Beelink EQ 12 Mini PC Evaluation: Is It The One? | Digital Noch

As Beelink continues to pump out mini PCs, one stands out as an unimaginable alternative for those who run IT dwelling labs. The EQ 12 comes out swinging with a mixed connectivity bandwidth of 45Gb/s at a value that’ll make you rethink your Raspberry Pi cluster.

Many firms have been loading the market with NUC-alike mini PCs over the previous few years. There are some which can be unimaginable and lots of that may go away you scratching your head. Beelink’s EQ 12 is unquestionably a headscratcher. Nonetheless, that doesn’t imply it’s with out its place. Even when its finest match is nowhere close to what Beelink supposed.

Beelink EQ 12 Specs

Although the Intel Celeron N100 is the linchpin of this mini PC, it has some wild connectivity, even in comparison with among the higher-end Beelink fashions. Whereas it will be deceptive to fake that it’s attainable to completely make the most of all of that bandwidth concurrently, it’s nonetheless a really spectacular battery of connectivity. The N100 has 9 PCIe 3.0 lanes. PCIe 3.0 is able to 4Gb/s per lane, for a complete of 36Gb/s on the N100. That’s lower than the 45Gb/s you get from tallying the 4 USB 3.2 ports and two 2.5Gb ethernet ports. To not point out the truth that a PCIe lane is devoted to the NVMe SSD, and doubtless one other to the wi-fi card, leaving solely 28Gb/s. So what provides?

To be honest, the N100 most likely may deal with all of its PCIe lanes being saturated anyway. Within the case of the N100, and by extension the EQ 12, it’s not that you’d need to maximize your bandwidth utilization. Fairly, you’d need to have that low-latency peripheral connectivity out there to share between gadgets. With that in thoughts, it makes full sense to allocate these PCIe lanes towards USB 3.2. Consequently, downstream gadgets can share the bandwidth and gadgets can leverage the excessive pace when wanted without having devoted PCIe lanes.

To that finish, the EQ 12 is a exceptional mini PC in its value bracket regardless of its humble CPU. However who wants all that throughput that’s solely going to be operating an Intel Celeron, and a cellular one at that? I truthfully don’t know. It jogs my memory of poorly chosen and/or barely conscious pc salespeople that might upsell with the go-to phrase “however this one has extra gigabytes.” The response to that was virtually at all times “giga-what?” Folks available in the market for a pc that may suffice with the Intel Celeron platform absolutely don’t want 45Gb/s of peripheral connectivity. That’s to say, this actually appears to me like one other “this one has extra gigabytes” (or gigabits on this case) sort of state of affairs.

That doesn’t should be a foul factor, although. As expertise fanatics, we at all times welcome extra mega-whos and giga-whats. I’m unable to inform you what market section Beelink supposed the EQ 12 for. However a sure area of interest echoes via all my Beelink opinions and I feel the EQ 12 reverberates that echo slightly louder than most of my others.

The EQ 12’s 2.5Gb ethernet is welcome by itself, however then, there are two. To me, this screams dwelling (IT) lab or DIY router/safety gateway materials. It may even deal with essentially the most luxurious of dwelling web connections with the twin 2.5Gb ethernet. All in a package deal that’s smaller than most dwelling routers.

Within the Field

As anticipated from Beelink, the EQ 12 comes with just a few easy, however appreciated, equipment.

The VESA mounting bracket is a superb method to mount the EQ 12 to the again of a monitor. The bracket could be very skinny, so it shouldn’t intrude with most monitor arms. There’s additionally a brief HDMI cable that needs to be lengthy sufficient to connect with a monitor that the EQ 12 is mounted to, and an extended HDMI cable to connect with a second monitor. The mounting system and appropriately sized cables make for a really tidy setup.

Beelink EQ 12 Efficiency

You most likely don’t consider efficiency whenever you consider Intel’s Celeron line, and few would argue with you for holding that notion. However the actuality of the matter is that Celeron CPUs are literally pretty commonplace in community tools due to their comparatively versatile thermal and energy necessities. I’ve a WatchGuard XTM 5 Collection router, which has seven gigabit-speed ports, that shipped with an Intel Celeron E3400. The E3400 is barely a dual-core, it makes use of DDR2 reminiscence, and was launched in 2010. However it could possibly deal with seven simultaneous gigabit connections. With this in thoughts, it’s simple to see simply how a lot a low-cost Celeron can do if leveraged the precise approach.

To be clear, the Intel Celeron N100 undoubtedly gained’t carry out wherever close to a Core-i3 or higher. However as I’ve proven, that doesn’t imply that it’s with out its place. I generally tend to keep away from CPU and GPU benchmarking as a result of there are lots of which can be way more thorough than I’m. I favor to give attention to the qualitative facets of merchandise. Whereas that does generally embody some benchmarks, and this assessment of the EQ 12 will observe go well with, I believed it necessary to set expectations.

Apparently, the NVMe SSD doesn’t report any details about the seller. Some looking round on-line leads me to imagine that it is likely to be the TeamGroup MP33, however I wasn’t capable of finding something conclusive.

This unbranded SSD piqued my curiosity, so I simply needed to benchmark it and see what was occurring. It seems to be maxing out the only PCIe lane that it’s been configured with.

The efficiency, whereas not similar to current PCIe 4.0 SSDs, is definitely fairly strong. Whereas the only PCIe 3.0 lane nerfs the sequential throughput, the random 4K reads and writes are on half with loads of mid-market brand-name SSDs. Moreover, as a result of most working system and utility operations happen on the order of kilobytes somewhat than megabytes, the random 4K speeds are literally what make a pc really feel quicker. Comparatively, arduous drive random 4K speeds are usually below 2MB/s.

Conclusion

The Beelink EQ 12 actually isn’t for everybody. I feel it will be a wonderful alternative for gentle dwelling or workplace use. The Intel Celeron N100 is actually the limiting issue. Regardless of this, the abundance of connectivity and peripheral bandwidth give it excellent potential for dwelling labs.

General, I feel Beelink’s EQ 12 is an unexpectedly virtuous finances PC, even when for even much less anticipated causes.