Linux on a BEELINK AMD

not a laptop for a change, not a raspberry pi, but a NUC! It came with Windows11 and I will initially keep it to be able to use WSL2. The boot process was easy, and even allowed me to bypass using a microsoft account, so I only used a local account, simply by saying I had no internet. Bravo MS (for this time). Really saved time.

Minor surprose. There was no start menu and no obvious power down button. But I had forgotten the ctrl-alt-del was the one that would bring up that menu.

Next was a Windows Update, to make sure I had all the security updates. Painfully long and slow, could have saved 25 minutes.

Noise: my house is quiet, base is 10 dB on the sound meter. During said update a slight hum was audible, bringing the noise up 18 dB. Still very respectable.

Here are the specs, directly from Amazon


Powerful CPU 	        AMD Ryzen 7 5800H Processor(8C/16T, 16M Cache, 3.2GHz up to 4.4GHz)
  
High-Performance GPU 	AMD Radeon Graphics 8core 2000 Mhz &
                        Dual HDMI2.0 Ports & Type C.
                        Support 4K@60GHz Triple screen display

OS 	                Licensed W~ins 11 Pro Pre-installed Without any bloatware, Support Wins 10, Ubuntu.

RAM 	                16/32GB SO-DIMM DDR4, 3200MHz

ROM               	500GB M.2 NVME 2280 SSD

lnternal slot 	        DDR4 Slot x2, M.2
                        NVMe 2280 SSD Slot x1,
                        SATA HDD (2.5inch7mm) Slot x1

Wireless LAN 	        802.11ax, WiFi6,
                        BT 5.2,
                        Ethernet 1000Mbps LAN

Interfaces 	        DC Jack(25mm*20mm)x1,
                        USB3.2 Gen2(10Gbps) Type-Ax3,
                        USB2.0Type-A x1,
                        RJ45 1000M x1,
                        HDMI(4K@60Hz) x2,
                        35mm Audio Jack (HP&MIC) x1,
                        Type-C (Data&Video) x1

Package Included 	1 x AMD 5800H Beelink Mini PC,
                        1 x Power Adapter,
                        1 x VESA Mount,
                        1 x HDMI Cable, 1 x User Manual

Power              	Input: 100-240V AC, 50/60Hz , Output: 19V 3A

Other Functions 	Wake ON Lan, Auto Power ON

Good, Bad and Ugly impressions:

-: After the first Ubuntu install, there was no GRUB menu, and it only booted into windows. Had to activate forced Fn-7 boot menu and select ubuntu. Still, all of this in just under 1 hours. The solution I used was go into the BIOS setup and change the boot order there.
-: nemobench5 barely scored 900, where geekbench claimed it could do 2000. With this nemobench5 the usual corresponding geekbench5 is more like 1300. Possible solution is that the max MHz is set at 3200, where this CPU can go to 4400. This would bring the score to a respectable 1200, but turbo speed is only allowed for brief (?) moments.
-: when connecting remotely using ssh, the machine would go to suspend itself. this was an ubuntu setting of the power management that had to be corrected.
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This page was last modified on 19-Jun-2023 by teuben@astro.umd.edu.