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Beelink Mini S (Win11 Pro, Intel N5095, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 2x HDMI) US$122.41 (~A$182.13) Shipped @ Beelink Official AliExpress

1050
JAN9

On sale from Beelink is this budget Mini PC that's a great option if you're after a low power consumption PC, Linux box or a Raspberry Pi alternative. It uses the 15W Intel Celeron N5095 CPU with 4 cores/4 threads and can decode a lot of 4K, HDR and VP9 content thanks to the Intel UHD graphics.

Other features include Windows 11 Pro, 2x HDMI 2.0 with 4K@60Hz support, 8GB LPDDR4 RAM, 128GB M.2 SATA SSD, 2.5" SATA port for additional storage, 4x USB 3.1 Gen1 ports, 3.5mm audio jack, Gigabit Ethernet LAN, WiFi ac, Bluetooth 4.2, VESA mounting and actively cooled with a heatsink and fan.

For reviews Techtablets have covered the basics and ETA Prime the gaming/emulation. The two most notable downsides is that it uses M.2 SATA instead of M.2 NVMe and the replaceable RAM is Single Channel and not Dual Channel, so an upgrade to 16GB RAM is recommended. Given this is Beelink's budget mini pc this comes as no surprise.

The base model includes 8GB of RAM with 128GB storage and you can pay more for 8GB/256GB, 16GB/256GB and 16GB/512GB configurations.

  • Apply the coupon JAN9 at checkout

AU$ based on current Mastercard rate, GST inclusive and stacks with cashback.

Original Coupon Deal

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closed Comments

  • +5

    FYI

    The CPU features the DirectX 12-capable 16 EU UHD Graphics iGPU running at 450 MHz to 750 MHz. The graphics adapter is capable of driving up to 3 displays with resolutions up to 4096x2160@60; it will happily decode HEVC, AVC, VP9, MPEG-2 and other popular video codecs. The latest AV1 codec is not supported, though.

    • +1

      Yeah, this is a great little device but it is stupidly slow in both CPU and GPU.
      It can work as a TV Box or Low-Power Office PC. I just hoped we would see less and less of these devices, and more and more of something more decent, like an AMD r3-5400u.

      • +1

        There's plenty of Ryzen Mini PCs around. As you'd expect they cost a lot more compared to these low power Intel CPUs.

        • +6

          I know, but my little rant just to get that off my chest.
          These Atom processors, which are evolved Celeron processors, which themselves are evolved Pentium processors, are just pretty weak. We've had the Core-i for more than a decade, and Ryzen for half that. Enough time has passed that we should be seeing "acceptable" hardware in the entry/low budget devices.

          We aren't.
          Intel is charging a lot for them, and in turn AMD is also participating.
          Any decent Mini PC is at least AUD $500 price, but moreso it is closer to a AUD $900+ price point. You may aswell get a laptop instead, or buy a used model for even more performance per dollar.

          • +2

            @Kangal: N5095 has over 25% more grunt than my n5030 4gb laptop according to passmark.
            My laptop comfortably runs everything in a home environment, on win10, AS LONG AS you run major aps one at a time. Multitasking is limited. But it can happily watch x265 vids and download via VPN in the background whilst doing the occasional google search without lag.

            It even plays Rimworld fine, no lag. These cpus have come a long way since Atom.

          • +8

            @Kangal: This is $180 for something that is ten times for practical and powerful than a Pi4 8gb, at a cheaper price.

            It doesn’t need to play games. Not everyone plays games. It won’t support more than 8 browser tabs. Big whoop.

            It is very useful for a subset of buyers
            Who want a basic kiosk, media pc, server or desktop.

            • +1

              @Bedgrub: Mate bought one for the sole purpose of being a citrix box for his WFH needs. It just runs.

            • @Bedgrub: Idk how these things get sold so short all the time… The whole 'only have 8 browser tabs open thing is garbage. I have a full Plex automation setup running on a j4105, including running ark servers, subtitle sync using voice recognition, among other things. It handles it all like an absolute champ, hw transcodes 1080 and lower bitrate 4k with ease.

              And it never breaks 10w on the package. Insane efficiency. If people want high performance they can stop posting garbage on ozbargain and go buy new desktop PC.

