• out of stock

MSI Cubi N100 Mini PC with $50 Gift Card and 1TB MSI SSD (via MSI Promotion) $259 + Delivery ($0 C&C) @ Umart / MSY

1260

https://www.msy.com.au/product/msi-cubi-n-adl-n100-barebone-…

1% fee on all payments except credit/debit card.

So many deals on mini PC's - but mostly unknown brand amazon stuff.
This one is MSI branded, so hopefully better quality components.
The same N100 low power CPU as the other posts.
MSI have a promotion https://au.msi.com/Promotion/AUCubiNUCpromotion
This model (Cubi N ADL-007BAU) is included.
You get a free 1TB Spatium M460 SSD - retails at $99
You get a $50 egift card, which I received within 2 days. You can redeem it for many retailers via https://www.giftpay.com.au/business/

$50 buys you 16GB of laptop SODIMM

This is great value for a branded mini PC at ~$110 if you value the SSD @ $99 and the $50 gift card.

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closed Comments

  • +11
    • Single SODIMM socket Max Capacity: 16GB
    • Wi-Fi (INTEL 9462) max speed: 433 Mbps
    • Audio Chipset (Realtek ALC256): 2.1 Channel
    • CPU TDP: 6W
    • The only thing holding me back on this is the stated 16GB RAM limit.

      The N95/N100 chipsets will generally work perfectly fine with 32GB RAM, which is ideal for using these as a small virtualisation node (e.g. Proxmox). For typical VMs, sitting idle most of the time, RAM is what constrains the number of VMs you can run.

      Many other vendors officially support 32GB RAM in their N95/N100 devices, and ship them with it as a configuration option. Whereas, with a stated 16GB limit on this unit, all bets are off if you slot in a 32GB stick and it doesn't work.

      • 16Gb is the official limit for the N100. That is likely what MSI is quoting, rather than quite literally imposing a 16gb limit in the bios.

        • Agree. However, if a vendor advertises it as supporting 32GB (or ships with 32GB) as some other manufacturers like MeLE do, then you're guaranteed it will work, and you can easily ship it back if it doesn't.

          However, since 32GB is not advertised as supported on this unit, all bets are off if there's an incompatibility with a 32GB SODIMM.

  • +3

    what do people use these for? o.o im interested in these but dont want to spend money on this and let it collect dust haha

    • +8

      Jellyfin server (run your own self-hosted streaming service)

      Home assistant (self-hosted home automation)

      And much more.

      • Is there a steep learning curve using this with home assistant? I like the idea of not being locked into a particular ecosystem ie Amazon, Google etc

        • +2

          There's a lifetime of reading here r/homeassistant/

        • +2

          First two times I setup Home Assistant with Proxmox I did it with 0% knowledge, just followed along with videos and tutorials.
          If you want to run multiple things (like Jellyfin) with Home Assistant I found tutorials for Proxmox pretty successful. (ie matched current version of both halves of the equation)
          If you only want HA then the Raspberry Pi installed offers HA as an image that can be installed on a microsd.
          I think you can also run it alongside an OS but thats not recommended for performance.

        • Non necessarily difficult to go from getting this to having home assistant running on it.

          But home assistant can have a steep learning curve especially if you have devices that aren't super straight forward to connect. Also programming things to do things when certain events happen is awesome and kinda the whole point of home automation, but definitely a steep learning curve on some of that.

          I tell my friends who like to tinker to get home assistant. I tell my family to use their established ecosystem of choice otherwise all I would be doing is helping them.

        • I wouldn't say that there's a steep learning curve with home assistant, but if you don't modify / tinker it regularly, there's a good chance that you'll set something up and then a year later when you're adding a new device or changing certain settings, you've completely forgotten how you originally set it up (or at least that's what happened to me over and over).

          FWIW, I ended up decommissioning most of my "smart home" stuff because I just found that it's more of a toy / fun hobby than it is actually something useful. It's just easier to walk over to a light switch to turn it on vs. yelling out a command or pulling out my phone. Similarly, a lot of the automations, e.g. setting up certain things to turn on when a sensor detects my car entering the garage, just turned out to be a cool novelty, but not really all that useful.

          A lot of the stuff that I would like to automate was not easily integrated into home assistant, e.g. automation of turning on my climate control, which I just directly set up using the remote.

      • +1

        are they fine to be left running 24x7 ?

        • +4

          Computers typically prefer to be running 24/7.

          • @iDroid: how do you know what they prefer ?

            • +6

              @morediscount: Non mechanical components wear through the heating and cooling cycle from being turned on/off (and allowed to cool). Running 24/7 the temperature is going to be more consistent.

              • -7

                @iDroid:

                Non mechanical components wear through the heating and cooling cycle

                This is the dumbest mythical nonsense I read on OZB in a long while. CPU, a non-mechanical component, practically does not wear unless overclocked and/or operating at high temperatures (near thermal limit) for prolonged time.
                SSDs, also non-mechanical components, wear when being used (computer being on means SSD is being used).
                These are non-issues, however.

