Mini PC for Home Lab

Are you guys looking for a powerful mini PC to run virtual machines in your home lab? And not only that, are you looking for a Ryzen 7 based mini PC? Well, I have just that, a low powered, high performance Ryzen 7 mini PC that I want to showcase for you guys today. What's up guys, Brandon Lee from Virtualization How To. And if you've caught many of the last videos that I've uploaded, you know that I've been trying out a lot of mini PCs as of late. The model that I have for you guys today is the Beelink SCR5 and it's equipped with the 5700U AMD Ryzen 7 processor. Now again, this is the laptop variant of the processor. It's extremely efficient and it also sports 8 cores and 16 threads. Now the SCR5, there are many things I like about it in this model of the V-Link. For one, it sports up to 64 gigs of DDR4 memory and it's dual channel. Unlike some of the other lower end mini PCs where you only have a single DIMM slot, this actually does have two DIMM slots so you can take advantage of dual channel memory operation. In addition to the dual channel memory operation, you've got a standard 2280 NVMe slot. However, it is only a single slot, but this unit also has the capability for you to install a two and a half inch SSD if you so desire. So you could run a two and a half inch SSD along with the single 2280 NVMe drive. Now to the not so positive side of things. one of the things that I have really been looking for is an AMD unit that not only sports the Ryzen 7U line of the processor with 16 threads, but that also has an Intel network adapter. Now, by and large, a lot of the mini PCs sport the Realtek network adapters. Now, this is fine for Linux-based hypervisors like Proxmox and XePng. However, VMware abandoned the native Linux network drivers. anything newer than VMware vSphere 6.7. So you will have problems if you try to install ESXi 7 or later with a Realtek network adapter. In fact, it's just going to say there is no network adapter detected. You can use USB network adapters. However, to me, it's quite a shame, though, to have a really nice mini PC with perhaps a two and a half gig network adapter with LAN port and have to revert back to a single gig. connection with a USB LAN connection. Now it works and it is quite stable. However, for my purposes in the home lab, I wanted something that I can not only run Proxmox, XCPNG, or other hypervisors, I could also run ESXi if I so desired. So it would give that unit a much higher utility value in a lab environment. So keep in mind that this SER5 with the 5700U Ryzen 7 processor does have a Realtek network adapter, and it is only a single gig network adapter. So let me guys show you physically around this unit, which I really like how it is built, how it's constructed. It's a very sturdy unit. You feel like it is substantial. I like the design of the case. I like that all of the ports are contained on the back of the unit. And by and large, you won't find this on the four by four units, but on some of the smaller mini PCs, you'll have ports on the side, you'll have ports on the back and the front. So when, by the time you plug everything in, you've got just a mound of cabling that you have to route and figure out how to manage that cabling. Starting in the front, we've got two USB-A connections. We've got the clear CMOS pinhole. We got the power button on the front. Let me swing around to the back. No surprises here. We just have a single LAN port. This is only a one gig connection. Again, the Realtek adapter. So you're not going to have any problems with Proxmox, XCPNG, and so forth. We've got USB ports. We've got a display port as well as an HDMI port. And then we also have the barrel connector for the power connection on this unit. So again, the AMD SCR5 with the Ryzen 7 5700U processor. Again, I really like the build quality. quality of the unit. I think by and large, B-Link does a really nice job with putting together these mini PC cases, how they arrange everything. One of the things I also like about the B-Link units is they seem to make these PCs so that they are able to be taken apart. They've had the forethought. Little things like putting the pull tab on this bottom plate can see that they have that in place. So you take the four screws out, you just pull the pull tab, then it exposes the inner fan shroud where you have the two and a half inch SSD compartment on the inside of this panel. And then underneath that, you've got three screws. You take that out and that exposes your memory as well as your 2280 NVMe slot. So I wanted to show you guys around the Proxmox 8 powered console. of this Ryzen 5700U CPU. As you can see in Proxmox, we've got 16 CPUs that are available to us for processing power. I've got 64 gigs of DDR4 memory. And as we can see, it's only 59 or so usable that is presented to the Proxmox host. Here we see the details of this Ryzen 7 CPU, 16 times AMD Ryzen 7 5700U. We've got a... a Radeon graphics adapter that we can play around with. How well does this little mini PC with the 5700U processor work with Proxmox? Actually, surprisingly well. And really, I say surprisingly, I'm not really surprised that this CPU is working well. We have 16 threads, good amount of horsepower to run virtual machines, better than some of the other B-Link units. that I have shared with you guys, the N305, the N100, and others. While they do work very well, this 5700U CPU is much more powerful for your virtualization needs. I just had an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS server template that I cloned out, and I wound up with 27 Ubuntu virtual machines. And again... As I like to do, I mix things up. I've got just a single Windows 10 box out here as well. Even with all of these virtual machines, most all of the virtual machines are just sitting idle. But we still only have just minimal CPU usage. And we've only got 24% roughly of our 64 gigs of memory consumed by these Ubuntu server virtual machines. These are configured with 2 gigs of memory. and one CPU with two cores. So I want to show you guys just how responsive the virtual machines are so you can see that we not only see the system baseline, but we also see that the systems are very responsive. So let me open the console. I just want to show you guys. I'm already logged in. We can run a sudo apt-get update, and we'll let that run. we can Open another console to another box. We'll run the same thing. Let a couple of boxes be running the updates. Now I'm going to go to Ubuntu 22.04.03. Let's run Nginx container. So as you can see, not only are we running updates on a couple of VMs, we're also pulling down an Nginx container. So we're not running benchmarking software. We're not seeing how much we can tax the CPU. Rather, I like to just kind of see how a real world home lab would respond with the typical workloads that we're going to be running, such as Ubuntu server virtual machines, pulling down containers, running updates, launching Windows instances, domain controllers, workstations, and everything is working as expected. I can browse the net and see. web pages that pull up without issue and everything just feels very snappy. I'm not seeing any issues interacting with the console environment. Even with 27 Ubuntu server virtual machines, a Windows 10 host. I mean, you guys can see what we have as far as system utilization. Very little CPU usage, not that much RAM usage either. I provision these fairly anemically, as you guys saw, with two gigs of memory, so I'm not doing anything crazy on the provisioning side. Hopefully, this will help you guys to see just how well this little Beelink 5700U Ryzen 7 processor would handle home lab workloads. Well, guys, I hope you've really enjoyed this look at the Beelink SER5 with the Ryzen 7 5700U processor. I think this is a great mini PC. for a home lab. It has, in my opinion, the right balance of both power efficiency as well as the ability to have those CPU cores and additional threads. as needed for running quite a few virtual machines. And as you saw in the video, I was barely taxing this unit with 20, 22, three, four virtual machines running. So once they settled down and you had a lot of those idle or just performing daily tasks on those, such as running updates and doing various things, we only saw 25% processor usage. So this unit is great for, I think, a moderate amount of virtual machines. If you want a mini PC that you can run as a Proxmox host, run those virtual machines, running those LXC containers, perhaps even running Kubernetes nodes on there if desired, this is going to be a great unit for that. However, if you are a VMware ESXi fan, this is probably not going to be the AMD Ryzen 7 that you want to purchase due to the limited network connectivity with that. Realtek chipset. Well, I'm Brandon Lee. I hope you've enjoyed this video. Please do like the video, subscribe to the channel. I've got more great content coming you guys way. Mini PCs, software, home lab stuff, you name it. We're going to cover some really cool stuff in the next few weeks. Stay safe out there, guys. Keep on home labbing, and I will see you in the next video.