              • +1

                @azza10: Why does it have to be one or the other?
                It is not preposterous for us to get a brand new Mini PC like this, for AUD $300 price point or lower. With specs such as an underclocked Quadcore CPU (Zen2 or Skylake, or newer), and a better iGPU (Vega 8 or Xe-96, or newer). It is very possible, it is just that Intel does not want to go that direction, and AMD (which is still recovering from its bankruptcy) is hesitant to neglect its shareholders.

                This chipset would be even more efficient. It's far from "high performance" but it is still much more serviceable in the modern age. I haven't used any Atom/Celeron/Pentium processor and thought to myself this is fast, or this is good-enough. We need to move on, or keep these devices here in the market while bringing down the price of these other modest systems.

    • The latest AV1 codec is not supported, though.

      Yeah, I get the feeling AV1 encode & decode will be kept behind the ARC dedicated GPUs. This makes me sad because AV1 is freaking fantastic!

      But this will make a fantastic lil media server.

  • +3

    Thinking about one of these for a Plex server for some light 4K transcoding.

    • +2

      honestly i dont think it will transcode very well, get an optiplex and put a low profile gpu in it (1030, 1050ti)

      • +1

        this is the same cpu/gpu as in the Synology 920+ which transcodes fine

      • Those graphics cards are total waste of money, and ongoing power draw for a media server.
        These boxes transcode brilliantly in hardware, whilst the CPU barely drags it's arse off the deck at all.
        I have one of the older ones with a J4125 as a Plex server and it's awesome - transcodes multiple 4k streams without breaking a sweat.

    • +1

      Also keen to hear whether this would be good for a Plex server, particularly compared with something like this: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/749066

      • +1

        Nvidia shield tv pro

        • I had a shield pro, and I have one of these. These Beelink's kick the shield to pieces as a Plex media server.

          • @TheMoose: Ive never had issue with shield. What makes this so much better?

            • @Jklaro: For one thing…..it's slow.
              The shield is designed to play media, not act as a media server. Making it do both produces a very slow experience which is annoying.

              It also has insufficient (onboard) storage for the media library (assuming you have a reasonably sized library or are going to grow the one you have) as well as all the other apps you want to load on it, so then you have to add a USB device to it as well and offload the PMS library.
              If you want to back-up your PMS library, that's also painful.
              You also need somewhere else to store the media, or a VERY large USB device.

              I find these Beeplex devices (running Linux) run the PMS brilliantly and all my media is remotely mounted from the NAS.
              The Beeplex has enough storage to house the PMS library and all the cached images/data, and does transcoding like a champ, and is also more responsive.
              I can also run jobs on it to do my backups, so I can restore/recover the PMS database/library if something ever dies.

              Then I just use the native Plex frontend on my TV to play it.

              • @TheMoose: Ive been using my nvida shield for many years. I have a nas in my study that hold all my media and through shield settings mount that nas.

                I dont do remote streaming only local. Maybe thats where it might struggle not sure.

                But for me local 4k streaming plex, nas and shield no problem.

    • There’s a review here

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2jgdJzygO-Q

      Sounds like it’ll be ok for 1080 transcoding for a few devices.

      • Different model in the review (Beelink U59), not the Beelink Mini S from this deal. The B59 also runs dual-channel where the S doesn't.

    • plex with linux is the go, no problem playing 30gb files with subtitles

    • Have you looked at Jellyfin as a replacement for plex?

    • -2

      Raspberry Pi 4 running a headless Linux lite does a great job running a Plex. Can transcode 4K or multiple 1080p streams at once. Most media doesn’t need transcoding depending on your player. Cheap and lower powered!

      • Pi is an absolute snail at transcoding…

        • -1

          Provided you have Plex pass to unlock hardware decoding it’s totally fine. Content starts with in seconds.

          • @squinly: Yep had Plex pass since it first started. Still dog slow unfortunately.

    • You need something with more power, This is a Mobile CPU with a fairly low end GPU.
      As mentioned previously get a Dell Optiplex or a HP in a small form factor and put in a low profile gpu that doesnt need external power.

      Then it will be more than enough, i have a GT1030 doing 50GB blueray files with ease.

    • Absolutely fine for light 4k. By light, stick to <20Mbit.

      I have a j4105 and it handles everything great.

  • +1

    Usable with Pfsense?

    • should be, although the lack of multiple ethernet ports might be an issue :/

      • Just need to connect some USB to Ethernet adapters and you're good to go.

        That reminds me, there's N5095 mini PCs with multiple 1G and 2.5G ethernet ports on Ali. I need to find one that works with the codes.

        • 😬 i cant imagine the speed would be good on a usb-ethernet cable.

          • +2

            @Leho: They run perfectly fine over USB 3.0, while USB 2.0 will only give you 100Mbps. I've used it in emergencies on servers where their NICs have failed and worked without issue.

          • +1

            @Leho: Totally fine with a USB 3.0 gbe adaptor. Would be fine on most sub-100mb home connections.

            I don’t recommend it though. Too much of a stuff around.

    • +2

      Couple of dollars off ($188.53) but this is the same chipset with two interfaces

      https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005076549630.html

      Trying to jump into Opnsense (not pfsense - lots of bad press around them) too

      • +4

        I'll have a deal on a mini PC with 4 network ports this evening around 7pm when one of the other AliExpress sales start.

        • Are you able to give a link before hand just so we can research the model?

          • +1

            @Saiya: No specific model as it's quite generic. Uses Intel i225-V B3 which is OpnSense compatible.

        • Thanks mate. Appreciated :)

  • Would this be enough just to surf the web, watch youtube and visit recipe websites ?

    • +4

      yep

    • +1

      Yes.

      You're asking very minimal specs, and this will handle that no problem.

      Surf the web is an open ended question, as long as you aren't trying to look at more than say 15 tabs? (someone else chime in) at once you'll be fine. Honestly it'll probably do double that in tabs, depending on what websites, as some are heavy usage; easy example being google maps with satellite view / perspective in 3D. But this is fine for that, as long as not too many tabs have a lot going on.

      128gb storage is fine for windows install, and a few other programs, but any more buy an external hdd and plug it in if you need it.

    • Yep it would be fine

    • +8

      If it can't do that - then this really can't do anything…

    • +2

      The machine itself is fast enough. It does have some cost cutting measures done to it and one of it being Intel Wireless-AC 3165. It is a 1x1 wireless card with the following specs:

      2.4GHz band:150Mbps ; 5GHz band: 433Mbps

      Unless your home has a decent mesh setup, it is quite likely you will be using the 2.4 Ghz band.

      Generally, the preference is at least have 2x2 wireless so the 2.4 GHz band would be 300Mbps. It's fine for what you want to do. The Wifi card is soldered onto the board so you cannot buy a better card to replace it. However, if you use wired connection, gigabit ethernet is certainly good enough.

      • I have deep pity for anyone still stuck on 2.4GHz…

      • +1

        Mesh isn’t really relevant.

    • +1

      yes, bought one of these Intel N5095 mini computer for my grandma, works wonder.

  • +1

    Need a plug converter. Not quite able to find good and cost effective ones here. The converters from China seem to be for Chinese plugs and the pins in China seem to be slimmer.

    • +1

      Get your Xiaomi power strips out.

      • +3

        Prefer to have it collecting dust. It is still in the box.

      • i see those Things and well are the heymaxs not fire starters ?

        • They have good internals and aren't generic rebranded shit with backwards wiring. I'd argue they're better internally than your cheap Kmart offerings.

  • My current office dell laptop i5 11th gen with 16GB RAM is just horribly slow. Just looking for some advice. For heavy office use, like excel with lots of tabs and macros running + browser also lots of tabs open… this is my daily job. … Plus my occasional gaming… Steam mainly… God of war or age of empire type games. Which Beelink mini pc would be a suitable choice ?

    Oh and does it take a very long time for the order to arrive on our shores ?

    • +8

      If you find your i5 11th gen with 16GB of RAM (and NVMe SSD, if Dell did not cut corner, it would be a PCIe gen 4 x4 SSD) slow, then this is not the solution. This mini PC is slower (it uses Intel Celeron mobile / laptop CPU, although Intel has now given that Celeron CPU 4 cores, no hyperthreading though).

      • Not this particular Intel Celeron model. I was thinking of other Beelink models like the GTR6 with Ryzen 9 6900HX or the SEi12 with Intel 12th gen i7 ? Would those fit my needs better or would they be overkill ?

        • igpu on 6900hx much better for gaming than 12th gen i7

        • You need to figure out the root cause of your current laptop feeling sluggish. If we are talking about Excel, office apps and browsers, based on your description, it seems to be a RAM issue. If your issue happens that you also game while leaving those apps and browser tabs opened, then it could be a RAM issue.

          Also, God of War and Age of Empire are two different types of games (in terms of GPU requirement). You are aware that Ryzen 9 6900HX (mobile / laptop CPU) does not beat Ryzen 5 5600 (desktop CPU) right?

