If you haven't seen this yet, Minisforum has announced the upcoming release of the brand new Minisforum MS-03. I have to admit this is one of the first mini PCs in a while that has caught my attention.
MINISFORUM MS-03 Workstation | Intel Core Ultra 9 386H | Fluent 35B Local LLMS – Minisforum
As most of you already know, I am currently running multiple MS-01 systems in my Proxmox cluster, and they've honestly been some of the best home lab purchases I've made. They've been rock solid, quiet, and incredibly capable for their size and have served me well now for 3 years or so (I had two original ones and bought 3 more for my Proxmox cluster). So, building on my good experiences with the MS-01, the MS-03 is very interesting.
From what I've been reading, this isn't just a CPU
refresh.
Some of the specs that stand out to me are the following:
- Intel Core Ultra 300 (Panther Lake) processor
- Support for up to 128 GB of DDR5-7200 memory
- Three M.2 NVMe slots
- PCIe x16 slot that can take a low profile GPU
- Dual USB4 ports
- 2x 10Gb SFP+ ports
- 1x 10Gb RJ45 port
- 1x 2.5Gb RJ45 port
That networking configuration is pretty crazy for a system this size. So if you are counting, that is (1) more 10 GbE connection than the MS-01 has. It has the (2) 10 gig SFP+ cages and then (2) 2.5 GbE ports. One of the things I already love about the MS-01 is not having to add external adapters just to get fast networking in the lab. So, it is great to see the MS-03 keeping with that strength and even adding to it.
The support for a low profile PCIe GPU is still an option with the MS-03 as it has been with the MS-01. From everything I've read, it supports cards up to 75W, which opens up some interesting possibilities. Whether that's adding a small NVIDIA card for local LLMs, extra media transcoding, or just having GPU resources available inside a Proxmox host, it's nice to have the option.
I'm also glad to see support for 128 GB of RAM (althought who can afford that right now? LOL). Home lab workloads have a way of growing over time, and I don't know many people who have ever said, "I wish I had less memory." But, again, in all seriousness, this is going to be a hard number to max out in today's market.
One interesting design choice is the processor itself. Instead of going with the Panther Lake SKU that has the largest integrated GPU, Minisforum appears to have chosen the version that leaves enough PCIe lanes available for the expansion slot. Personally, for us in the home lab crowd, I think that's the right decision for a workstation or virtualization platform. I'd much rather have expansion options than a faster integrated GPU.
I'm really curious to see a teardown once these start shipping. I'm wondering things like:
- How well does it cool under sustained load? There were some cooling problems noted with the MS-A2.
- Is the fan noise similar to the MS-01?
- Are there any compromises with the PCIe slot when all three NVMe drives are populated?
- Does Proxmox detect everything cleanly out of the box?
- How much power does it draw when it's sitting idle? Power consumption is also a big characteristic for running a system 24x7x365.
At this point I don't think Minisforum has announced pricing yet, so that's probably going to be one of the biggest questions with the unit. If they can keep it somewhere in the same ballpark as the MS-01, which will be hard to say if that is possible in today's market, I think these are going to end up in a lot of home labs.
I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye on this one. Is anyone else thinking about replacing an MS-01 with one of these, or would this be your first Minisforum system? I'd be interested to hear what you would use it for.