Raspberry Pi Mega-IO Expansion Card - Raspberry Pi Accessories

Raspberry Pi Mega-IO Expansion Card - Raspberry Pi Accessories

We released a new add-on card for Raspberry Pi packed with I/O's.
Eight on-board relays, 8 12-bit ADC channels,12-bit DAC output, 8 opto-isolated inputs, 4 open collector outputs, 6 GPIO's, 4 layer stackable
Currently on Kickstarter

may i get a link?

Related

Amazing new Raspberry Pi enclosure; check out piServer

Hello Everyone, We're introducing the piServer. piServer is a sleek enclosure for the Raspberry Pi equipped with an integrated power source, a powered USB hub, high-definition optical audio output, an internal hard drive, a case fan, and an intelligent power switch. The piServer harnesses the power of the Raspberry Pi, transforming it into a stand-alone appliance ready for almost any application.
The piServer has the appearance of a set-top-box that could rival any of today’s most popular consumer products. Inside the fit and finish of this enclosure is custom-engineered, digital circuitry that expounds upon the features of the Raspberry Pi. It nearly doubles the number of USB peripherals that can be connected to the Raspberry Pi and boosts the power supplied to each of these peripherals to the full USB 2.0 specification. Furthermore, the piServer equips the Raspberry Pi with a 1TB or 2TB internal hard drive. This enormous data storage can be used to store an entire movie and music collection or create a network file storage device. To complete your multimedia experience, the piServer enables the Raspberry Pi to output high definition digital audio through optical S/PDIF or HDMI. Finally, a PWM controlled fan, a heat sink, full access to the 40-pin GPIO header earn piServer the title of Ultimate Raspberry Pi Enclosure.
Please visit the NightShade Electronics campaign on Indiegogo to purchase a piServer or at the ns-electric website - they are ready to produce the piServer and have it to you in December 2016! (sorry I can't give links yet). Thanks for your time and your help to spread the word!