          Check out these review:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UD48S1_otw
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0-9dWP8NK0

          If you want to game and must be a mini PC, then get 6900HX pack ($1200 before discount voucher). However, personally, I wouldn't play God of War on 720p.

          • @netsurfer: Thanks. I don't game on my work pc, can't install games. But when I have my excel + chrome + PowerPoint + word + edge + outlook + teams running it's already super slow. So not even thinking of running something else on it.

            I'll try to ask for a RAM upgrade. Knowing the tight arse my boss is, I doubt I'll get it.

            Hence I'm thinking of getting my own mini PC, cos my home desk space is limited. So I can use the machine for both purposes.

            • @BudgetAce: Chrome Tabs and MS Office apps use alot of memory. You should first try to only keep open apps that you need in the current moment. 16GB RAM should be plenty.
              If your excel macros are the culprit then you need to think about optimising it better. More RAM just pushes the issue down the line. It’s only going to get slower as the years go on.

              I’ve seen product managers keep 100 tabs open because they didnt want to lose the page, thats what bookmarks are for.

            • +1

              @BudgetAce: Check your ram usage on Task Manager. Should a see your answer pretty quickly, you’ll likely be out of ram or flogging the CPU. Take screenshots, use as a justification for an upgrade.

              Depending on your laptop, a 32gb upgrade usually isn’t very expensive.

            • @BudgetAce: I have a nearly identical spec'ed laptop (but lenovo)
              11th gen i5 is a decent chip, BUT, two major things to look out for

              1) Chrome tabs don't sit idle, they suck not just RAM but also CPU cycles. once I go over 10 tabs or so, I start to feel it chugging on "Eco mode"

              2) Most of these things are tuned for power efficiency and while the chip/cooling can happily sustain double the performance, most of them will max at 1.8GHz 80% CPU usage. There is normally a control somewhere in the laptop (maybe Dell software somewhere) that can unlock the cap (its called performance mode on lenovo) and it will then hit 2.6 GHz 100% CPU sustained.

              If you can't find the option, look into a software called throttle stop, it can remove the lock on the CPU.

          • @netsurfer: I can't tell you how many machines like yours never get restarted properly. Check if there is a backlog of failed or waiting updates and make sure they run through and restart after updates.

    • +3

      I would investigate whether your office PC is optimised correctly. Our finance team uses a mix of Dell 5400 through to 5430 Windows 10 Enterprise laptops, single 8 or dual 16GB paired with i5s and running either Office 365 32bit or 64bit versions. They usually have a dozen browser tabs, large Excel files with macros, Teams, Outlook with cached mailboxes and other apps running constantly.

      The silver Dell 5410 through to 5430 are plenty fast and this is with heavy group policy and third party security software running in the background.

    • +2

      If a 11th gen CPU is slow and crappy then it's probably because your company installs all sorts of spyware on it.

      • My bad. Doubled checked and it's a Intel 10th gen i5 with 16gb RAM and windows 10 pro. When I first got it. It was fine, after over a year, it's grown slower and slower and slower. And that is only with the excel + chrome + PowerPoint + word + edge + outlook + teams + god knows what other stuff they put running in the background

        • The slowing down after a year or so is not an uncommon scenario. If it’s not related to hardware it might be due to “Windows rot”.
          This condition is generally ascribed to a deterioration of the Windows Registry, caused by applications that use it improperly and don’t clean up after themselves.
          Using a registry cleaner won’t help either.
          Reinstalling Windows solves this problem. Frustrating and often time-consuming if you have many apps to reinstall, the sooner you do it the quicker you’ll be back to having a snappy system.

        • +1

          Back up your data (if not already using network or cloud profiles) and get a reimage to start from a clean base, if possible.

          Also find that MS advanced threat protection (if your org uses it) really slows some things down, compared to home setups. Check task manager and see what is going on if you think it should be quicker.

    • Do you use it closed with an external monitor by any chance? Could be overheating and throttling like my crappy Surface Laptop piece of shite. Has overheating issues even when open and sitting on an external cooling pad.

      • I do use an external monitor. But I don't run it closed cos I use the camera on the laptop for teams meetings.

        Doesn't make any difference. Many times in the middle of updating my excel, either the excel will freeze or my whole laptop will freeze. Until I close everything and restart it. Pain in the butt especially when I lose all the data I had entered on my excel

        • Many times in the middle of updating my excel, either the excel will freeze or my whole laptop will freeze. Until I close everything and restart it. Pain in the butt especially when I lose all the data I had entered on my excel

          That alone should be a good enough reason for your boss to upgrade or wipe and reinstall.

