MINI S13/N150/16G/500G

Running as a Emby server for movies, win11 by itself is a bargain at $99.99. Didn't bother reconfiguring for a linux distro. replaced the sata m.2 with 2Tb and added a 2TB sata 2.5. I set power button to shut down, so power on no need to log in. Emby is set to run at boot in windows services when done bump the switch, it powers down safely with no need for a monitor or keyboard.

We bought this computer a year ago. We received it actually less than a year ago, and it has stopped working. It still turns on, but it gets to the load menu where it shows the Beelink name and it won't go any farther. It shows you can hit Del to get to setup or F7 to get to the Boot Menu but NO keyboard inputs will work. The keyboard is powered when the computer is turned on and it gets a signal to the monitor but from that point forward, nothing... Wow, not even one year old and this computer doesn't work at all! Up to this point we had no issues with the computer at all. We have not been doing anything that would tax the computer to the point it would overheat or something but apparently we couldn't depend on it to last a year. I am very disappointed.

Great features, great performance, great price. Until I opened it up. I wanted to remove the M.2 Sata SSD and replace it with another so I could install pfSense and leave the original SSD intact in case I wanted to go back. Page 3 of the manual shows how to install an SSD - slip the SSD into the slot, press it down and screw it in place. Well, who/what ever installed the SSD screw here must have used a torque wrench. No matter what I tried I could not get the screw out. As a result, I returned it. I would really like to get another one, but if this is a common problem, I'm not sure I want to try again.

My TIVO keeps giving me issues with antenna quality, plus I have 3 extra TVs that I had to get mini tivo boxes with wifi extenders. This whole setup is just ridiculous just to watch recorded TV. I started to look into building a Plex Server since I already had an 4 tuner HDHomerun in my network. I needed something cheap, powerful enough for Plex, small, quiet and low power. Well, this is where this small PC comes in. I was able to get the base model with a 500gb ssd and 8 gigs of ram for very cheap (around 170, prices bounce on this unit all the time, search for n5105 here on amazon). I added 8 more gigs of ram to go dual channel and added a 2TB WD BLUE 2.5 inch mechanical hard drive for around 80 bucks (for storing media, mechanical HDD is recommended instead of SSD since the memory chips on SSD wear out quicker). So after all said and done, I had a small server with 2.5 tb of storage for around 270. I had no issues installing the memory and the hard drive. After first booting I went through the setup (with wifi and ethernet off). No issues there. Now, here is where I noticed that this is a small pc is not very fast. I started doing all the windows updates on it and it was extremely slow downloading and installing. It took hours to complete them all. Hours compared with my main pc which did them in around 20 mins the last time I formatted and re installed windows 11 on it. After the little pc was done installing updates, I disabled them so as to not have the mini PC download updates and installed them automatically. You dont want your server to reboot after an update right in the middle of recording a show. After all updates installed, I installed Plex Server and configured it. It was a breeze. You can always buy 1 month to try, but I highly recommend you get the lifetime subscription if you decide to keep it. This is so much better than TIVO. Now I can watch my recorded shows using my Fire TV sticks and I can finally get rid of all the TIVO hardware around the house. I made sure I setup windows power management to Max Performance to make sure the CPU is always running at 2.9 ghz and I plugged a small usb fan into one of the ports to blow cool air on the unit. Temps of the CPU do not go over 60c while processing shows and the mechanical drive at the bottom stays cooler. This unit would be absolute perfect if it had an NVME drive instead of a SATA3 drive. I found other n5105 mini pcs with NVME drives but were more expensive. Since you only set it up once, I guess is ok that is slow since you wont be using it. And since you have USB C port in front, you can add even more external storage down the line. For now, 2TB should be plenty. UPDATE: After about 4 months of the computer being on 24/7, the ssd that came pre-installed with windows died on 3/22 (the main drive sees little activity as all the plex tv shows get recorded on a 2tb hard drive) I should have known since they put the cheapest ssd they could find in there. Going to replace it with a WD blue and see how it goes. I also noticed that the WD blue is so quick compared with the pre-installed ssd. I installed windows 10 and did all updates, I was done in 30 minutes compared with hours on the original ssd. The blue comes with a 5 yr warranty and has a SanDisk controller. The computer is snappier now also. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND upgrading to a wd blue or red (not green or black) if you need this machine to be on 24/7

Very fast PC , good Price. Amazon is the best.