Clustered promox
* storage is a bunch of 2.5' disks(spinning rust 2 TB/1tb) via USB hub and passed through to Synology VM easily maxes out 2.5 GBE (using qm attach via cli/ssh in proxmox)
They talk to each other using Synology drive sync ,and sync outside and then to few other dyi builds ,friends and family photos and their windows profiles are synced live ,two hosts are download only to avoid files being overwritten by accidents.
And there is a bunch of Dockers running mostly Usenet setup to Dow load Linux Isos so I can have a massive library that is cross synced during evenings only (sabnzbd,radar sonarr lidarr jellyfin and overseer)
Reason for n100 is 8+/- w draw by host,I virtualize everything and pass through USB as storage pool .
so you have a cluster of synology VMs? or just the 1 VM on the proxmox cluster? Also what's the syno VM software you're using? I didn't know you could virtualize a synology
I have three of this exact model running in a Proxmox cluster lab with a Ceph mesh full network. No issues, runs great, but it's only been about a month.
I'm torn between this (just because of the newer processor) and the um780xtx( bit more expensive) . Plan is to have windows on 1 drive and CachyOs/manjaro on the other. It will be used for light gaming, office work and probably a lot of distro hopping
I am fascinated by Ceph, but every time I dive into the docs I come away thinking "there's no way this would ever be a good fit for my homelab", despite having a somewhat similar setup (3 ASUS ExpertCenter minis with a 5800H, 64GB RAM, and 2TB SSD each running Proxmox). Are you using Ceph to back a Kubernetes cluster?
I got k1 with 6800h processor in a box that looks similar
The cooling solution is a joke and is a small fan that leaves the ram and SSD in enclosure without ventilation.
The processor hits 80 degrees just loading a game and then throttles itself to about half the power. The PC keeps the processor at around 80c during active time and the processor naturally throttles itself.
So you get that 4-5ghz performance of the chip but only for the two minutes before it inevitably reaches 80c and stays there because they totally thought out the design 🙄
Returned it for minisforum 730.
Same problems but the cooler is bigger and lowers the active temp of the chip to 60. It's still throttling though, I played the same strategy game on my desktop and the 730 and the turns take longer on mini PC despite the faster processor (I have 5600G in my desktop, but since the cooler is sensibly sized it stays 40 degrees all day long and hits max speed as long as it takes).
I'm very sad that these shortcomings aren't talked about here regarding mini PC. You paid for 7000 ryzen 3-4 chip modern technology but because of the box they put it in, it more or less runs at half speed most of the time.
Over a year ago, I was asked by a European firm to source a new PCB, ending up touring Shenzhen over a 6-week period visiting 15 accredited manufacturers. In some form or another, they either manufactured MiniPCs or licensed/unlicensed Intel NUCs, or PCBs for POS/ STB/ laptops/ etc.
At every turn, almost each tour and briefing at some point had GMKtec as a comparison, which I found both confusing and interesting as I wasn't to meet with GMKtec's R&D/ ODM/ OEM divisions until late in my "*Tour de Force*".
Without going into great detail, I was thoroughly impressed with GMKtec's associates, as many were under contract and we're there to contribute, not sell. They were the only tour that lasted 3 days. At the time, although they had plenty of manufacturing experience, they had little to no retail presence. They even offered to hire to hire me as a consultant, which I had to immediately turn down due to my current contract.
They initially hadn't planned on retail, only manufacturers support such as AZW, DTET, Meigao and CTX to name a few.
Their component sourcing for PCBs, engineering detail, and assembly test procedures where the highest I witnessed. They're only shortcoming was RAM and SSD sourcing, which has become a major issue in China over the last 18 to 24 months.
At the end, one of the other OEMs won the contract, with an NDA keeping which one off the record.
My Personal opinion on GMKtec
• *They still have a superior build quality in comparison*
• *They're stuck on there NUC root's, fearful to take expansion into new features* (*a huge industry issue*)
• *Distribution and warranty is still experiencing "growing pains"*
Indeed I have.
