Beelink SER7 Review A Smaller and Cheaper AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS Mini PC

Beelink SER7 Performance

Instead of going through the entire Linux-Bench test suite, we are going to show a few performance and power numbers here to give a general sense of performance. This also gives us the opportunity to test with Linux/ Ubuntu instead of just Windows.

We sometimes see Zen 4 cores run at 5.1GHz but less so than in the GTR7. One of the changes is the size of the chassis and cooler, so that is something we might expect.

Python Linux 4.4.2 Kernel Compile Benchmark

This is one of the most requested benchmarks for STH over the past few years. The task was simple, we have a standard configuration file, the Linux 4.4.2 kernel from kernel.org, and make the standard auto-generated configuration utilizing every thread in the system. We are expressing results in terms of compiles per hour to make the results easier to read:

Here we can see that despite having the same CPU, the Beelink GTR7 is faster than the SER7.

7-zip Compression Performance

7-zip is a widely used compression/ decompression program that works cross-platform. We started using the program during our early days with Windows testing. It is now part of Linux-Bench.

We saw the same behavior in the 7zip testing.

OpenSSL Performance

OpenSSL is widely used to secure communications between servers. This is an important protocol in many server stacks. We first look at our sign tests:

Here are the verify results:

Consistently lower performance comes down to cooling. The GTR7 seems to be designed to run at higher power levels for a longer period of time. In contrast, the SER7 will drop power levels as we showed in the video. The impact on performance is noticeable. At the same time, the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS is a solid 8-core/16-thread CPU so we still get good performance. Most users are unlikely to notice the difference often if at all, but the numbers were consistent.

Crucial P3 Plus 1TB Performance

We mentioned this earlier, but we just wanted to see how the Crucial P3 Plus performed. It is certainly PCIe Gen4, but it is also not the fastest.

Overall, this is a fairly mid-range NVMe SSD. In the video we noted that more than the performance, a 2TB option in these systems would be interesting since 2TB drives are cheaper on a cost per TB basis than 1TB drives.

A Word on the AMD RDNA 3 GPU

By far, the biggest update to the mini PC is not the Zen 4 CPU that is still 8 cores/ 16 threads albeit a bit faster than previous generations. Instead, it is the integrated AMD Radeon 780M based on RDNA 3. This is a great example of one of the features we get with the new GPU, the ability to use not just AV1 decode, but also encode.

In the video, we show our mini PC League of Legends test that we captured using AV1 encode via OBS.

The League of Legends testing was funny. We use that because folks asked for gaming, and it is a massively popular title that also is within the realm of running on mini PCs. When we started, running 1080p at solid framerates with high settings was just about achievable. When we ran the GTR7, we thought there was no gain because we saw 70-88fps similar to the GTR6. Then we realized that the GTR7 was doing this at 4K instead of 1080p. This was a very solid performance by RDNA 3. This was very similar to the GTR7 with the same CPU.

Geekbench Performance

Geekbench 6 just underwent a 6.1 update that changed numbers. Instead, we wanted to show Geekbench 5 results for the GTR6 and GTR7.

The SER7 is able to get a small lead in the multi-core which is more of a run-to-run variation, the single-core results are in that same range.

Next, let us get to power consumption.