          I've never seen this Windows Rot people often talk about. I ran one Windows install (home PC) for
          over five years and I didn't notice any slowdown due to rot. It was always a dieing HDD that caused slowdowns for me. That install went from Win7 to 10 then from it's Intel based PC to a new AMD system. I just took the disk out of the old system and put it in the new one. New drivers were automaticly installed and after a few restarts the system was back and humming along.

          I do keep my PC extremely clean so that may be why it doesn't slow down. I only install a new program if I absolutely have to.

    • 11th gen i5 with 16 gb should not be slow( except gaming ). Is the 16 gb ram dual channel? Is the ssd a slow one. I had a display issue with my 11th gen i7 laptop and they sent me a replacement unit which had dual channel ram and intel Optane ssd. Below is a comparison video i made before sending the old unit back and you can see there is a quite a bit of performance difference with basically the same laptop.

      https://youtu.be/QmC77QjG6To

      Also i noticed the apps I use regularly and chrome loads much faster even when i am running things in the backgroud compared to my old unit. Maybe explore why your machine is slow first before switching would be my suggestion.

  • Hm… get this and sell my Pi 4?

    • Depends what you use it for but in general Pis are very overpriced for their capabilities.
      You might be better off with an ex-office USFF that has a more capable CPU and PCIe slots.

      • Used USFF is a flat out no for me. Not power efficient, noisy, PCIe in USFF means low profile cards. I already have a decent NUC and a Mac Mini. Family members rejected plex and kodi years ago. They just want to use streaming services directly.

        I got my Pi 4 for less than $100 (including case).

        • Disagree on power efficiency.

          Most USFF are high efficiency (power supply, regulators etc). Idle at 10-15w. Can enable OS power save/sleep/WOL to limit power consumption/noise.
          The cost difference between buying a new pi vs cheap USFF, the cost offset will pay for the power for a couple of years…

          Much more flexible. Multiple video outputs, more usb ports, sata/nvme, virtualisation, more ram, more performance, hardware video encoding (HEVC), os choice.

          A real swiss army knife but if Pi 4 scratches your itch, then go for it.

    • It's highly depens on what you want.

      If you just want to host some light services, such adadguard, home assistant, samba, password manager .etc, Pi 4 is great as it consumes so little power. As long as you need to run 4k transcoding, or use it as a desktop, sell your Pi 4 for a good price on Facebook and buy this one.

  • Thanks for this.

  • Will this have any issues with Dolby TrueHD audio passthrough on HDMI? Thinking about Plex and Kodi clients.

  • +1

    Any good for home assistant?

    • +2

      It's more than enough

      • This or a tiny pc with an i5 from eBay? What would be more power efficient?

    • I’ve got an earlier version of this box (J3355 cpu) running HA and it is rock solid. Boot times were more than twice as fast as my rPi3B+. Just make sure you got into bios and change it to reboot after power outage.

    • I want to run HA too but sadly the Raspberry Pis are non existent in the market at a decent price.

  • Why this over a 10 inch tab?

  • +2

    Curiously why this over one of the micro PC offerings recently? Power usage would be very close . Very small dimensions still (different shape of course). CPU and iGPU far more powerful. Cheaper.

    • Which machine are you comparing it to? Most of the used tiny PC's are i5 with older architectures. So more powerful in terms of sheer grunt. Better desktop experience, but with lesser igpu features for graphic applications.

  • I bought the Beelink with slightly better chip N5105, 16GB RAM, 512GB for $320.
    Not sure how much better compared to this model. Still haven't received it yet.

  • I tried 1 of the n5105 models. Dog slow.

    • Reviews say good enough to play GTA V apparently.

      • -1

        With no GPU, GTA V is not going to work.

        • +1

          It has an iGPU and plays GTA at 24fps
          https://youtu.be/CNZj4XmW68k?t=373

          • -4

            @sharkfan12: I do find it hard to believe that an iGPU can play GTA 5 on low or high settings, the game takes a lot resources.

            • +3

              @Tollery: Well it is a 2021 CPU/GPU going against a 2013 game. It's hardly demanding by today's standards anymore and these new 10nm CPUs can pack a lot of punch. Even if they're a Celeron, which has come a long way since then.

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