REVIEW: Beelink SER4 Ryzen 7 4700U (8C/8T) MiniPC - A small, quiet, fast, general "workhorse" PC... [Addendum: HDR works.]

These days, if we look around most homes, I think we'll see all kinds of computers used for different purposes in the rooms. I've talked about my main Workstation, the Server machine, even my Gaming rig a number of years back (much of that upgraded since). And a few months ago, we talked about the very low power fanless Celeron MeLE Quieter2Q which functions as a very stable stereo/multichannel streamer for Roon.

[BTW, there is an upgraded MeLE Quieter3Q now which is faster by ~30-40% featuring the Celeron N5105 processor for a few more dollars, but still no AVX2 if you're thinking about Windows HQPlayer as discussed here.]

Recently, I've been wanting to upgrade my 2016 Intel NUC 6i5SYH which in the last few years has been the heart of the audio measurements rig. Over time, as my measurement regimen has become more detailed, often using larger FFTs parameters, once awhile, I've started noticing that the old i5 CPU isn't keeping up with the processing needs and this shows up as glitches in the data such as when running multichannel REW "stepped sine" captures. Obviously, this will not do. ;-)

To remedy the situation, I got one of these Beelink SER4 Ryzen 7 4700U-based MiniPCs (8-core, 8-threads, currently less than US$450 for the 16GB RAM/512GB M.2 SSD model). There is also a more expensive SER4 with faster 4800U processor (8-core, 16-threads) if you need that extra speed.

This machine was purchased from standard retail channels; this review was not sponsored in any way.

I. The Machine...

Above, you see the open-box shot of the computer. It comes with a couple of HDMI cables - a short (6") and a longer (1m) one, the power supply (19V, 3A; I wish the cable connector is longer), very brief manual, and of course the computer itself. There's also a metal VESA mounting bracket and screws if you want to attach it to the back of a monitor for example (short HDMI cable handy).

It's a small machine, black color, measuring 17cm x 12cm x 4cm (6.7" x 4.7" x 1.6") approximately, 0.5kg, constructed of a mix of plastic and metal externally. While it feels reasonably sturdy in the hand, obviously one would not want to drop any computer! Aesthetically, it has some text branding as well as Ryzen/Radeon stickers which some might not like but it looks fine to me.

Here's a closer look at the front:

A headphone/mic jack which I have not tried yet for audio in/out. Couple of USB-A 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) ports, a USB-C which can also do 4K video "Alt-Mode" (no Thunderbolt), power button, and a small "CLR CMOS" on the left if you ever mess up the BIOS settings and need to clear it; unplug the computer, use a pin to push down and hold for ~10 seconds and the CMOS will reset.

I would have preferred the USB-C at the back for out-of-the-way convenience if plugging into a USB hub or as monitor output.

BTW: When connecting to your screen the 1st time, letting Windows 11 install, use the HDMI output closest to the USB3 port.

On the back, we see the DC power in (standard 19V, compatible with my NUC 65W power supply), a couple of HDMI2.0 ports (4K/60 but no HDR), another blue USB3.1, a black USB2.0 port, and gigabit ethernet.

Along the sides, top and rear, we see metal mesh vents and holes for airflow. When you first turn on the machine, you'll hear the internal fan going at maximum speed which sounds a bit like a hairdryer! Do not be alarmed however, even at full load for more than an hour, the stock machine has never gotten much louder than a low hum for me. In fact, with normal usage like say editing this blog or surfing the web, the machine is inaudible in my living room. I am quite strict about having a fanless machine in my low ambient noise sound room (about 30dBA). From my listening position about 9-10' away in normal use, I can very faintly hear the fan at stock settings which would still make this a fine HTPC, but not for "hi-fi" listening. The BIOS does offer fan controls which we'll look at later.

Wireless technologies built-in includes WiFi 6 (802.11ax capable of triple-band 2.4/5.8/6GHz, I can confirm excellent transfer speed with the ASUS GT-AX11000, have seen >30MB/s in an adjacent room to the router), and Bluetooth 5.2.

