Beelink Micro PC's (SER5 5500U)

[ctechbob]

I'd been thinking for a while now that I wanted to upgrade my desktop PC here at home. The old AMD 6800K was getting a bit outdated and frankly it makes a TON of heat in my room (100Watt CPU). Got to thinking that I'd try out one of the new 'Micro' PC's that are flooding the market. My brother had mentioned that he'd picked up a few BeeLink ones for using around the house for various things.

Essentially what these things are is a laptop crammed into a box. They have a few more options, such as the multiple display outputs etc. There are a few things you can upgrade on these, Memory, the internal SSD, and there is a slot for a 2.5" SSD that can be added if you choose. They also come pre-loaded with Windos 11 Pro with no bloatware at all installed, which is nice. You could also run Linux on them if that's your jam.

I ended up going with the SER5 5500U. It is based on a 15 watt laptop CPU. Certainly not bleeding edge, but it is about 70% faster than my current desktop and makes about 1/5th the heat. I'm having to move my big spinning drive to an external enclosure, but that's not a big deal and I won't have an optical drive unless I stick one of mine in an external enclosure, but I couldn't tell you the last time I burned a BR or DVD anyways, so that can wait.

So far it has been a win win. A $259 computer that is sitting here running 3 monitors that is about the size of a couple decks of cards. Using the Dispay Port/HDMI/USB C outputs and off it goes.

So far, I'm plenty impressed with this little thing. Certainly a lot cooler in this room.

With a VISA sitting on top for scale:

Old CPU, New CPU:

 

[ka9mnx]

Good deal!!!

About six months ago our home theater computer started showing it's age. It was a gen 3 i3 Intel. The wife's, and my, computers were of the same vintage (actually the same motherboard). I was interested in a small low power replacement and began looking at the Intel NUC's. I ended up with a gen 6 i3 Intel NUC from ebay for under $100. It came with no ram or hard drive. I purchased an NVME M.2 for the operating system, 8g of DDR4 ram and installed the 2T spinning back up disk inside the box.
This thing is awesome! Fast, quiet and all on 15 watts. Within 3 months I replaced the wife's computer and mine with the same.

Caveat: I get away with older, cheaper hardware because we use Linux Debian here. "My house is very dark. We have no Windoz".

 

[ctechbob]

Good deal!!!

About six months ago our home theater computer started showing it's age. It was a gen 3 i3 Intel. The wife's, and my, computers were of the same vintage (actually the same motherboard). I was interested in a small low power replacement and began looking at the Intel NUC's. I ended up with a gen 6 i3 Intel NUC from ebay for under $100. It came with no ram or hard drive. I purchased an NVME M.2 for the operating system, 8g of DDR4 ram and installed the 2T spinning back up disk inside the box.
This thing is awesome! Fast, quiet and all on 15 watts. Within 3 months I replaced the wife's computer and mine with the same.

Caveat: I get away with older, cheaper hardware because we use Linux Debian here. "My house is very dark. We have no Windoz".

I forgot to mention in my first post. The $259 on these includes 16GB of Crucial ram and a 500gb M.2 SSD. They're ready to go out of the box, which is nice.

Even the upgrades to the 32gb of ram and bigger HD's are priced resonably as well. It's not really any cheaper to do the upgrades yourself in this case, just order what you want from the get-go.

I also popped a $35 Chomebox in the camper. I know that camping is about getting away, but sometimes you need to do research or buy something while you're on site and I am one of the few (I think) that can't stand using a phone for 'real' computer things.

You can see it peeking out from the left side of the TV.

 

[ka9mnx]

Roger on trying to use a phone as a computer!

 

[SR20DE]

These mini PCs are great. Intel recently announced they were shutting down their NUC line of mini PCs though. Hope it doesn't hurt the industry but it seems like there's enough newer brands that they'll keep going.

 

[ctechbob]

They're probably shutting it down because they can't compete, or won't complete with the newcomers. Not enough profit in it I'd guess.

 

[Merek]

I have the A10-7850k but never really was a primary system for me and mostly used with Linux, cloning, etc... it never was the fastest machine, I always felt it was a glorified dual core cpu at best and AMD dropped that lineup after a short period. Given the right upgrades it would still be decent for today's use but totally not cost effective compared to other options.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

These mini PCs are great. Intel recently announced they were shutting down their NUC line of mini PCs though. Hope it doesn't hurt the industry but it seems like there's enough newer brands that they'll keep going.

I have a NUC and the materials and overall build quality is FAR above most of the other mini PC's on the market. Shame they decided to take their ball and go home but I understand why. People are generally fine with cheap junk that works. Computers nowadays are seen as disposable. The Ace PC branded mini computer I bought not that long ago was absolute garbage.

 

[racer12306]

I'm in the market to buy something in this form factor for work. Glad to see a positive review. There's so many no name ones out there that it's hard to take a stab in the dark.

I don't need that much power, so I might get away with the $200 one.

 

[ka9mnx]

These mini PCs are great. Intel recently announced they were shutting down their NUC line of mini PCs though. Hope it doesn't hurt the industry but it seems like there's enough newer brands that they'll keep going.

Intel was never in the motherboard or computer business, they made and sold processors. NUC was a niche project that was never expected to get corporate support. The NUC's generated about $250M in a billion dollar sales company. The build quality of genuine NUC's cannot be compared to the competition, hence, the high initial price.

Many of the competitor NUC products use the Intel board so, as they may be shutting down built computers, I think they will continue building motherboards. For a while at least.

 

[JustinH]

Yep I replaced my fathers ancient desktop with one of these running windows 10, and literally bolted it to the back of a monitor. Works fine for him to look at facebook pictures.

 

[ctechbob]

I have a NUC and the materials and overall build quality is FAR above most of the other mini PC's on the market. Shame they decided to take their ball and go home but I understand why. People are generally fine with cheap junk that works. Computers nowadays are seen as disposable. The Ace PC branded mini computer I bought not that long ago was absolute garbage.

This one isn't too bad. Mostly metal case, Kingston SSD and crucial memory.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

This one isn't too bad. Mostly metal case, Kingston SSD and crucial memory.

I've never seen one 'in the flesh', but Beelink seems to be one of the much better Mini PC brands out there.