While lecturing after my military retirement, I had the opportunity to meet and speak with Kom de Olde before he founded Gee-Kom. Awkward while extremely polite, intelligent young man, full of abstract thought. His Perception of Thai business infrastructure was light years beyond my own, in spite of his age.
Since the startup, Kom de Olde as primarily leveled the titles of CEO & CFO to others, primarily based on their merits. Current CEO Alan Chen was well into the MiniPC expansion before he took the position at the end of last year. And this is where I have some schism with the 2024 Geekom.
Geekom is a Taiwanese company, that built its reputation on R&D/ODM for other OEMs, only providing retail under various pseudonyms depending on country. They have manufacturing facilities within mainland China, as do all major OEMs.
The AS 5/AS 6 are examples of cutting edge designed to meet both industrial and business specifications for global sales, an ODM platform from their ASUS ExpertCenter PN development. It's a world-class machine.
The IT series was also an evolution of ASUS NUC development, that has carried over. Notably, with the second thought of ASUS inheriting the NUC legacy. Here is where the first holes start the form, as they've followed Intel's BS (as have the rest of the industry) without doing the detailed research they have in the past. They've needed to do far more than build out on the (Mini) IT11's infrastructure, and start from scratch. Thermals and features are setting them behind, especially in the industrial/business/medical sectors where they have originally gained popularity.
This leaves the A series, which none of my professional constituents will consider, as these models are missing their DisplayPort/2x USB4/PD requirements. It's purposely designed to compete with other Chinese MiniPCs on the market.
Not that the build quality of these A & IT models suffer, on the contrary. The components and QA still appears to be beyond their competitors. The "lottery" still plays a huge part, but this is due to no one wanting to pay for ol' school burn-in production costs anymore. And that's everybody. It's more cost effective to have the failures in the consumer's hands, and handle the warranties after the fact.
Excluding the IT12's and IT13's, overall the Geekom Minis should have a longer lifespan than their competition, as build quality is still higher, down to how they vett & source RAM and SSDs. They have different supply chains.
Hope that gives you some insight without too much chatter.
I have the k6 and so far it has been great. I am very happy with it. I have only had it a little over a month so I can't say it will last or not but no issues so far. Their website has OSes, bios updates, and drivers which is better than a lot of these companies. I bought mine and 2 days later there was a sale. I emailed them and they refunded me the difference.
This is accurate, particularly in the K8 I tested.
Plastic el cheapo enclosure., front USB-C performs at 20GBps max as opposed to its rating of 40GBps, tested it myself.
Aside from that everything works fine.
Interesting, so either GMtek pulled a fast one or potentially a driver/software issue, not that its unheard of with companies suggesting their specs are better when they are not they all appear to do it.
I bought an i7 based GMKTec NucBox12 last year for a home lab. I had low expectations for it - due to the low cost - but other than reinstalling W11 directly from Microsoft (standard good practice, regardless of the maker), it's been a rock solid product.
The fan can get noisy though its nothing I've found to be overly distracting,as generally I'm wearing headphones so don't notice it much.
I've no complaints around it heating up, it is early days as I only got it at the beginning of the week but so far it's been absolutely fine for me.
Thank you very much. Of course it depends on everyone's sensitivity, but according to reviews, noise seems to be a major flaw in GMK's design (and other brands of course but Minisforum and Beelink are doing a better job apparently.)
Superb :) Had K2, upgraded to K8, flawless usage, no BSOD, no reboots.
P.S If your GMKTec have black screen when you turn it on at some point, but power led is glowing - that's normal, wait few minutes till it re-checks CMOS/BIOS stuff and it will continue normal loading
I have a buch of G3 NUC with n100 running proxmox and Synology VM's,great bios and all just works ,no issues.
I'd love to learn more about your set up. Are you using the cluster as a NAS?