                Real issues, such as fan wearing out, and dust clogging up the computer, are directly related to the computer being on.

                So no, "computers typically prefer not to be running 24/7"

            • +1

              @morediscount: He is a PC whisperer

    • +1

      Me neither, I'd assume these types of computers are used as payment terminals or something lightweight like that.

    • +11

      Few things I'm running orr considering:

      Plex, Portainer, watchtower, Fileserver, VPN, Firefox, Heimdall, tailscale, Audiobookshelf, Kavita, Calibre, Home Assistant, PiHole.

      • +1

        But most of this can be installed on Rasberry pi right ? What's the advantage of mini CPU over Rasberry pi. Higher processing power ?

        Edit : Asking because I have 2 Rasberry pi already so is there any benefits of getting this.

        • +6

          Quick sync, better compatibility for some packages since this is x86

        • +4

          And significantly better performance. I moved away from my raspberry pi farm recently to x86 .
          Raspberry has many flexibilities for DIY projects such as GPIO, but not ideal for home server and virtualisation.

        • +2

          @Yogi555 - two things happen when you start to use a Raspberry Pi as a 'home server'
          1. You use it, it meets your needs and you forget about it
          2. You use it, you realise you can do a whole bunch more and are constrained by a raspberry pi.

          Examples:
          - Doing realtime AI analysis of video, a PI will never do it (except maybe with a NPU hat)
          - Running a Valheim server (or satisfactory or whatever floats your boat)

          I moved from a Pi to a Laptop and I am MUCH happier with performance, compatibility, capacity, etc.

        • +1

          I found an RPI running just Plex to be a bit unstable. There were one or two occasions where it stopped responding, though, I was running over Wifi at the time. I didn't bother debugging any further to work out if it was another issue.

          The extra resources also allow for running more things.

    • +2

      For homelabs…

      • ?

    • +2

      They're popular as mini home servers or as home theatre PCs or retro emulation boxes.

      I have a N100 mini PC hooked up to a Cricut Maker for my wife, and that's pretty much all it does.

    • +1

      I use them for general internet surfing and light gaming. I looked at it logically and listed everything I played and did and found out I could get away with using one of these and given that its only 6-50wph (with display and speakers) compared to 500wph its a no brainer for me.
      Don't get me wrong if I want to do something more heavy computer usage I have my other cpu for that. But most of the time I am just using this.

      • its only 6-50wph

        What is a "wph"?

        • Guessing Watts per hour

    • +6

      People will have some pretty fancy use cases here in homelabs and the like, but I find them to be very good "general use" PCs.

      If you just want to do some web browsing, emails, watch some videos, do some basic Word / Excel…etc., this would be perfect for that kind of use. The N100 is a really capable CPU which is equivalent to something like a Skylake i5 6500.

      • Yeah it's crazy how good they are now. A few short years ago I built a mini ITX system for a parent, very minimal setup. Today I can save myself the hassle with one of these mini PCs.

    • +2

      Using a very similar n100 PC for

      • plex music streaming to alexa (I don't want to pay for spotify premium)

      • Syncthing to sync all my music across different devices

      • Jellyfin for movie streaming (Much better than plex because you don't have all the concierge and plex pass and other BS)

      • A basic NAS with some usb to sata adapters I had

      • Immich, a google photos alternative

      • Crafty for minecraft servers (Soon, anyway, right now I have barely any time for games)

      Also thinking of running some software for CCTV cameras and using some old phones as the cameras on the PC but im not sure where to start.

      • +1

        +1 for immich, its so fully featured

  • Does it come with OS?

    • +1

      nope, barebones kit

    • I don't think it does, says barebones… so that's just the CPU and board so I'm assuming we need to purchase
      1) memory, reading the info says max 16gb
      2) ssd - not needed since one is in the promo

      • N100 max single dimm 16gb

    • No. It's a barebone system. You need to add RAM, storage and OS to get it running.

      The storage you can get for free via redemption and the $50 gift card will buy you the RAM, but the OS you'll have to sort out yourself.

    • +20

      At a guess - MSI. They manufacture the motherboard I'm using.

    • +1

      I've got a Chatreey N100 mini PC and used it once and found it too noisy with just a YT vid and text browser going side by side @ 4k. I was looking up these MSI Cubi models including the higher spec 12M, and the reviews made it sound like these have a legit cooling setup, and can actually keep quiet.

      I also like the fact most of these Cubi's can have a HDD in them. But then I saw it was 2.5", and they are well overpriced. So I'm back on the hunt for something relatively small, efficient, cool+quiet, and that fits 1x3.5" HDD. I know about Aoostar's "NAS" PC's, but I'm not sure they have enough cooling either.

      And I also want type-c front and rear, or 2 rear, or 1 rear at worst. I don't like that these Cubi have it on the front, because it will look ridiculous having the cable out the front whilst sitting on my desk connected to my monitors KVM.

      • +2

        These aren’t going to be physically big enough for a 3.5” HDD plus everything else that’s in there.

