REVIEW: Beelink Mini S (Celeron N5095A 4C/4T CPU, 8GB DDR4 RAM, 256GB SSD) Mini-PC. (And E1DA Cosmos ADC follow-up: RIAA EQ & 768kHz.)

In the image above, we see the Beelink Mini S computer. I was sent this product from one of the distributors (thanks to MinixPC - see here for the current price) for an honest opinion in the context of the fact that over the last while, I had already explored the small MeLE Quieter2Q and Quieter3Q as well as the more powerful AMD-based Beelink SER4 Ryzen 7 machines. 

Now, unlike the MeLE Quieter machines, this one is not fanless, but it is indeed quiet and I suspect the fan noise will be no problem in the vast majority of settings. On balance however, what you get is a machine that is less expensive (you should be able to find one for around US$180 or better) and the active cooling will keep it cooler especially if you do end up placing it in more cramped environments. As usual, make sure there is still air flow of course!

Let's have a closer look at the item and performance...

Above we see the box contents, the computer unit itself is small, about 4.5" x 4" x 1.6" (11.5 x 10 x 4cm). It's mostly plastic so the weight is only around 270g. There's the 12V, 3A power supply, a couple of HDMI cables (short 25cm, and longer 100cm lengths), manual, and wall/monitor mount metal bracket with screws.

A closer look at the computer itself:

As you can see, we have a total of 4 USB3 ports (2 front, 2 rear), front headphone jack and power button, gigabit RJ45 ethernet port, 2 HDMI 2.0a (yes this can do HDR, but as we'll see later, limited), and the power jack. Oh yeah, there's also a front CMOS CLR recessed button if you mess up the BIOS and need to reset, and Kingston security slot.

Notice from the pictures that clearly the air flow comes in from the sides and is vented out the rear just above the ethernet port and HDMI. Needless to say, make sure airflow isn't obstructed to these key regions.

At this price point and this machine marketed as a "Mini Office Computer", it's not surprising that we don't see anything fancy. No USB-C, the built-in WiFi is 802.11b/g/n/ac, and Bluetooth 4.0 specs. The recent 10nm Gen11 Intel Celeron N5095A CPU is a 4-core/4-thread device running at base 2.0GHz, with turbo up to 2.9GHz. This is the same generation as the MeLE Quieter3Q's N5105 but the main difference is the graphics subsystem. The N5095 UHD Graphics iGPU runs at 450-750MHz stock and has 16 execution units compared to the N5105 with 24. While this is better than the MeLE Quieter2Q's J4125 processor with 12 execution units, and should be fine when it comes to office-type applications and general web streaming (like YouTube), be mindful of tasks that demand a bit more from the graphics system like 3D or higher resolution 4K work. We'll talk about this later.

Let's now take a quick peek inside the box. Note that because the base is flush with the sides, after taking off the 4 small Phillips-head screws holding the bottom down, I had to put a screw in one of the wall-plate mounts so I can pull the bottom off, it would have been nice if they had some kind of "lip" to allow the user to pull the base apart easier. In comparison, it was easier to open up the case of the Beelink SER4 4700U.

As for the guts of the machines, we can see the enclosure for the 2.5" HDD/SSD if you need extra storage attached to the machine's base. Inside the main box, there's the AZW-branded SODIMM which is a single 8GB DDR4-2666 stick. The M.2 drive is a SATA3 2280 256GB. While the SATA3 M.2 drive should be reasonably fast (maximum 6Gbps or 600MB/s), it would not be as quick as a NVMe M.2 SSD.

We can't see the heatsink, fan and CPU located on the other side of the mainboard.

The machine is pre-installed with Windows 11; just stick in your USB keyboard, an HDMI monitor, and it's basically plug-and-play from there.

Let's have a deeper look at the hardware data using HWiNFO64:

As you can see, the N5095A has a 15W TDP which is higher than the Quieter3Q's N5105 (10W) even though the CPU speed is about the same and the N5095A's iGPU performance is actually less powerful. We see some data for the DDR4-2666 RAM, and confirmation of the 16 EU iGPU. As with other Celeron processors, these lack some of the advanced instructions like AVX2.

The Jasper Lake USB controller is capable of USB3.1 (10Gbps) and as you can see above, I have confirmation that my portable SSD drive is connecting at "SuperSpeedPlus" plugged into one of the front USB ports. Note that the Bluetooth is based on Intel's Bluetooth 4.0 module.

WiFi is the Intel Dual Band AC 3165 (WiFi5), not their latest WiFi6 AX modules.

Other than some alphanumeric codes, I don't see a brand name or clear model number for the M.2 SATA3 SSD.

So how fast is this machine (stock speed)?

