I happened to accumulate 3 Beelink computers at once: Two are going to be PtP VPN nodes at undisclosed mysterious and super interesting locations (some of that is a lie), and one will be a portable Plex Media Server for travel.
This video is an unboxing and disassembly of all three, comparing them and showcasing their design advantages and disadvantages. If you’re looking for a video about their performance, well, I kinda didn’t even get to powering them on yet. This is 100% about the physical hardware.
The SER and SEi series are incredibly similar, the former having an AMD CPU and the latter an Intel. The cases are different (metal vs. plastic and different venting), but the motherboards are interchangeable. Both are incredibly easy to disassemble (and hence reassemble), having the same screws throughout. Even the NVMe SSD hold down screw is the same as the motherboard and case screws!
The EQR was a pain, however. I lost count of how many different screw heads, thread pitches, and lengths. Hex standoffs/posts of varying sizes. Weird multi-layered construction, a seemingly unnecessary (due to poor optimization) daughter board, and worst of all the line voltage inlet connector is half supported by the motherboard itself. I really don’t like this one, just from a design and serviceability standpoint. For example, the BIOS/RTC battery is underneath the motherboard. It would require removing something like 25 screws and posts just to extract it!
As usual, this video is NOT sponsored, endorsed, nor in any way related to Beelink. I paid for all three computers out of my own pocket for my own purposes.
The other thing I didn’t address in the video is about the EQR series’ internal power supply. There’s no airflow whatsoever over the PSU, and it’ll be radiating its heat into the case. Time will tell, but that doesn’t speak well to the reliability of the PSU, and puts more of a burden on the CPU fan (the only fan) to handle the removal of that additional heat.