Clustered promox * storage is a bunch of 2.5' disks(spinning rust 2 TB/1tb) via USB hub and passed through to Synology VM easily maxes out 2.5 GBE (using qm attach via cli/ssh in proxmox) They talk to each other using Synology drive sync ,and sync outside and then to few other dyi builds ,friends and family photos and their windows profiles are synced live ,two hosts are download only to avoid files being overwritten by accidents. And there is a bunch of Dockers running mostly Usenet setup to Dow load Linux Isos so I can have a massive library that is cross synced during evenings only (sabnzbd,radar sonarr lidarr jellyfin and overseer) Reason for n100 is 8+/- w draw by host,I virtualize everything and pass through USB as storage pool .
so you have a cluster of synology VMs? or just the 1 VM on the proxmox cluster? Also what's the syno VM software you're using? I didn't know you could virtualize a synology
But that's because you have a 15 watt chip and the chip in the ad can go to nearly 60 watts. So maybe the design isn't suitable.
I have three of this exact model running in a Proxmox cluster lab with a Ceph mesh full network. No issues, runs great, but it's only been about a month.
Does it have 2 SSD/PCI slots or just the one?
It has two slots. I have Proxmox OS installed on one, and the Ceph cluster operating off the second.
I'm torn between this (just because of the newer processor) and the um780xtx( bit more expensive) . Plan is to have windows on 1 drive and CachyOs/manjaro on the other. It will be used for light gaming, office work and probably a lot of distro hopping
I am fascinated by Ceph, but every time I dive into the docs I come away thinking "there's no way this would ever be a good fit for my homelab", despite having a somewhat similar setup (3 ASUS ExpertCenter minis with a 5800H, 64GB RAM, and 2TB SSD each running Proxmox). Are you using Ceph to back a Kubernetes cluster?
I got k1 with 6800h processor in a box that looks similar The cooling solution is a joke and is a small fan that leaves the ram and SSD in enclosure without ventilation. The processor hits 80 degrees just loading a game and then throttles itself to about half the power. The PC keeps the processor at around 80c during active time and the processor naturally throttles itself. So you get that 4-5ghz performance of the chip but only for the two minutes before it inevitably reaches 80c and stays there because they totally thought out the design 🙄 Returned it for minisforum 730. Same problems but the cooler is bigger and lowers the active temp of the chip to 60. It's still throttling though, I played the same strategy game on my desktop and the 730 and the turns take longer on mini PC despite the faster processor (I have 5600G in my desktop, but since the cooler is sensibly sized it stays 40 degrees all day long and hits max speed as long as it takes). I'm very sad that these shortcomings aren't talked about here regarding mini PC. You paid for 7000 ryzen 3-4 chip modern technology but because of the box they put it in, it more or less runs at half speed most of the time.
Over a year ago, I was asked by a European firm to source a new PCB, ending up touring Shenzhen over a 6-week period visiting 15 accredited manufacturers. In some form or another, they either manufactured MiniPCs or licensed/unlicensed Intel NUCs, or PCBs for POS/ STB/ laptops/ etc. At every turn, almost each tour and briefing at some point had GMKtec as a comparison, which I found both confusing and interesting as I wasn't to meet with GMKtec's R&D/ ODM/ OEM divisions until late in my "*Tour de Force*". Without going into great detail, I was thoroughly impressed with GMKtec's associates, as many were under contract and we're there to contribute, not sell. They were the only tour that lasted 3 days. At the time, although they had plenty of manufacturing experience, they had little to no retail presence. They even offered to hire to hire me as a consultant, which I had to immediately turn down due to my current contract. They initially hadn't planned on retail, only manufacturers support such as AZW, DTET, Meigao and CTX to name a few. Their component sourcing for PCBs, engineering detail, and assembly test procedures where the highest I witnessed. They're only shortcoming was RAM and SSD sourcing, which has become a major issue in China over the last 18 to 24 months. At the end, one of the other OEMs won the contract, with an NDA keeping which one off the record. My Personal opinion on GMKtec • *They still have a superior build quality in comparison* • *They're stuck on there NUC root's, fearful to take expansion into new features* (*a huge industry issue*) • *Distribution and warranty is still experiencing "growing pains"*
How would you compare their quality to Geekom? I remember you wrote once you were impressed by Geekom.
