Beelink SER4 R7-4800U mini PC hands-on: better than a NUC

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The Beelink SER4 is a new mini PC powered by an AMD Ryzen7-4800U processor, and it's smaller and more powerful than the Inel NUC 11 Pro.

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Small form-factor (SFF) machines have been one of the major drivers in the resurgence of the PC market. The trend was kickstarted by Intel's NUCs in the early 2010s. These PCs have usually relied on low-power processors with compelling performance per watt metrics. AMD was largely absent in this market till the introduction of its Ryzen processors. While mini-PCs based on Ryzen embedded processors are still outnumbered by those powered by Intel, more and more OEMs are beginning to utilize AMD Ryzen CPUs in their own high-performance mini-PC lineups.

The Beelink GTR5 released last year arguably represents the best of AMD powered mini PCs, but the Ryzen9-5900HX processor was way too much of an overkill for average consumers. For those who have less CPU-intensive tasks to deal with in their everyday computing, the newly released SER4, which comes with a less power-hungry Ryzen7-4800U SoC. and a slightly lower price tag, could be a better offer.


Specifications

OS: Windows 11 Pro
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7-4800U, 7nm process, 15W TDP
CPU: 8 cores, 16 threads @1.8-4.2GHz
GPU: Radeon RX Vega 8 @1750MHz
RAM: 16/32GB DDR4 3200MHz (dual-channel)
Storage: 500GB/1TB m.2 NVMe SSD
Wireless: WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Ports: USB Type-A 3.0*3, USB Type-A 2.0*1, USB-C*1, HDMI*2, 3.5mm Audio Jack*1, 1000M Ethernet*1, DC-in*1
Dimensions: 126*113*42mm
Weight: 455g





What’s in the box

Beelink SER4 Mini PC * 1
57W Power Adapter * 1
User Guide * 1
VESA Mount Bracket * 1
HDMI Cable * 2 (1m and 0.2m)



Design: she’s quite a beauty



The SER4 is a gorgeous piece of tech. It has a much more attractive design than the likes of the uninspiring ASUS PN50 and Intel NUC 11 Pro. The panel on the top is perforated, which not only allows more efficient air flow, but also gives the machine an extremely classy and premium look. There’s quite a lot of branding here, besides the AMD and Beelink logo, you will also find the Ryzen7 and Radeon Graphics stickers, but I personally don’t really hate them, cause they just make the machine look more professional.



The ventilation grilles on the two side panels are coated in red, but whether you like it or not will come down to personal preference. The chassis has a metallic build, which means it will be able to take a fair amount of reasonable office abuse. The build quality is excellent, as there are no ugly mold lines on the case, and none of the panels tend to flex, even when I impose some serious force on them.



Measuring only 5 inches wide, 4.4 inches deep, and just 1 and a half inches in height, the SER4 is less than 1/6 of the size of the new Apple MAC Studio. It easily fits on any desk or even under a monitor stand if you have one, without taking up too much space with its small footprint. If you literally have no room on your desk, the VESA mount included in the retail box can help you attach the mini PC onto the back of the monitor, making it completely disappear from the surroundings.



Despite its trim dimensions, the SER4 is very well endowed with connectors. On the front, alongside the power button, you‘ll find a 3.5mm audio jack, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port that also supports DisplayPort 1.2.



Around the back you’ll find one more USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one USB2.0 port, two HDMI 2.0 ports, an RJ45 1000M Ethernet LAN connector and a DC-in. As the keen-eyed have noticed, that gives the SER4 the potential to drive three 4K displays at once. Running multiple screens in a retail, commercial or corporate environment is one of the SER4’s raison d’etres. Unsurprisingly, given the absence of an Intel chipset, there's no support for Thunderbolt protocols, but if you don’t need an eGPU, it won’t make much difference.



Getting inside the PC couldn't be easier. There's a panel underneath the chassis that can be removed once four screws have been extracted. This reveals the two DDR4 3200MHz memory slots, 2.5-inch mounting area, as well as access to the m.2 slot. The m2.2230 wireless card on the other side of the motherboard is also replaceable, but you wouldn’t have much reason for replacing it any time soon, since it already supports the latest WiFi6E and Bluetooth 5.2.



This computer weighs only 455g, moving it around the house or taking it on a business trip won’t be much of an effort. If you have monitors in both your office and your apartment, this thing should be far less of a carry than, say, an average notebook computer.



Software: licensed Windows 11 Pro, and it’s clean



Most mini PCs run on the Home Edition of Windows OS, but the Beelink SER4 ships with licensed Windows 11 Pro, Average consumers will probably see no difference, but for power users, Windows 11 Pro offers a few extra features, the most important of which is being able to join a domain, including Azure Active Directory for single sign-on to cloud services (and have group policy applied as part of that).

You also get Hyper-V for virtualization, BitLocker whole disk encryption, enterprise mode Internet Explorer, Remote Desktop, a version of the Windows Store for your own business, Enterprise Data Protection containers (a feature that comes later in the year) and assigned access (which locks a PC to running only one modern application, to use like a kiosk). Pro users can get updates from Windows Update for Business, which includes options for scheduling updates, so they don't reboot PCs at important business times.

The Windows 11 Pro here is also a completely clean version, with no pre-installed 3rd party applications or bloatware that you need to uninstall.

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Performance: old processor that still rocks



The unit I have on hand features an AMD Ryzen7-4800processor, which is a 7nm Zen2-based APU that has 8 CPU cores, 16 threads, as well as integrated Radeon Graphics GPU. There’s also 32GB DDR4 3200MHz dual-channel memory and a 500GB m.2 NVMe SSD in my unit. Although the Ryzen7-4800U is a mobile chip released more than 2 years ago, it is still mighty impressive, and benchmark scores told the story.



