MINISFORUM MS-A1 Mini Workstation Mini Barebone Pc, DDR5/4xM.2 NVMe SSD, Dual 2.5G RJ45 Mini PC,HDMI/DP/Type-C,4xUSB Ports,Supports AMD AM5 CPU,WiFi 6E&BT5.2 Mini Computer(NO CPU/NO RAM/NO SSD/NO OS)

After reading so much hype about the MS-A2, I couldn't wait to get my hands on one! I already have an MS-01 and MS-A1, so I was super excited to see how much the tech has evolved in the last year. The MS-A2 is essentially in the same case as the MS-A1, but packed with a lot more power!I was a bit saddened to see there is no USB4 support or Gen5 NVME and has just one HDMI video output . It does have two type-C USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps ports that support display port out, so you can add two additional monitors (for a total of three monitors at the same time.)It has two 2.5GbE ethernet ports. One is Intel-based, the other is Realtek based. In addition, it also has two SFP+ ports based on the Intel X710 network chip. The WiFi 6E and Bluetooth are from a Mediatek RZ616 m2 network adapter inside.It is now possible to get 64GB DDR5 SODIMM memory modules, so two of those DO work in this system for a total of 128GB of RAM!!!Of course, I had to get the Ryzen 9 version 9955HX, which has 16 cores and 32 threads. That CPU can turbo up to 5.4GHz!For storage, there are three M.2 slots that can fit either M.2 2280 (80mm) or M.2 22110 (110mm) NVMe SSDs. Yes, you can use RAID 0 or RAID 1 on them! It also includes an adapter if you want to use U.2 enterprise-class server storage drives.This Mini PC is no toy! The power brick is 240 watts! It's amazing how much power, performance and reliability you get for such a low price in such a small and quiet package! Yes, you can absolutely hear the CPU fan ramp up when it's under a heavy workload, but it is much quieter than the CPU coolers of yester-year!Opening up the system to work on it is just a push button away. No tools required! You push a button in the back and the entire case pulls off like a sleeve!There is an option to slot in a OcuLink PCEi card if you want to have an external GPU, though I'd just get a regular tower PC if that was my intention, personally.This is THE best value homelab computer available today! I am absolutely smitten with this workhorse!!!

I am a Mac person through and through but have a few workloads that don’t work well in Parallels, so I started looking for a minimalistic approach that didn’t require me to buy an expensive laptop or bulky desktop. I found great articles about the Minisforum MS-01 and was impressed with its upgradable design, size, and performance characteristics. I bought the largest model and got a 4Tb NMVe SSD and a Yeston RTX 3050 low-profile GPU as upgrades.The PC was super easy to set up. I first cloned the 1Tb SSD to the 4Tb SSD and installed it without any problem by removing just 3 screws. The video card was even easier to install as it required a single screw to be removed. I connected the PC to my 10Gbps network using an SFP+ fiber adapter and was off to the races. The boot time was super fast and after a few obligatory Windows installation steps, I was up and running, connected to the internet, and had a great 4K image. I was glad to see it came with a Windows 11 Pro license and absolutely zero apps; just the necessary drivers.The forums mentioned that upgrading the BIOS was important and that was easy too, although that entire process was much better explained on the forums than in the Minisforum documentation. It took just 5 minutes in the end and allowed me to see a lot of interesting features in the BIOS as well.Now that I’ve run the system for a week, I’m so impressed. It’s unbelievable how powerful this minuscule PC is and how easy it was to expand. It’s not as quiet as my Mac Studio Pro, but it’s totally fine from a noise perspective.I highly recommend the Minisforum MS-01.

I originally tried to buy 3 via their official store, but they seemed unwilling or unable to ship after WEEKS (and then also unable/unwilling to cancel until I threatened a chargeback). This sales/support experience will be important later. So I ended up get 3 from Amazon (with next-day delivery!) for the same price as direct from their store.These little systems are real powerhouses. I have all three (i5 barebones) setup as a Proxmox cluster with Ceph (using 64GB of RAM, 2x 8TB NVME drives for Ceph storage, and a smaller SSD for the OS), and making real good use out of the dual 10Gb SFP+ ports. These have been GREAT... except when one of them failed a month later (while I was on a 2-week vacation). Now, this wasn't an issue (everything that was running on them came up on the other two in the cluster). And when I said "dead", I mean no lights, nothing. And replacing the power brick did not resolve the issue, so it was something with the power components on the board itself.Given my experience with their sales support, I bought a 4th (on Amazon) before attempting RMA of the broken unit. But it turns out, other than them trying to tell me to use a pin to press the non-existent reset button, their post-sales return/RMA process wasn't too bad, though I did have to pay for the return shipping (~$16). But they were quick to agree to replace it, and gave me a shipping address to send it to, and the replacement was shipped out the day after it was received.I've ended up using the 4th now for a desktop (replacing my 12-year-old desktop), with 10Gb fiber connection back to the rack for access to the Ceph storage pool.So so far, 1/4 died after 1 month of use, but their RMA support is pretty good, even if their site sales support was VERY poor.In all, I'm pretty happy with these for my homelab. They only take about 55W each and are more than sufficient for their workloads. And they're quiet. All around really good systems, and the option for an i9 (which supports up to 96GB of RAM) is available for those needing more power. And all for a really good price (really, the 2x8TB SSDs were the most expensive part of the project).So in general, I can definitely recommend these, especially if buying on Amazon (or at least not the OEM's official site)... especially if you need (or can use) 10GbE networking.