I mentioned the "CLR CMOS" button. This comes in handy when playing with the BIOS and attempts at overclocking/overvolting as we'll discuss below; here are a couple screenshots of the typical AMI BIOS:

Trusted Computing Module 2.0 is included and Windows 11 Pro comes pre-installed. There are many options and sub-options in the "Advanced" menu which we'll get into below; great that the features are unlocked.

As the name of this model implies, this machine I have features the Ryzen 7 4700U CPU which is an 8-core, 8-thread model built on the 7nm Zen2 architecture with a stock TDP of 25W (maximum ~30W for total system seen on Kill-A-Watt meter). Here's a look at the CPU-Z information:

Let's open up the machine to look at the innards; just remove the 4 small Phillips screws at the bottom holding the plate:

As per CPU-Z, we see the 2 sticks of Crucial 8GB DDR4-3200 SODIMMs, and the Intel 660p Series 512GB M.2 SSD to the left. There's a HDD metal plate which you can lift up and install a 2.5" SATA drive under. I have an old 120GB OCZ Vertex2 SSD to put in there:

Be careful with that short cable between the motherboard and the SATA connector.

Put the metal plate back on, a few screws to secure the SSD and away we go. I'll use that SSD drive for test signals and miscellaneous data storage for my measurement setup.

II. Performance Benchmarks:

So how fast is this machine?

Well, we can compare this to some of the other computers I have here at home for some practical context. Let's have a peek at results using AIDA64 6.70 Extreme testing the memory and separate CPU integer and floating point speeds; I like that the software separates the tests into these components so we can better understand the strengths and weaknesses.

Memory Tests:           Read (MB/s)    Write (MB/s)   Copy (MB/s)    Latency (ns)

Beelink Ryzen 7 4700U    36173           35510          29360          99.8

Intel NUC 6i5SYH         32161           45606          36301          66.1

Intel i7-7700K Server    31323           33913          31512          61.9

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X        49044           45780          46165          77.1

MeLE Q2Q J4125 (6-8W)    10409           10623          12721          92.3

Overall, good memory read and reasonable write speeds. Latency is a bit on the higher side near 100ns.

CPU Speed (Int): CPU Queen  PhotoWorxx(MPx/s)   ZLib(MB/s)  AES(MB/s)    SHA3(MB/s)

Beelink 4700U     49409       20336              422.8        48864        1534

NUC 6i5SYH        18092       15463              119.3        6101         553

i7-7700K Server   54240       20647              392.4        20509        1874

Ryzen 9 3900X     124348      29694              1191.3       107024       3705

MeLE Q2Q (6-8W)   16723       6296               92.2         7572         298

CPU Speed (FP):   Julia    Mandel    SinJulia    Ray-Trace(kRay/s)    FP64 Ray-Trace

Beelink 4700U     50212    27457     8003        8750                 4870

NUC 6i5SYH        11358    6126      1603        2417                 1352

i7-7700K Server   38236    20577     5422        8160                 4505

Ryzen 9 3900X     113102   59539     20537       21413                11413

MeLE Q2Q (6-8W)   4729     2576      906         732                  412

Notice that I'm comparing this Beelink to my other desktop/hobby computers that inhabit other "niches" in the home. The NUC is what this Beelink will be replacing for running audio measurements and data collection; significant CPU speed upgrade here. The i7-770K processor is used as the central home music, movie, and file server across the multi-gigabit network. This Beelink and the i7-7700K are about equivalent for integer benchmarks but the Beelink Ryzen 7 quite easily beats out the i7 in floating point performance!

The Ryzen 9 3900X, being my fastest machine, is what I'm using to edit images, and creating some of the content on this blog among other computing tasks. No question that this 12-core/24-thread processor is faster than the others!

Finally, the MeLE QuieterQ2 is my fanless, very low-power 24/7 audio streamer with HDMI multichannel output. Clearly this underclocked Celeron is the slowest machine of the bunch but it sips the least amount of power (less than 9W max) and is completely silent.