With knowledge of the above specs, we can surmise that this box would be faster than the eMMC drives in both the MeLE Quieter machines, will have GPU performance somewhere between the Quieter2Q and Quieter3Q, and raw CPU speed would be around the same as the Quieter3Q. Let's see how those predictions pan out with some benchmarks!

Here's the AIDA64 Extreme 6.7 suite of memory, integer and FPU benchmarks with comparisons to some of my other machines:

Memory Tests:           Read (MB/s)    Write (MB/s)   Copy (MB/s)    Latency (ns)
Beelink Mini S N5095     15910           17470          15860          60.8
MeLE Quieter3Q N5105     16959           22453          19042          66.9
MeLE Quieter2Q J4125     10409           10631          12860          93.5
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

CPU Speed (Int): CPU Queen  PhotoWorxx(MPx/s)   ZLib(MB/s)  AES(MB/s)  SHA3(MB/s)
Beelink Mini S    22293       7383               188.0        19420        515
MeLE Q3Q N5105    20157       8640               144.5        15822        431
MeLE Q2Q J4125    19156       6771               120.4        9301         365
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

CPU Speed (FP):   Julia    Mandel    SinJulia    Ray-Trace(kRay/s) FP64 Ray-Trace
Beelink Mini S    7462     3967      1003        1244                 677
MeLE Q3Q N5105    5604     2974      1003        1034                 533
MeLE Q2Q J4125    5835     3179      1112        933                  499
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

While it's clearly not a fair comparison to pit a machine like this to an i5, Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 9, among its Celeron peers, the Beelink Mini S performs quite well. In fact, other than PhotoWorxx (integer) where it lagged behind, and SinJulia (floating point) where it tied the MeLE Q3Q, the Mini S performed on the whole a bit faster than the fanless N5105 machine on these CPU-intensive tasks. It manages to edge out the MeLE Quieter3Q by 10-20% on a number of tests which is noteworthy.

With UserBenchmark, we can compare the performance to other machines out there with similar components:

Given the combination of parts in the machine, it's good that this is scoring in the upper half of expectations at 66%'ile. This is where we also see the relative weakness of the iGPU in the Celeron N5095 chip clocking in at 2.6% of all tested machines out there. Significantly lower than the N5105 of the MeLE Quieter3Q scoring at 4.2% (not that this is impressive).

Here's the M.2 SATA3 SSD drive speed using CrystalDiskMark for a better look:

Yes, definitely a much faster performing part compared to the eMMC of the MeLE Quieter mini PCs (by about 2-3x). This speed advantage is noticeable in usage as boot-up and application launching feels quite fast; certainly important if the machine is to be used in an office-type setting. In fact, that 550MB/s read speed is basically the limit of SATA3 (ideal conditions up to 600MB/s).

Examining the Graphics / Audio potential as HTPC...

Obviously, with the low integrated GPU speed noted on UserBenchmark, the Mini S is not going to be a gamer's machine! Having said that, I ran it downstairs in my sound room on the 4K TV to see the limitations if one were to try it as a home theater box.

Since I found issues with the MeLE Quieter3Q previously for 4K video and HDR, it stands to reason that I would generally not recommend this machine for HTPC applications if you want 4K/60fps/HDR. It does perform fairly well for 4K/60fps/SDR streaming off YouTube. For example, here's the 4K/60fps Costa Rica video with stats:

 

44 dropped frames out of 10,251 in 4K/60fps/SDR is not noticeable and looks great still.

I mentioned above that the HDMI output is capable of HDR, but from what I can tell, it's only limited to the 4K/30fps display setting.

And it will do a fair job (using K-Lite Codec Pack) with playing back common 4K/24fps/HDR10 movies encoded in HEVC; here's Edge of Tomorrow:

If you have a look at the stats bottom left, only 5 dropped frames in 5800. I'm also bitstreaming the Dolby TrueHD-Atmos audio through HDMI with no problem. The machine is certainly usable when you're in a pinch on movie nights on a 4K screen.

As with the other Mini PC computer boxes I've looked at through the year, we can tell Windows to use multichannel HDMI audio layout as below (I typically use 24/96 resolution):

Notice the options for DTS:X and Dolby Atmos which would bring you to the Microsoft store to download/purchase these as add-ons. Anyone out there using these? Any opinions on how useful?

Since this machine will not allow 4K/60fps/HDR to be turned on, obviously don't expect much from any of the few 60fps/HDR UHD BluRay rips you may have. I'd still recommend a purpose-built device like the AppleTV or nVidia Shield for 4K/HDR media room playback rather than a low-power PC at this point.

