Mini PC Mini Review - Minisforum UN1245 (Intel i5-12450H)

owdi · Dec 13, 2023

After my challenges with a different mini PC I decided to go with a unit that had actual reviews.

I bought a barebones Minisforum Venus Series UN1245 from Amazon for $232 ($255 after tax). Link

~~EDIT: It lasted 2 months. On Feb 18, 2024, it powered off and will not power on again.~~
EDIT2: After sitting unplugged for a few weeks, it powered up mid March. Uptime now at 21 days.

Specifications:

Intel Core i5-12450H (8C/12T up to 4.4Ghz, 45W)
No RAM
No SSD
No OS
WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Single LAN (2.5G)

I installed 2x16GB DDR4 sticks and a Samsung EVO 960 NVMe SSD, then installed Windows 11 and Debian 12. That was fun, after installing Debian, Windows would blue screen with a MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION error. The solution is documented, I had to prevent Debian from powering down the WiFi adapter on shutdown by adding NETDOWN="no" to /etc/default/halt

Packaging was dense, they crammed a lot into a small box, there was no empty space. I like it.

The power adapter is a chunky barrel type 19V, 4.73A, 90W unit, and comes with a typical C13 to NEMA 5-15 power cord. Model YHY-19004730

I used the excellent SIV (System Information Viewer) to get system info and monitor sensors.

CPU: Intel i5-12450H with 4 performance cores that support HT, and 4 efficiency cores. This is a 45 watt Alder Lake CPU that supports both DDR4 and DDR5.

RAM: No RAM was included. The specs confusingly call for up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 SODIMM 1.1V CL40 GDDR4, sigh. For a barebones system you would hope they get this right, especially since this CPU supports both DDR4 and DDR5. The actual supported ram is the very common DDR4-3200 1.2V CL22 SODIMM 260-pin. I was cheap and bought TEAMGROUP RAM, model TED416G3200C22-S01, for $27+t per stick. I placed two separate orders for my previous mini pc project, and received two different DIMMS, sigh. I received a dual rank DIMM and a single rank DIMM. Same model number, different rank, fu TEAMGROUP. Fortunately the mini PC detected both, and after a several minute long first boot, it was happy.

Disk: I installed an old Samsung EVO 960 250GB PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD. This mini PC claims support for PCIe 4.0 NVMe, and it comes with a SATA cable, with room for an internal 2.5" SSD.

WiFi: Mediatek MT7921K, part number RZ608
This is a 2 stream device with onboard Bluetooth 5.2 via an emulated USB controller. It's detected as a PCIe 2.0 x1 device, and the MediaTek RZ608 Bluetooth Adapter shows up as connected to a USB Root Hub (USB 2.10 High). This appears to be a common Wifi 6E module, but Windows 11 23H2 did not have a driver for it. Minisforum support website did have the driver. I had to install separate drivers for WiFi and Bluetooth. No driver issues in Debian.

LAN: 2.5G Intel Ethernet Controller I226-V
Cool. This operates at PCIe 2.0 x1. Surprisingly, Windows 11 23H2 did not have a driver for this. Easily solved, but weird. No driver issues in Debian.

Audio: Onboard mic and 3.5mm mic input
This shows up as two High Definition Audio Device Microphones. I do also see a High Definition Audio Device in the Playback tab of Windows Sound settings, but there is no 3.5mm output jack, and plugging headphones into the 3.5mm input jack produces no audio. What were they thinking?

The BIOS is a basic blue AMI bios with most settings hidden. I think they hid too much, as I could not find a setting to increase the boot timeout, disable the splash screen, or to prompt to select a boot device. Fortunately booting to Grub then choosing Windows works. It is possible to change CPU power limits but I left it at the default 45 watts. There are no options for memory timings. There are basic controls for fan speed vs temp at 4 levels. Boot time is quick. I can go from power off to to a Debian login prompt in 6 seconds, and a Windows login prompt in 10 seconds.

First round of tests:
Power measured at the wall, temp and rpm as reported by SIV

Turned Off	1.3 watts
Turned On, Display Off	9 watts
Turned On, Display On	11 watts, 37*C, fan at 1500 rpm
Watching Youtube @1080p in Edge	20 - 24 watts, 43*C, fan at 1860 rpm
y-cruncher multithreaded 500m	73 watts, peaked at 67*C, fan at 2600 rpm

These benchmarks were taken with 2 sticks of RAM, running at their rated 3200mhz, CPU at the default 45 watt setting, Windows Power Mode set for Balanced.