Beelink Gemini J45 Mini PC review: small, but competent

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The good:
Beautiful, neat and compact design.
Great build quality.
Licensed Windows 10 Pro OS.
Decent performance.
Fast SSD.
Lots of connectivity options.
The bad:
MicroSD card slot doesn’t support cards larger than 64GB.
HDMI is not 2.0a standard.
Bottom Line:
The Gemini J45 is a beautifully made mini PC designed to deal with basic computing tasks, and it works as designed.
With the Pentium CPU line refreshes from Intel earlier this year, we're starting to see a wave of revised mini PCs from different manufacturers. The all new Beelink J45 comes with the Intel Apollo Lake Pentium J4205 processor, 8GB DDR4 RAM, up to 512GB built-in SSD, and an attractive new design, it is set out to be a strong contender in the race.
Main specs of the Beelink Gemini J45
Processor: Intel Apollo Lake Pentium J4205
CPU: Quad Core 1.5-2.6GHz CPU
GPU Intel HD Graphics 505
Process technique: 14nm
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64bit
RAM: 4/8GB LPDDR4 2133MHz (8GB in our review)
Storage: 128GB/256GB/512GB SSD (512GB in our review)
Network: Wifi ac + BT 4.2 (Intel 3165D) / Ethernet Gigabit / 1x miniPCIe for opcional Wifi
Ports: 4x USB 3.0 / 2x HDMI 1.4 / microSD slot / 3.5mm audio jack / Kensington lock
Accessories: 12V-2A DC adapter/ 2x HDMI Cable (1m & 0.3m) / User Manual
Retail package:
The Beelink Gemini J45 comes with very attractive packaging, the combination of colors is young and refreshing, yet not overly colorful. The red capital letter “J” on the top side of the blue box looks extremely cool.
Inside the relatively small box we have found a mini PC, a 12V-2A DC power adapter, two HDMI cables (1m and 0.3m), a bracket and some screws which can be used for mounting the J45 to the back of a monitor.
Design and build
The overall design of the J45 doesn’t stray too far from previous Beelink Mini PC models. But the new combination of metal and plastic material used for the chassis is quite a catch, and vividly reminds us of the design of the much more expensive Intel NUC mini PCs.
The shell of the J45 is a combination of metal and plastic. The top side is acrylic plastic, which is, in our opinion, an elegant touch as it gives the J45’s top a glossy and reflective look, although it is also more prone to collecting all your fingerprints. There’s a Beelink logo sitting comfortably in the middle. The other sides of the chassis are all made of high-quality aluminum.
As small as it is, the J45 still offers a slew of ports and slots. The front side is home to a pair of USB 3.0 ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, a red power button with activity LED (not lit in the photo).
There are lots of vents on the left, right, and back side of the device.
The right side also plays host to a MicroSD card slot, which supports storage cards up to 64GB. As 128GB and 256GB Micro SD cards are getting so cheap now, I don’t understand why Beelink holds back here.
The back side of the device sports another pair of USB 3.0 ports, two HDMI 1.4 ports, an RJ45 1000M Ethernet jack, and a DC-in port.
Four small rubber feet are hosted on the bottom side.
The J45 measures 115mm*102mm*43mm, and weighs only 300g, neither much bigger nor heavier than an average TV box. I found it extremely easy to move it around in the house. The build quality is solid and definitely well above average, as the mini PC looks particularly refined, with no ugly mold lines on the surface. It also feels robust and sturdy in the hands, you won’t really break it without some serious force.
Setting up
Although it is very small, the J45 is still a Windows-based personal computer, and needs to be connected with a monitor (or TV, or projector), a keyboard and a mouse to work as designed, and that’s how you should set it up.
During first-time start-up, you will need to go through some of the Microsoft Windows initialization protocols (choosing your region and language, connecting to the network, logging into your Microsoft account, etc), which is easy but definitely takes some time. After that, you are good to go.
System & apps
Most mini PCs run on Windows 10 Home OS, but the Beelink J45 ships with licensed Windows 10 Pro OS, which offers lots of extra features over Windows 10 Home – the most important of which is being able to join a domain, including Azure Active Directory for single sign-on to cloud services (and have group policy applied as part of that).
You also get Hyper-V for virtualization, BitLocker whole disk encryption, enterprise mode Internet Explorer, Remote Desktop, a version of the Windows Store for your own business, Enterprise Data Protection containers (a feature that comes later in the year) and assigned access (which locks a PC to running only one modern application, to use like a kiosk). Pro users can get updates from Windows Update for Business, which includes options for scheduling updates so they don't reboot PCs at important business times.
Fortunately, the Windows 10 Pro here is very clean, as we didn’t find any pre-installed 3rd party applications and bloatware. There are thousands of apps available in the Windows Store, if they are not enough, you can also install any traditional PC apps you need.
We don’t feel like digging into the main features Windows 10 offers. For those who is still unfamiliar and curious with this dominant PC operating system, we highly recommend you to watch some tutorial videos on YouTube.
Performance
The J45 is powered by the Intel Apollo Lake Pentium J4205 processor (1.5-2.6GHz). This chip isn’t designed as a powerhouse and won’t match the latest Intel CoreTM processors found in mainstream laptops and desktops PCs in terms of performance, but it is still very capable of dealing with normal everyday tasks. There is also 8GB LPDDR4 RAM under the hood to take care of multi-tasking, and up to 512GB built-in SSD for storing your files.