Going beyond the media room and basic office applications, even an inexpensive box like this will be fine with lighter duty media applications like photo and audio editing. As a "real life" trial, I ran Lightroom Classic 9 on this machine supplying it with some Sony 24MP raw files I took back in 2019 (at the final RMAF):

Pictures from the last Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. Images from the Tekton and Wilson rooms.

The Beelink Mini S was certainly fast enough with Lightroom, no issues with the usual routine like exposure, color balance, resize/rotation, lens distortion compensation, etc. Resizing, sharpening and exports to JPEG likewise did not take long. I found the machine just as fast as my usual i5 or i7 laptops when at the shows (like the recent PAF'22) as I edit pictures before posting them to the blog in the evenings.

I'm no gamer but clearly the iGPU is not suited for anything demanding. 2D and light 3D games in 1080P (like Minecraft?) should be alright, anything more likely will need you to push resolution lower for reasonable framerates (reviews have mentioned DotA 2 as an example of a game that one should drop to 720P).

The wireless connectivity works well even if it's not supporting the latest-and-greatest revisions. The Beelink's WiFi 5 (802.11ac) was able to communicate with my ASUS ROG GT-AX11000 in an adjacent room transferring files at around 20-25MB/s, quite reasonable compared to other machines I've had here at home. The Bluetooth 4.0 module doesn't have bells and whistles like the latest high speed, low-energy, or extended range BT 4.2 or 5.x versions. However, I connected some recently-acquired QCY T18 wireless AirPod-like earbuds to the machine for music playback. (At some point guys, I'll have to start discussing measurements of Bluetooth earphones since I think this has been neglected/dismissed by traditional audiophiles for way too long!)

As you can see, I'm playing Robbie Williams' latest XXV, connected to the QCY headphones over Bluetooth, and the Bluetooth Tweaker app is telling us that Windows 11 has elected to send the audio as AAC 48kHz, 285kbps which sounds very good. Range was more than 20' here at home line of sight, and would vary depending on walls and other obstructions.

By the way, if you look at the "CODEC#4 supported by the device" line, we see that the QCY T18 is capable of "aptX Adaptive" (Qualcomm QCC3050 chipset internally) which includes 16/44.1 aptX Lossless depending on your source device support. In recent days, I see that Qualcomm is using the term "aptX" less and just calling it "Snapdragon Sound" for consumer recognition on smartphones.

Summary...

Well, in these uncertain, inflationary economic times where fiscal prudence is becoming more important, it's good that at a low price point of around US$180 for the 8GB RAM / 256GB SSD version, there are computers like the Beelink Mini S. It's a no-nonsense box that will get general light to moderate 2D computing tasks done (office, school work, surfing web...). At my workplace, this would be a fine machine in the office for a secretary or research assistant to compose mail, data gathering, basic data entry, moderate-sized database management, small-business spreadsheets, medical point-of-care access, etc. Maybe as a fileserver for a small group project. For these kinds of niches, the price point, no-frills feature set, and fast SSD speed are really all that are needed.

Relative speed as measured with benchmark suites, comparatively, it's great that the Beelink Mini S CPU performance was about 10-20% faster than the more expensive but fanless MeLE Quieter3Q although the Q3Q's N5105 has faster graphics though still not to the point of being a recommended 4K/60fps/HDR media player. In principle, the two CPUs should be about the same apart from the graphics so it's possible there are BIOS tweaks that could be done for the Q3Q, another possibility is there's thermal throttling happening in the fanless MeLE design.

For less than US$200, in 2022, it doesn't take a lot of money to get "core" computing tasks done! Compare this price to even a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB which is a way less capable machine (significantly less than 50% the computing power, doesn't include the 256GB SSD) at around the same money if not more and I think we can get a sense of the relative value per dollar.

[Thanks again to MinixPC for sending this box along for the review. You can use the code "ARCHMINIS" to get another US$10 off on their site.]

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BIOS Options: Power Limiting & Fan noise...

I mentioned at the beginning that I think the fan noise would not be an issue - it's quiet. For the discerning sound room and home theater hobbyist, it can be audible however. Thankfully, the noise is primarily the low hum of air blowing out the back of the unit although pitch will vary with fan speed.

Up to this point, I have been talking about the stock machine, its capabilities, and benchmarks which I think would be what the vast majority of customers would be using this for. As you know, here at The Musings, I like to see if I can optimize the product to target a certain role that would be useful as an audio hobbyist; usually this involves a very quiet, ideally silent machine!

Let's look under the BIOS hood and see what I can do about that fan noise.

