For the last six months, I’ve been running Plex Media Server on a Beelink Mini S12 Pro. It’s got the grunt to perform encoding on the fly, and it’s certainly more stable than a Raspberri Pi, while still running completely slient.

This job used to be handled by a small Rasperrry Pi, but after that decided to no longer boot, I wanted to see what else was out there in the small PC market, and it’sa suprisingly big market. There’s many different vendors out there targeting the gap between ssmall microprocessor’s and full size PC’s.

Specifications

The Beelink is powered by the Intel N100 processor, a 4 core chip running at 3.40 GHz, which targets the mobile industry. The Mini S12 Pro ships with 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD for storage and as a nice touch - a choice of five different international power adapters.

If also comes with Windows pre-installed (though this was removed in favour of good ol’ Debian!) and all of this for around $200.

There’s two USB3 ports on the front, and dual HDMI for 4K output if you want to run it direct into your TV as well. It’s the perfect little addition to the entertainment shelf. It also sports a gigabit eithernet port, something most small form-factor computers have dropped to save on space, but for a media server, it’s something I wouldn’t want to be without, espectially since the NAS is stored right next to it. But there is WiFi6 of course, if needed.

Overall Beelink have made a very robust, powerful and small computer that’s a step up from microcontrollers that tend to die after heavy, prolonged use - but small enough to remain quiet and stable.

Check out the full range over at https://www.bee-link.com.