And if you've caught many of the last videos that I've uploaded, you know that I've been trying out a lot of mini PCs as of late. The model that I have for you guys today is the Beelink SCR5 and it's equipped with the 5700U AMD Ryzen 7 processor. Now again, this is the laptop variant of the processor. It's extremely efficient and it also sports 8 cores and 16 threads. Now the SCR5, there are many things I like about it in this model of the V-Link.

For one, it sports up to 64 gigs of DDR4 memory and it's dual channel. Unlike some of the other lower end mini PCs where you only have a single DIMM slot, this actually does have two DIMM slots so you can take advantage of dual channel memory operation. In addition to the dual channel memory operation, you've got a standard 2280 NVMe slot.

However, it is only a single slot, but this unit also has the capability for you to install a two and a half inch SSD if you so desire. So you could run a two and a half inch SSD along with the single 2280 NVMe drive. Now to the not so positive side of things. one of the things that I have really been looking for is an AMD unit that not only sports the Ryzen 7U line of the processor with 16 threads, but that also has an Intel network adapter. Now, by and large, a lot of the mini PCs sport the Realtek network adapters.

Now, this is fine for Linux-based hypervisors like Proxmox and XePng. However, VMware abandoned the native Linux network drivers. anything newer than VMware vSphere 6.7.

So you will have problems if you try to install ESXi 7 or later with a Realtek network adapter. In fact, it's just going to say there is no network adapter detected. You can use USB network adapters. However, to me, it's quite a shame, though, to have a really nice mini PC with perhaps a two and a half gig network adapter with LAN port and have to revert back to a single gig. connection with a USB LAN connection.

Now it works and it is quite stable. However, for my purposes in the home lab, I wanted something that I can not only run Proxmox, XCPNG, or other hypervisors, I could also run ESXi if I so desired. So it would give that unit a much higher utility value in a lab environment.

So keep in mind that this SER5 with the 5700U Ryzen 7 processor does have a Realtek network adapter, and it is only a single gig network adapter. So let me guys show you physically around this unit, which I really like how it is built, how it's constructed. It's a very sturdy unit.

You feel like it is substantial. I like the design of the case. I like that all of the ports are contained on the back of the unit.

And by and large, you won't find this on the four by four units, but on some of the smaller mini PCs, you'll have ports on the side, you'll have ports on the back and the front. So when, by the time you plug everything in, you've got just a mound of cabling that you have to route and figure out how to manage that cabling. Starting in the front, we've got two USB-A connections.