Another benchmark I like using to compare a machine against others out there is the free UserBenchmark. This benchmark can be used to compare each component in the system with often thousands of other submissions and will report back whether the speed is as expected:

That looks great. The overall Beelink package achieves an 85%ile score compared to other similar machines suggesting that the "synergy" of the CPU, motherboard, BIOS settings, Windows 11 and the components chosen are working well together.

Having said this, if we look at the scores, it's obvious that the slowest component is the integrated AMD RX Vega 8 graphics achieving "14%" on the benchmark overall. Obviously this is not the kind of machine to use if you want to do 3D gaming! For casual 3D at 1080P and lower detail settings, you might be able to get by.

Finally, a quick CrystalDiskMark 8 reading for the Intel 660p M.2 SSD:

Good speed with 1.8GB/s sequential reads and almost 1GB/s writes for a high value QLC NVMe drive in the M.2 form factor.

III. Overclocking:

Let's talk about overclocking a computer like this. The Ryzen 7 4700U is meant as a mobile CPU/GPU SoC like you would find in laptops. Yes, you can try playing with the base CPU clockspeed in the BIOS settings under Advanced → AMD CBS → CPU Common Options → Performance and change the value for "Pstate0 Freq (MHz)":

If this is like other Ryzen machines, VID corresponds to a voltage code. Be careful with this unless you know what you're doing.

Note that you have to "Accept" the risk of possibly "bricking" your machine when you go into the custom settings. As tempting as it might be to overclock and squeeze out some performance using the setting above, don't bother. The machine is set at 25W TDP and I had issues booting with anything above stock 2000MHz for Pstate0.

However, we can try overclocking the RAM a bit (Advanced → AMD CBS → NBIO Common Options → UMC Common Options → DDR4 Common Options):

Stock speed is 1600MHz, I've been able to push it to 1767MHz on this machine although it really doesn't significantly change the performance in day-to-day usage. With benchmarks, I can see a bit more MB/s transfer speed and about 4% gain on AIDA64's CPU Queen test. There are a host of other RAM parameters to play with as you can see.

If you want to be "serious" about overclocking a Ryzen laptop processor, head over to Ryzen Controller and install the software. This will allow you to push the CPU TDP among many other options. Let's see what happens if I push it to 50W TDP, overclocking my RAM to 1700MHz (BIOS), and to be safe, put the temperature cap at 85°C, fan speed steady at 80% in the BIOS (moderately loud like a hair dryer in slow speed to reduce thermal throttling):

With this applied, the Kill-A-Watt meter now spikes up to 66W under heavy load. And here are the results of AIDA64, comparing stock (25W) with overclocked (50W, RAM 1700MHz):

Memory Tests:           Read (MB/s)    Write (MB/s)   Copy (MB/s)    Latency (ns)

Beelink 4700U 25W       36173           35510          29360          99.8

Overclocked 50W         36571           35642          29446          97.0

CPU Speed (Int): CPU Queen  PhotoWorxx(MPx/s)   ZLib(MB/s)  AES(MB/s)    SHA3(MB/s)

Beelink 25W      49409       20336              422.8        48864        1534

Overclocked 50W  60583       20377              552.0        63246        2002

CPU Speed (FP):   Julia    Mandel    SinJulia    Ray-Trace(kRay/s)    FP64 Ray-Trace

Beelink 25W       50212    27457     8003        8750                 4870

Overclocked 50W   65138    35520     9273        11390                6329

Some gain in RAM performance but not really significant. Overclocking clearly helped with the rest of the CPU benchmarks but PhotoWorxx is minimally improved. Overall, about 20-30% gain in the CPU benchmarks which is significant.

For comparison with other machines "in the wild", let's have a look at how the UserBenchmark results changed with overclocking:

This machine is now up at 88%ile of expected as an overall build. I guess it's one of the fastest Ryzen 7 4700U's out there at 100%ile. ;-) Of course, the Vega 8 iGPU is still quite a slow 3D graphics processor. Very slight bump in the overclocked Crucial 16GB DDR4 scores.

Running at stock speed, you'll notice a little bit of warm air from the vents under load. Obviously as we overclock here, it does get warmer and also the metal HDMI connector I was using at the back got uncomfortably hot to the touch (~40°C).