Yes, the BIOS does have the ability to underclock the machine and drop fan speed. We can do this by changing the machine's "power limit" parameters to restrict the amount of watts it's allowed. For example, let me show you my "almost silent" settings:

Looking in Advanced → CPU - Power Management Control → View/Configure Turbo Options, I see that the stock BIOS setting has "Power Limit 1" up at 15000 (15W) which is the CPU's TDP. Let's curtail PL1, and activate PL2 to reconfigure the total watts. In the screenshot above, PL1 is now at 8.5W which is the average power to aim for. PL2 at 10W means that in turbo mode, for a few seconds (usually around 10 seconds) the CPU can use up a bit more juice to get things started. Once the burst activity has settled, it has to at least go back down to PL1 for 20 seconds (PL1 Time Window) until an idle period, and then it's allowed to "turbo" again up to 10W briefly.

In this way we keep the total CPU power limited generally around 8.5W.

Further power savings can be had by turning down the speed of the iGPU (Advanced → GT - Power Management Control):

I dialed it down to 350MHz maximum (normally up to 750MHz). "RC6 (Render Standby)" reduces iGPU power use during sleep.

Given that the computer heat sink and fan were designed for 15W performance, this lower performance level at 8.5-10W means we can slow down the fan quite substantially. In the BIOS, we can turn on thermal functions and drop the active set-points for the fan (see Advanced → Thermal Configuration):

Then go to Platform Thermal Configuration to specifically adjust fan speed and make sure the Active Trip Points are enabled:

These settings dropped the maximum "Point 0" to 60% (at 71°C) and 30% (up to 55°C) fan speed (default was 100% and 50% I think). Now we reset the machine and it should be nice and quiet, basically inaudible unless I literally put my ear to the box when it's running heavy benchmarks.

In stock configuration, total machine power draw when idle is around 8W, maximum ~24W when pushed 100%. By dropping the power level and slowing the fan, the total power draw now goes down to 5-6W idle, maximum 17W under heavy load, and quiet. With these changes, using LinPack Xtreme, I'm seeing more than 23GFLOPS of processing power available. That's still a fair amount of potential.

So you might be wondering: "What's that Archimago guy doing with those underclocked/powered settings?"

Let's talk about that next time, friends! ;-)

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To end, for those of you who have the E1DA Cosmos ADC, Ivan (aka IVX) has released the latest firmware which adds 768kHz capability. Just flash it with the ComTrue USB ISP firmware Tool:

Select the new "CosmosAdc_V13_RIAA_768.hex" firmware file and press "Auto" to get the flash done and verified.

After this, you can then use the ComTrue ASIO driver as input in REW, increase the samplerate to 768kHz, and get measurements like this:

As you can see in the graphs above, I'm measuring the same RME ADI-2 Pro FS playing a 0dBFS 1kHz (24/96)  signal at +13dBu (~3.5Vrms) into the E1DA Cosmos ADC. Notice the high frequency noise floor modulation >200kHz when running at 768kHz. There are also noise spikes up there which could be artifactual. Finally, between 20Hz to 20kHz, the noise floor is elevated when running at 768kHz resulting in higher N and THD+N results. Ivan noted that to improve the noise would likely require a hardware update of the ComTrue CT7601C to CT7601PR part; probably not worth the extra expense. Personally, I'm happy enough with 384kHz so 768kHz is "icing on the cake". I can imagine using the higher bandwidth just as a quick screen to make sure a device doesn't create too much noise above 200kHz beyond around -110dB with such a 0dBFS fundamental. One should not use the 768kHz sample mode for detailed resolution measurements.

This firmware also has a DSP curve setting included for those of you who like ripping vinyl directly into the Cosmos ADC acting as a phono preamp, applying very accurate RIAA equalization. Use the ADC volume setting in Windows or Cosmos Tweak to tell the ADC what mode you want:

It's generally more convenient to just use the Windows volume settings. Put the volume level between -45 to -55dB in Windows to turn on the RIAA EQ.

Here's what the RIAA EQ looks like in action when sent a flat sine sweep:

If it has been awhile since you've examined the RIAA EQ, there it is in all its "glory". About 40dB variation has been applied between 20Hz to 20kHz! Depending on the quality of a phono preamp, the accuracy of that compensation curve would be another source of potential error in vinyl playback (assuming that when the LP was created, the "recording" EQ was accurate to begin with).

Notice in particular the bass boost on playback (and concomitant bass reduction when creating the LP) which reduces the groove excursion needed when cutting the LP so that the length of each side can be a reasonable duration, typically 20-25 minutes per side. A potential side effect with this kind of system is that low-frequency distortions like turntable rumble also gets boosted during playback, a reason why a turntable with good vibration isolation is important beyond time precision (ie. exactness of 33 1/3 or 45 rpm).

Both the 768kHz sample rate and RIAA DSP are cool features and could come in handy at some point. Great to see ongoing developments and optimizations.

Okay everyone, hope you're all doing well and having a great time enjoying the music!