Just got one...

[Gabe]

I haven't had a chance to set it up yet, but wow, this thing is pretty neat looking, and smaller than I thought it would be. Granted, the dimensions are listed, but I hardly ever look at them. I like the magnetic base too.

Screenshot 2023-10-13 at 3.20.53 PM.png (1.03 MiB) Viewed 4004 times

[cackletinkle]

look forward to a brief review I wish it was an N100 and had USBc as a single cable solution tho..

also.. no specs on acemagic site but it looks like one slot is SATA and the other NVMe.. is it limited to PCIe 1x like most other N95s?
funny enough amazon shows 2x 970 Evo which are both NVMe..

[Gabe]

cackletinkle,

I'm reasonably sure it's PCIe 3.0 x2. In testing with CrystalDiskMark, the drive the unit comes with topped out at about 1750MBps. I then temporarily put a drive I bought for my AMR5, an XPG SX8200 Pro, into the S1 to check its speed. It topped out at about 1750MBps as well, while in my AMR5 that drive hits about 3400MBps.

PCIe 3.0 x1 tops out at about 985MBps, whereas x2 is about 1970MBps, so it's got to be x2.

Regarding the N100 vs the N95, looking at the specs they both have some advantages over each other, but over all yeah, the N100 is a little better. Still, so far the unit is quite snappy. I haven't done much with it at this point, but for what I have done with it it's worked very well. I did end up having to use it in a horizontal position rather than vertical, as I use a USB extension cable for my Logitech mouse/keyboard's wireless dongle. With the USB ports being on top in the vertical position, the cable stuck straight up out of it, making the unit a little unstable on its magnetic base. But with the LCD screen being able to be switched to horizontal, using it horizontally is fine.

I like it so far. It stays pretty cool as well, especially for a mini pc. It's been idling in the low 40s and only hitting into the 50s when running programs.

[cackletinkle]

thanks @gabe .. that's a nice boost over most n95/n100s that run @ PCIe 1x

i have the AMR5 but the fan noise, even on 'silent' mode is annoying so I'm looking for a different/quiet mini pc as an office PC replacement.
the s1 isn't available in canada and when it is, i'm not sure if it will be worth the premium over the trigkey/beelink n100 16G/500G ones.
maybe black Friday will bring some deals as the recent prime day offers weren't that enticing.

besides TDP of 6W (n100) vs 15W (n95) and 24 vs 16 execution units clocked at 750Mhz and 1.2Ghz respectively, i don't see other differences between the 2 chips.. are there other differences?

[Gabe]

Mostly that, but there are a couple of other things too.

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_c ... cessor_n95

And that's interesting about the fan noise. I can't even hear the fan in my AMR5 unless I get my ear right up next to it.

[dragonpoo]

Nice purchase, Gabe! I hope it's a fun system to tinker with. Every once in a while, a new system comes out that I wouldn't mind getting my hands on!

My AMR5 is quiet with the fan as well, so I'm not sure what issue Cackletinkle is having. I know, this isn't the right place to discuss that, but it might be worth bringing up in the AMR5 area.

[Gabe]

dragonpoo,

I really like it. I've been using it all day today. And that LCD display is pretty handy. Though I always install Core Temp, it's nice to be able to see the temp and a bunch of other things in one place. And when I checked, the temp shown on the display matched Core Temp exactly. I'll likely keep everything stock on it rather than upgrading anything like I often do with other models. It's already maxed out with the RAM, and the storage is already at the top speed it can be, so putting a faster drive in it wouldn't have any effect. I also didn't perform a clean install of Windows like I normally do. I figured it would be a little more work with the LCD display and the light strip on the front, so I decided to just use what it came with.

I had gotten a T8 Plus a few days before. With that one I'm going to upgrade the storage to NVMe. Though it was too small and I had to temporarily tape the end down to stay in place, I tried the 2230 NVMe drive that originally came in my Dell laptop to make sure it supported NVMe, and it worked. So I'm looking at a couple of 512GB 2242 NVMe drives on Amazon.