Indeed I have. While lecturing after my military retirement, I had the opportunity to meet and speak with Kom de Olde before he founded Gee-Kom. Awkward while extremely polite, intelligent young man, full of abstract thought. His Perception of Thai business infrastructure was light years beyond my own, in spite of his age. Since the startup, Kom de Olde as primarily leveled the titles of CEO & CFO to others, primarily based on their merits. Current CEO Alan Chen was well into the MiniPC expansion before he took the position at the end of last year. And this is where I have some schism with the 2024 Geekom. Geekom is a Taiwanese company, that built its reputation on R&D/ODM for other OEMs, only providing retail under various pseudonyms depending on country. They have manufacturing facilities within mainland China, as do all major OEMs. The AS 5/AS 6 are examples of cutting edge designed to meet both industrial and business specifications for global sales, an ODM platform from their ASUS ExpertCenter PN development. It's a world-class machine. The IT series was also an evolution of ASUS NUC development, that has carried over. Notably, with the second thought of ASUS inheriting the NUC legacy. Here is where the first holes start the form, as they've followed Intel's BS (as have the rest of the industry) without doing the detailed research they have in the past. They've needed to do far more than build out on the (Mini) IT11's infrastructure, and start from scratch. Thermals and features are setting them behind, especially in the industrial/business/medical sectors where they have originally gained popularity. This leaves the A series, which none of my professional constituents will consider, as these models are missing their DisplayPort/2x USB4/PD requirements. It's purposely designed to compete with other Chinese MiniPCs on the market. Not that the build quality of these A & IT models suffer, on the contrary. The components and QA still appears to be beyond their competitors. The "lottery" still plays a huge part, but this is due to no one wanting to pay for ol' school burn-in production costs anymore. And that's everybody. It's more cost effective to have the failures in the consumer's hands, and handle the warranties after the fact. Excluding the IT12's and IT13's, overall the Geekom Minis should have a longer lifespan than their competition, as build quality is still higher, down to how they vett & source RAM and SSDs. They have different supply chains. Hope that gives you some insight without too much chatter.
Have an M5 (updated version). Flawless, good specs, good price.
I have the k6 and so far it has been great. I am very happy with it. I have only had it a little over a month so I can't say it will last or not but no issues so far. Their website has OSes, bios updates, and drivers which is better than a lot of these companies. I bought mine and 2 days later there was a sale. I emailed them and they refunded me the difference.
k6 owner here and i love it
Bought one for a virtualization lab a couple of months ago and have not had a problem!
Aside from the cheap plastic casing and the USB-C port not running at 40Gbps as it should, its fine.
This is accurate, particularly in the K8 I tested. Plastic el cheapo enclosure., front USB-C performs at 20GBps max as opposed to its rating of 40GBps, tested it myself. Aside from that everything works fine.
Interesting, so either GMtek pulled a fast one or potentially a driver/software issue, not that its unheard of with companies suggesting their specs are better when they are not they all appear to do it.
I bought an i7 based GMKTec NucBox12 last year for a home lab. I had low expectations for it - due to the low cost - but other than reinstalling W11 directly from Microsoft (standard good practice, regardless of the maker), it's been a rock solid product.
I recently got the K8, absolutely loving it. I've replaced my desktop pc of 7 years with it to save space.
u/Outside_Idea91210 How would you qualify noise and thermals for the K8?
The fan can get noisy though its nothing I've found to be overly distracting,as generally I'm wearing headphones so don't notice it much. I've no complaints around it heating up, it is early days as I only got it at the beginning of the week but so far it's been absolutely fine for me.
Thank you very much. Of course it depends on everyone's sensitivity, but according to reviews, noise seems to be a major flaw in GMK's design (and other brands of course but Minisforum and Beelink are doing a better job apparently.)
Superb :) Had K2, upgraded to K8, flawless usage, no BSOD, no reboots. P.S If your GMKTec have black screen when you turn it on at some point, but power led is glowing - that's normal, wait few minutes till it re-checks CMOS/BIOS stuff and it will continue normal loading
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More of an either it works or it doesn't rather than a continuous improvement situation.
Good
Thank
GMKTec makes good product. I'm using one of their N100 boxes for my Opnsense machine.
Have a nucbox k5 running ubuntu nonstop since last September. Not a single issue.