We've got the clear CMOS pinhole. We got the power button on the front. Let me swing around to the back. No surprises here.

We just have a single LAN port. This is only a one gig connection. Again, the Realtek adapter.

So you're not going to have any problems with Proxmox, XCPNG, and so forth. We've got USB ports. We've got a display port as well as an HDMI port.

And then we also have the barrel connector for the power connection on this unit. So again, the AMD SCR5 with the Ryzen 7 5700U processor. Again, I really like the build quality.

quality of the unit. I think by and large, B-Link does a really nice job with putting together these mini PC cases, how they arrange everything. One of the things I also like about the B-Link units is they seem to make these PCs so that they are able to be taken apart.

They've had the forethought. Little things like putting the pull tab on this bottom plate can see that they have that in place. So you take the four screws out, you just pull the pull tab, then it exposes the inner fan shroud where you have the two and a half inch SSD compartment on the inside of this panel.

And then underneath that, you've got three screws. You take that out and that exposes your memory as well as your 2280 NVMe slot. So I wanted to show you guys around the Proxmox 8 powered console. of this Ryzen 5700U CPU. As you can see in Proxmox, we've got 16 CPUs that are available to us for processing power.

I've got 64 gigs of DDR4 memory. And as we can see, it's only 59 or so usable that is presented to the Proxmox host. Here we see the details of this Ryzen 7 CPU, 16 times AMD Ryzen 7 5700U. We've got a... a Radeon graphics adapter that we can play around with.

How well does this little mini PC with the 5700U processor work with Proxmox? Actually, surprisingly well. And really, I say surprisingly, I'm not really surprised that this CPU is working well.

We have 16 threads, good amount of horsepower to run virtual machines, better than some of the other B-Link units. that I have shared with you guys, the N305, the N100, and others. While they do work very well, this 5700U CPU is much more powerful for your virtualization needs.

I just had an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS server template that I cloned out, and I wound up with 27 Ubuntu virtual machines. And again... As I like to do, I mix things up. I've got just a single Windows 10 box out here as well.

Even with all of these virtual machines, most all of the virtual machines are just sitting idle. But we still only have just minimal CPU usage. And we've only got 24% roughly of our 64 gigs of memory consumed by these Ubuntu server virtual machines. These are configured with 2 gigs of memory. and one CPU with two cores.

So I want to show you guys just how responsive the virtual machines are so you can see that we not only see the system baseline, but we also see that the systems are very responsive. So let me open the console. I just want to show you guys.

I'm already logged in. We can run a sudo apt-get update, and we'll let that run. we can Open another console to another box.

We'll run the same thing. Let a couple of boxes be running the updates. Now I'm going to go to Ubuntu 22.04.03. Let's run Nginx container.

So as you can see, not only are we running updates on a couple of VMs, we're also pulling down an Nginx container. So we're not running benchmarking software. We're not seeing how much we can tax the CPU. Rather, I like to just kind of see how a real world home lab would respond with the typical workloads that we're going to be running, such as Ubuntu server virtual machines, pulling down containers, running updates, launching Windows instances, domain controllers, workstations, and everything is working as expected. I can browse the net and see.

web pages that pull up without issue and everything just feels very snappy. I'm not seeing any issues interacting with the console environment. Even with 27 Ubuntu server virtual machines, a Windows 10 host.

I mean, you guys can see what we have as far as system utilization. Very little CPU usage, not that much RAM usage either. I provision these fairly anemically, as you guys saw, with two gigs of memory, so I'm not doing anything crazy on the provisioning side.

Hopefully, this will help you guys to see just how well this little Beelink 5700U Ryzen 7 processor would handle home lab workloads. Well, guys, I hope you've really enjoyed this look at the Beelink SER5 with the Ryzen 7 5700U processor. I think this is a great mini PC.

for a home lab. It has, in my opinion, the right balance of both power efficiency as well as the ability to have those CPU cores and additional threads. as needed for running quite a few virtual machines. And as you saw in the video, I was barely taxing this unit with 20, 22, three, four virtual machines running. So once they settled down and you had a lot of those idle or just performing daily tasks on those, such as running updates and doing various things, we only saw 25% processor usage.

So this unit is great for, I think, a moderate amount of virtual machines. If you want a mini PC that you can run as a Proxmox host, run those virtual machines, running those LXC containers, perhaps even running Kubernetes nodes on there if desired, this is going to be a great unit for that. However, if you are a VMware ESXi fan, this is probably not going to be the AMD Ryzen 7 that you want to purchase due to the limited network connectivity with that.

Realtek chipset. Well, I'm Brandon Lee. I hope you've enjoyed this video. Please do like the video, subscribe to the channel.

I've got more great content coming you guys way. Mini PCs, software, home lab stuff, you name it. We're going to cover some really cool stuff in the next few weeks. Stay safe out there, guys.

Keep on home labbing, and I will see you in the next video.

Transcript for:Mini PC for Home Lab

Transcript for:
Mini PC for Home Lab