IV. Underclocking:

For audiophiles and AV hobbyists, computer speeds these days are often faster than what we need. I think what's actually more interesting than overclocking is UNDER-clocking to minimize power needs, heat, and noise. One simple way to do this is just to change the BIOS to the 10W TDP setting and adjust the fan controls to make it essentially silent. Access these under Advanced → AMD CBS → SMU Common Options (→ Fan Control):

I kept the fan speed at 5% just so there is still a little bit of movement for air flow below 50°C in case it needs to spin up quickly. The machine basically runs silent now unless I put my ear inches from the box. Maximum system power usage I see is around 25W, idling at less than 8W total.

And how slow is 10W TDP?

Memory Tests:           Read (MB/s)    Write (MB/s)   Copy (MB/s)    Latency (ns)

Beelink 4700U 25W       36173           35510          29360          99.8

Underclocked 10W        36367           35152          29455          97.7

No change expected in the memory speed... Interesting how results are even a little higher here than stock without changing the RAM clock speed.

CPU Speed (Int): CPU Queen  PhotoWorxx(MPx/s)   ZLib(MB/s)  AES(MB/s)    SHA3(MB/s)

Beelink 25W       49409       20336              422.8        48864        1534

Underclocked 10W  40033       20340              312.8        36518        1110

CPU Speed (FP):   Julia    Mandel    SinJulia    Ray-Trace(kRay/s)    FP64 Ray-Trace

Beelink 25W       50212    27457     8003        8750                 4870

Underclocked 10W  31187    16183     5936        5115                 2854

While slower than stock obviously (~20% drop in CPU Queen, 30-40% drops in floating point tasks, again, PhotoWorxx barely affected - even a few points higher for whatever reason!), notice that this machine is still much faster than the underclocked MeLE Quieter2Q as reported above.

[Given that even a Raspberry Pi can perform well as an audio streamer, the processing power needs for pure audio are minimal; maybe just a small bump up for multichannel.]

Let's have a peek at the underclocked speed compared to other Ryzen 7 4700U machines out there:

Obviously memory and SSD have not changed significantly, running quite fast, but at 10W TDP, this CPU is slower and well below expectations at 28%ile among other 4700U machines. The iGPU performance dropped even more down to 12%ile, suggesting that it's more power-hungry than the CPU.

Nonetheless, an underclocked machine like this works very well in the AV room:

Apologies for picture a bit dark, you can see the little MeLE computer sitting on the rack below the Beelink - bottom left.

As you can see, I'm running a YouTube video here. No dropped frames playing 4K/60/SDR video at the 10W TDP setting. No problem getting multichannel HDMI audio through the receiver. With the fan speed tuned down, this is now effectively silent even in a very quiet "man cave" in the evenings.

Since this CPU does have the AVX2 instruction set, feel free to use this with the newer versions of Windows HQPlayer. You should be able to do some PCM → DSD playback if you think it's beneficial.

See Addendum on HDR below!

Conclusions...

It's great to see the ongoing progress being made in the "MiniPC" segment using technology primarily aimed at low-power mobile laptop machines! I think this Beelink SER4 Ryzen 7 4700U (8-core / 8-thread) machine represents a very good current price-performance ratio as I write this in mid-2022. Speed-wise, it's about equivalent to my Intel i7-7700K desktop computer in integer performance, and even faster for floating point processing (like DSP stuff).

With a street price around US$450 for the 16GB DDR4 + 512GB M.2 SSD version, the feature set including USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, USB-C with 4K video, integrated WiFi 802.11x, and Bluetooth 5.2 represent a nice collection of modern specs. The integrated GPU is nothing to get excited about so don't expect to play 3D games at high resolution or quality settings; it's certainly great for 2D office work and video playback. Be mindful of the lack of HDR if this is important for you in a home theater.

Again, if you need a faster machine, consider the Beelink SER4 4800U version ~US$550. The 8-core / 16-thread design does improve multicore performance by around 25% on the benchmarks I've seen, single-core performance is about the same so be mindful that a speed improvement is not guaranteed depending on what you're running. The 4800U also has a faster GPU, but we're really only looking at about 5-10% improvement in 3D performance which still isn't great.