Benchmarking with P and E cores that vary their frequency is a PITA. Lightly threaded benchmarks have a ton of variance, often randomly running 50% slower. Below I report the best result, as well as the rando alternate result in parenthesis. for those tests that were inconsistent. Before you ask, setting CPU affinity did not fix it. Setting Power to Best Performance gave worse results in most tests.

y-cruncher 0.7.7.9500, AVX2 + ADX (Kurumi), Single-Threaded, 100m	19.1s, One core reached 56*C
y-cruncher 0.7.7.9500, AVX2 + ADX (Kurumi), Multi-Threaded, 100m	5.6s, peak core 57*C (sometimes 8s)
y-cruncher 0.7.7.9500, AVX2 + ADX (Kurumi), Multi-Threaded, 500m	34.5s, peak core 67*C
kraken, Edge 100.0.1185.36	447ms
FurMark 2.0.7.0, 1080p	827 (13 fps average), GPU temp not reported
FurMark 2.0.7.0, 1440p	526 (8 fps average), GPU temp not reported
CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4 x64, 1GiB, SEQ1M Q8T1	Read 3.3 GB/s, Write 1.5 GB/s
iperf3.12_64, iperf3 -c localhost -P 1	35.6 GBytes 30.5 Gbits/sec (17.3 GBytes 14.9 Gbits/sec)
iperf3.12_64, iperf3 -c localhost -P 2	54.1 GBytes 46.5 Gbits/sec
iperf3.12_64, iperf3 -c localhost -P 4	56.3 GBytes 48.4 Gbits/sec
winsat formal	CPU LZW Compression 816.64 MB/s CPU AES256 Encryption 13536.26 MB/s CPU Vista Compression 2131.10 MB/s CPU SHA1 Hash 5809.92 MB/s Uniproc CPU LZW Compression 109.52 MB/s Uniproc CPU AES256 Encryption 1346.12 MB/s Uniproc CPU Vista Compression 262.62 MB/s Uniproc CPU SHA1 Hash 808.45 MB/s Memory Performance 36662.23 MB/s Video Memory Throughput 22036.50 MB/s Disk Sequential 64.0 Read 2984.20 MB/s Disk Random 16.0 Read 1366.18 MB/s

owdi · Dec 13, 2023

Those Furmark scores were higher than I expected, so let's see what happens in Minecraft.

Minecraft 1.20.1 with default settings, looking down at a plains biome with 30 entities. Vsync disabled, no frame cap.

Resolution	Vanilla/Fancy	Optifine/Fancy	Vanilla/Fabulous	Optifine/Fabulous
720p	175	216	161	158
1080p	159	182	93	92
1440p	132	134	60	60

Overall pretty good, and more than enough to play comfortably. I'm surprised Optifine made so little difference on Fabulous and at 1440p.

The fan was spinning well over 2k for all these tests even though temps stayed under 70*C. It was pretty annoying, the default fan speeds are much too aggressive. I just installed Fan Control and am thrilled to find the fan can be controlled from software! Pushed it down to 1200 rpm... aaaah, so much better.

Nevarre · Dec 14, 2023

View: https://www.amazon.com/MINISFORUM-i5-12450H-Threads-Desktop-Computer/dp/B0CJ34M9GW
This one? I'm not seeing an *ND*1245

I got a UM560XT early this year in the non-barebones configuration and was actually pleasantly surprised that the included RAM and SSD were not bottom of the barrel. RAM was sourced from Kingston and the SSD was a common OEM model (don't have it handy-- I pulled it and installed an SK Hynix P31 Plus. Most of the rest of the details and complaints are fair. I don't mind the BIOS being a throwback design, but it is a little feature-poor. Beyond that it's been a solid system and a shockingly good value.

owdi · Dec 14, 2023

Nevarre said:
View: https://www.amazon.com/MINISFORUM-i5-12450H-Threads-Desktop-Computer/dp/B0CJ34M9GW
This one? I'm not seeing an *ND*1245

I got a UM560XT early this year in the non-barebones configuration and was actually pleasantly surprised that the included RAM and SSD were not bottom of the barrel. RAM was sourced from Kingston and the SSD was a common OEM model (don't have it handy-- I pulled it and installed an SK Hynix P31 Plus. Most of the rest of the details and complaints are fair. I don't mind the BIOS being a throwback design, but it is a little feature-poor. Beyond that it's been a solid system and a shockingly good value.

