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Presentation and unboxing
Mini PCs are a good way to fulfill your computing wants whereas holding your desk clear and minimalistic. The times of outdated tower computer systems that you just shove beneath your desk simply to take up house at your ft (collect mud) are actually over. Most individuals are fantastic with a laptop computer, a mini PC, or perhaps a highly effective pill (what’s a pc, huh?).
Right here comes the Beelink EQ14. It is constructed across the all-new Intel N150 — the successor to the 2023 Intel N100 — a staple for entry-level methods.
The Beelink EQ14 comes on this Navy Blue possibility and includes a honeycomb sample on high. It is a fashionable Mini PC, which is uncommon for the class.
On the time of writing, the configuration we’ve for evaluate prices $230 (and has a $40 Amazon coupon), which features a 500GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, and Home windows 11 Professional preinstalled.
The automobile has built-in Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, together with a wide variety of ports on the back and front.
The EQ14 ships in a reasonably small field, with a separate energy cable and an HDMI cable (1 meter). The facility provide is built-in into the PC, so there aren’t any thick bricks to fret about.
Design and ports
Mini PCs aren’t flashy machines, and so they’re not imagined to be. The Beelink EQ14 is refined in its navy blue colour – it is not a bland black plastic field.
It has a sample on the high and an EQ letter within the nook. There may be an EQ on the backside of the drive together with small vents.
wanting mini PC
Ports are nice in EQ14. On the entrance are two USBs – one A (USB 2.0, 480 Mbps) and one C (Information, 10 Gbps), a 3.5 mm audio jack and the facility button. On the again, there are three USB-A (USB 3.2 Gen2, 10 Gbps), two HDMI (4k@60Hz), two LAN (1000 Mbps) and the determine 8 energy connector.
As you may guess from the specs above, not one of the ports are Thunderbolt, and the USB-C port lacks DisplayPort assist, so you may want to attach displays by way of two HDMI ports.
Back and front gates
Opening the Beelink EQ14 is kind of simple. You will want to take away the 4 rubber covers over the 4 Philips head screws and undo them. While you’re achieved, pull the small rubber tab to take away the underside panel.
Inside, you are greeted by a small heatsink (held in place by two extra Philips headers) with two thermal pads on the underside, the facility provide, two PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSD slots (the primary one is PCIe 3.0 x4, the opposite PCIe 3.0 x1 and free), and a single 16 GB 3200 MHz DDR4 SODIMM slot preinstalled (most supported).
This implies you may simply add a second SSD (or swap each for greater ones), or swap out the RAM in case of failure (you may’t have greater than 16GB).
efficiency
An important characteristic of the Beelink EQ14 is its Intel N150 processor. The N150 is the successor to the favored N100 and is the next frequency variant of that processor.
The Intel N150 relies on the Intel Twin Lake structure, which is extra of a tweak of the outdated Alder Lake than a brand new configuration. It is primarily based on Intel’s lithography 7, which suggests it is a 10nm processor.
Apparently, Intel has but to offer particulars on the processor and there’s no Arc web page printed but.
Bodily an identical to the N100, the N150 has 4 efficiency-focused cores and 4 threads. The utmost Turbo clock velocity is 3.6 GHz – up from 3.4 GHz – whereas the cache is identical 6MB. On the GPU aspect, you get the identical Intel graphics with 24 compute models, however the peak clock has been elevated from 750 MHz to 1000 MHz.
The N150 has a most TDP of 25W (typical TDP is 6W). We ran some benchmarks on the Beelink EQ14 to provide you an concept of what to anticipate from the machine. In Geekbench 6, the N150 scores about 18% greater in single-core checks and about 5% greater in multi-core checks than the N100. The Passmark rating is about 5% higher than the N100, as are the Cinebench numbers.
This implies you may count on nearly an identical efficiency to the N100, which is completely fantastic for an entry-level PC or an inside server.
| commonplace | Check | The consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 6 | Single Core | 1199 |
| Multi Core | 3045 | |
| Geekbench AI (NPU) | Single precision | 863 |
| Half precision | 468 | |
| Quantized | 1396 | |
| Crossing signal | CPU | 5990.3 |
| 2D graphics | 226.0 | |
| 3D graphics | 759.0 | |
| Reminiscence | 2463.6 | |
| Disc mark | 4160.3 | |
| On the whole | 1222.4 | |
| Blender 4.3.0 | Customary rating | 30.42 |
| Cinebench R23 | Single Core | 902 |
| Multi Core | 2771 | |
| Cinebench 2024 | Single Core | 58 |
| Multi Core | 183 |
To place the above numbers into some type of perspective, let’s evaluate the N150 to the Intel Core i3-14100 – the logical step up from the N collection. The Core i3 has the identical 4 bodily cores, however double the variety of threads at 8, it additionally helps as much as 96GB of RAM as much as the N150 restrict of 16GB. Trying on the Geekbench 6 numbers, the Core i3 scores simply over twice as a lot because the N150. Transferring on to Cinebench R23, the Core i3’s single-core rating is twice as excessive and its multi-core rating is 3 times greater, on common.
The built-in SSD didn’t impress. The preloaded unit is a SATA III SSD, and it is value swapping it out for a PCIe 3.0 NVME drive. Nonetheless, remember the fact that the second SSD slot is incompatible with SATA III, so the pre-installed SSD can’t be moved to the second slot.
Disk velocity and 7zip commonplace
We ran a three-hour stress check on the Beelink EQ14.
The processor began the check at a full 3.6 GHz (about 22 W), however then nearly instantly dropped to 2.7 GHz (about 15 W) and went right into a cycle that goes as much as about 2.7 GHz and drops to about 600 MHz.
It by no means went again to three.6GHz (22W) and stayed round 15W throughout the check, that means a steady 3.6GHz is out of the query. The processor heated as much as 61°. The PC itself felt a bit of heat from the surface.
To summarize the efficiency, we are going to say that the Intel N150 is sweet for what it’s meant for – entry-level computing. This isn’t a good selection for gaming or video modifying, however it is going to be best for an workplace pc, a scholar machine or a server. It is quick sufficient that on a regular basis duties do not get in the way in which, and it is quiet and really environment friendly. More often than not it can run at about 6W and devour electrical energy.
Fan noise
The built-in fan was inaudible in our typical workplace setting throughout our stress check. In case you are very near the EQ14, you may hear the fan when the system activates. We measured under 30 dB.
CONCLUSION
The Beelink EQ 14 prices $250, however on the time of this text, you may get it for $190 from Amazon.com — there’s an 8% low cost plus a $40 coupon. That is an awesome value and arduous to beat—the entry-level Apple Mac Mini prices $599. Sure, the Mac has a way more highly effective 10-core M4 processor, but it surely additionally has the identical 16GB of RAM and half the storage at 256GB with out the choice of a second SSD slot.
Apples and oranges, certain, however on the finish of the day, a Mini PC is an reasonably priced and minimalist solution to deal with your computing wants, and the Beelink EQ14 is completely able to that.
Purchase Beelink Mini PC EQ14 at Amazon.com
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