Arm Homelab-in-a-Box – Minisforum MS-R1

Minisforum just launched the MS-R1, their first Arm workstation PC.

Will it bring Arm into the homelab, in a big way? Or will it suffer the same fate as the Radxa Orion O6, let down by a power-hungry SoC? And will a dedicated GPU fit inside this tiny box?

Things mentioned in this video (amzn.to links are affiliate links):

- Minisforum MS-R1: https://s.minisforum.com/4hRFZbj
- MS-R1 benchmarks and test data: https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/89
- Radxa Orion O6 review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMnCqmM-WKo
- Abovetop Nvidia RTX A2000 SFF GPU: https://www.newegg.com/abovetop-Model-A2000laptop/p/1DW-00MF-00001
- Intel Arc A310 ECO GPU: https://amzn.to/49Q3vn4

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Contents:

00:00 - Hardware overview
01:47 - Cix's 12-core Arm SoC
02:57 - Deeper problems
03:55 - 10 Gbps Networking and AI inference
04:55 - Installing a dGPU (RTX A2000)
06:15 - A BIOS detour and AC Power Loss bug
06:50 - Trying an Intel GPU (A310 ECO)
07:20 - Installing Ubuntu and getting GPU acceleration
08:40 - Arm Homelab in a box?