Ug, PEBKAC, yes, the UN1245. I've updated the post, thank you.

Nevarre · Dec 14, 2023

One thing I don't know if you're planning on testing; I had heard that the UEFI on some Chinese systems didn't have the OS license tied to it like it's supposed to for Win10/11. In other words, if you ever wiped the SSD or replaced it, there goes your Windows license.

I installed a new SSD to test the theory, and Win11 did immediately recognize its license burned into the UEFI. Reinstalling on the new NVMe drive was easy.

Shavano · Dec 16, 2023

IMO 1.3W is a lot of power for "turned off". Is that vampire drain in the power adapter, in the mini, or do you know?

owdi · Dec 16, 2023

Nevarre said:
One thing I don't know if you're planning on testing; I had heard that the UEFI on some Chinese systems didn't have the OS license tied to it like it's supposed to for Win10/11. In other words, if you ever wiped the SSD or replaced it, there goes your Windows license.

I installed a new SSD to test the theory, and Win11 did immediately recognize its license burned into the UEFI. Reinstalling on the new NVMe drive was easy.

This unit did not come with Windows so I cannot test that. I thought Microsoft stored the hardware fingerprint in the cloud, so the same hardware gets activated...

owdi · Dec 16, 2023

Shavano said:
IMO 1.3W is a lot of power for "turned off". Is that vampire drain in the power adapter, in the mini, or do you know?

1.5w for a computer that is off is great I think. This is not drain from the adapter, unplugging the minipc from the adapter drops the power to 0.

Keep in mind a computer that is off must still provide standby power to support wake on keyboard, mouse, or LAN, or to power ram when sleeping. On an ATX PSU, +5VSB must be at least 1A (5 watts), and is usually 2.5A (12.5 watts).

Shavano · Dec 17, 2023

owdi said:
1.5w for a computer that is off is great I think. This is not drain from the adapter, unplugging the minipc from the adapter drops the power to 0.

Keep in mind a computer that is off must still provide standby power to support wake on keyboard, mouse, or LAN, or to power ram when sleeping. On an ATX PSU, +5VSB must be at least 1A (5 watts), and is usually 2.5A (12.5 watts).

Sleeping in wake-on-land, -keyboard or -mouse isn't off. Yeah, that's pretty good for sleeping.

owdi · Dec 20, 2023

I ran a PWM test using pwmconfig in Debian with the following results:

Code:

    PWM 255 FAN 3982
    PWM 240 FAN 3901
    PWM 225 FAN 3792
    PWM 210 FAN 3571
    PWM 195 FAN 3534
    PWM 180 FAN 3391
    PWM 165 FAN 3229
    PWM 150 FAN 3082
    PWM 135 FAN 2909
    PWM 120 FAN 2710
    PWM 105 FAN 2500
    PWM 90 FAN 2288
    PWM 75 FAN 1994
    PWM 60 FAN 1746
    PWM 45 FAN 1380
    PWM 30 FAN 993
    PWM 28 FAN 928
    PWM 26 FAN 858
    PWM 24 FAN 804
    PWM 22 FAN 717
    PWM 20 FAN 635
    PWM 18 FAN 581
    PWM 16 FAN 528
    PWM 14 FAN 399
    PWM 12 FAN 354
    PWM 10 FAN 254
    PWM 8 FAN 170
    PWM 6 FAN 0
    Fan Stopped at PWM = 6

Subjectively, the fan was quiet around 1400rpm, and not audible above the background noise in my quiet office at 800rpm. The default fan PWM appears to be 50, for 1500 rpm.

I was able to turn the fan completely off by setting PWM to 0, which caused CPU temperature to increase to 55*C at idle. This is with a few containers running, and with the default 45 watt power setting. Everything seemed fine, but the minipc locked up after half an hour. I think the complete lack of airflow caused something other than the CPU to overheat.