First, we ran three versions of Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
In the Cinebench R10 test, the Gemini J45 scored 2091 in single core, 6573 in multi-core, and 2599CB-GFX in OpenGL.
In the R15 test, the J45 was returned with an OpenGL score of 13.45fps and a CPU score of 158cb. These scores are not impressive even by mini PC standards, since the Celeron N4100 powered Chuwi Gbox and Celeron J3455 powered Vorke V1 got better results in the same tests.
In the latest R20 CPU test, the J45 scored 287. We did not run this test on most of the other mini PCs so we don’t have sufficient data for comparison.
The Fritz Chess benchmark returned a predictable score of 4,131, not bad, but not good, either.
In Geekbench 4 CPU test, the J45 got 1649 in single core and 4661 in multi-core, and 9276 in GPU computing.
Somehow, the Gemini J45 could not finish the PC Mark 8 Home Accelerated test. We ran the test twice and each time the device reported an error.
The SSD in the J45 isn’t the fastest we have seen, but it is definitely faster than the eMMc storage found in cheaper mini PCs and Windows tablets. In the AS SSD benchmark, the J45 scored 664. The sequential read and write speeds are 484.9MB/s and 436.05MB/s respectively. There are 3 variants of J45 in terms of built-in storage (128GB/256GB/512GB), the one that we received has 512GB mSATA SSD. If you want more storage, you can replace the stock SSD with a 2TB drive.
The J45 is capable of outputting 4K, but 1080P is still a more reliable choice. The absence of a discrete graphics card was felt on many occasions when we set the display resolution at 4K.
We witnessed significant improvement in the real-world performance with the J45 when compared to Celeron and Atom-based mini PCs released in the last couple of years. Launching apps is a lot faster, so is loading and switching between image-heavy webpages in Opera and Chrome. We also tried editing some of our presentations on the Gemini J45. Although there was a short delay when we were adding a big video file to a slide, the whole experience was generally smooth. Trying complex filters in Photoshop is a different story, as the J45 took much more time than the Huawei Matebook 13 did in each application.
The J45 was capable of playing all the media files we threw at it, including various 4k video clips. We used the Thunder Player to play all the video clips and there was no sign of struggling at all, the playback was always extremely smooth.
We also played many YouTube videos in Chrome. 1080P and 4K videos were generally smooth. 8K clips were playable, but with extremely low frame rates. Since the maximum video output of the Gemini J45 is 4K, there’s really no point in playing 8K on it.
Having 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM on board, the J45 was also able to handle serious multi-tasking. The active cooling system inside the shell did a fantastic job in keeping the computer from overheating. We could hear the fan making sound when the J45 was under loads, but it never really became a noise of any kind. And when we used the J45 as an HTPC in our living room, I couldn’t even hear any sound from the PC from 2 meters away.
The HD Graphics 505 GPU here had no problem running 3d games we installed from Microsoft Store, including the visually stunning Asphalt 8, Battle Tanks and Game of Emperor. We were actually surprised to see how smooth and responsive the J45 was during gameplay. However, without a discrete graphics card in it, the J45 was expected to struggle with big desktop titles, and it did. We tried “DarkSiders II” and set the graphics at 720P, although the game took a very long time to load, and there were some stutters in the middle, it was generally playable with decent frame rates. But when set at 1080P, the game became too laggy to play. We had similar experiences with “GS:GO”. More demanding games such as “Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate” and “Crysis 3” were unplayable even at medium settings.
Connectivity
The J45 supports dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz & 5GHz). The connection was as stable as it was on my Huawei Mate 20 Pro. The Beelink AP34 Ultimate usually struggled to reach a decent download speed on my TV cabinet, as the Wi-Fi router was placed in another room, but the J45 had no such problem.
The J45 can be connected to input devices and sound systems (headphones or speakers) wirelessly via Bluetooth, which saves you from the messy wires on your desktop, and frees the USB ports for other devices.
There are 4 USB 3.0 ports on the J45, you can mount lots of external devices at the same time. We mounted a 4TB Seagate mobile drive, a 128GB Samsung mobile SSD drive, and A 128GB flash disks, the computer has no problem supporting them all at the same time.
The USB 3.0 ports on board are quite fast. It only took us a few seconds to copy a 1.5GB MP4 file from our mobile drive.
There are two HDMI ports on the Gemini J45, which means you can connect the computer to your TV and monitor at the same time. Unfortunately, however, you won’t be able to get 4K/60fps, as the HDMI port is of 1.4 standard, which only supports a maximum video output of 4K/30fps or 2K/60fps.
The J45 also has a 1000M RJ45 Ethernet jack, 3.5mm audio jack, and even a MicroSD card slot.
Verdict
It is exciting that mini PCs are getting so good nowadays. With an upgraded Intel Pentium processor, 8GB LPDDR4 RAM and up to 512GB SSD under the hood, the Beelink Gemini J45 can get a wide variety of things done, including some lightweight productivity tasks. It has the potential to be more than just another HPTC placed at your living room for media consumption.
It won’t beat the mainstream laptops or desktop PCs in terms of overall performance, nothing this size or at this price point will. But for those who don’t use heavy apps or game intensively on their PC, the Gemini J45 is worthy of their consideration.

