Since I have moved my home lab now to mostly mini PCs, I definitely keep my eyes open for great mini PC configurations and offerings that make sense for home lab workloads. MINIX has long been known for its lineup of compact mini PC form factor machines that have great “power to weight” ratio in terms of performance and small footprint. The new Elite EU715-AI is definitely a capable system. It is packaged as a sleek system that feels quality and ready for serious work in the home lab or other use cases. MINIX sent one of their sample units over for me to test, but my thoughts and opinions are my own and this blog is not sponsored outside of receiving the review unit.
Build of the MINIX EU715-AI
This mini PC arrives in a very premium package that feels qaulity. Built quality is solid with a matte black finish that fits in with your current fleet of other mini PCs you may be running. However, you can also mount this mini PC behind a monitor as well if you want to. It includes the VESA mount to do this if you want to configure it this way.
All, in all, build quality is very good and you feel like you have a substantial “chunk” in your hand with the MINIX EU715-AI.
Hardware configuration of the EU715-AI
Let’s take a look at the hardware configuration of this mini PC and see what it has to offer.
Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU
The unit I received has the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor. This processor is one of the latest Meteor Lake processors and is a laptop chip. It has the “big-little” architecture that combines performance and efficiency cores together, along with the integrated Intel Arc GPU. It also has an Intel NPU that adds Intel AI Boost to the mix.
Below is the information from cpubenchmark on the processor:
- 16 Cores, 22 Threads
- 6 Performance Cores with 12 threads
- 10 Efficient Cores with 10 Threads
- Intel Core Ultra 7 155H Benchmark
So, like the marketing of most mini PCs coming out on the market today, this mini PC is billed as a PC that can run not only traditional workloads for browsing, productivity, and other creative tasks, but can also handle AI-assisted workflows such as local LLM inference and things like image recognition. Microsoft’s Copilot can also offload tasks onto NPU-equipped PCs.
However, if you have read my recent blog post on this topic, I don’t have great feedback on NPUs in mini PCs. For the most part, unfortunately, most software these days for running local AI DO NOT take advantage of NPUs. Tools like Ollama and LM Studio, although there are a few beta builds of LM studio that are tailored for using specific AI processors.
Memory and storage
In terms of memory and storage, the EU715-AI can “officially” support up to 96 GB of DDR5-5600 memory. I suspect like most other mini PCs that can run dual-channel DDR5 memory, it likely will run the new 64 GB SO-DIMMS with no issues, for a max of 128 GB of RAM.
Another things that caught my attention with this mini PC is that it has dual PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD slots. Not only do you get the speed of PCIe 4.0, you get 2 slots of it. This allows you to separate your storage based on what it is used for. If you want to install a hypervisor for home lab workloads, you can use the second NVMe slot to run your VMs from.
Display options: Thunderbolt, displayport, HDMI, USB-C
With this package, you also get Thunderbolt 4 connectivity and DisplayPort, HDMI, and USB-C for video outputs. With this, you can connect up to four 4K displays at 60 Hz or a single 8K display.
Network connectivity
From a networking perspective, you get dual 2.5 GbE LAN ports. I think this is great as well since having the two ports will allow you to have two physical connections to split out your workloads or types of network traffic with a total of 5 Gb/s of fabric there. Wireless connectivity includes Wi-Fi 6E. Also, it is noted as “Wi-Fi 7 ready”.
In case you are wondering, the network adapters for the EU715-AI are Realtek based. So, there won’t be any native VMware ESXi on this one. But Proxmox should run just fine.
- 2 x RTL8125
Connectivity and expansion
This mini PC is serious about I/O connectivity options. It includes Thunderbolt 4 at 40 Gbps. It also has multiple USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, and a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2×2 port that is rated at 20 Gbps. With these connectivity options, it makes it easy to connect external storage drives, docking stations, or even an eGPU if you want to have even more powerful graphics than the integrated Intel Arc can supply.
