Proxmox Mini Server: Beelink Mini PC S12 Pro

In testing and playing around with a lot of Mini PCs in the lab envirnoment lately, this video showcases the Beelink Mini S12 Pro which I think will make a great little Proxmox micro server for running a few workloads, containers, virtual machines, and other tasks as a home server. Check out my thoughts and review of the hardware for this type of use case.

Introduction - 0:00
Introduction to the Beelink Mini S12 Pro - 0:37
Hardware specs of the Beelink Mini S12 Pro - 0:51
Overview of the Intel N100 CPU - 1:04
Describing the efficiency of the CPU - 1:22
DDR5 memory and configuration of the S12 Pro - 1:41
NVMe 2280 slot for storage - 2:09
Describing the networking of the Beelink S12 Pro - 2:34
Realtek incompatibility with VMware - 2:51
Talking about the experiment to see what this class fo hardware can run - 3:26
Overview of the Proxmox installation, LXC containers, and virtual machines - 3:48
System resource overview - 4:16
Responsiveness of the unit and running updates in containers for workloads - 4:23
No torture tests but real-world tasks being ran - 4:55
Idle time is desirable for home labs for power efficiency - 5:13
Very good fit for home lab workloads - 5:33
Talking about perhaps spinning up even more workloads - 5:57
RAM is most likely the bottleneck with 16 GB of memory and the N100 - 6:12
What is the sweet spot for this class of hardware in the home lab? 6:43
Why run a hypervisor instead of bare metal on this type of hardware? 7:04
Concluding thoughts on the Beelink Mini S12 Pro - 7:33

Write up of the home server review of the Beelink Mini PC S12 Pro:

5 Tips to install ESXi on a Mini PC:

Mini Server for the Home lab: GMKtec Nukbox G2:

[accesser]

Keen for a few more similar comparisons, love small labs like this

[chrisumali]

Thanks for the demo and info, have a great day

[goodcitizen]

Great demo. I was suprised a power sipping N100 would do so good.

[feo]

I'd be interested to see how something like this fares against one of the lower power Ryzens like the 5500U or 6600U.

[cybr]

I'm currently running proxmox on an Intel nuc 12 and it's been working great. I'm even planning on trying eventually microstack as an alternative to proxmox

[ZajaxFilms]

Love the video, a note about the RAM - it is DDR4 as you can see in the product page you have in your video.
Another note - I was able to install a 32 gb of DDR4 memory without issue - so that should help with the bottleneck!
I just got this this week and currently playing around with proxmox 8!

[Pinkman]

Do you think the s12 mini is enought to serve content and hardware decode with the igpu passthrought on jellyfin or plex?

[AchwaqKhalid]

Onscreen text/description will really help the delivery 💡

[vladyno]

If I download the Proxmox 8 ISO, will I install it straight away without any problems?

[goodcitizen]

These cheap but fast nodes could cluster well. Add a 4 TB sdd (cheap) for clustered storage between 3 nodes.

[JamesGreen-gvyn]

I have been using Proxmox in my home lab for many years now in a clustered configuration. I started with some mini servers that ended up having issues with disk drive and memory errors. I suspected they were just not high quality systems. I then moved to Intel NUC systems. Later I replaced those with fan-less systems.

As I have upgraded my systems, the power consumption is one consideration in my choice of hardware. The others are the maximum amount of memory the system can be configured with and the running noise level during use. I constantly find that I run into memory constraints long before the CPU usage is an issue.

I would love to see more people focus on the amount of noise produced by computing equipment in general. After spending a lot of time during my career in loud computer rooms which has significantly damaged my hearing, I am now sensitive to noisy devices. Maybe you could focus some of your reviews on units that are fan-less or as silent as possible. I'm sure many have no idea how damaging fan noise can be on your ears and manufacturers simply don't seem to care very much.

[rodrigomarins]

Hey, can you tell me please if can i rum windows (basic use) + home assistant with proxmox in n100 16gb?

[jvianneyjr]

Esse MiniPC aguenta a carga ligado direto ?

[deathcometh]

I'm looking at getting a few(x3) 5700u to make a cluster. 8c/16t 25tdp up, 16gb ram I'll upgrade to 32gb/max64. You can have 1 go down to upgrade/fix the 2 will carry over.

[eillylee]

Can you test MINIX Z100-0dB ? Fanless mini PC with Intel N100 CPU, 16+512GB SSD and Windows11 Pro pre-installed.

[themightyapefish]

Installed proxmox on this little computer, I got pretty high IO delay, anything you experienced?

[orkuncanberk]

Nice Video!
Is a PCi passtrouch possible with the Host GPU? some changes in the Bios is not possible like
Enable SVM/Virtualization Mode
Enable VT-d
Enable SR-IOV
Enable IOMMU

Got error 43 with the Intel UHD Grapihcs

[riad_ahmed]

what do you think about the reliability of the unit?

[MarkConstable]

I've always used ZFS, so it was interesting to see how much LESS ram that LVM uses.

[leatherwiz]

Do you think a N95 would be ok to use? The N95 uses even less energy than a N100. What about the RAM, I hear it is only a single ram and the new Intel cpu can't support dual.