The Plug Fest
First off, we are going to keep everything we test documented in this forum thread. If folks find other cards, drives, or memory that work or do not work, please drop a note in that thread. We bought a ton of hardware to try, plus looking for hardware around the studio. There are Amazon affiliate links in here that you can use if you wish to support us. The system arrived from Minisforum, but we spent several thosand dollars on items to try.
The first one was that we tested not just the Minisforum supported maximum of 64GB of DDR5 SODIMM memory, but also 2x 48GB for 96GB of memory and did not have any issues.
When we saw the PCIe slot, the first thing we thought of was the QNAP QM2-2P2G2T2 (Amazon Affiliate.) This card has two M.2 SSD slots plus two 2.5GbE ports. We were excited at the potential capability gain, and that it had a fan for cooling the card. Sadly, the system would not boot with this card installed.
For those that may also want 10Gbase-T, we tried a super-cheap NICGIGA Marvell Aquantia AQC113C card (Amazon Affiliate.) It was by far the cheapest we could find after discounts, and it worked no problem.
We added a quad port Intel X710-da4 card. This had an issue with the cover and retention mechanism for the low profile PCIe card slot that interfered with the top SFP+ cage. We ended up removing the rear faceplate, installing the card, then re-installing the faceplate and then the card worked.
The Broadcom BCM9574 was interesting since it was a few mm too long for the chassis. We managed to install the card by removing the front faceplate. It would have been nice if Minisforum tried a few more cards as there were at least two of these physical installation challenges.
As one might imagine, a Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx dual 25GbE card worked without issue. (Amazon Affiliate.)
On the storage side, we tried a Broadcom LSI SAS 3008 (9300-8e) that folks may want to use to conenct to disk shelves. That worked. (Amazon Affiliate.)
We tried the recent QNAP TL-D400S we reviewed, a 4-Bay SATA JBOD DAS enclosure, using its included SFF-8088 connector SATA card, and that worked. With 18TB hard drives, that gave us 72TB raw capacity. (Amazon Affiliate.)
We also tried the QNAP TL-D800S we reviewed. An 8-Bay SATA JBOD DAS. We used the included card and that worked as well. (Amazon Affiliate.)
Cards like the 25GbE Mellanox NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPU did not work. We tried the MikroTik CCR2004-1G-2XS-PCIe 2x SFP28 25GbE router on a PCIe card and that worked (Amazon Affiliate), but was limited to supported OSes (e.g. not Windows.) The AMD E9173 GPU we pulled from a Dell Wyse 5070 worked. That GPU is slower than the onboard graphics, but it adds display outputs and has active cooling. We tried a Linkreal 16-port internal Broadcom SAS controller to no avail. Cheap M.2 adapters worked fine.
Next, we are going to get to our power consumption and noise and key lessons learned.
This part is repeated twice in the article (Page 5), I’d edit one of them out real quick:
“We spent a ton of time and money on this review testing cards that we thought folks would be interested in. This was one of those reviews that we were very excited for the product, so we put extra effort into.”
So it doesn’t support PCIe bifurcation? Shame.
Were any other plx cards attempted excluding the QNAP qm2-2p2g2t?
It would be nice to try a simple dual NVME. Aiming for 5 nvme ssds at using the maximum bandwidth available.
Looks like they won’t ship until Jan 20? I have 2 on order, also have 2 RTX A2000’s. Should make for an interesting homelab.
How does the iGPU on this compare to a laptop dGPU like a laptop version of an RTX 2070? If significantly worse, do they make graphics cards that would fit in this unit’s pcie slot that would provide that sort of slightly boosted level of graphics performance?
Would something like a OWC Thunderbolt enclosure work on these?
Is there a low profile single slot a2000 that fits?
Anyone who is buying one and planning to use it for firewall duty, could you check throughput of IMIX traffic when running through Suricata or ZenArmor? Really interested what this CPU can do.