        • I've pulled apart my Chatreey. The mobo is about the same size as a 3.5" HDD. A stack of HDD+MOBO+FAN would be great. Something like a Noctua NH-L9i on top. M2+RAM could be arranged next to the HDD, on either side of mobo. Could all fit quite nice I reckon - https://imgur.com/LVcCaYA

      • I have a Topton N100 with two 16TB drives acting as a backup server.. its super quiet and very low power draw. Runs Debian like a dream.

        • Yer they probably work fine when used headless as a server/router/whatever, but I wanted it as a basic daily driver instead of my main rig, but I think loading up the GPU with video playback along with internet browsing etc tasking the CPU meant the fans were constantly ramping.

        • How do you have these connected to the nuc, do you have a specific dual bay or single enclosure you could point me to?
          Also do you let them sleep or keep them spinning 24/7?

    • +4

      I personally would rather support Taiwan (MSI) instead of China (Beelink).

  • +3

    I ordered the Beelink from yesterday, will set it up tomorrow, but I would prefer it alone based on it is complete vs this which you need to source own items.

  • +3

    2x 1Gbps LAN ports (RTL8111H). Can be used as a low end router or home lab for geeks. But at this price… nah.

    I got my hands on a retired corporate PC for $100 thru a previous deal on OzB, has an 8th gen i5, 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD in it. Much more powerful and a better deal than this.

    • +4

      Nope. The RTL chipset used in the NICs doesn't play nice with linux firewalls and is a deal breaker.

      • +1

        Linux should support RTL chips. Are you thinking about FreeBSD firewalls?

        Could always run virtualised firewall on Proxmox and pass the port as a virtual NIC

        • +1

          No I'm just worried about RTL chips' stability. They don't have the best rep for that.

  • Can I run Ubuntu OS on this?

    • +2

      Yes

  • +2

    Realtek LAN… yuck.

    These MiniPCs could be amazing pfSense routers if they had Intel LAN.

    • why bad

      • +2

        I asked the same question, and here are some reddit people's past experience, which may or may not be applicable to new Realtek NICs.
        - Lower throughput (17% lower)
        - Jitters, Timeouts
        - Okay for end-point compute, but not for pfSense, NAS, and servers where reliable network throughput is critical.

  • Would this run office well? Not the 365 garbage but real office?

    • +1

      Yes, very well actually.

  • Hmm considering buying one of these to move my Plex server from my PC. What’s the best OS for this? I also wanna setup sync thing for my handhelds and possibly pihole

  • I’m assuming this is barebones and missing the RAM - what is it compatible with?

  • -2

    1% fee on all payments except credit/debit card. So they want to know your card number.

  • Can this run R/Studio and SPSS and LibreOffice? … well of course it can run them be will I die of old age waiting for it to do anything?

    • +1

      These are decently fast machines, about as fast as an i5 6400 which is more than enough to do word processing.

  • +2

    Ozbargain'ed? Looks like OOS - but still available at other retails, e.g.:
    https://www.saveonit.com.au/product/msi-cubi-n-adl-007bau-mi…

  • Msi are processing redemptions quickly at the moment. I received my gift card the same day I lodged the claim.

  • Can someone tell me the difference between the Cubi N ADL-007BAU vs Cubi N ADL-035BAU? I tried comparing the specs but can’t spot a difference.

  • The Aoostar I have takes 32GB RAM… I have it running proxmox and my home server.

    This MSI looks to be good value but wonder why they state maximum 16GB?

  • Out of stock at all locations now. I was too late!

    • +1

      Amazon has Cubi N ADL-007BAU for $279 which would be very close to buying from the above shops+ delivery fee.

      If you are in VIC you can pick up from CPL this model which is similarly specced:
      https://cplonline.com.au/msi-cubi-n-adl-035bau-mini-barebone…

      • Thanks! Without the ram or the SSD I'll wait a bit longer

        • You get a bonus SSD and $50.to buy RAM though?

          All the other models i've listed are included in the promotion.

  • +1

    @Slugs how long did it take to get the SSD?

    I just filled out the redemption. Slightly concerned there was no mention of it, only the $50 gift card. Hoping I haven't missed something

    • You'll get an email from MSI (in Taiwan) in a few days

    • Same here - I'm unsure if the promotion thing I filled out was only for the gift card. Haven't heard anything about the SSD.

      • Yeah got the gift card real quick, but no acknowledgement of the SSD, yet

    • +1

      The SSD arrives in a few days, posted via StarTrack from COM 1 - I presume it's these guys (https://www.com1.com.au/) from Mulgrave VIC

    • +1

      Can confirm, you'll get an email after a couple of days asking to confirm postage details. It ships very quick after that. My SSD is arriving today (Wednesday). I lodged my claim on Friday afternoon.

    • Just got my email asking for shipping details.

  • Back in Stock at MSY/Umart

  • Memory Slot (Total/Free)
    1/1
    Max Capacity Max
    16GB
    Realtek lan chips

  • Are these Fanless, looking for something quiet

    • These are quiet but not fanless. The fanless version is the Cubi N ADL S which I have not seen in Aus

  • The dual LAN was very interesting until I saw they are RTL NICs :(

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