MeLE Overclock3C N5095 16GB 512GB Windows 11 Pro Micro

 

Pleased so far with this purchase. I bought it to sit behind a monitor with its provided VESA attachment with HDMI, keyboard and mouse all connected.

It does a sterling job of running three Linux distributions , Fedora 38 in particular, Linux Mint Victoria and Linux Manjaro 22. Later on the course of my experiments, I discovered that GhostBSD, based on FreeBSD 13.2 runs beautifully except WiFi. An ethernet connection saved the day.
To Linux users be aware the the WiFi will work out of the box only if you are running a distribution with Linux Kernel 6.2 or higher. The ethernet port will run if if the kernel is older as will Bluetooth as I discovered upon unboxing and before I ran updates.

One of my principal motives for buying this product was the upgradability. Removable RAM and M.2 SSD NVMe furnishes users with freedom or at least respects it. This is counter to how many manufacturers are shipping computers today. The expandability here is of great importance.

This device has a fan and is well vented. It is not entirely silent and does kick in under load. But much of the time it is at rest.

I hope to be writing another review in the next year to see how this product really compares with my old laptops.
Currently, I’ve no regrets.

 

I wasn’t expecting too much from this but it has exceeded my expectations. Put an additional memory card in, and Microsoft office on it and it does all the basic things you’d want. It’s true you can’t hear it but it’s a bit of a fib it doesn’t get hot. If it’s thinking a lot it does get very warm.

 

Ok, so if you like Windows this is a fine little box, however if you prefer a proper OS then grab a usb stick, download Fedora 35 live image, insert the USB stick in the USB port, fire up the machine and hit delete a couple of times. This will take you to the BIOS, in the BIOS navigate to boot options and replace windows with USB at the top of the boot order. The machine will boot from the USB device, select run Fedora Live and the little box will boot from the USB stick straight into Fedora 35. Now I dont suggest you wipe out the Windows install, so you can run Fedora straight from the USB stick or install an M2 NVME SSD, up to 2TB drives are supported. There are some nice Western Digital fast SSD M2 NVME drives available on Amazon, I went for a 500GB drive as it seemed to provide the best value for money. Once installed (there are plenty of vids on youtube to help you here) you can install Fedora straight to the M2 drive and dont forget to change your boot order in the BIOS. In terms of supported drivers everything worked fine on first boot with Fedora 35, wireless was faultless and sound worked like a dream, power management was superb as well. Everything you need for a Linux desktop. I have not tried 4K yet but I hope this helps. Its a great little system for the money.

 

I’ve bought a fanless Atom compute stick from Mele before, years ago. From China. So I felt I could trust their design/product.

I’ve only had this a few days … but as I was confused from reviews and product descriptions about what SSD it can take, I wanted to say here I can use a 2TB NVMe drive … the socket’s keyed for NVMe … not SATA. On the model I bought anyhow.

I just wanted a “back-up” + “ancillary” machine. I tend to RDP Virtual machines running on slightly heftier though mobile-CPU based servers … I like small powerful devices that sip energy rather than gulp it. So as an “ancillary” machine, I have it plugged into a 13″ 1080p USB C powered touch screen … powering the screen from this PC via USB A port to USB C, which is also the “touch” connection, and using a full HDMI cable. I RDP my general VM for email etc. But I also have the Spotify App on there, and Plex client as I have a Plex server (I have a lot of personal “server” services running on other small machines in VMs/containers etc.). I can KVM to it with my mouse/keyboard, although I also use Microsoft’s “Mouse Without Borders” which works really well in Windows 10. I checked compatibility for Windows 11 before purchasing … I think this machine looks OK for that. Using Web browsers is fine too … and fine for other video streaming etc.

I’m an Office 365 account holder so I wanted to be able to store up to 1TB of OneDrive data on here too. I’m running Windows from the built-in eMMC though … it seems fast enough for that, but I have created a Windows page file partition on the NVMe SSD. And I wanted dual boot – though still to set that up, though left some space free for it. I leave some space … made some space on the eMMC, as I’m not sure how wear algorithms work on these chips and whether leaving some space might be helpful. I don’t know. Just belt & braces approach. Bitlocker runs just fine on it. I chose to bitlock the entire partitions in one go though … as I preferred to let it do it rather than possibly slow the CPU down a little more during operation later. I fitted a WD Blue SN550 2TB High-Performance M.2 PCIe NVME SSD from Amazon for 175 at time of writing which seemed the best bang for my buck from a reliable vendor, as far as I could see. This machine is unlikely to benefit from performance pedigree per se, but it’s the reliability and running cooler when maxing-out the data transfer rates, at a competitive cost, that interests me.