I settled on:
Minimum PWM of 26 (860 rpm) at 50*C cpu temp. (Idle temps settled around 42*C)
Maximum PWM to 150 (3080 rpm) at 80*C cpu temp. (5 min cpu burn peaked at 77*C)

morpheusX · Dec 24, 2023

Hello owdi and others and thank you very much for your detailed review.
I am looking into buying the exact same model as you did and I would be obliged if you could answer a couple of questions:

1. Can you please describe the BIOS options available somehow? I got a bit worried from what you mentioned. Specifically, I am interested in PCIE aspm settings. Based on your consumption numbers it seems that aspm may be disabled. Is there a way to enable it in BIOS? If not and since you are running linux could you please run a "sudo lspci -vv | grep ASPM" command and let us know?

2. Is there a way to enable/disable wake-on-lan in BIOS?

3. Is there an automatic power on after power loss feature in BIOS?

4. How about virtualization options in BIOS? Does VT-d enable/disable exist?

5. Can E-cores be disabled in BIOS?

6. Just for clarification your consumption value of 1.3W is after a complete shutdown right? You are not referring to a sleeping state correct?

Thank you very much in advance.

owdi · Dec 25, 2023

1. Can you please describe the BIOS options available somehow? I got a bit worried from what you mentioned. Specifically, I am interested in PCIE aspm settings. Based on your consumption numbers it seems that aspm may be disabled. Is there a way to enable it in BIOS? If not and since you are running linux could you please run a "sudo lspci -vv | grep ASPM" command and let us know?

There are no PCIe settings in the BIOS. See below output from lspci.

2. Is there a way to enable/disable wake-on-lan in BIOS?

Yes, under Advanced, ACPI Setting, Wake On Lan. Can be Enabled or Disabled.

3. Is there an automatic power on after power loss feature in BIOS?

Yes, under Advanced, ACPI Setting, Restory On AC Power Loss. Can be Always On, Always Off, or Last State (They misspelled Restore)
There are also time controls under RTC Wake. Can be Fixed Time with configured time of day, or Dynamic Time in 1-5 minutes, which I think is a delay to power on after power loss.

4. How about virtualization options in BIOS? Does VT-d enable/disable exist?

Yes, Under Advanced, System Devices Configuration. VT-D is Disabled by default, SR-IOV Support also disabled by default.

5. Can E-cores be disabled in BIOS?

No. There are no settings for cores, hyperthreading, or clocks.
Under Advanced, Power & Performance, the only available settings are Platform PL1 Power, Platform PL2 Power, Power Limit 1, Power Limit 2, and Tcc Activation Offset. All power limits are set to 45000 (for 45 watts), and Tcc Activation Offset is set to 9, which I believe sets thermal throttling to 92*C.

6. Just for clarification your consumption value of 1.3W is after a complete shutdown right? You are not referring to a sleeping state correct?

Correct, shut down, but with mini PC plugged into the power brick. This is standby mode. This was measured with a cheap power meter so I doubt the power number is very accurate at such a low power draw.

Here you go:

Code:

lspci -vv | grep ASPM
                LnkCap: Port #5, Speed 16GT/s, Width x4, ASPM not supported
                        ClockPM- Surprise- LLActRep+ BwNot+ ASPMOptComp+
                LnkCtl: ASPM Disabled; RCB 64 bytes, Disabled- CommClk+
                LnkCap: Port #9, Speed 8GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported
                        ClockPM- Surprise- LLActRep+ BwNot+ ASPMOptComp+
                LnkCtl: ASPM Disabled; RCB 64 bytes, Disabled- CommClk+
                LnkCap: Port #10, Speed 8GT/s, Width x1, ASPM not supported
                        ClockPM- Surprise- LLActRep+ BwNot+ ASPMOptComp+
                LnkCtl: ASPM Disabled; RCB 64 bytes, Disabled- CommClk+
                LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 8GT/s, Width x4, ASPM L1, Exit Latency L1 <64us
                        ClockPM+ Surprise- LLActRep- BwNot- ASPMOptComp+
                LnkCtl: ASPM Disabled; RCB 64 bytes, Disabled- CommClk+
                L1SubCap: PCI-PM_L1.2+ PCI-PM_L1.1+ ASPM_L1.2+ ASPM_L1.1+ L1_PM_Substates+
                L1SubCtl1: PCI-PM_L1.2- PCI-PM_L1.1- ASPM_L1.2- ASPM_L1.1-
                LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L1, Exit Latency L1 <4us
                        ClockPM- Surprise- LLActRep- BwNot- ASPMOptComp+
                LnkCtl: ASPM Disabled; RCB 64 bytes, Disabled- CommClk+
                L1SubCap: PCI-PM_L1.2+ PCI-PM_L1.1+ ASPM_L1.2+ ASPM_L1.1+ L1_PM_Substates+
                L1SubCtl1: PCI-PM_L1.2- PCI-PM_L1.1- ASPM_L1.2- ASPM_L1.1-
                LnkCap: Port #1, Speed 5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <2us, L1 <8us
                        ClockPM- Surprise- LLActRep- BwNot- ASPMOptComp+
                LnkCtl: ASPM Disabled; RCB 64 bytes, Disabled- CommClk+
                L1SubCap: PCI-PM_L1.2+ PCI-PM_L1.1+ ASPM_L1.2+ ASPM_L1.1+ L1_PM_Substates+
                L1SubCtl1: PCI-PM_L1.2- PCI-PM_L1.1- ASPM_L1.2- ASPM_L1.1-