These are the models I use for comparison, including some of the most popular machines out there.



First, I ran Maxon's latest CPU-crunching Cinebench R23 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. The SER4 got a solid score in CPU multi-core, beating the M1 powered Apple MAC mini and both variants of the Intel NUC 11 Pro, but it fell a little short in terms of single core performance.



In the older Cinebench R20 test, the SER4 easily outpaced the Intel NUC 11 Pros again in multi-core CPU performance.



Comparing the SER4 to the Intel NUC 11 Pros using GeekBench 5 tells a similar story. Intel has AMD beaten in single-core performance but in multi-core performance, the AMD chip simply stomps the i7 into the dirt.



PCMark 10 simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. we use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and video conferencing. The SER4 notched 5177 in the standard PCMark 10 test, ranking above both variants of the Intel NUC 11 Pro.



In everyday use, the difference in single-core performance will go largely unnoticed, but if you decide to edit some high-resolution images or 4K videos, then the multi-core ability of the AMD chip will shine through.




The m.2 NVMe SSD is not the fastest we’ve seen, but at nearly 2,000MB/s for reading data off the drive, this is still more than ideal for booting Windows and all your favorite productivity apps.



The unit I received comes with two Crucial 16GB DDR4-3200MHz memory sticks. This dual-channel memory setup guarantees high overall bandwidth and throughput speed. In the AIDA64 cache & memory benchmark, the read, write and copy speeds of the 32GB memory are decent, the 95.6ns latency is not the best we’ve seen, but still solid. The performance of the integrated GPU also benefits greatly from dual-channel memory, as most of the numbers in the GPGPU test result look lovely.



The AMD are known to offer better integrated GPUs than Intel, that’s why you often see Intel powered laptops relying heavily on GeForce MX series discrete GPU for gaming, while AMD chips can take care of gaming all on their own. The integrated Radeon Graphics GPU here isn’t powerful enough to make the SER4 a proper gaming or VR machine, but it is still reasonably capable. In 3DMark, the SER4 was returned 1,420 in Time Spy, 3,573 in Fire Strike, and 13,036 in Sky Diver.




Running “Genshin Impact” at 1920 x 1080 and medium settings saw an average of 44fps, not great, but still generally smooth the whole time. “Spell Break” returned very similar results. Less graphics-intensive games such as LOL can run smoothly even at 4K and high settings.

“Conqueror’s Blade” tells a different story, though. At 1080P and medium settings, the average frame rate recorded by GamePP was only 22fps. It is still playable, but you probably will want to turn down the resolution, or settings, or both for better smoothness. Because when I switched to 720 and low graphics settings, the average frame rate was improved to 42fps.






Those results mean the SER4 should be able to deal with reasonably intense graphic workloads without grinding to a halt. With that said, please bear in mind that the SER4 will not be enough if you want to game in the highest possible settings and still get a fair chance against other players.



The SER4 can also be a solid HTPC if you want it to. It has no problem decoding any video formats I played on it, including a few 8K@60fps and 4K@120fps clips. Streaming 4K YouTube Videos in Chrome, this machine does not skip a bit, either.




However, the SER4 did struggle a lit bit with 8K online streaming, as you can see in the screenshot that the CPU usage reached 100%, and I did notice some frame skip.



The SER4’s performance hasn’t come at the expense of heat or economy. The power draw is only 5W at idle over the course of two hours. When running the AIDA64 stress test, the SER4 drew an indicated maximum of 38W. Even under stress the casing never became more than slightly warm to the touch and the fans were impressively quiet. The quoted noise levels 21.9dB at idle and 37.7dB with the fans at full chat tallied with the results from our sound monitor.



Thanks to the efficient cooling, the SER4 is also extremely stable, it passed the 3DMark Time Spy Stress test with a very high mark.

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Internet Connection



The SER4 supports the latest WiFi 6E technology, also known as WiFi 6 Extended. It allows the PC to use the 6GHz band, which in return brings more bandwidth, faster speeds, and lower latency, opening up resources for future innovations like AR/VR, 8K streaming, and more.

There’s also a 1000M Ethernet jack for wired internet access. Although it’s not as fancy as the 2.5Gbps ethernet found on the Intel NUC 11 or Beelink’s very own GT series mini PCs, it won’t make much difference for average users, not for now.



Competition



Price at $699 (16GB+500GB), the Beelink SER4 is well positioned in the mini PC market. The choice of a Ryzen 7 CPU (from the 4000 series) is a good step when going against Intel powered mini PCs that often don't go beyond an Intel Core i5. While it is not as powerful as its Ryzen9-5900HX powered brother, it is slightly more affordable and power-efficient than the latter.

Probably the closest competitor to the SER4 is the i5-1135G7 powered Intel NUC 11 Pro. As you can get the latter with 8GB memory and 500GB SSD on the same budget. The NUC comes with more versatile Thunderbolt 3 ports, which is a must for some users. However, in terms of horsepower, very few Intel powered models can really match the SER4.



Verdict

Beelink has squeezed plenty of performance and features into a tiny box. The Ryzen 7-4800U chipset delivers terrific performance while the abundance of upgrade options and connectors makes it supremely versatile. That it runs cool, quiet and economically should further endear it to business and corporate users and guarantee it a home in many an office, boardroom and customer-facing environment.

My video review of the SER4 will also be available in a week, please subscribe to my YouTube channel and get notified if you are interested in more content about the SER4. Thanks for reading, hope to see you next time.



Some of the benchmark screenshots here: