Beelink EQ14 mini PC with Intel N150 review | Infinium-tech

Introduction and unboxing

Mini PCs are a great way to meet your computing needs while keeping your desk clean and minimalist. Gone are the days of those old tower PCs that you shoved under a desk just to take up space (collect dust) at your feet. Most people don’t mind a laptop, mini PC, or even a powerful tablet (what’s a computer?).

This is where the Beelink EQ14 comes in. It’s built around the all-new Intel N150 – the successor to 2023’s Intel N100 – which is a flagship device for entry-level systems.

Beelink EQ14 comes in this navy blue option and has a honeycomb pattern on the top. It’s a stylish mini PC, which is unusual for this category.

At the time of writing, the configuration we have for review is priced at $230 (and has a $40 coupon at Amazon), which includes a 500GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, and preinstalled Windows 11 Pro.

The machine has Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 built-in, as well as a good selection of ports on the front and back.

The EQ14 comes in a small box, which contains a separate power cable and an HDMI cable (1 meter). The power supply is built into the PC, so there are no thick bricks to worry about.

Design and port

Mini PCs aren’t flashy machines and they shouldn’t be. The Beelink EQ14 is subtle in its navy blue color – it’s not a bland black plastic box.

There’s a subtle pattern on the top and an EQ moniker in the corner. There is an EQ at the bottom of the machine with small holes for ventilation.

a nice looking mini pc

The ports on the EQ14 are excellent. There are two USBs on the front – one A (USB 2.0, 480Mbps) and one C (data, 10Gbps), a 3.5mm audio jack and power button. On the back, there are three USB-As (USB 3.2 Gen2, 10Gbps), two HDMI (4k@60Hz), two LAN (1000Mbps), and a figure 8 power connector.

As you can guess from the above specifications, none of the ports are Thunderbolt, and the USB-C port lacks DisplayPort support, so you’ll need to connect a monitor via the two HDMI ports.

front and back ports

Opening the Beelink EQ14 is quite easy. You will need to remove the four rubber covers over the four Phillips head screws and undo them. When you’re finished, pull the small rubber tab to remove the bottom panel.

Inside, you’re greeted by a small heatsink (screwed in place by two other Phillips heads) with two thermal pads on the bottom, the power supply, two PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSD slots (the main one being PCIe 3.0 x4, the other two Is. PCIe 3.0 X1 and free), and a single DDR4 SODIMM slot with 16GB 3200MHz preinstalled (maximum supported).

This means you can easily add a second SSD (or swap both for the larger SSD), or swap out the RAM in case of failure (you can’t have more than 16GB).

Display

The most notable feature of the Beelink EQ14 is its Intel N150 processor. The N150 is the successor to the popular N100 but is mostly a higher-clocked version of that processor.

The Intel N150 is based on the Intel Twin Lake architecture, which is a variation of the older Alder Lake rather than a new setup. It is based on Intel’s 7 Lithography, that is, it is a 10nm processor.

Interestingly, Intel has not announced the processor yet and no Arch page has been published yet.

Physically identical to the N100, the N150 only has four cores and four threads with increased efficiency. The maximum clock speed has increased from 3.4GHz to 3.6GHz – while the cache remains the same 6MB. On the GPU side, you get the same Intel graphics with 24 compute units, but the peak clock has increased from 750 MHz to 1000 MHz.

The maximum TDP of the N150 is 25W (typical TDP is 6W). We ran several benchmarks on the Beelink EQ14 to give you an idea of ​​what to expect from the machine. In Geekbench 6, the N150 scores about 18% higher in single-core and about 5% higher than the N100 in multi-core tests. The Passmark score is about 5% better than the N100, as are the Cinebench numbers.

This means you can expect almost identical performance to the N100, which is just fine for an entry-level computing machine or in-house server.

benchmark	Examination	Result
geekbench 6	single core	1199
	multi core	3045
Geekbench AI (NPU)	single precision	863
	half precision	468
	set quantity	1396
pass mark	CPU	5990.3
	2d graphics	226.0
	3d graphics	759.0
	Memory	2463.6
	disc mark	4160.3
	overall	1222.4
blender 4.3.0	benchmark score	30.42
Cinebench R23	single core	902
	multi core	2771
cinebench 2024	single core	58
	multi core	183

To put the above numbers into some kind of perspective, let’s compare the N150 to the Intel Core i3-14100 – which is the logical step up from the N series. The Core i3 has the same four physical cores, but double the number of threads to 8. It supports up to 96GB of RAM, to the N150’s limit of 16GB. Looking at the Geekbench 6 numbers, the Core i3’s score is a little more than double the N150’s score. Talking about Cinebench R23, the Core i3’s single-core score is on average two times higher and its multi-core score is three times higher on average.

The built-in SSD didn’t impress. The preloaded unit is a SATA III SSD and it’s worth replacing it with a PCIe 3.0 NVME drive. However, keep in mind that the second SSD slot is SATA III incompatible so an already installed SSD cannot be moved to the second slot.

Disk Speed ​​and 7Zip Benchmarks

We ran a three-hour stress test on the Beelink EQ14.

The processor started testing at its full 3.6GHz (about 22W), but then almost immediately dropped to 2.7GHz (about 15W) and continued a cycle of going down to about 2.7GHz and back down to about 600MHz.

It never dropped back to 3.6GHz (22W) and remained around 15W during the testing period, meaning sustained 3.6GHz was out of the question. The processor reached 61°. The PC felt a little warm from the outside.

To summarize performance, we’d say the Intel N150 is good for – entry-level computing. It’s not a good choice for gaming or video editing, but it would be ideal for an office computer, student machine, or server. It’s so fast that it doesn’t interfere with daily tasks and it’s quiet and very efficient. Most of the time it will run at around 6W and suck power.

fan noise

The built-in fan was inaudible in our normal office environment during our stress test. If you are very close to the EQ14, you may hear the fan whirring when the system boots up. We measured below 30 dB.

conclusion

The Beelink EQ 14 costs $250 but at the time of this writing, you can get it for $190 From Amazon.com – 8% off and has a $40 coupon. That’s a great price and it’s hard to beat – the entry-level Apple Mac Mini costs $599. Yes, the Mac has a more powerful 10-core M4 processor but it also has half the storage at 256GB, without the option of 16GB RAM and a second SSD slot.

Apples and oranges, sure, but at the end of the day, a mini PC is an affordable and minimalist way to handle your computing needs, and the Beelink EQ14 is perfectly capable of that.

Buy Beelink Mini PC EQ14 on Amazon.com

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