BIOS Version AHBTB 1.01 x64
Build Date and Time 08/10/2023 14:56/49
Manufacturer Name Shenzhen Meigao Electronic Equipment Co., Ltd

fitten · Dec 31, 2023

For Christmas, I got myself a UN1265 from the same company. It was on sale on Amazon for ~22% off. I would have gotten a UN1245 except for the sale. I didn't get mine barebones. I got it with 32G DDR memory and 1TB m.2 SSD. I haven't opened it up but the SSD is a Kingston (as reported by the BIOS screen). The stats are the same as the above except for the i7-12650H processor which has 6P and 4E cores and runs at a peak of 4.7GHz (vs 4.4GHz of the 12450H). To be fair, I probably should have gotten the UN1245 except for the sale (and the 12650H has 24MB of L3 vs. the 12MB or the 12450H... which, to be honest, is a minor thing for my use case). I started playing with it on Dec 27 and have messed around with it for a few hours every day since.

I wiped the SSD and installed Ubuntu 22.04LTS on it from the start. I only booted into Windows because I accidently forgot to plug in the Ubuntu installation flash drive that I had made. I've been playing around with it a little, mostly just messing with Advent of Code problems for this year, getting various other things set up (git, Chrome, various chat apps, etc.) and it's been pretty nice.

Overall, I'm very pleased with it. I also received the 90W PSU but I had already read about aftermarket PSUs of higher power so I also ordered a 150W laptop PSU (hasn't gotten here yet). The unit uses standard laptop PSUs so that's a nice feature. I did this because the default BIOS setting for CPU power use is 45W. From reviews I saw on YouTube, setting this higher can improve multithreaded workloads significantly (one review set it to 60W, for example). The problem with doing that is the provided 90W PSU. Setting it at 60W, that reviewer saw the power draw get as high as the mid/high 80s which is too close to the PSU rating. The advice (I read on Reddit, etc.) was that getting a higher rated aftermarket PSU will let you play with that more. Of course, I don't plan to play with that much, or at all, but.. well... I'm me. I have read that some people had received 120W PSUs with their UN1245s and UN1265s but I wasn't one of the lucky ones. In any case, the aftermarket laptop PSUs are pretty cheap and searching will turn up posts where people list known working PSUs that they've bought.

There's another model that's a step up, with the same Intel processors, called the NAB6. It has two 2.5gbe ports and some other stuff, but I didn't need that. Of course, Minisforum also has AMD based mini pcs. I might actually think about one of those if/when my wife's computer needs replacing. She does light gaming on her desktop now and one of the AMD systems should be able to handle that well.

I posted my Kraken results in the CPU forum the other day. Not bad for a computer of that cost and is about the size of a personal meal sized frozen chicken pot pie you can get from the grocery store.

owdi · Dec 31, 2023

Two weeks in and I'm really impressed with this mini PC. It has spent about 20% of it's life as a Windows PC and 80% as a Linux server.

The GTX 670 in my sons Minecraft PC finally kicked the bucket, so this mini PC became an emergency Minecraft PC. No problems pushing 2k60 with Fancontrol keeping things quiet.

Under Linux, this little box is a mean docker host. NVMe + fast burst CPU + lots of ram means spinning up containers is super quick, the longest part is waiting for things to download over my 300Mbps internet connection. I have pihole, minecraft, nginx, home-assistant, wordpress, mysql, plex, and a few more going. It's massive overkill, the CPU rarely goes over 10%, 80% of ram is free, and total disk space used is only 12gb.

fitten · Jan 2, 2024

Further review of the Minisforum UN1265. Well... as much as I liked this machine, I'm returning it. I powered it down Sunday (Dec31) and it would not power back on. I've tried all the things to try to get it to restart that I found by searching but nothing seems to work. I sent an email to Minisforum support on Dec31 and I got the first response this morning (Jan2), but I've already decided that I'll be shipping it back to Amazon today.