I’m using wired internet – not tested the WiFi or bluetooth yet. With the NVMe in, it gets a little warm if using the Plex client, but not hot. It goes to sleep nicely with a push of the front button. The sound is OK – using the wired socket. I use a USB powered Hart Just Mixer – mixer which is another product that I really like. (Though I use anti-ground loop thingies on a couple of the audio leads to get rid of hum/noise if powering the mixer, especially, from a USB source sharing a ground-plane with any of the audio inputs/outputs).

In every day use the machine, including web browsers, feels fast/responsive, even with multiple tabs and apps open.
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As a back-up machine, I wanted the dual 4K option, because I like using at least 2x monitors for software development. One only 1080p landscape, but the other, a very wide screen, in flipped-portrait mode. And then I RDP my work VM. It’s a backup to my Dell XPS that’s my everyday driver, though it’s nice having an ancillary machine while my XPS focuses on work. This machine is plenty fast enough to not notice much difference for everyday tasks.

For back-up purposes, I can plug it into my “admin” vlan at home … and I also have edge, chrome and firefox installed with no issues and running well. I’m saying all this to highlight how versatile this machine is … as everyday computer, but also a handy thin-client and administrative machine. It uses so little power it could run on a decent UPS for ages! It doesn’t give off much heat.

I haven’t tried anything heavier on it … e.g. any Development / creative stuff. I’m sure it’ll run vscode … but I don’t expect it to be a great experience though perhaps adequate for light Dev tasks, and I don’t expect it to compile very fast. I don’t expect it to play games unless streamed games which I expect will run quite well on it (ToDo). Maybe if I had no choice but to run a Dev environment on it, my impression is that I could maybe get by very slowly (e.g. running Web API servers with debugger attached and maybe Node proxy / front end React server, refreshing (recompiling) the Node stuff on save etc. and maybe running a heavy-database like SQL Server … this sort of meatier load probably won’t run too well on this machine, and might even knock it over, but using vscode or similar (I’m mostly Microsoft based and creature of habit though migrating a lot of stuff to Linux actually) … anyway … using something like VScode … it could probably get by. If you’re a front-end Dev maybe and the backend/database is running somewhere else. Occasional Photoshop etc. might be OK if not doing any crazy rendering. It is a 4x processor machine so I imagine multi-threaded work will benefit from that … the J4125 does support VT-D … Hyper-V etc. if you want Microsoft’s Sub System for Linux and Docker desktop running etc. … I’m pretty sure it will be OK for light tasks using those sorts of technologies. I do actually have a J5005 based NuC running Open Media Vault (including with LUKs encrypted drives), Plex Server in a docker container, and quite a few other services in Docker containers including IoT etc. and OpenVPN in case my main router goes down etc. … and I have actually used an Ubuntu based container with a desktop, in the container, that I could RDP before too … so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at just how pleasantly powerful Intel’s more modern Celeron chips are.

This machine is a light duty machine. What’s amazing about it is just how good it is, for such little volume, and such little energy. And a reasonable price.

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I had no issues finishing the Windows set-up and updating it to a more recent version. You can set it up with a local account if you like (while Windows 10 anyway … not 11). If you want bitlocker, you have to enable it. (It is Windows 10 Pro).

No crashes or freezes or anything so far.

The only caution I have is that the USB C power socket isn’t a Power Delivery one. There’s a sticker on the device warning you of this, advising a 26V max input limit, and advising to use the included 12V 2A plug. The plug doesn’t seem too cheap … happy with that. And I’m powering a monitor from it too, via USB on this machine. But still … I took the sticker off the heat sink facing, and I hope I don’t forget in the future. I wish it was a Power Delivery socket.

I’ve probably forgotten key things I meant to say that’s actually relevant lol. Oh well. My impression at least, is that machine is a very decent every day (modern Windows / Web / Streaming) PC that could hide behind your monitor and add maybe 25 per year to your electricity bill if maxing it out 24/7 all year. Or something like that. Maybe less if you have “economy 7” equivalents etc. It’s just amazing. Amazing.