Purchase Link:
DE：https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07MP9JP18?ref=myi_title_dp
ES：https://www.amazon.es/dp/B07MP9JP18?ref=myi_title_dp
US：https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07M5JBF59?ref=myi_title_dp

CA：https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07M9BCVH7?ref=myi_title_dp

IT：https://www.amazon.it/dp/B07MP9JP18
FR：https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B07MP9JP18
UK：https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07MPPW7JY

Apollo Lake is the last-gen processor, the latest is Gemini Lake.

Twitch007 said:
Apollo Lake is the last-gen processor, the latest is Gemini Lake.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the correction.

Funny it is named Gemini.

Twitch007 said:
Funny it is named Gemini.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That confuses me as well. But the PC is still quite solid.

The US purchase link is wrong, it's Amazon Canada.

leelavie said:
The US purchase link is wrong, it's Amazon Canada.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for pointing it out.

Hope more people could read this article.

I just received mine today, will update some of my experiences in the next few days.

leelavie said:
I just received mine today, will update some of my experiences in the next few days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looking forward to your feedback.

I enjoyed this PC quite a lot, it's even smoother than the L55.

It generally works fine, but I experienced some stutters in 1080P movies with the stock Movie&TV player, will install the VLC player and see how it works later.

leelavie said:
It generally works fine, but I experienced some stutters in 1080P movies with the stock Movie&TV player, will install the VLC player and see how it works later.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
why not give kodi a try?

This should be at the top.

Twitch007 said:
why not give kodi a try?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will try it later.

GEEKOM MiniAir 11 Review: An Almost Perfect Budget Mini PC

Performance
The MiniAir 11 is powered by an Intel Celeron N5095 chip, which is built on 10nm process, with typical Thermal Design Power of 15W. This SOC incorporates 4 CPU cores, 4 processing threads working at 2.0-2.9 GHz, and an Intel UHD 605 iGPU working at 650MHz. Celeron processors are often associated with low performance, but the N5095 chip is really anything but, and can be a game changer for the mini PC category.
Benchmarks
In the cross-platform Geekbench 5 test, the MiniAir 11 scored 656 in CPU single core, 2142 in multi core, and 2121 in OpenCL. Those were typical numbers for the N5095 processor, but the MiniAir 11 did a little better than the Beelink Mini S, which features the same SOC.
In the Cinebench R20 CPU-crunching test, the MiniAir 11 snatched 236 in single core, and 792 in multi-core. As you can see in the charts above, the MiniAir 11 handily beat the Core i3-8109U powered Beelink SEI8 in multi-core performance.
While the CPU performance of the N5095 chip may have caught up with older Intel Core and AMD Ryzen processors, the GPU performance obviously has not. In 3DMark, the GEEKOM MiniAir 11 scored in 2448 Sky Diver, 645 in Fire Strike, and 205 in Time Spy, falling far behind the Beelink SEI8, which employs a beefier Iris Plus 655 iGPU to take care of graphics-intensive tasks.
PCMark 10 simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We often use it to assess the overall system performance of a PC. The GEEKOM MiniAir 11 scored 2287 in this test, much better than models featuring older Celeron and Pentium processors.
GEEKOM doesn’t offer a barebone version of the MiniAir 11, all units will be sold with an SSD inside. The 256GB SATA3 SSD in my review unit has decent sequential read and write speed, and you can upgrade the storage to an M.2 PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD whenever you need to. But unlike higher-end Intel Core SoCs, the Celeron N5095 processor only has a very limited number of PCIe channels, so you should not expect any significant increase in speed.
Daily computing
I had tested a handful of N5095 powered systems before the MiniAir 11, so I wasn’t really surprised by how capable this machine could be. Mainstream computing duties like web-browsing, social-networking, Microsoft Office tasks and media playback definitely put no pressure on the MiniAir 11. Thanks to the sufficient DDR4 memory inside, you can also expect the MiniAir 11 to handle a fair amount of multi-tasking. I could open a dozen image-heavy webpages in Chrome, play an 8K video clip, and edit a few documents at the same time without experiencing any hiccup or delay.
It obviously makes no sense to use the MiniAir 11, or any budget mini PC, for heavy creativity tasks such as 4K video editing or complex artwork design, but you can expect it to do well in lightweight content creation. I did not notice any lags or delays when adding filters and colorations to a couple of 1080P video footages in Power Director.
Gaming
It’s not impossible to play games on the MiniAir 11, but you should keep your expectations modest. Simpler games like Minecraft, Angry Birds 2 and Plant vs Zombies could run smoothly on this mini PC, but with heavier titles, you will need to tune down the resolution and settings to ensure a smooth run.
For example, League of Legends was playable at 1080P and medium settings. With 57 fps on average, I only experienced a few minor frameskips in those intense battle scenes. After turning the resolution down to 720P, the average frame rate of the game was improved to 77 fps.
Genshin Impact has proven to be too challenging for the MiniAir 11, even at 720P and low settings, the average frame rate was only 11 fps, and graphics generally felt sluggish and slow during the entire session, making you want to quit the game as soon as possible.
HTPC
According to DXVA checker, the Intel UHD 605 iGPU can decode most video formats to 4K and above, making the MiniAir11 an ideal HTPC or media center for your home entertainment. I played quite a number of video clips on this mini PC, and all of them were extremely smooth. Because the MiniAir 11 always utilizes hardware video decoding, the CPU usage is never too high. However, there is a drawback. Since the MiniAir 11 only supports one M.2 SSD as internal storage, you will probably need external storage devices for your local media files.
Streaming videos online was a similar story. When I was playing an 4K/60FPS YouTube video in Chrome, neither the CPU nor the GPU was stressed too much. Streaming 8K/60FPS videos could be challenging for the MiniAir 11, as I noticed frequent frameskip during the playback, since this mini PC doesn't really support 8K output, there's no point in doing that anyway.
Power consumption and noise
Power consumption of the MiniAir 11 is at only 6.8 watts idle and 22.5 watts on max load, and the machine stayed quiet most of the time. I did hear some noise from the cooling fan when running benchmark tests and games, but the sound was always so gentle that I easily ignored it.
The fan does an excellent job of keeping this mini PC cool and stable. The surface of this mini PC never gets hot, and in the 3DMark Time Spy Stress Test, the MiniAir 11 scored a decent 97.6%.
Verdict
If you’re looking for a compact system to deal with basic home or business computing tasks, this machine is an easy recommendation. The lack of another internal storage interface can be a deal-breaker for some, but with great build quality, plenty of I/O, licensed Windows 11 Pro, and a sensible price tag, the GEEKOM MiniAir 11 is still one of the best bang-for-the-buck mini PCs out there.

