Beelink MINI-S12 Pro Mini PC, 12th Gen Intel Alder Lake-N100
Beelink MINI-S12 Pro Mini PC, 12th Gen Intel Alder Lake-N100 Processor (up to 3.4GHz) Mini Computer, 16G RAM 500GB SSD Business Mini Desktop PC, Dual HDMI/WiFi6/BT 5.2/RJ45/WOL/Auto Power O
Beelink Mini S12 Pro Low-Power Office Mini PC
Beelink Mini S12 Pro Low-Power Office Mini PC
CPU
Intel 12th Gen Processor Alder Lake-N100 (4C/4T, 6M Cache, 0.8GHz to 3.4GHz)
Details in’product specifications’ suggested that it would have no operating system (said was dos) which was what I wanted.
It came with rubbish ‘Windoze’ 11. I will instal Lubuntu later.
Other than this very minor detail I am very happy with my purchase.
I’d been using a 4GB Pi 4 as a home server and it was okay but had very little head room, plus some general issues I had which I put down to performance. Replacing with this has been an incredible upgrade. I’m running Ubuntu server with 20+ docker containers (all the usual suspects, Plex, Sonarr etc) and the memory usage is still only sitting around ~20%. It also uses hardly any power and runs nice and quietly. Highly recommended if you’re looking for a no fuss home server.
You can get cheaper mini PCs with this chipset, I decided to go for a more established ‘off brand’ in the mini-pc space. I have misophonia and have to be very careful when choosing small forma factor anything if there is a fan in it. Thankfully this mini-PC is fine for me and the fan noise during heavy use is more than bearable.
Its a snappy device, its no speed demon but does everything I need for general web browsing and is saving me money due to the miniscule power draw compared to my main PC which has not been turned on from I received it!
I hope it gives me a few years before I need to replace it, I shall update if anything happens in the coming months/years.
I added the Crucial MX500 4TB drive and its been working fine for months as a server (Nextcloud, Plex etc). I’m about to purchase another Beelink Mini so that I can stream games to it from my other gaming laptop as I’ve heard it works very well for game streaming.
As the title says, this is a superb little PC for general use. I think it would struggle for Gaming use. But for all that I use it for it has proven to be a perfect update for the old Tower system that it replaced.
That would be lots of web apps concerning Office usage, some on-line CAD and more heavy duty apps such as 3D Slicers that are heavy on memory and CPU usage. The Mini S12 Pro chews through the load very well indeed, far better than I had anticipated.
It is quite impressive how much power is contained in such a small package. There are more powerful versions available of course. But if you’re looking for a great balance of power and cost the Mini S-12 is very well worth a look.
First things first. The reviews and product description are too broad and unclear regarding storage as the term SSD is used too broadly.
The device comes with a 500GB M.2 NVME SSD (the one that looks like RAM). On the bottom cover there is a 2.5 inch SATA SSD slot where you can expand the storage. The 2TB limit applies to the M.2 drive I doubt it will apply to the SATA one. I installed a 2TB SATA SSD and it works just fine but it was a tight fit the sata interface was half a millimeter off so I had to be a bit forcefull (remember any drive you install that is not bootable needs to be initialized in windows partition manager for it to appear). It’s really silent. I use it for a home media server so haven’t loaded it heavily. Watched a 4K video on my meta quest over my local network while downloading a large file and it was served quickly and flawlessly.
Windows is clean, no bloatware that I could see. Great vallue too it will probably pay for itself in a year as the PC it replaced was a power hungry old desktop PC.
Great tool for running your own plex or using it for light work , i tried battle net and roblox ‘for kids’ and it really struggled so just use it as a media centre
I have only recently become aware of the availability of mini pcs when looking for a replacement. I am really amazed by the specs on offer for such great value prices. If you require a pc for browsing, emails, office tasks then these can’t be bettered. I am using mine as a server for Plex which it is ideal as it is unobtrusive and quiet. It was a dream to set up with Widows 11 pre installed. Beeline seem to be a good supplier with lots of different specs available and from reviews the after sales service seems to be helpful in the event of a problem. Adding memory also seems easy to do. So far I am more than satisfied with my purchase.
What can you say about a mini pc. Chances are, like me, you are looking for a mini pc to act as a media server for plex or other software of your choice.
With that in mind it works perfectly and is left on 24 hours a day and does not get hot. It is very fast too.
Has a good transfer rate when transferring files averaging over 100mb per second for me. So when copying terabytes of movies or old wrestling……whatever it may be doesn’t take a million years like my older desktop does.
Obviously don’t buy one if you are looking for gaming as I’d recommend a proper desktop with a designated graphics card but for basic stuff it’s perfect.
This is great value for a Windows 11 office PC. It runs fairly hot (around 50-60 deg centigrade) in normal use, but that hasn’t been a problem so far. Using it on the back of a monitor saves desk space compared with the old mini-tower pc it replaced.
Very impressed with this my first mini pc, thought I’d struggle moving from windows 7 to the installed 11 but am pleasantly surprised with how much I like the interface on this. 16gb ram and 500gb SSD is a nice move up from my old 8gb. Runs smooth and ultra quiet. Browsing net and file explorer is speedy. Would recommend. 10/10
The Beelink mini is great value for money. Very easy to setup, update and migrate from old system to new (with usb drive or cloud account). Highly recommended, but be aware mine didn’t arrive with UK power supply so needed adaptor and monitor output is HDMI only so will need new monitor or a USB Hub with VGA output.
Minor things but can delay and frustrate your use.
I am so pleased with this mini PC.
I was not sure at first when I started looking to replace my old PC tower desktop. Then I came across this one and got me interested. So I finally went for it slightly dubious about my choice but I really liked the idea of it being so small because of storage. Well I am so glad that I did, super easy to set up, great and fast performance. Starts in a few seconds no delays. I would recommend. 10/10 Best buy I did. Thank you.
This is a great little PC with decent performance for the form factor and good connectivity in terms of ports. The addition of two HDMI cables (short and long) and a mounting bracket is nice to have. However, despite what they say, Linux support is limited.
The latest Linux kernel as of April 2023 doesn’t support the N100 wireless or bluetooth chipsets due to a bug and Intel are seemingly not being very helpful fixing it from what I’m read. Initially Linux also didn’t detect the true resolution of my monitor, defaulting to low resolution, but I manually set the kernel version to the very latest and this was fixed.
Overall it’s a great device and I’m happy I bought it, but having to mess about with kernel versions and resort to wired keyboard, mouse, ethernet, etc, is a bit frustrating.
Seems to be working well. Almost nothing to say against it.
Except that from time to time it did not boot up, just sat there with the fan running. I see someone else had the same problem. This happened after I had selected Shut Down from the power menu.
I have now fixed it. Once it has turned off, switch off the mains power to the PC (i.e. to the power unit). Then later, switch on the monitors and finally power up and switch on the PC. It has worked properly ever since.
It comes with windows 11 installed, but I have put Linux Ubuntu on it instead. I initially had trouble with graphics compatibility using Kubuntu, I think this was a problem with that particular operating system though so I reverted to Ubuntu and now everything works great.
Very nice and compact, very quiet most of the time, a low hum from the fan when booting or under heavy graphics load still very reasonable noise level.
Only has 4 USB ports (2 x USB3 on the front), (2 x USB2 on the back). This is OK but I had to buy a USB extender hub with 4 extra ports on it. The 4 ports can easily be filled by a keyboard a mouse a webcam some speakers and then you need a spare port for USB external drives. So it could do with a few more USB3 ports.
I bought this to replace a tower that I built about 7 years ago. I was sceptical but needn’t have worried.
I am a software developer and use VS and SSMS alot which this PC can handle no problems. Unless you are into gaming this can replace any PC.
The one downside which is often mentioned is fan noise but to be honest, it is hardly worth consideration. I would also assume that support is not great through Beelink although I luckily havent had to test that out.
I love this thing and would certainly recommend if you are replacing your old desktop although if you are only surfing the web and other light use activities then maybe consider cheaper models?
Details in’product specifications’ suggested that it would have no operating system (said was dos) which was what I wanted.
It came with rubbish ‘Windoze’ 11. I will instal Lubuntu later.
Other than this very minor detail I am very happy with my purchase.
I’d been using a 4GB Pi 4 as a home server and it was okay but had very little head room, plus some general issues I had which I put down to performance. Replacing with this has been an incredible upgrade. I’m running Ubuntu server with 20+ docker containers (all the usual suspects, Plex, Sonarr etc) and the memory usage is still only sitting around ~20%. It also uses hardly any power and runs nice and quietly. Highly recommended if you’re looking for a no fuss home server.
You can get cheaper mini PCs with this chipset, I decided to go for a more established ‘off brand’ in the mini-pc space. I have misophonia and have to be very careful when choosing small forma factor anything if there is a fan in it. Thankfully this mini-PC is fine for me and the fan noise during heavy use is more than bearable.
Its a snappy device, its no speed demon but does everything I need for general web browsing and is saving me money due to the miniscule power draw compared to my main PC which has not been turned on from I received it!
I hope it gives me a few years before I need to replace it, I shall update if anything happens in the coming months/years.
I added the Crucial MX500 4TB drive and its been working fine for months as a server (Nextcloud, Plex etc). I’m about to purchase another Beelink Mini so that I can stream games to it from my other gaming laptop as I’ve heard it works very well for game streaming.
As the title says, this is a superb little PC for general use. I think it would struggle for Gaming use. But for all that I use it for it has proven to be a perfect update for the old Tower system that it replaced.
