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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.