Minisforum MS-01 with i9-13900H 3 NVMe two 10 gig SFPs two 2.5 GbE ports PCIe-4 and DDR5

Good review, Brandon. In both senses. You liked the machine and you covered it well.

I am left wondering who this machine was designed for. Who's its target audience?

It has a non-server processor in it, one that almost requires it be partially turned off for server use. It maxes out at 96GB RAM, unofficially, using non-binary DDR5 DIMMs. Better than 64GB, of course, but short of the 128GB or more than even a small server would support. It has vPro, which is a corporate management feature. It takes three M.2 sticks or two and a U.2, but not all U.2s fit. I like that the SSDs are actively cooled. I bet the machine is a little furnace with three SSDs installed.

Then there's its networking capability. Two SPF+ ports and two 2.5Gb Ethernet jacks (Intel based). Very flexible. Server-ish more than desktop-ish, though 2.5Gb is not really a server standard. I'd like to see RJ45 jacks instead of SFP+ sockets. Much more likely that 10Gb would be used with copper connects rather than fibre, and not having to purchase transceivers of either type would be a cost savings.

The machine seems to be a chimera of server features and desktop features. It doesn't seem to be at home on most desktops and it falls way short of anything that would be considered for a data center.

I do see the machine fitting into a home lab, either as a single server or as part a short stack of nodes in a cluster of some sort.

Of course, they are not inexpensive, and choices for low power, low cost home lab "servers" are increasing in number seemingly every day.

I wonder what goodies the MS-02 will pack when its time arrives.

The MS-01 seems to be short a PCIe slot or two for a workstation class machine. I'd like the option to add at least a GPU; anything from one slot wide to four. You know graphics cards are growing to the size of suitcases these days. For a GPU, the machine would need either a high power option for a consumer card or a cooling option for a passively cooled server class adapter. 

I agree with exactly what you listed in wanting a Xeon and ECC RAM as options.

On the other hand, realize the size and power rating of the last couple of generations of Xeon CPUs. They're physically huge, hot running, and consume power by the kilowatt. Server water cooling is a manufacturer offered option these days (fifteenth, sixteenth generation Dells).

I am not sure there's a perfect tiny workstation class machine possible these days, at least not one with current CPUs. Of course, reviewers being reviewers, a new machine shipping with anything older than the last couple of generations of Xeon is going to get the product seriously dinged.

Look at the Intel NUC Extreme (11 and 12) as a possible form factor for a workstation or stackable server. The machine is big enough for 3 or 4 M.2 sticks, an upgradable CPU, and a two-slot video card. It falls short on having a spare slot though, and it only takes two SODIMMs, so it maxes out at 64GB. The Core i9 version of the Extreme 12 even has both 10GbE and 2.5GbE (dual NICs) onboard. 1 litre machines are cheap, cute, and plentiful, but have proven to have too many configurability limitations for various use cases.

i'm interested to see what type of pcie cards people go with for these. adding an HBA would make this a great multipurpose NAS unit connected to a disk shelf.

personally, i think the MS-01 falls into a great middle ground: not too expensive, good storage and network options, lower power, good CPUs. it's not perfect for everyone, but it's great for a lot of people.

I did consider using this as a Proxmox host (because of the core issues with esxi) with an HBA card, but honestly it would look quite ugly with the hba card sticking out connected to some kind of jbod chassis (or more likely a case with hotswaps, PSU and a breakout board of some kind since it would be much cheaper. Honestly I think that if they sold it as an ITX, possibly with an optional case would have been perfect even if it would become slightly bigger. 

That's honestly why I am considering the Miniforum BD790i. The 770 variant SEEM to support bifurcation so I might be able to fit a HBA and a 10G network card in it. Not sure if I can afford to get one just to test if it is possible tho. (Also lacks OOB management, but got a spare rpi4 CM and was considering getting a Geekworm X680 4 port Pi-KVM anyway for three other mini-pcs, so I'd have a free slot there)

Regarding the ram, I wonder if the two slot limit is a limit of the "laptop" CPUs or if they could add two additional slots if they wanted. But I fear that the CPU itself has not enough channels for it. 

Hi All,

Seriously looking at this MS-01 as my Home Server replacement and after some advice.

I have for some time been running a tiny AWOW AL34 box as a home server (UNRAID), just mounted on my study wall with nothing but NW & Power (my own custom 3D printed airflow + over-sized case)

I'll throw some pics up as im quite proud of this one, its been running for a couple of years and the fact I managed to cram so much into such a small form factor and have it all working seamlessly (surprisingly supports mux) as the board has 2x m.2 slots, one for SATA and one for NVMe. However, the board also has a tiny connector for a supplied proprietary cable to a powered SATA drive connector on other end. I got a Startack 2.5" SSD chassis which you can add two m.2 SATA drives inside and somehow, it all plays nicely!! UNRAID 6TB array with Parity and Cache has been running Plex and trans coding for a couple of years now.

Drives:

• Front USB Key (UNRAID OS)
• 2 TB NVME m.2 (Parity)
• 2 TB SATA m.2 (Data Drive 1)
• 2 TB SATA m.2 (Data Drive 2)
• 2 TB SATA m.2 (Data Drive 3)
• 512 GB PCIe m.2 via USB (Cache Drive)
• 40mm Noctua Fan via ZFC39 Temp Probe Fan Controller

Anyway, iv had a few drive issue/corruptions lately and im looking at replacing the whole system+drives. However, I still want to keep with the tiny footprint.

The MS-01 although larger gives me huge scope to futureproof and do other things. Being NVMe, I might look at moving to 4tb SSDs (ill ignore the supposed limit for now).

My main question about the MS-01:

So the board on this has three NVMe slots baked in, great. The PCIe x16 slot actually runs at x8 I think? (according some the smallprint).

I would want to add a half height quad NVMe adapter card so I could add another 3 NVMe drives (6 in total), such as this from Amazon. 

Will this board (given the CPU/Chipset) support bifurcation, and will it automatically lower to x4, x2, x2 if thats the case, so all the drives show up?

I might be pulling the trigger on this if thats the case and ill put my old one in the motorhome to act as a server for the kids films when on Holiday! 

Let me know your thoughts on the MS-01 as I might end up pulling the trigger here!

Kind Regards,

James.