Recommendations for Ryzen based mini pc for kernel development

W

william

Hello community,

I am trying to follow FreeBSD Kernel Development Workflow so as to foray into FreeBSD kernel hacking. I am planning to get a new Ryzen based mini PC to serve the builder in the article. My primary concern is compile time. I am going to use it in a headless way. Could you recommend a decent mini PC? Less that US$1200 would be good.

thanks,

william
 
I bought this:

Beelink Ser 5 Pro Mini PC, AMD Ryzen 7 5825U 2 - 4.5GHz 8 core/16 thread CPU, 32GB DDR4 SODIMM RAM, Kingston NVMe 1TB SSD, AMD Radeon Graphics 8 core 2GHz, Intel AX200 WiFi, Bluetooth 5.2, 2.5Gbps Ethernet, 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2, USB 2.0, USB Type-C (data + video), HDMI 2.0, Display Port 1.4, Audio jack (HP + MIC).

Works fine on FreeBSD 13.5-STABLE - that includes ethernet, WiFi, sound. Cost $AUD 499 from Amazon AU. Compiling FreeBSD kernal + world is very fast compared to my previous 2012 quad core i7 Mac mini :) Not tried it headless, nor Bluetooth. Currently using a cheap Chinese HDMI-> VGA adapter for hooking up to my KVM.
 
you don't really have to build the whole kernel every time so it will be decent on any hardware. the ctfmerge takes a bit more but i built various parts even on thin client class hw which have very slow cpus
 
I'm running on this: https://www.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-um870-slim?variant=49673592406322

Basically, Ryzen 7 (Zen4) with 8cores/16threads but no NPU and an integrated Radeon 780M. Everything works fine (FreeBSD 14.3 and 15) with some notable exceptions:

* Ethernet (2.5G) requires realtek-re-kmod, which is a pain in upgrades, but works fine otherwise
* GPU requires drm-kmod, which is pain in upgrades, but works fine otherwise (for better results I suggest drm-latest-kmd and mesa-devel)
* Wi-fi is still a no go (work in progress https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/issues/66): MT7902 802.11ax
* Bluetooth is a no go: dual card with the above, and this does not work
* S3 is not supported, S0ix is required for it (work in progress: https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/issues/32)

The good part is that you can add as much memory as is supported (96GB) by the two so-dimm slots and you can swap out the wifi/bt card, you can also add two nvme driver. It's not particularly loud/hot.
 
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