GEEKOM recently launches their USA summer sale. If you are interested in purchasing this mini PC, or any other products from GEEKOM, please visit their official website: www.geekompc.com
You can also find the screenshots of test results here:

Does Geekom MiniAir 11 have virtualization support in the bios?

Beelink SER5 Pro Review: A Beast of a Mini PC

Performance
The SER5 Pro comes with the AMD Ryzen5-5600H processor, which runs at a 3.30 GHz base frequency and can increase its speed to 4.20 GHz in turbo mode. It bundles six Zen3 CPU cores, twelve threads, 16MB L3 Cache, and has a TDP of 35 Watts. The SoC handles the graphics part too, you’ll get a very capable AMD Radeon Vega7 iGPU running at 1800MHz. There’s also 16GB/32GB dual-channel memory to deal with big applications and multi-tasking, and 500GB NVMe SSD to store all your files.
Benchmarks
In terms of performance, the SER5 Pro is a beast. It handily beat both varaints of the Intel NUC 11 Pro in Geekbench 5.4.1 and the Cinebench R23 CPU crunching tests.
PCMark 10 is a holistic performance suite developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). We use it to assess overall system performance in different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows like word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score, and higher numbers are better. The 5797-point finish from the SER5 Pro is well above the 4,000 points we consider excellent, and it's a very respectable showing for a PC this small.
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. I ran three different 3DMark subtests on the SER5 Pro: Sky Diver, Fire Strike, and Time Spy, which are suited to different types of systems. Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark which tests how well a system can handle DirectX 12 games. The other two are both DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to slim laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The SER5 Pro scored 1417 in Time Spy, 3636 in Fire Strike, and 13327 in Sky Diver. The NUC 11 Pro i7, which features the Intel Iris Xe EU96 iGPU, achieved better results in all three subtests, but the Intel NUC 11 Pro i5, which comes with the Intel Iris Xe EU80, scored lower than the SER5 Pro in Fire Strike and Sky Diver.
The 500GB Kingston solid-state drive used by the mini PC proved to have good reading and writing data speeds, although I did have seen better. Still, the SSD allows us to boot into Windows in less than 10 seconds, and offers more than enough speed for everyday office duties, lightweight content creation, and moderate gaming.
Content Creation
With such a beefy processor and plenty of RAM inside, the SER5 Pro obviously has no problem of seeing us through common home and office tasks. This mini PC is also quite capable when dealing with relatively demanding creativity workflows.
Editing 4K videos in Power Director, the SER5 Pro stayed fast and responsive even when I was adding some complex effects and renders to the raw footages. Producing a 10 minute high-bitrate 4K video via software encoding, the SER5 took 28 minutes, 9 seconds, while the Intel NUC 11 Pro (i7-1165G7 variant) took 41 minutes, 44 seconds. After I switched to hardware encoding, the SER5 took 6 minutes, 1 second to finish the task, while the NUC spent 5 minutes, 30 seconds. Even though I used the exact same setting for both mini PCs, including the bitrate of the output video, the SER5 Pro finished the task with a much bigger video file than it was commanded to.
During the video production (hardware encoding), the CPU utilization of the NUC 11 Pro stayed above 70%, and even hit 100% sometimes. The CPU utilization of the Beelink SER5, on the other hand, stayed below 50%, allowing users to work with other applications efficiently at the same time.
Encoding the same video clip in Handbrake, the SER5 took 1 minute, 56 seconds, while the NUC 11 Pro i7 took 2 minutes, 37 seconds.
Gaming
For an integrated GPU, the AMD Radeon Vega 7 in the SER5 Pro is quite capable. Running League of Legend at 1080P and medium quality setting, the average frame rate was 117 fps, even when I switched to 4K and high settings, the game still averaged 67 fps.
Genshin Impact was also playable at 1080P and medium setting, I saw an average of 47 fps, and didn’t notice any stutters or hiccups even in those intense fighting scenes. Switching to low quality setting will improve the smoothness to 55 fps.
Conqueror’s Blade has proven to be a little too challenging for the SER5 Pro. At 1080P and medium quality setting, the average frame rate was only 28 fps, and there will be noticeable frameskip and delays in intensive battle scenes. Switching to 720P and low setting could bump up the average frame rate to 41 fps, but it was still only playable.
These results mean the SER5 Pro should be able to deal with reasonably intense graphic workloads without grinding to a halt. But if you want to game in the highest possible settings and still get a fair chance against other players, you will need to look elsewhere.
Video Playback
Video codec support is one of the few areas that AMD Radeon iGPUs lag behind their Intel counterparts. According to DXVA checker, the Iris Xe Graphics iGPU can support many more video formats of up to 4K and 8K than the Radeon Vega 7. With that said, the SER5 Pro managed to play all of the 4K videos I threw at it smoothly.
Streaming YouTube videos in Chrome was also a fun and smooth experience, including all [email protected] and most [email protected] videos.
Stability, power consumption and noise
Not only is the Beelink SER5 Pro is powerful for its size, it’s also very stable. Although the AMD Ryzen5-5600H processor inside is extremely fast and can reach high frequencies when necessary, the cooling system inside the mini PC is super effective. Besides the high-speed cooling fan, there’re also copper pipes inside to help keep temperatures at bay. In the 3DMark Time Spy stress test, the SER5 Pro scored an amazing 100%, the best result I’ve seen in any laptop or mini PC.
Fortunately, the SER5 Pro’s incredible performance doesn’t result in high power consumption. The power draw was only 3-4 watts at idle, and around 47 watts at maximum. Unlike many other small form-factor computers, the SER5 Pro is also very quiet. It made almost no noise when dealing with relatively lightweight tasks, and even in some benchmark tests, where the hardware was stressed to its limit, the fan noise was still quite tamed.
Verdict
The Beelink SER5 Pro is a well-rounded choice for a mini desktop. It has a small chassis that allows it to fit almost anywhere, plenty of ports for all kinds of external devices, superb networking, ample pep to complete all kinds of computing duties without lag, and efficient cooling to keep it running stably for a long period of time. The $469 starting price also seems decent for a model with 16GB dual-channel memory, 500GB NVMe SSD and a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro. All told, the Beelink SER5 Pro could be an inspirational choice for anyone who wants a small computer for their everyday tasks.

What are your thoughts on the hades canyon nuc? I doubt the beelink can handle serious gaming.

Beelink SEi12 mini PC review: a better investment than the Intel NUC 12

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Small form factor PCs are gradually taking over from conventional desktop computers, as their compact size and low power consumption are attractive to lots of consumers. The recently released Beelink SEi12, which rocks an Intel i5-1235U processor, plenty of RAM, a fast PCIe4.0x4 SSD and a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro operating system, may be a perfect choice for consumers looking for a compact personal computer for their everyday computing chores.
The good:
Premium design and compact size
Wi-Fi 6 and plenty of connectivity options
Performance better than higher-priced competitions
Easy to add memory and storage
Works with two 4K displays
Quiet even under heavy workloads
The bad:
No built-in card reader.
The Type-C port is data-only.
Specifications
OS: Windows 11 Pro
Processor: Intel Core i5-1235U
CPU: 10 cores, 12 threads @3.3-4.4GHz, 12MB Intel Smart Cache
GPU: Iris Xe Graphics EU80
RAM: 16 DDR4 3200MHz (dual-channel)
Storage: 1*m.2 2280 PCIe4.0*4 NVMe SSD (up to 2TB)
1* SATA3 2.5-inch HDD/SSD (up to 2TB)
Wireless: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2
Ports: USB 3.0*2, USB 2.0*2, USB-C (data only)*1, HDMI 2.0*2, 3.5mm Audio Jack*1, Gigabit Ethernet*1, DC-in*1
Dimensions: 126*113*42mm
Weight: 455g
What’s in the box
Beelink SEi12 Mini PC * 1
120W Power Adapter * 1
User Guide * 1
VESA Mount Bracket * 1
HDMI Cable * 2 (1m and 0.2m)
The retail packaging of the Beelink SEi12 is more attractive than ever. Along with the mini PC, you get a 19V-6.25A power adapter, two HDMI cables, a user guide, a bunch of screws, and a VESA mount bracket for attaching the mini PC to the back of a monitor.
Design: it’s one of a kind
Beelink continues to work on improving the design of their products. The SEi12 a simply gorgeous. Its plastic chassis is vented on four of its six sides, allowing efficient airflow to keep the mini PC cool and stable. Most of the perforated top panel is covered with high-quality felt cloth, giving it an interesting and premium look.
The fabric material used here is not only waterproof, but also immune to fingerprints. There Beelink branding and the SEi model name on the bottom-right corner are very subtle, blending in extremely well with the rest of the housing.
On the front of the SEi12, you will find the following: a power button with status LED, a 3.5mm audio jack with mic support, a Clear CMOS pinhole, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port, two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports.
The rear side plays host to two HMDI 2.0 ports, two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, and a DC-in port. As keen eyes might have noticed, the SEi12 doesn’t come with an SD card slot, you will need an external card reader if you transfer photos and video footages from your cameras frequently.
Both HDMI 2.0 ports support [email protected] video output, allowing you to connect the SEi12 to two displays simultaneously. Unlike other high-end Beelink mini PCs, the Type-C port on the front of the SEi12 only supports data transmission. It’s a letdown for those who prefer to work with more than two monitors.
The bottom cover has four rubber feet, texts showing how to enter BIOS and boot menu, and the screws that allow you to open the SEi12 and access the insides.
Compared to previous Beelink mini PC models, the SEi12 features an additional 4007 OS fan and an aluminum heat sink to keep the SSD cool. As a result of the improved cooling, the internals are more difficult to access than before. Older Beelink mini PCs only require you to remove four screws on the bottom panel to get to the motherboard, with the SEi12, you will need to unscrew 3 extra screws on the SSD cooling panel, which also serves as the bracket for a 2.5-inch HDD/SSD.
The hardware expansion in the SEi12 consists of an M.2 Type-2280 slot for PCle4.0*4 NVMe SSDs, a traditional 2.5-inch SATA3 drive bay, and two laptop-style SO-DIMM slots for the RAM. The M.2 2230 wireless card is also accessible under the pre-installed M.2 SSD.
Housing two storage drives in a system this compact is rather impressive. Beelink sells this PC as a ready-to-use system, you get either 16GB or 32GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory (in the form of Crucial brand memory sticks), and a super-fast 500GB Kingston PCIe4.0 NVMe SSD, onto which a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro is preinstalled.
To access the CPU, and other components of the PC, you will have to remove even more screws, but there's really no need to do that since nothing else is replaceable or upgradable. In terms of wireless connections, the SEi12 supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.
OS and Software
The Beelink SEi12 ships with a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro which, compared to Windows 10, brings more aesthetically pleasing UI, improved multiple desktops, built-in XBOX gaming, and better security features. Since this is the Pro Edition of Windows OS, you also get a few extra IT and business features.
The Windows 11 Pro here is also very clean, with no pre-installed 3rd party applications or bloatware. Besides regular Windows software, you can also load the Android subsystem on the SEi12 and run Android apps on the SEi12. If you are interested in open-source operating systems, the mini PC is also compatible with Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS and many other Linux distributions.
Performance
The SEi12 comes with the Intel Alder Lake Core i5-1235U processor, which runs at a 3.30 GHz base frequency and can increase its speed to 4.40 GHz in turbo mode. It bundles as many as 10 CPU cores (2 performance cores and 8 efficient cores), 12 threads, 12MB Intel smart cache, and has a TDP of 15 Watts. The SoC handles the graphics part too, you’ll get a very capable Intel Iris Xe EU80 iGPU with a dynamic frequency of up to 1.2GHz. There’s also 16GB/32GB dual-channel memory, and a 500GB PCIe4.0x4 NVMe SSD under the hood.
Benchmarks
In terms of CPU performance, the SEi12 is a huge step up from mini PCs with Intel Tiger Lake quad-core processors. In Cinebench R23, it completely blew the Intel i7-1165G7 NUC 11 Pro out of the water, scoring 11% higher in single-core and 42% higher in multi-core. It also handily beat the Apple Mac mini and the Beelink SER5 Pro in both subtests.