That would be lots of web apps concerning Office usage, some on-line CAD and more heavy duty apps such as 3D Slicers that are heavy on memory and CPU usage. The Mini S12 Pro chews through the load very well indeed, far better than I had anticipated.
It is quite impressive how much power is contained in such a small package. There are more powerful versions available of course. But if you’re looking for a great balance of power and cost the Mini S-12 is very well worth a look.
First things first. The reviews and product description are too broad and unclear regarding storage as the term SSD is used too broadly.
The device comes with a 500GB M.2 NVME SSD (the one that looks like RAM). On the bottom cover there is a 2.5 inch SATA SSD slot where you can expand the storage. The 2TB limit applies to the M.2 drive I doubt it will apply to the SATA one. I installed a 2TB SATA SSD and it works just fine but it was a tight fit the sata interface was half a millimeter off so I had to be a bit forcefull (remember any drive you install that is not bootable needs to be initialized in windows partition manager for it to appear). It’s really silent. I use it for a home media server so haven’t loaded it heavily. Watched a 4K video on my meta quest over my local network while downloading a large file and it was served quickly and flawlessly.
Windows is clean, no bloatware that I could see. Great vallue too it will probably pay for itself in a year as the PC it replaced was a power hungry old desktop PC.
Great tool for running your own plex or using it for light work , i tried battle net and roblox ‘for kids’ and it really struggled so just use it as a media centre
I have only recently become aware of the availability of mini pcs when looking for a replacement. I am really amazed by the specs on offer for such great value prices. If you require a pc for browsing, emails, office tasks then these can’t be bettered. I am using mine as a server for Plex which it is ideal as it is unobtrusive and quiet. It was a dream to set up with Widows 11 pre installed. Beeline seem to be a good supplier with lots of different specs available and from reviews the after sales service seems to be helpful in the event of a problem. Adding memory also seems easy to do. So far I am more than satisfied with my purchase.
With that in mind it works perfectly and is left on 24 hours a day and does not get hot. It is very fast too.
Has a good transfer rate when transferring files averaging over 100mb per second for me. So when copying terabytes of movies or old wrestling……whatever it may be doesn’t take a million years like my older desktop does.
Obviously don’t buy one if you are looking for gaming as I’d recommend a proper desktop with a designated graphics card but for basic stuff it’s perfect.
This is great value for a Windows 11 office PC. It runs fairly hot (around 50-60 deg centigrade) in normal use, but that hasn’t been a problem so far. Using it on the back of a monitor saves desk space compared with the old mini-tower pc it replaced.
The Beelink mini is great value for money. Very easy to setup, update and migrate from old system to new (with usb drive or cloud account). Highly recommended, but be aware mine didn’t arrive with UK power supply so needed adaptor and monitor output is HDMI only so will need new monitor or a USB Hub with VGA output.
Minor things but can delay and frustrate your use.
I was not sure at first when I started looking to replace my old PC tower desktop. Then I came across this one and got me interested. So I finally went for it slightly dubious about my choice but I really liked the idea of it being so small because of storage. Well I am so glad that I did, super easy to set up, great and fast performance. Starts in a few seconds no delays. I would recommend. 10/10 Best buy I did. Thank you.
The latest Linux kernel as of April 2023 doesn’t support the N100 wireless or bluetooth chipsets due to a bug and Intel are seemingly not being very helpful fixing it from what I’m read. Initially Linux also didn’t detect the true resolution of my monitor, defaulting to low resolution, but I manually set the kernel version to the very latest and this was fixed.
Overall it’s a great device and I’m happy I bought it, but having to mess about with kernel versions and resort to wired keyboard, mouse, ethernet, etc, is a bit frustrating.
Except that from time to time it did not boot up, just sat there with the fan running. I see someone else had the same problem. This happened after I had selected Shut Down from the power menu.
I have now fixed it. Once it has turned off, switch off the mains power to the PC (i.e. to the power unit). Then later, switch on the monitors and finally power up and switch on the PC. It has worked properly ever since.
Very nice and compact, very quiet most of the time, a low hum from the fan when booting or under heavy graphics load still very reasonable noise level.
Only has 4 USB ports (2 x USB3 on the front), (2 x USB2 on the back). This is OK but I had to buy a USB extender hub with 4 extra ports on it. The 4 ports can easily be filled by a keyboard a mouse a webcam some speakers and then you need a spare port for USB external drives. So it could do with a few more USB3 ports.
I am a software developer and use VS and SSMS alot which this PC can handle no problems. Unless you are into gaming this can replace any PC.
The one downside which is often mentioned is fan noise but to be honest, it is hardly worth consideration. I would also assume that support is not great through Beelink although I luckily havent had to test that out.
I love this thing and would certainly recommend if you are replacing your old desktop although if you are only surfing the web and other light use activities then maybe consider cheaper models?