Beelink ME Pro Power Consumption and Noise
With such a low-power SoC at the heart of the ME Pro, Beelink’s NAS is starting in a very good place when it comes to power consumption and noise.
At idle and without any additional hard drives or SSDs installed, we measured the system idling at 14 to 15 Watts. Meanwhile, if we load down the system with our two Seagate Barracuda hard drives and another couple of SSDs and try to push for maximum power consumption, we measured 42 to 46 Watts. So even under a full load with all the storage devices it can handle, the Me Pro is a lightweight system as far as power consumption goes.
With just one laptop-size blower fan for cooling, the NAS’s acoustics are pretty good as well. At idle, the box does not reach past our lab noise floor of 34dBA. Under full load (again with hard drives), that increases to about 38dBA, with most of that noise coming from the aforementioned hard drives. So much so that, in practice, the compute module itself may as well be silent, as it is going to be the hard drives clunking that generates most of the total system noise.
Key Lessons Learned
Even as a subset of the larger computing market, NASes end up covering a rather wide spectrum of capabilities and price points. And while there’s certainly something nice to be said about the biggest and most powerful units, it is also great that there are NASes at the other end of the spectrum as well in order to provide storage for smaller use cases. That is the exact scenario for which Beelink’s ME Pro is designed.
The tiny dual hard drive box is barely bigger than the couple of drives it can hold – and indeed, it is smaller than some competing dual bay NASes. So even among small form factor NASes, the ME Pro is particularly pint-sized. This is a simple storage solution that makes it incredibly handy as a small box that can be tucked in a corner, out of the way of everything else. Beelink has even added WiFi capabilities that, while not optimizing the NAS’s storage performance, further improve its portability by allowing the box to be placed anywhere there is power, no hardline Ethernet required.
The low power requirements also mean that this is an especially quiet box. If not for the hard drives you would likely never hear it, which further underscores the flexibility in where the NAS can be installed.
The trade-off to such a small box, however, is that it is purpose-built for storage tasks and little else. Beelink built a NAS, not a full-fledged server, so there is not much in the way of spare resources for running other workloads. 12GB of DRAM and an entry-level quad-core processor will be enough for NAS duties and maybe a virtual machine or a few LXC containers, but it is not the kind of system that you are going to be running a giant home lab off of.
Final Words
In creating the ME Pro, Beelink set out to make a small and simple dual bay NAS, and they have accomplished just that. The small storage box packs in everything needed for a basic NAS, with room not only for a pair of hard drives for high capacities, but also a trio of SSD slots as well, allowing for a rather expansive set of storage options overall.
Meanwhile, the Intel Alder Lake-N platform backing the system will not turn any heads, but it provides enough compute performance to meet the needs of the NAS, especially as the system will not need to support any complex RAID configurations beyond RAID 1. This has allowed Beelink to really focus on the network and storage sides of “network-attached storage,” pairing the aforementioned storage capabilities with above-average networking capabilities such as a 5GbE port. All of this without breaking the bank on system costs or breaking the silence in whatever room the NAS is installed in.
Ultimately, the Beelink ME Pro is a prime example of an entry-level NAS. It does what it needs to as a network storage device, and it does it well. For NAS buyers who do not need anything more, it is exactly the kind of box they should be looking for.
Where To Buy
If you wanted to find the Beelink ME Pro, here is an Amazon Affiliate link. Also, you can find an Amazon Affiliate link to the 28TB enclosures we shucked for the hard drives as well.