Details of connectivity
Front Panel:
- 1 x Power Button
- 1 x Clear CMOS Button
- 1 x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack
- 2 x USB3.2 Gen2
- 1 x TBT 4 (Support 4K@120Hz)
Rear Panel:
- 1 x Power Jack
- 1 x Kensington Lock
- 2 x RJ45 LAN
- 1 x HDMI Jack (Support 4K@120Hz/8K@60Hz)
- 1 x DP Jack (Support 4K@144Hz/8K@60Hz)
- 1 x Type – C (Support Output 15W, Input 100W, DP 4K@120Hz)
- 1 x USB3.2 Gen2
Unboxing
Below are a few pics of the MINIX Elite EU715-AI packaging. Everything was packaged great.
Here is a shot of the back of the EU715-AI. Here we can see the (2) 2.5 GbE ports, USB 3.2, Display port, HDMI, USB-C and
The front of the MINIX EU715-AI. Here you can see the TB4, two USB 3.2 ports, headphones jack, power button, etc.
To gain access to the internals, you remove 4 screws, 1 in each corner to pop off the bottom lid. I keep waiting on all mini PC manufacturers to incorporate tool-less designs for this type of access, but the screws of course work.
Another angle. You can see the (2) M.2 NVMe slots and the dual channel memory slots.
One thing I like about this mini PC is the size of the power adapter. Basically it looks like a cell phone adapter with the USB-C connection. The pic below gives you an idea on the size.
AI capabilities
The MINIX EU715-AI has an Intel NPU and AI boost included. Some workloads are taking advantage of these. However, I still think by and large, it is not a component that most AI software is using that I think most in the home lab are interested in.
Below, you can see the performance of LM Studio using Gemma-3n-e4b when asking it to explain the theory of “relativity”:
- 14.24 tokens/sec
Use in a home lab
I really like the potential for this little mini PC in the home lab. While it does have the Realtek NICs, I think many are steering away from VMware in the home lab. So, with that being said, it has great potential for a single Proxmox node or a cluster of these if you want to use it as a cluster node.
The dual M.2 slots I think is great since it gives you the separate and dedicated storage that many look for and you have the dual 2.5 GbE NICs which is nice as well. You can separate out cluster and storage traffic physically if you want.
I had no issues loading up Proxmox VE Server 9:
Proxmox handles the hybrid CPU architecture with the latest Linux kernel and CPU microcode. Plus, you have 22 cores to play around with, running your workloads.
Thermals and power efficiency
The system is really efficient and stays surprisingly quiet even under full load benchmarking I did with Proxmox and the s-tui and Linux stress utility.
One of the highlights I will cover in detail during my own hands-on testing is power efficiency. Mini PCs like the EU715-AI tend to sip power compared to traditional desktop workstations, and the 155H CPU is designed with hybrid cores to balance performance with energy savings. Expect idle power draw to be minimal and load power to stay well within what a typical UPS or power strip can handle comfortably. I will have actual measurements with my review unit.
Idle power draw
Below is what I measured for idle power draw.
After booting in Windows in the included Windows 11 Pro drive, I saw typical 20-25 watts with just normal tasks.
100% CPU power draw
I like to use the Linux stress utility along with the S-TUI GUI for 100% CPU power draw benchmarking.
As you can see in Proxmox, CPUs are maxed out.
The power draw at 100% CPU was 69+ watts. Very impressive!
Price and who should buy it
The MINIX EU715-AI mini PC is not the cheapest option. But, right now, you can purchase it directly from MINIX with $110 off the $899 normal price with the discount code BLEU715: MINIX EU715-AI.
Who should buy it?
- If you want a low-power home lab node, or buy multiples of these for a cluster that is low-power and has tons of processing power
- If you want to have a mini PC with 128 GB of RAM. This is not a feature from MINIX, but I suspect this little PC will have no problem with 128 GB of the new DDR5 SO-DIMM kit from Crucial
- If you want a quiet and low heat output mini PC
- If you need dual networking or strong networking capabilities and dedicated storage for running home lab workloads (it has the multiple M.2 slots
Wrapping up
The MINIX Elite EU715-AI mini PC is a powerful little compute node that has a modern CPU, AI acceleration built-in and it has healthy connectivity options. It is fast enough for most productivity tasks and it will run AI processing at acceptable performance levels for light AI work.
I think the MINIX Elite EU715-AI would make a great Proxmox node for ones looking for a low-power node with many compute cores, as well as multiple network adapters and storage slots. How about you? What do you think about the MINIX Elite EU715-AI? Let me know in the comments.
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