GMKTec some of the bigger YT channels and influencers pushing them hard but they have a dubious past for support/security vulnerabilities and their engineering both software and hardware seems chaotic without joined up thinking.

MeLE seems good from my experience so far and likewise Beelink and Trigkey I believe is basically the same company.

I've had a lot of interest in the Minisforums devices but there is always a background mumbling about support and long term reliability which I find off-putting for the premium prices they charge and the joke discounts which are never real.
 
I've started to see the Minisforum machines advertised on Faceache now, so I've had a look, tempting...
 
Finally managed to upgrade the m720q gpu

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Now it's got a Nvidia rtx A1000 in it
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This now makes the machine very capable
 
I remember a little while back when a Gmktec N100 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB drive was being sold for less than £64, including delivery. That's was with a Win11 Pro install.
Whether you keep 11on it or not, as a cheap and effective DAS, or something, it was worth a buy from Ali I thought. I don't think much about warranty for items I buy direct from them.
Although, for more money, you can buy through Amazon, with their warranty.

Different choices I assume when you go up in their range.
 
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It came on offer a week ago for £77.63 and nearly three weeks back for the deal I noted.

But, yes the price does fluctuate quite a lot. Coupons sometimes help.
 
Fonz-Valo said:
I've been tempted so many times to pick up a M720q but i've never found one for the right price.
I just love how much upgrade potential they have
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Yep I'm hoarding a spare one too incase I decide to build an arcade cab and use it in that.
Iv seen they make gen 5 ones now with core ultra CPU and the pcie slot. Depends if I want to spend the 550 quid on one of those or not.
I5 8500t with the A1000 and 32gb of ram does fine for the kiddo now.
 
The m920q seems to be better spec with better heatsink and extra m.2 slot
Wonder if a Ryzen version is available, would be good to have a 35w x3d version
 
I've had a brief experience with a Beelink - on spec and paper it was decent kit, in real life, what a waste of money. Quality was decent enough to last a bit but thermally it was a small cookbox and I was dissapointed with performance (this may be unfair as it was pretty basic spec so was never going to be amazing).
However - all, even older mini PCs like m920q or Dell will be far better experience but price bracket is also a bit further north of £100.
 
qbazdz said:
and I was dissapointed with performance
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Depends a lot on the CPU, usage and expectations - the Intel quad cores are never going to be up to much beyond light web browsing and the higher spec Intel mobile CPUs while power efficient in idle to low power use tend to use quite a bit of power under load, the older AMD like the 5000 series use quite a bit of power but are reasonably performant, the newer Zen 4 and 5 are generally pretty decent for performance and power/heat under heavy loads but tend to be less power efficient than the Intels under light loads or idle due to the SoC using a fairly constant minimum amount of power irrespective of load.

I'm using an older J4125 based mini PC as a kind of local cloud / lightweight NAS and it performs fine for that task and is very low power/heat.

Some attempts, especially with the first release based on a new mobile CPU, have not been the best for thermals, etc. both Beelink and Minisforums have had to re-spin some of their units due to that.
 
Rroff said:
Depends a lot on the CPU, usage and expectations - the Intel quad cores are never going to be up to much beyond light web browsing and the higher spec Intel mobile CPUs while power efficient in idle to low power use tend to use quite a bit of power under load, the older AMD like the 5000 series use quite a bit of power but are reasonably performant, the newer Zen 4 and 5 are generally pretty decent for performance and power/heat under heavy loads but tend to be less power efficient than the Intels under light loads or idle due to the SoC using a fairly constant minimum amount of power irrespective of load.

I'm using an older J4125 based mini PC as a kind of local cloud / lightweight NAS and it performs fine for that task and is very low power/heat.

Some attempts, especially with the first release based on a new mobile CPU, have not been the best for thermals, etc. both Beelink and Minisforums have had to re-spin some of their units due to that.
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Yeah, I set my expectations low and even that was not met. It was a simple machine for web browsing and bit of office work for my Mum.
I found the spec, it was the T4 Ultra, with Atom Z8500, 4Gb RAM and eMMC, which I think was what dragged it down. It struggled to replace a 2012 (?) Vaio with AMD E-350 lol
Its ages ago, so take it with a pinch of salt, as newer kits may be better now.
 
Things have come on a fair bit since the early Atoms and eMMC storage. The Z8500 was around the speed of the Core 2 Q6600 and the eMMC would have been a big bottleneck. Though I still have a GPD Pocket in my work bag - Atom Z8750 processor, 8GB LPDDR3 and 128GB of eMMC which does OK for quick desktop tasks when I don't have access to a decent machine.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
Yep I'm hoarding a spare one too incase I decide to build an arcade cab and use it in that.
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Yeah that's kinda what I'm tempted to do, it definitely makes more sense for me to pick a m720 or m920q than a Pi or "N" CPU based box as down the line I know it would hold me back.
 
Been playing around with my first mini pc/workstation an DELL Pro QCS1250 Intel Core Ultra 5 235T.

Very nice quality build on the inside, I appreciate the large workstation type heatsink like the normal motherboard socket heatsinks from intel/amd, anything with those 4 screws giving good solid cpu core contact its always going to more reliable and better thermals imo. There is a blower fan on top but I can run a silent noctua fan on top with no issue.

The intel core ultra 5 235T is pretty nice for energy efficiency overall being limited to 35 watts, I can see it hovering around 14-25 watts for general daily task such as surfing/YT (8+ tabs open) and also 30-45 watts during more intensive actions like file copying/unraring, when benchmarking and gaming it can ramp up to 80-120watts though and 7-8 watts idle.

But its still the most impressive wattage overall since there is no sluggish slow downs from those 14 cores and everything can be handled snappy.

Also the cpu heatsink barely warm to the touch, was tempted to try and run it passive.

My other AMD mini pc with 8 core 8845hs is fairly decent, but 30-40 watts on average doing the same task and can also ramp up to 50-60 watts for more intensive task.

Id certainly recommend intel cpus still and their newer arrowlake generation if doing say nas/unraid or just wanting something that runs cool, speedy and energy efficient.
 
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