Introduction and unboxing
Mini PCs are an effective way to cater to your computing wants whereas protecting your desk clear and minimalist. The times of outdated tower PCs you tuck underneath the desk solely to remove house out of your ft (gather mud) are really over. Most individuals are high quality with a laptop computer, a Mini PC, or perhaps a highly effective pill (what’s a pc, eh?).
This is the place the Beelink EQ14 is available in. It is constructed across the very new Intel N150 – the successor to 2023’s Intel N100 – a staple for entry-level programs.
The Beelink EQ14 comes on this Navy Blue possibility and contains a honeycomb sample on the highest. It is a trendy Mini PC, which is uncommon for the class.
On the time of writing, the configuration we have now for evaluate prices $230 (and there is a $40 coupon on Amazon), which features a 500GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, and Home windows 11 Professional preinstalled.
The machine has Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 built-in, together with a wide variety of ports on the entrance and rear.
The EQ14 ships in a sufficiently small field, that includes a separate energy cable and an HDMI cable (1 meter). The facility provide is constructed into the PC, so there aren’t any chunky bricks to fret about.
Design and ports
Mini PCs aren’t flashy machines they usually’re not imagined to be. The Beelink EQ14 is delicate in its Navy Blue – it isn’t a bland black plastic field.
There is a delicate sample on the highest and an EQ monicker within the nook. There’s an EQ on the underside of the machine alongside small holes for air flow.
A great trying mini PC
As you may guess from the specs above, not one of the ports are Thunderbolt, and the USB-C port lacks DisplayPort assist, so that you’d want to attach displays by way of the 2 HDMI ports.
Ports on the entrance and rear
Opening up the Beelink EQ14 is straightforward sufficient. You’d have to take away the 4 rubber covers over 4 Philips head screws and undo these. Whenever you’re achieved, pull the small rubber tab to get the underside panel off.
Inside, you are greeted by a small heatsink (screwed in place by two different Philips heads) with two thermal pads on the underside, the ability provide, two PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSD slots (the primary is PCIe 3.0 x4, the opposite PCIe 3.0 x1 and free), and a single DDR4 SODIMM slot with 16GB 3200MHz preinstalled (the utmost supported).
Which means you can simply add a second SSD (or swap each for larger ones), or swap the RAM in case of failure (you may’t have greater than 16GB).
Efficiency
Probably the most noteworthy function of the Beelink EQ14 is its Intel N150 processor. The N150 is the successor to the favored N100 nevertheless it’s largely a higher-clocked variant of that processor.
The Intel N150 is predicated on the Intel Twin Lake structure, which is extra of a tweak of the outdated Alder Lake, than a brand new setup. It is based mostly on Intel’s 7 lithography, which means it is a 10nm processor.
Apparently, Intel has but to announce the processor and would not have an Arc web page revealed simply but.
Being bodily an identical to the N100, the N150 has 4 Effectivity-only cores and 4 threads. The utmost clock velocity is 3.6GHz – up from 3.4GHz – whereas the cache is similar 6MB. On the GPU aspect, you get the identical Intel Graphics with 24 compute models, however the peak clock has gone up from 750MHz to 1000MHz.
The N150 has a peak TDP of 25W (the standard TDP is 6W). We ran a number of benchmarks on the Beelink EQ14 to provide you an concept of what to anticipate from the machine. In Geekbench 6, the N150 scores round 18% increased in single-core and a few 5% increased in multi-core exams than the N100. The Passmark rating is round 5% higher than the N100, as are the Cinebench numbers.
Which means you may anticipate practically an identical efficiency to the N100, which is completely high quality for an entry-level computing machine or an in-house server.
Benchmark
Take a look at
Outcome
Geekbench 6
Single Core
1199
Multi Core
3045
Geekbench AI (NPU)
Single Precision
863
Half Precision
468
Quantized
1396
Passmark
CPU
5990.3
2D Graphics
226.0
3D Graphics
759.0
Reminiscence
2463.6
Disk Mark
4160.3
General
1222.4
Blender 4.3.0
Benchmark Rating
30.42
Cinebench R23
Single Core
902
Multi Core
2771
Cinebench 2024
Single Core
58
Multi Core
183
To place the numbers above into some type of perspective, let’s examine the N150 towards the Intel Core i3-14100 – the logical step up from the N collection. The Core i3 has the identical 4 bodily cores, however twice the variety of threads at 8, it additionally helps as much as 96GB of RAM to the N150’s restrict of 16GB. Taking a look at Geekbench 6 numbers, the Core i3 scores a bit of over twice the rating of the N150. Transferring to Cinebench R23, the Core i3’s single-core rating is 2 occasions increased and its multi-core rating is 3 times increased, on common.
The built-in SSD did not impress. The preloaded unit is a SATA III SSD and it is price swapping it for a PCIe 3.0 NVME drive. Consider, although, that the second SSD slot is SATA III incompatible so the preinstalled SSD cannot be moved to the second slot.
Disk velocity and 7zip benchmark
We ran a three-hour stress check on the Beelink EQ14.
The processor began the check at its full 3.6GHz (round 22W) however then practically instantly dipped to 2.7GHz (round 15W) and stored up a cycle of going as much as round 2.7GHz and taking place to round 600MHz.
It by no means returned to three.6GHz (22W) and stayed round 15W for the check length, which means a sustained 3.6GHz is out of the query. The processor bought as excessive as 61°. The PC itself felt just a bit heat on the skin.
To sum up efficiency, we’ll say the Intel N150 is sweet for what it is meant for – entry-level computing. This is not a good selection for gaming or video modifying, however it will likely be superb for an workplace laptop, a scholar machine, or a server. It is quick sufficient for each day duties to not get in the best way and it is silent and really environment friendly. More often than not it can run at round 6W and sip electrical energy.
Fan noise
The built-in fan was inaudible in our typical workplace surroundings throughout our stress check. In case you’re very close to the EQ14, you may hear the fan when the system boots up. We measured beneath 30 dB.
Conclusion
The Beelink EQ 14 is $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 excellent value and exhausting to beat – the entry-level Apple Mac Mini is $599. Sure, the Mac has a way more highly effective 10-core M4 processor nevertheless it 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 technique to deal with your computing wants, and the Beelink EQ14 is completely able to that.
Purchase the Beelink Mini PC EQ14 on Amazon.com
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