Theres nothing glaring at me to say they won't work, I've not used any from AliEx before but if they ate the same quality as those from 10GTek or H!Fibre you should be fine
MinisForum MS-01 - Owners Thread
- Thread starter TechMinerUK
- Start date
Yeah, the converter would be the biggest query, especially ensuring that it doesn't run super hot either.
For that price though its probably worth a shot as if its not right just refund it and buy one from a UK seller or a different model
Cracking work, that looks like a pretty clean mod!!Yer tis lol...
Had some free time this afternoon so thought why not have a go...
10gtek dual 10gb rj45 nic fitted, had to cut off some of the half size bracket but no other fitting issues. Manufacture said fan not required but I've done it anyway given the compact build. Used my dremmel with some cutting discs to mod the cover. Had plenty of small nuts and bolts from RC modelling days so they came in handy.
£9, 3 x speed fan from amazon running off a usb port using 1.5w on maximum speed.. I have found the low setting seems fine at the moment extracting from the card so will see how that goes. My watt meter says the ms01 is using between 25 and 30w depending on what it's doing on the test bench including the fan on low. I'll be swapping it with my n100 mini pfsensev live firewall tomorrow hopefully. Good box but no 10gb interfaces so the ms01 will fully integrate with my 10gb lan &wan now...
Some pics. I'm no dremmel king so excuse any roughness haha
My friend printed my this free plan vertical stand I found. Looks good I think.
Thanks for your help and advice along the way. I'm sure I'll be back with questions in time haha..
Just need to get minisforum to refund the duty which is proving difficult even after they said they would....
No worries on the questions, any help I can give I'm happy to, likewise keep us updated on the unit and its temps as it may end up being a fairly popular modification if it stays cool, especially with RJ45 10G installed as well
If its like OPNsense I think you can get extensions that'll let you measure the temperature
Marvellous stuff, glad to hear that progres is being made
Regarding the 2.5Gbit ports on the MS-01. I haven't had any stability issues with them however they do seem to be a bit painful to work with as in Server 2022 the drivers for them have to be bodged to work on one of the units since Intel doesn't have any official drivers to use for "Server" grade operating systems and the other for love nor money can I get the AMT function to work for OOB management. It seems that the better option is to go the route you have and to use PCI-e add in cards for anything that needs a truly stable network connection on the units
26-30w is great and is the real push with these sort of units, don't get me wrong they are by no means enterprise grade but the amount of power you get in these considering the form factor and power consumption is amazing
I've added a third unit into my setup to use as a backup hypervisor and to host my Veeam VM and like my other two hosts it's loaded with an additional X710-DA2 card for 4x 10Gbit connectivity and it works just as good as the first two.
One discovery I did make is that it appears to have made it back to Minisforum HQ that the thermal paste being shipped with the units was poor as out of the box it had a noticeable thermal improvement so it appears that is consistently fixed going forward. I've still re-pasted the unit as whilst it was improved with the X710-DA2, 2x 32GB DIMMs and 2x 1TB NVMe SSDs it was still pushing 55c when under small loads (Admittedly with regular spikes to 55c but between 30 and 40) however after the MX4 was applied it now tops at 47 as a peak.
It's becoming a bit of an addictive habbit getting a hold of them
Glad to hear you got your money back from them
As for heat pasting, yes, you can poke 4 holes in the foam block with a screw driver to get to the heatsink screws. Once undone it's just a case of removing it, clearing up the old stuff, putting on the new stuff and re-screwing it back ony (
It's a decent heatsink with some bits to prevent over tightening and there's plenty of room incase too much thermal paste is applied. Overall it's quite easy (I think I put the measurements to the screws/a link to measurements earlier if needed)
If it's working fine without though I'd leave it as is, I'm just OCD when it comes to temps
Excellent stuff, your setup looks very polished with the vertical mount
I don't have the exact measurements to hand however on the ServeTheHome forums link on one of the earlier posts there is a user who has the measurements photographed on there
I'm using G-Tek 10Gbit SFP+ DACs with the X710 on mine. As far as I can tell in the MS-01 there is no vendor lock so any should work
That's the one
I run two in a Hyper-V cluster and it works great, I know Proxmox prefers you to have 3 nodes unless you are using a monitor device such as an RPI etc but if you have that it should be fine.
The AMD one I wouldn't bother with personally, it lacks the extra network connectivity and PCI-e slot meaning if you are wanting to wire up additional storage you are out of luck
Depends on the usecase however I'm rocking the 12600H and its plenty powerful for 5 VMs per host on Windows server
- In theory the unit supports 96GB of RAM which has been tested with Corsair and Crucial modules from my understanding
- Yes, I would definitely recommend replacing the thermal paste with something decent, the stock paste isn't great
For actual power to run work, the i5 should be fine unless you are doing something extreme
Good to know!
I'm gonna do a post in the next few weeks on how to get the Intel AMT working for remote access as I think I have almost managed to get it working for KVM using a variety of guides online. It works for power management but I'm struggling to get it working for KVM as Meshmini keeps timing out (It could just be a Meshmini issue)
I've also tried Server 2025 on the unit this week and that runs with zero issues (Other than the issues that are related to Server 2025)
Im running 64GB 5600 here with no issues (Corsair DIMMs if it makes any difference)
When it comes th the M.2 and SSDs, just to confirm the unit supports 3x M.2 SSDs or 1x U.2 and 2x M.2 SSDs. It doesn't support any SATA drives to my knowledge so as long as the 4TB SSD is U.2 (And fits within the size constraints of the unit) you should be fine
I've not got much experience with Proxmox but you should be fine with the DAC to link the units and then using it to connect to your switch, if I recall correctly you may be able to use the Thunderbolt ports to link as well
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If the 6500T is running fine then the MS-01 may be overkill however if you want more head room its likely the best value unit available of you dont want a bigger form factor.
The other benefit is the newer CPU means they dont use a great deal of power
I see, I guess it depends if networking is going to be an issue etc as the main reason I would go for the MS-01 over the other units is the network connectivity and extra PCIe slot for expansion.
If networking and storage expansion is something you'll need go for the MS-01, if not if you can get the other units cheaper they might be a better fit
I wouldn't advise using more than one and if you are make sure there is some extra cooling for the unit (Mini heatsinks and fans etc)
What you could do as an alternative is get a PCI-e 10GE add in card and then make sure that is cooled, @skyeci100 made some modifications on their unit too cool their RJ45 card
As long as the SSD is U.2 you should be fine, to my knowledge and after stripping mine down last night these units do not take SATA drives (As in SATA connector)
In terms of heatsinks, if they are low profile ones you should be fine, in the box they include a heat sink if you want to use one (Or mine did anyway)
For 10G it depends how you want to use it, in Proxmox I believe you could link the MS-01s with one and then link the other to the switch for each of the units. Or you could have them both plugged into the switch, entirely up to you I think