Geekbench 5 measures the computer's single-core and multi-core power, for everything from checking emails to taking pictures to playing music, or all of it at once. The results reveal how close the tested system is to the cutting-edge. What makes the Geekbench special is that it allows us to compare system performance across devices, operating systems, and processor architectures. The SEi12 scored 1619 in single core, 7475 in multi-core, way above systems with the Intel Tiger Lake mobile CPUs.
PCMark 10 is a holistic performance suite developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). We use it to assess overall system performance in different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows like word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score, and higher numbers are better. The 5284-point finish from the SEi12 is well above the 4,000 points we consider excellent, and it's a very respectable showing for a PC this small.
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. Like always, I ran three different 3DMark subtests on the SEi12: Sky Diver, Fire Strike, and Time Spy, which are suited to different types of systems. Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark which tests how well a system can handle DirectX 12 games. The other two are both DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to slim laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The SEi12 scored 1343 in Time Spy, 3686 in Fire Strike, and 12443 in Sky Diver, falling behind the Intel NUC 11 Pro and Beelink’s very own SER5 Pro.
According to CrystalDiskMark, the 500GB PCIe4.0x4 solid-state drive in the mini PC has excellent reading and writing speeds. It allows you to boot into Windows 11 Pro in only a few seconds. Launching big creativity applications and 3D games is also incredibly fast.
Content Creation
With such a beefy processor inside, the SEi12 has absolutely no problem of seeing us through common home and office duties. It is also quite capable when dealing with relatively demanding creativity tasks.
The SEi12 stayed smooth and responsive even when I was adding complex effects and renders to 4K video footages, it almost felt as fast as my desktop PC, which features an AMD Ryzen5-5600G CPU and an Nvidia GeFore GTX1660 Ti GPU. Encoding a 3-minute 1080P/30fps video in Handbrake, the SEi12 took 1 minute, 51 seconds, which was a lot shorter than the 2 minutes, 36 seconds the Intel NUC 11 Pro took to finish the same task.
Gaming
Even though the SEi12 is using an integrated GPU for graphics-intensive tasks, its gaming capability is on par with PCs with entry-level discrete graphics cards. Running League of Legend at 1080P and medium quality setting, the average frame rate was 131 fps, the visuals are extremely smooth on my 144Hz gaming monitor. Even when I switched to 4K and high settings, LOL still averaged 71 fps, good enough for an enjoyable gaming experience.
Genshin Impact was playable at 1080P and medium setting, I saw an average of 41 fps, and didn’t notice any dips even in intense fighting scenes. Switching to lowest quality setting will improve the average frame rate to 56 fps.
Most of the other games ran fine at moderate settings, but somehow, I failed to launch Conqueror’s Blade on the SEi12, as the game constantly got stuck at the animation in the very beginning.
These are the results of all the games I tested on the Beelink SEi12, quite promising for a mini desktop PC with such a small footprint. However, if you want to enjoy the most graphics-intensive titles at higher settings, you will probably be better off with the Beelink GTR6, which rocks an even more powerful AMD Ryzen9-6900HX processor and a 12-core Radeon 680M iGPU.
Video Playback
Intel iGPUs are known to have amazing video codec support. According to Bluesky DXVA checker, the Iris Xe Graphics EU80 iGPU can support most video formats of up to 4K and 8K. When I was playing an 8K video clip, the CPU utilization was only 1%-2%, while the GPU usage also stayed below 50%. Streaming YouTube videos in Chrome was also no problem for the SEi12, including 8K/60fps videos.
Networking
The SEi12 has a Wi-Fi 6 compatible network card that works well with my TP-Link Wi-Fi6 router. However, if you want even higher speeds, you can use the Gigabit Ethernet jack on the back of the mini PC and connect it through a cable to the network.
Stability, power consumption and noise
Although the 12th generation Intel processor inside is extremely fast and can reach high frequencies when necessary, the dual cooling fans, heat sinks and copper pipes under the hood are super effective in keeping the SEi12 cool and stable. In the 3DMark Time Spy stress test, the mini PC scored a solid 99.7%, ranking above most mini PCs I've tested. In the AIDA64 Stability Test, the temperature of the CPU never surpassed 90 degrees in one hour of running in full load.
The SEi12’s higher performance does result in high power consumption, though. The power draw was around 13 watts at idle, and around 73 watts at maximum. In comparison, the Intel NUC 11 Pro draws around 8 watts at idle, while the Beelink SER5 Pro draws only 3.5 watts. Fortunately, the included 120W adapter never needs to work too hard to keep the mini PC going as mighty as it could be.
As long as I did not stress the processor inside the SEi12, the mini PC was perfectly quiet. Even in demanding tasks such as benchmark testing, where the hardware was pushed to its limit, the noise made by the fans was still rather tamed. I used to be bothered by the fan noise picked up by my Creative Live! MIC when dubbing the review videos on the Intel NUC 11 Pro. After switching to the Beelink SEi12, that problem was gone.
Verdict
The Beelink SEi12 is a well-rounded mini desktop PC. Its small footprint allows it to fit almost anywhere. There are plenty of ports for all kinds of external devices. The mini PC also offers solid performance for dealing with common computing duties without lag, as well as efficient cooling to keep it running stably for all day long.
The price of this mini PC starts from $459, which includes 16GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory, 500GB PCIe4.0x4 SSD, and a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro. In comparison, the Intel i7-1165G7 NUC 11 Pro with the same amount of storage will cost you $815.99, even though it is powered by a much weaker processor. The Beelink SEi12 is obviously missing premium features like dual Thunderbolt ports, a built-in SD card reader, and a 2.5Gbps Ethernet jack, but its price will probably compel most of consumers to question the necessity of these features.

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