I hope to see an AMD minipc with dual 10 GbE soon.
Was a link to the QNAP NAS through the onboard 10gb SFP port successful with these Cheap SFP+ Optics (Amazon Affiliate link)?
Would be nice to see the power consumption from wall in ‘on-demand’ or power safe mode in idle in promox.
Frustratingly, on the uk store site the 12900H model is no longer showing a barebones option, and that’s the one I would be interested in :/
I would buy a lot of these if it had PCIe 16x with Bifurcation, and IPMI. So much potential…. Maybe a PRO version or Rev 2 model with these features
Now where’s the AMD version of this powerhouse!?!?
Going to order at least one soon.
@All the ones concerned with bifurcation: you can circumvent this lack via active adapters sporting onboard PCie switches. Costly, but effective when lacking bifurcation.
Is the case material aluminum or steel?
i just ordered one and i will be getting the power usage down as much as i can. (not going to be using hyperthreading for starters and limiting burst.)
Consider their weird NIC choices on their AMD mini PCs, I wouldn’t put hope on the AMD version of this platform, but if you are not so into VMware camp like me you would be fine.
And TBH I would rather they make the chassis thicker or wider so I can have the PSU internalized, than finding ways to accommodate this god horrid large power brick that would get moved easily and take up a lot of space, especially when you buy a cluster of them.
What about using an external thunderbolt expansion case for those who want to link in a 4090? I know that begs the question of “why mini-pc” but it would allow for a flexible arrangement in a short-rack depth.
Also, for v2.0, ECC support pls!
Wish you would stop getting my hopes up with 10GbE in the title.. I need ethernet.. For love of all that’s holy can we get Base-T instead of SFP+
I have my CAT7 already run, what I’m in need of is 10Gbase-T!
Which x710 nic are they using? Some of the models only support 1/10 instead of 1/2.5/5/10.
No block diagram?
Just got mine in. I was wanting to run a standard SATA SSD, Will that not work or is there some config im missing?
The BIOS is very basic so i cant tell on a hardware side if the device is being recognized.
I ordered a barebone MS-01 system (based on the i9-12900H) on January 13, 2024. Given the website’s very clear warning, I thought it wouldn’t ship until March 29th. To my very pleasant surprise, it arrived today (January 24, 2024)! Now I have to scramble to pick up done memory and NVMEs!
Wow…the space under the heat dissipation bracket & fan is TIGHT. I applied a thin heatsink (.5mm silica gel pad & 1mm copper plate) to the first SSD, but there wasn’t enough clearance for the second SSD!
Can someone please suggest a beefier power supply for the Minisforum MS-01? Along the line of 240W+ that will be compatible with the MS-01. Thanks in advance.
Can someone tell me if I can connect an eGPU via the USB4 (thunderbolt 3) port? If so this would help greatly to over come the power, low profile PCIe slot, and heat limitation for attaching a dGPU to the system.
Great review
Question on the primary NVMe slot and the specs. They state 2TB max on the website. Can a larger M.2 drive capacity fit with double sided memory chips or will it only support single sided M.2 drives up to 2TB max only?
What is the hight of that heatsink? wondering if a 990 Pro with heatsink will fit?
@Joe Pepsi: You know you can put in a 10GBASE-T SFP+, right?
Anyone got the KVM working? I enabled Intel AMT with KVM and can access the WebUI. But there ist no KVM to connect to.
hello about the Bradcom lsi 9300-8e card, it seems that all the card i found on amazon or ebay seems to be very long… wath is the lenght of the tested card?
in fact i want to replace asm1164 qnap card (not compatilble with my freebsd xigmanas ) by a LSI compatible model and i want to know to by one..
could some body helpe me
Any recommendations for a cheep JBOD that can be used with a HBA on IT mode to run with proxmox and TrueNAS Scale? Thank you kindly
@mishan you can use lsi 9300-8e from china wia ebay