Best Minipc Forum

Hello,

My first time posting on here. I wrote a review for AD03, you can check it out here:
https://www.michaelstinkerings.org/ace- ... u-mini-pc/

As you can see, I paid for this unit. Although I am pretty satisfied with it (at least for now), I do want to make a few suggestions:

1. To be a very competitive network appliance, we would need two more ports. It can be 2.5G+2.5G+1G. That'd be ideal.
2. M2 SATA slot is pretty much useless. Use this PCIe X1 for 2 x 2.5G NIC will be better.

I. To be a very competitive thin client, the WiFi is just bad. I can't imagine troubleshooting my grandma's WiFi 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.
II. Offer barebone version, so that 8G RAM stick doesn't become e-waste. Even for light browswing, running Windows 11 on 8 GB RAM is torturous.

I will be excited to see more good product from your company, thank you.

That was a fun read, thanks for posting your review. I learned a few things unrelated to the system:

• Ghost is a publishing platform, similar to WordPress, focused on SEO and other extended features. I've used WordPress and other CMS platforms before but not this one, as it appears to only be a cloud/hosted offering. Doesn't look like something I would use, but it's always great to know alternatives.
• Proxmox is a Linux distro used for various services, like running VMs, handling backups, email gateway, etc. I'll be checking that out.

Now, about your review.

• I really appreciated the technical details you went into on it. I wonder why you didn't benchmark it after a reboot with nothing else running, as that skews numbers.
• I found your comment about the Intel 5095 being "aged and crippled" as somewhat off, as the CPU isn't even two years old yet, and many systems use older 4xxx CPUs.
• I'm surprised the AD03 can't handle a NVMe drive. What happened when you put one in? I've used other mini PCs that came with a SATA m.2 drive, and replacing them with a NVMe drive worked without issue.
• The comment about upgrading the RAM is valid. You can purchase a 16GB one on Amazon (current $215 after coupon) with 512GB storage, which should be sufficient for most uses. Going to 32GB is a little overkill for a single tiny desktop, but if you plan to run VMs or Containers on it, I get the desire to upgrade. I haven't seen many barebones mini PCs without RAM, excluding Intel's NUCs which come in various builds. Checking Intel's site (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... ducts.html) I can find some around $200 that support adding your own RAM, but you miss out on other cool features like the dual NICs.
• Curious comment about the NICs on the system. I think dual gig NICs are pretty cool, and hadn't even considered something faster was available before I encountered the iKoolCore R1 (https://www.ikoolcore.com/products/ikoo ... 0125708575). That's even more impressive to know it comes with Intel chipsets, not RealTek, as they are more compatible with products like ESXi.
• What was wrong with the Wifi? You never explained that in your article.

Hi, thanks for the reply.

• I had to run a few lightweight containers in the background because at that time the machine has already been deployed and joined the cluster. I compared the result with other similar systems online, and the numbers aren't that far off, less than 5% of difference.

• If N5095s are at $130 or less, it could be competitive. However with N95 at the $170 range, and the N5095s are selling at the same price bracket, I do believe that the N95s are a far superior option.

• AD03 has a SATA connection in M.2 form factor, so NVMe will not work. I think this is also confirmed by one of the moderator in the AD03 board.

• I put a 32G stick in it because I do have one for my laptop. So I just swapped the two. I glad I didn't make any e-waste, but for some of my target audiences, who are homelab enthusiats, if they don't have a 32G stick on hand, 9 times out of 10 they will just go out and buy a stick to replace the 8G stick.

• I mean, I can live with 1G NICs. I can even take out the WIFI card and stick a M.2 NIC in there. It's not a big issue, but rather an area for improvement. If this thing is equipped with 2x2.5G and 1x1G NIC for sub $200 barebone? That's a real killer product, it would kill the entry/mid level soft router/firewall market, once and for all.

• The WIFI is spotty. 2.4G/5G auto switching and power management seems to be the culprit.

• I've also reached out to ACE for a test unit for me do some more testing work on, waiting for their reply. Once I get my hand on one, I would be doing a more in-depth review. But for now I just need this system for my workloads so tests are light and brief.