From my searches, it seems that my issue is uncommon but it happens. I found a few posts via searching that say the same thing, or very similar thing, happened with their mini pc. The suspected culprit is that there are QA problems and the power circuitry in the box can fail. I saw a number of posts that say that Minisforum's support is pretty good but that since it is in China, the typical email exchange rate is once per day. I saw several posts saying that it took nearly a month to get their mini pc RMA and return from them. I'm not willing to wait that long so I decided to just sent it back for a refund.

I'm pretty disappointed. I really like the machine. If I were confident I could get an RMA return in a week, I might would go that route. However, I'm not confident that a replacement system wouldn't do the same. Granted, a bit of that is just my pessimism marinated in my disappointment that it failed.

skondris · Feb 7, 2024

@owdi I purchased this same mini-PC and am wanting to replace the minisforum startup logo but can't seem to find the BIOS CAP file as I'm not sure which NUC this is considered, any chance you could help me locate the correct CAP file? thanks in advance!

Nevarre · Feb 7, 2024

skondris said:
@owdi I purchased this same mini-PC and am wanting to replace the minisforum startup logo but can't seem to find the BIOS CAP file as I'm not sure which NUC this is considered, any chance you could help me locate the correct CAP file? thanks in advance!

It's not a NUC, like at all. If you want to tinker, you'd need to ask Minisforum directly.

owdi · Feb 9, 2024

skondris said:
@owdi I purchased this same mini-PC and am wanting to replace the minisforum startup logo but can't seem to find the BIOS CAP file as I'm not sure which NUC this is considered, any chance you could help me locate the correct CAP file? thanks in advance!

Minisforum has not published a BIOS update and I've not tried to backup the BIOS and unpack it to see what can be changed.

skondris · Feb 9, 2024

ahhhh, ok, no worries, thank you !

owdi · Feb 18, 2024

~~sigh~~ EDIT: It's alive
~~It's dead.~~ It ran great for about 6 weeks, then yesterday had a random power off while playing minecraft. The mini PC was in Debian with only one minecraft server container going using 4gb of ram, cpu was barely busy.

Today, it powered off again, also during minecraft, and now it will not power on again.

This was too good to be true after all, lesson learned.

WM314 · Feb 19, 2024

Will you attempt a warranty claim? If you do, I think a report on that experience would be helpful, as most existing reports are via the probably-not-neutral Reddit…

continuum · Feb 26, 2024

Probably more of a Mobile Computing Outpost (MCO) topic but looks like Minisforum is doing tablet/2-n-1 laptops now too...

Minisforum Unveils V3: A 2-in-1 Tablet with Ryzen 7 8840U and Windows 11 Pro

www.anandtech.com

owdi · Apr 1, 2024

I did open a ticket by sending an email to support, received a detailed response with things to try within a business day, then found the mini PC just powered up when I plugged it back in. It's now been up for 2 weeks.

owdi · Apr 21, 2024

3 more weeks and it's still alive. I powered it off for a few days while out of town, turned it on a week ago, and it came up with zero fuss.

On my todo list is to install a SATA disk, install a second fan to help with cooling while keeping things quiet, test 2.5G performance, and test Wifi 6 performance.

tiredoldtech · Apr 22, 2024

All, after I had random reboots with my MinisForum X400 4750g- I reached out to their support. It took a bit for them to get back to me, but they actually put in writing confirmed what I had thought.

A number of their units were shipped with lower wattage power supplies than what is needed. I believe they said the current standard for their units is along the lines of a 19V/19.5V 6.32A power supply (something like PA-1121-28 / A15-120P1A on Amazon). The claim is that they shipped units with 65w-90w adapters (depending on the model mini-PC) as they worked, but under various load it was found to not be enough to power certain components correctly (multiple USB, internal drives, etc). All units since 2023 are now shipped with the 19/19.5V 6+ amp (120w) models to address that. I'd worry about going above that 6+ amp level as it may be too much power at that point (over 120w). Just remember that the barrel connectors are 5.5x2.5mm when looking for a replacement.