As a hobbyist, I appreciate the flexibility of an open BIOS that allows me to customize settings as I see fit. In this regard, I applaud Beelink for allowing users to choose between the 10/15/25W TDP settings. The fan controls work well for us who want to have the machine almost silent, even the ability to do a bit of RAM tweaking is appreciated. Time will tell about durability of the machine, but so far with all the tweaking and overclocking, I have not run into any issues.

Well, here's a look at the Beelink sitting beside the 2016 Intel NUC i5 which it will replace as the audio measurement computer system:

Notice the similarity in size with the Beelink slightly wider, while the NUC is taller and deeper. The Beelink's Intel 660p M.2 SSD feels a lot faster starting Windows and opening apps. Overall the 2.5-3x CPU speed increase certainly makes it a snappier experience.

Mounted out of the way behind the monitor, running quietly, I can see this little machine satisfying many general computing roles in the household. In fact, at this performance level similar to desktop quad-core i7 CPUs, I would have no problems using this for moderate intensity tasks like coding, photo editing, or DAW/audio editing.

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Remember, dear audiophiles, a small, low-power machine like this will sound no different than comparatively extreme "audiophile computers" as discussed previously. Unless proven otherwise, as usual, don't believe the hype - just open your ears and close your eyes. ;-)

The other night I saw Steve Hoffman mentioning the old Bob Cooper album Coop! The Music of Bob Cooper (1958, DR15) on his Twitter feed. I find it's recorded with a bit too much extreme right-left spacing causing a soundstage "hole" in the middle for my taste as often heard in old stereo recordings. Otherwise, a good sounding album of the "classic" West Coast jazz genre - check it out if you haven't already. Hope you're all enjoying the music!

Off to catch more photons while they're available over the summer.

Addendum: July 15, 2022 - Yes, HDR10 playback works...

In the initial version of this article, I said that there was no HDR video capability. I am pleasantly reporting that I was wrong! Once I plugged the HDMI into a HDCP 2.2 port, HDR10 became available:

Nice. As you can see, all HDR features in Windows 11 are available including Auto HDR for games and such.

At stock speed, it works very well with 4K/30fps videos, no dropped frames. There's a bit of stress however with YouTube 4K/60fps/HDR10:

As you can see in the stats, it's not perfect but watchable. 359 dropped frames out of 6545 rendered is around 5.5%; personally I prefer <3% distributed evenly over time as a rule of thumb to not be noticeable. You'll see discontinuities here and there during playback unfortunately. Note that SDR playback is a lot less demanding on the iGPU which is why I reported above that YouTube playback of 4K/60fps/SDR is still smooth even when "underclocked" at 10W TDP.

Using K-Lite Codec Pack, I can also play 4K UHD-BluRay ripped files off my network server. No issues with 4K/24-30fps/HDR. However for the very rare movie at 60fps, the HEVC/H.265 decoding does stutter a bit. Here's Gemini Man (59.95fps to be exact):

Dropped 546/11513 frames for a total 4.7%. Still not good enough and occasional jerky movements noticeable especially with the buttery smooth high-framerate look.

In terms of audio, Windows 11 has no trouble with bitstreaming lossless Dolby TrueHD/Atmos over HDMI:

As you can see, my Yamaha receiver is decoding the TrueHD/Atmos stream and playing it back as 5.1.2. Excellent.

While not quite able to achieve completely smooth 4K/60fps/HDR10 playback at stock speed, this is still quite a capable HTPC IMO. In terms of power utilization, 4K/30/HDR playback uses <25W and 4K/60/HDR boosts this up to around 35W. With sustained playback, the fan does eventually speed up. While still soft and not annoyingly distracting, it will be audible from my listening position about 9' away (as usual, I am rather critical of fan noise in the AV room). Obviously if we reduce the machine to 10/15W TDP mode, this will reduce fan noise but performance will also be go down if trying to play 60fps material.

Hmmm, it is quite possible that the Beelink SER4 Ryzen 4800U version with faster CPU and iGPU might be able to achieve smooth 4K/60fps/HDR playback.