We wouldn’t recommend you install that drive, as it will restrict the airflow from the fan mounted on that cradle that cools the mainboard below it. The positive part of this experience was that the machine had branded Crucial DDR4 memory and a Kingston M.2 drive, and not the typical OEM unbranded parts.

There are rubber non-slip feet on both sides of the bottom of the fuselage, and the shortcuts to enter the BIOS and boot menu are marked in the middle. Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH HECI Controller [8086:51e0] (rev 01) capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiationIn the network connectivity section this mini PC has a Wifi 6 + BT 5.2 wireless adapter (Intel AX201) and one Ethernet 2.5GB port ( Intel I225-V). The speed results are quite good and we have a correct range. Overall, even if it has four fewer CPU cores, the performance of the AMD Ryzen 7735HS is better than the Intel CoreT i7-1360P used in the NUC 13 Pro in the majority of tests.

is currently the most professional game performance testing software. As always, I chose three subtests: Time Spy, Fire Strike, and Sky Diver. Among them, Time Spy examines the performance of computers running DirectX 12 games, while Fire Strike and Sky Diver are both based on DirectX 11, but the former is mainly used to test game consoles, while the latter is mainly used to test thin and light notebooks and ordinary home computers. The scores of SEi12 in these three tests are 1343, 3686 and 12443 respectively, which are lower than the i7-1165G7 version NUC. Although the latter is also an Intel Iris Xe core display, the number of execution units is 20% higher than that of SEi12. This also shows that although the 12th-generation mobile Core processor has greatly improved CPU performance, GPU performance is actually stagnant.The way the internals are designed makes upgrading a bit annoying, although many will never venture inside, and those that do will probably only do this once.

Removing the base of the device reveals a plastic bay that supports adding a 2.5” SATA drive for increased storage. The bay includes a further new feature which is a small fan that not only cools the drive but also cools the motherboard and memory underneath: Beelink have launched their first Intel Alder Lake mini PC calling it the SEi12. Featuring a mobile 12th gen Core-i5-1235U processor it is also their first mini PC to incorporate a PCIe4 NVMe slot. Beelink kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at the performance running both Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.04. Beelink SEI12 hardware overviewHowever on Ubuntu whilst Firefox had no issues, Chrome did occasionally drop frames at 4K 60 FPS and also when the ‘Quality’ was decreased. Interestingly at ‘1080p60’ the codec changed from ‘vp09’ to ‘av01’:

However, since this computer is mains powered and not trying to efficiently use a battery, many of these enhancements are rather arbitrary here. Since the release of SER3 last year, Beelink has been continuously improving the appearance design of the brand's mini console products to make them more recognizable. SEi12 is the first mini console made of fabric material. While enhancing the visual sense of luxury, it can also achieve more efficient heat dissipation, because there are a lot of cooling holes under the top fabric layer. Like other mini PCs of Beelink, SEi12 Pro is pre-installed with genuine Windows 11 Pro operating system. The serial number of the system has been bound to the computer motherboard, which supports unlimited re-installation and automatic activation, which is very worry-free. Compared with the home version commonly found on ordinary laptops, the professional version of the Win11 operating system adds IT and business functions including Hyper-V virtualization technology, group policy management and remote desktop, which are often used by higher-level players. Hardware Performance Unfortunately, the Type-C USB port is ‘data only’ so the device can only support two 4K displays via the HDMI ports on Windows (see below for the Ubuntu limitation):What it can’t compete with is the Tiger Lake Core i7-1195G7, as used in the Geekom Mini IT 11. That’s admittedly a more expensive NUC, but there isn’t a processing benchmark where the older Core i7 doesn’t beat the newer Core i5.