I have yet to get a reboot since replacing my power adapter. No, one thing I did not toy with is power settings outside of sleep modes and standard options for processor/ram/graphics.

Hopefully, this helps with the UN1265/UN1245/UM650XT/etc.

Also, as an aside/side note - see if there's an update for your unit's BIOS. Mine had several over the years before MinisForum pulled them from the site. Those often "there and then not there" updates actually fixed a few issues I had early on with sleep modes and enabling/disabling/tweaking options. If you're nice to them in emails and patient to wait a while for their response, I've heard that sometimes they will still hand out links/zips to the new BIOS versions to fix issues.

owdi · Apr 24, 2024

@tiredoldtech this is great info, thank you. Did minisforum support send you the larger power supply or did you have to purchase it?

owdi · Apr 24, 2024

I ran a few more benchmarks under Debian comparing single channel vs dual channel performance.

The results were mixed. I think I need to upgrade from Stable to Testing, to get a newer Linux kernel that better handles the P vs E cores, to get more consistent results.

Debian 12, Linux 6.1.0-18-amd64

Benchmark	Single Channel (1x 16gb)	Dual Channel (2x 16gb)
iperf3 -c localhost -P 1	106 GBytes 91.5 Gbits/sec	104 GBytes 89.1 Gbits/sec
iperf3 -c localhost -P 2	113 GBytes 97.5 Gbits/sec	94.8 GBytes 81.4 Gbits/sec
iperf3 -c localhost -P 4	119 GBytes 102 Gbits/sec	not tested
7zz b -mmt1	Comp: 6412 Dec: 5089	Comp: 5889 Dec: 5086
7zz b -mmt12	Comp: 39576 Dec: 37370	Comp: 51570 Dec: 35753

owdi · Apr 24, 2024

cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.backup
sed -i s/bookworm/testing/g /etc/apt/sources.list
apt update
apt upgrade
apt full-upgrade
reboot

12 seconds to download 350MB, 5 minutes to upgrade 360 packages and reboot

<3 Debian, now at Linux 6.6.15-amd64

Unfortunately my 7-zip benchmarks are about the same, while iperf loopback benchmarks have wild amounts of variance. The -P 4 test shot up to 184 Gbits/sec, but the intervals ranged from 1.33 Gbits/sec to 403 Gbits/sec.

tiredoldtech · Apr 26, 2024

owdi said:
@tiredoldtech this is great info, thank you. Did minisforum support send you the larger power supply or did you have to purchase it?

Reasonably considering, no, they did not send me one (especially since it's been 2 or 3 years since I had purchased my MinisForum PC).

I obtained my power adapter/supply from Amazon using the specs they had provided (that I had noted in my prior post) for about $45. They have cheaper, but I got one that matches another I had for one of my laptops, so I knew it was compatible from prior testing and went with that.

Checking this evening, my PC not only doesn't crash/reboot randomly anymore (only reboot at all since swapping the adapter/supply is for a Windows update), but it even performs better doing things such as ripping DVD/Blu-Ray/4k to MKV/MP4 and the external USB 4k Blu-Ray burner actually reads/rips a little faster too (probably due to actually being able to get the right power voltage/amperage on the USB connections).

MinisForum PC's have a documented historical reputation on several forums for not supplying enough power/amperage to the USB ports in their systems (especially under CPU/onboard drive load and/or having all ports in use/connected). These problems mostly go away with better power adapters/supplies. There were a few older models when they first started around 2018-2019 where unfortunately, that didn't matter- they still had hardware and performance hiccups no matter what was upgraded on them. However, it appears that with products post 2020, it was addressed and the newer units do improve with upgrades (better stability and performance). I still do see the occasional person on forums state that their newer unit came with a power adapter/supply in the 90 watt range instead of a proper 120 watt adapter/supply. It isn't only MinisForum though- I have personally seen it in the office with HP and Lenovo providing adapters/supplies that are also underrated for their laptops and mini-PC's. Same thing- better wattage adapters/supplies usually fix problems you wouldn't initially think was due to power.

Just don't go nuts. A 230 watt adapter/supply might actually be bad when it comes to a device looking for half that or less (90 to 120 watt OK, 90 to 180 or 230 watt = might be giving it too much juice).

steelghost · Apr 29, 2024

tiredoldtech said:
A 230 watt adapter/supply might actually be bad when it comes to a device looking for half that or less (90 to 120 watt OK, 90 to 180 or 230 watt = might be giving it too much juice).

