Minisforum N5 Pro Internal Hardware Overview
The compute tray pulls out of the front of the system after the bottom two screws and front magnetic cover are removed. Once it is out, you are likely to see a familiar layout if you have seen pieces like those from our MS-01 and MS-A2 reviews.
Removing the blower fan via three screws, we can see the memory and CPU heatsink.
The CPU in this case is the aptly named AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX Pro 370. We will get into more of what that means from a CPU side in the peformance section, but it is a fast CPU with a solid iGPU and NPU.
Here is a quick profile of the cooler and of the PCIe slot. The low profile PCIe slot is a PCIe Gen4 x16 physical slot but is only x4 electrical. This gives one the ability to add more storage either internal SSD or external via external connectors, more networking, or even a small and low power GPU. 25GbE SFP28 is a good option as an example of what we used in here. The one caution we would have is that many high-end data center focused cards are passively cooled, and this does not have the best airflow. If you find an actively cooled card with a blower style fan in a low profile single slot design, that is probably going to be the winner here if you go to higher power. Otherwise, we would strongly suggest using lower power cards.
The memory is neat. Here we have two 16GB DDR5 SODIMMs for 32GB, but there is a twist. Since we have the Ryzen PRO series processor, we have ECC memory support and Minisforum sells these with up to 96GB (2x 48GB) of DDR5 ECC SODIMMs. That is a standout of this platform as it is a modern Zen 5 CPU, with ECC support.
Flipping the compute tray over, we can see the data and power connectivity to the SATA side.
The connector slides into a slot in the chassis and provides power and data connectivity to the top section. This is an elegant design, especially for what is effectively a first-generation Minisforum NAS.
Here is a close up of the connector.
The other side of the compute tray is for storage.
There is another fan on this side to help circulate air here so it does not become a stagnant oven.
Under the fan, we have three M.2 drives. There is one that came with base OS storage then two data drives. The two data M.2 drives fit either 2280 (80mm) or 22110 (110mm) NVMe SSDs.
Here is a look from another angle including the white power connector on the side.
That is for the U.2 adapter board.
The U.2 adapter board is a custom board that plugs into the three M.2 slots and provides one M.2 slot for an OS boot SSD, then two 7mm U.2 slots for data SSDs.
Here is the bare board installed.
Here it is with power hooked up and drives installed.
On top we have the M.2 for our OS boot SSD.
We then have two U.2 SSDs. These are U.2 7mm drive slots which limits what can be done here. 15mm drives are more common and are used for high-capacity drives. 7mm drives tend to run cooler, but also offer a lot less capacity.
Worth noting on the SSD side is that bandwidth is not ideal. There are four PCIe lanes that go between the drives so they are x1 x1 x2 not all three x4. To us, the reason then to use the U.2 drives is potentially capacity while also getting power loss protection. If you wanted an ultra-fast 100GbE NAS, this is going to be the reason that this is not the ideal platform for that.
One other small internal feature here is a USB header for those who still use these for internal OS boot or software license key applications.
Next, let us quickly get to the topology.
I’ve only got 3 complaints
1. Please ship without your OS. TrueNAS is fine
2. SFP+ instead of Base-T even if it’s just for 1 port
3. Make me believe you’re gonna help if there’s a problem
Honestly, my only complaint with my experiences with Minisforums is their garbage BIOS support/updates/breakages for their platforms.
My last minisforums was the AMD 7945 based box. Literally had to stay on the launch BIOS because all of the fix BIOS they released after the fact made things worse. Stability, memory support, all of it.
That being said, wanted to point out there is no link back to this article on the youtube video.
Once again, can’t even label the performance charts? Come on, do better. Also, under Power Use, you state eight 28TB drives? In a 5 bay NAS? Magic.
A few slightly curious decisions; but I’m pleasantly reminded of the older HP microservers, NL54-era, from before they decided to switch away from situationally appropriate mobile-focused CPUs and toward basically the most depressing xeons intel bothers to sell(along with things like typing boot m.2 to the ILO kit).
Please, please, please, please mention in the first page of the article if the system can run TrueNAS or boot an alternative OS. It saves a lot of time.
Thanks for the very nice review! I’ve put this on my “would be nice to have but hard to justify over my old self-built TrueNAS box” list. Looking at the specs, the price is actually very competitive. Not much more expensive than mini PCs with the same CPU:
999 EUR Minisforum AI X1 Pro (including 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD)
1050 USD GMKtec EVO-X1 (including 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD)
Did anyone else also think that it’s very unusual to see support for 110 mm m.2 (22110)? In fact geizhals.eu only lists 14 models with this size, compared to 1324 models with 2280.
I just bought one of these. I fail to be impressed with the OS that comes pre-installed. When booting up into it there is a label describing it as “beta”. I’d not expect something sold for $1000 to be “beta”. I wish it were easier to add and remove NVME/M2 drives cause doing so requires opening up the machine. Adding/removing hard drives in any of the 5 bays is very easy. It’s a tad pricey but I do appreciate that it can hold all kinds of storage devices.
Did you try the QNAP 25G NIC card in the PCIe slot?
I bought one of these on Amazon, and I love it. It was just under $1600 for the model with 96GB of LPDDR5 ECC memory.
I’ve been looking for a capable mini-server to act as a secondary host for virtual machines (so I can do updates on the main VM server) and also to act as a server for regular backups. This thing is perfect.
It has a very-capable processor and space for up to 3 NVME M2 SSDs and 5 full-size hard drives. I bought the version that includes 96GB of ECC memory, and I installed 3 Adlink D60 2TB SSDs. These are high-endurance (3,800 TBW) PCIE 4 SSDs with Power Loss Protection for a great price.
I removed the built-in NAS software it comes with and instead installed Proxmox VE and Proxmox Backup Server. The former gives a powerful and flexible environment for hosting virtual machines that can operate as part of a cluster with my other Proxmox server.
I use the SATA hard drives to create a separate ZFS pool for Proxmox Backup Server. This allows rapid, incremental backups of all my VMs and incorporated deduplication to greatly reduce storage needs.
All this gives me the power of a commercial small server for a lot less money and in a much smaller and quieter space.
So far it has performed perfectly and is cool and nearly silent.
What about remote management? Are there any headers for the power of reset buttons, for piKVM-style addons, or even PICe boards?
Would the BIOS even recognize the Asrock PAUL impi card?