Minisforum – Easy Hosted https://ezhosted.com Everything Self-Hosted and Homelab related. Sat, 03 Aug 2024 16:05:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 https://ezhosted.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/IMG_1762-150x150.png Minisforum – Easy Hosted https://ezhosted.com 32 32 Minisforum MS-A1 https://ezhosted.com/2024/08/minisforum-ms-a1/ https://ezhosted.com/2024/08/minisforum-ms-a1/#respond Sat, 03 Aug 2024 15:33:42 +0000 https://ezhosted.com/?p=110 NAS, which is an excellent Homelab device, especially if we can get access to that new addon that converts 3xNVMe SSD to 6xNVMe SSD. But there is a new device recently released by Minisforum: MS-A1. Very similar to MS-01, but with a few differences. First of all, it’s AMD-based,...]]> Recently, we talked about Minisforum MS-01 -> NAS, which is an excellent Homelab device, especially if we can get access to that new addon that converts 3xNVMe SSD to 6xNVMe SSD. But there is a new device recently released by Minisforum: MS-A1. Very similar to MS-01, but with a few differences. First of all, it’s AMD-based, and it accepts AM5 Socket CPUs. You can get it with AMD Ryzen 7 8700G or barebone, which means no CPU – and you can add it yourself. It also features AMD Radeon™ 780M graphics card, with 12 GPU cores, a graphics card frequency of 2900MHz, 4 M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD slots with transfer speeds of up to 7000MB/s, and 2x 2.5G RJ45 network interfaces. Unfortunately, it lacks SFP+ ports you can find on MS-01. Also, it officially supports dual-channel DDR5 memory with speeds of up to 5200MHz and up to 96GB.

This seems to be an incredible and very versatile device that you can use in your Homelab for a long time, especially given its max memory support and 4 NVMe slots. You can either get a prebuilt version with AMD Ryzen 7, 8700G 32GB DDR5, and 1TB SSD or get a Barebone version and configure it to your needs.

We have a sample build you can use to get a machine with maximum memory and a great SSD, and in the future you add more SSD drives as your needs grow:

Direct links to parts used in this build:

As mentioned, this seems to be a great device, and I’m really considering getting it as a replacement for the much bigger and WAY louder Supermicro 5019D-FTN4 AMD Epyc 3251 that I have rack-mounted.

]]> https://ezhosted.com/2024/08/minisforum-ms-a1/feed/ 0 Minisforum MS-01 -> NAS https://ezhosted.com/2024/08/minisforum-ms-01-nas/ https://ezhosted.com/2024/08/minisforum-ms-01-nas/#respond Sat, 03 Aug 2024 03:59:32 +0000 https://ezhosted.com/?p=107 I’ve been looking for an ideal Homelab server for a while. Something that’s not too big but not too simple, something that can power many VMs in my Proxmox but does not sound like a jet engine. Something that could be potentially used even in the apartment and is not too noisy and big. Ideally, I would like to install something with more than 64GB of memory and add more than 2 SSDs.

Recently I found a device that has a lot of these qualities: Minisforum MS-01. It has a decent 13th Core i9 13900H Processor with 14C/20T, 24MB Cache, up to 5.4GHz, and can have up to 64 GB of DDR5 memory officially (and looks like it’s possible it can support 96GB unofficially, unconfirmed). Also, it has 2x 10Gbps SFP+ and 2x 2.5G RJ45 (one of which can be used as IPMI for remote management). Also, you can install up to 3x M.2 NVME SSDs (one of which could be U.2 NVME SSD). This looks almost perfect, but for some reason, I am still not convinced. Maybe if I get at least one more NVME, it would be an easier choice for me. And today, I found an interesting video from NASCompares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MDzL2mxYcY, where he showcases an official (not yet released) upgrade card for this mini PC, which can transform 3xM.2 NVME into 6xM.2 NVME. Pretty exciting solution, and I’m waiting to see this in store.

NASCompares about Minisforum Official MS-01 6x M.2 SSD Upgrade Card

Another great review of MS-01 (without the 6xSSD card) from Hardware Haven on YouTube

Hardware Haven
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