Power supplies don't "push" power into devices, devices draw what they need. As long as the PSU can provide the rated amps and volts, it should work.

That said, if you're only really pulling 70W from a PSU rated to deliver over 200W, you're probably not using it in the best part of the efficiency curve; this would be the main reason to get a PSU that is well matched to the duties it will be used for, IMO.

tiredoldtech · Apr 29, 2024

steelghost said:
Power supplies don't "push" power into devices, devices draw what they need. As long as the PSU can provide the rated amps and volts, it should work.

That said, if you're only really pulling 70W from a PSU rated to deliver over 200W, you're probably not using it in the best part of the efficiency curve; this would be the main reason to get a PSU that is well matched to the duties it will be used for, IMO.

Efficiency is the issue here. The true numbers for the design are unknown as we only know the chip wattage numbers. The rest is kinda sketch as the true numbers are never actually revealed for most MinisForum tiny PC's. There are claims of total consumption wattage numbers from the manufacturer, but it in no ways means those are accurate (due to design bugs, build and power shortcuts, and actual load needs).
Prime example: My X400 4750G came with a roughly 90w supply. The TDP of the AMD Ryzen 7 4750G that is in it is 65w. Logically, when using USB 3/3.1/3.2, DP, HDMI, spinning platter drives, and/or SSD/NVME- the wattage usage climbs faster and quickly overwhelms a 90w supply. We are also talking about aftermarket replacement supplies that are sometimes a roll of the dice with piss-poor quality control and sometimes do naughty things (like claim 19v, but really run 24v, or have some weird Ohm issue because of the equipment or cabling they had in house at the shop that made them that day). Thus, logically speaking, going a bit higher than what was provided by the manufacturer in this instance- but not insanely, is the safer way to go.

owdi · Apr 29, 2024

My measured peak power was 73 watts with a all-core y-cruncher stress test. This is at the wall using a power meter, so even with 90% efficiency the platform would have consumed 65 watts. CPU power limit in the BIOS is 45 watts so efficiency is probably lower than 90%.

Typical idle power is 9 watts at the wall. 90 watts seems pretty right sized.

Wish I had an oscilloscope to measure it myself.

VectorVoyager · May 1, 2024

Seems quite expensive for its specs. Have you heard of x86 based single board computers? They come in a single board with no case etc, therefore are generally cheaper.

steelghost · May 2, 2024

Are there any x86 SBCs that offer similar specs and performance, and are also cheaper than the OP's system when you factor in a case, PSU, storage and whatever else?

tiredoldtech · May 2, 2024

VectorVoyager said:
Seems quite expensive for its specs. Have you heard of x86 based single board computers? They come in a single board with no case etc, therefore are generally cheaper.

Most single boards are lower specs as they are designed for industrial/lower load and/or spec. I have yet to see an equivelant single board that matches some of these minisforum (and competitor) machines for what they come with/can do- espcecially for the price.

@steelghost you beat me to the reply by 10 minutes!

VectorVoyager · May 4, 2024

steelghost said:
Are there any x86 SBCs that offer similar specs and performance, and are also cheaper than the OP's system when you factor in a case, PSU, storage and whatever else?

I would give Udoo Bolt or Lattepanda 3 Delta a try. Lattepanda seems to be producing newer products while Udoo's latest board is a bit outdated (still, it has Ryzen and capable of running GTA 5 which was a very big deal for such a board when it came like 5-6 years ago).

owdi · May 5, 2024

@VectorVoyager both of those are more expensive and less capable than this mini pc.

steelghost · May 7, 2024

The x86 SBCs you mention are, charitably, aimed at a different sector than the Minisforum system the OP has. Built in Arduinos and GPIO headers, but based on either older technology (Udoo), or a less powerful platform (Lattepanda).

VectorVoyager said:
I would give Udoo Bolt or Lattepanda 3 Delta a try. Lattepanda seems to be producing newer products while Udoo's latest board is a bit outdated (still, it has Ryzen and capable of running GTA 5 which was a very big deal for such a board when it came like 5-6 years ago).

If I just wanted a small computer, the value of the Minisforum and similar machines is much better. If I need some of the specific features of the other SBCs you mention, well I need to pony up the extra, but as a general purpose machine, they are not really cost effective.

Mini PC Mini Review - Minisforum UN1245 (Intel i5-12450H)

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