Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H mini PC review – Part 3: Ubuntu 22.04 Linux

After going through an unboxing and teardown of the Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H mini PC, and testing the 12th gen Intel Core i7-12650H mini PC in Windows 11 Pro, we’ll now report our experience with Ubuntu 22.04 in the third part of the review to show how the Beelink SEi12 performs in Linux.

We will perform feature testing, run some benchmarks to evaluate performance, test Ethernet, WiFi 6, and Bluetooth, submit the system to a stress test to check its cooling performance and measure fan noise and power consumption. We’ll also compare it to the GEEKOM Mini IT12 mini PC with the same Intel Core i7-12650H CPU.

Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H mini PC Review Ubuntu 22.04

Ubuntu 22.04 installation

We shrank the Windows partition is about half to install Ubuntu 22.04 in dual boot configuration along with Windows 11 Pro.

Beelink SEi12 Disk Management Dual Boot Windows Linux
We then installed Ubuntu 22.04.3 ISO from a USB flash without any issues.

Ubuntu 22.04 system information

After a system update, going to Settings->About shows we have Ubuntu 22.04.4 running on an AZW SEi computer equipped with a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12650H processor with 16 threads, 32GB RAM, and 626.8 GB of storage (the preinstalled 500GB M.2 SSD plus our own 128GB SATA drive).

Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H Ubuntu 22.04
We can find more details in a terminal:


The inxi command provides more details:


We have an Intel Core i7-12650H processor with 10-core (6-mt/4-st) and 16 threads closed up to 4700 MHz, a Crucial CT500P3PSSD8 with size 465.76 GB capacity, a CJ225128TC SATA SSD that we installed for testing, and an AX200 module for WiFi and Bluetooth. The CPU temperature is reported to be 43°C at idle which seems about right, but we’ll test that again.

Let’s start with sbc-bench.sh:


No thermal CPU throttling was detected, and the 7-zip benchmark score was 42,610 MIPS on average, with the first run as high as 45,080 MIPS (due to the initial burst in performance) and it then stabilizes at 41,688 and  41,058 MIPS in the second and third runs. That’s much higher than the score in the GEEKOM Mini IT12 (35,730 MIPS) and we initially thought this could be due to the default PL1 and PL2 power limits:


PL1 is set to 35W, and PL2 to 55W in the Beelink mini PC, while the Mini IT12 had those set to 35W and 80W respectively.  So the power limits should not be involved here, and I’m guessing the thermal design is better in the Beelink mini PC so multi-core performance is better than in the GEEKOM Mini IT12, as we had already reported in the Windows 11 Pro review.

sbc-bench.sh also reports errors for the NVMe SSD drive as well as a high drive temperature:



I’m not 100% sure what the error is, but it looks like the controller may just not support some commands, and it’s not a big issue.

We then tested the CPU single-core and multi-core performance with Geekbench 6.2.2.

Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H Geekbench 6.2.2 Ubuntu

That would be 2,589 points for the single-core benchmark and 10,208 points for the multi-core one. The single-core result is similar to the one in the GEEKOM Mini IT12 (2,575 points), but the multi-core result is better in the Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H mini PC (Mini IT12: 9,874 points) although not with a difference as great as in the 7-zip benchmark.

We’ll evaluate 3D graphics performance with Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0.

Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H Unigine Heaven Benchmark4.0

The Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H mini PC achieved 38.5 FPS on average and got a score of 969 points at 1920×1080 resolution.

Next up is YouTube video streaming at 4K and 8K resolution in the Chrome web browser.

Core i7-12650H Youtube 4k p30 Chrome Linux
8K 30 FPS played great with no frame dropped after watching the video for 9 minutes.

Core i7-12650H Youtube 8k 30 Chrome Linux
Same thing for 8K 30 FPS (4320p).
Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H Youtube 4k 60 Chrome Ubuntu
As usual, 60 FPS becomes more challenging, but the Beelink SEi12 mini PC handles that relatively well at 4K 60 FPS with only 92 frames dropped out of 54,226 after playing the video for 15 minutes.

Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H Youtube 8k 60 Chrome Ubuntu
Sadly, 8K 60 FPS is another story, and the video is unwatchable with 2045 frames dropped out of 5825 in a short test, and we can also see the loading wheel from time to time although the buffer has enough data for 20 seconds of playback.
Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H Youtube 8k 60 Firefox Ubuntu
We tried to play the video in Firefox just in case, but the result is even worse with 2,285 frames dropped out of 2,689. This issue did not occur in the Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H Windows 11 Pro review, and more surprisingly, the GEEKOM Mini IT12 could play 8K 60 FPS YouTube videos with AV1 codec just fine in Firefox… Not sure what happened here.

Speedometer 2.0 was used to estimate the web browsing performance in the latest version of Firefox.

Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H Speedometer2.0 Firefox Ubuntu 22.04
The system averages 291 runs per minute with the results varying between 277.7 and 295.4 runs per minute.

Now that we have Ubuntu 22.04 benchmark results for the Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H, let’s compare its performance against the GEEKOM Mini IT12 (with the same Intel Core i7-12650H), GEEKOM Mini IT13 (Intel Core i9-13900H), GEEKOM AS 6 (AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX), and Khadas Mind Premium (Intel Core i7-1360P).

Before looking a the results, we should probably check out the main specifications of the five mini PCs.

Beelink SEi12GEEKOM Mini IT12GEEKOM Mini IT13GEEKOM AS 6Khadas Mind Premium
SoCIntel Core i7-12650HIntel Core i7-12650HIntel Core i9-13900HAMD Ryzen 9 6900HXIntel Core i7-1360P
CPU10-cores/16-thread processor up to 4.70 GHz10-cores/16-thread processor up to 4.70 GHz14-core/20-core processor up to 5.4 GHz, 8-core/16-thread processor up to 4.9 GHz12-core/16-core processor up to 5.0 GHz
GPU64 EU Intel UHD Graphics (Alder Lake-P GT2)64 EU Intel UHD Graphics (Alder Lake-P GT2)96 EU Intel Iris Xe GraphicsAMD Radeon Graphics 680M96 EU Intel Iris Xe
Memory32GB DDR4-320032GB DDR4-320032GB DDR4-320032GB DDR5-480032GB LPDDR5-5200
Storage500 GB NVMe SSD1TB NVMe SSD2TB NVMe SSD1TB NVMe SSD51TB NVMe SSD
Default OSWindows 11 ProWindows 11 ProWindows 11 ProWindows 11 ProWindows 11 Home

Ubuntu 22.04 benchmark results comparison.

Beelink SEi12GEEKOM Mini IT12GEEKOM Mini IT13GEEKOM AS 6Khadas Mind Premium
sbc-bench.sh
- memcpy22,040.2 MB/s (P-Core)24,180.5 MB/s (P-Core)24,014.4 MB/s (P-core)19,131.7 MB/s25,389.5 MB/s (P-core)
- memset27,417.4 MB/s (P-Core)27,539.6 MB/s P-Core) 26,647.9 MB/s (P-Core)16,781.4 MB/s24,731.8MB/s (P-core)
- 7-zip (average)42,61035,73056,54054,59244,430
- 7-zip (top result)45,08041,36060,98156,25150,396
- OpenSSL AES-256 16K1,587,265.54k (P-Core)1,630,005.93k (P-Core)1,844,401.49k (P-Core)1,249,203.54k1,771,334.31k (P-Core)
Geekbench 6 Single2,5892,5752,7451,9922,093
Geekbench 6 Multi10,2089,87411,9749,5358,891
Unigine Heaven score9691,0021,3331,5531,349
Speedometer (Firefox)291302273202242

Just like the GEEKOM Mini IT12, the Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H mini PC has excellent single-core performance as illustrated in Geekbench 6 (single core) and Speedometer results, while the 64EU Intel iGPU is a weak point of the Core i7-12650H processor. Multi-core performance is however quite better in the Beelink mini PC than in the GEEKOM device as we can see from the 7-zip results, and to a much lesser extent in the GeekBench 6.2 multi-core benchmark.

Storage performance

iozone3 command line utility can help us evaluate the performance of the 500GB NVMe SSD that comes with the mini PC:


That’s a sequential read speed of about 4,431 MB/s and a sequential write speed of around 1820 MB/s which compares to 4,836 MB/s and 1,905 MB/s in Windows using CrystalDiskMark.

We also tested the SATA interface with an entry-level 128GB 2.5-inch SATA SSD using iozone3:


That’s about 252 MB/s for reads and 144Mb/s for writes, or about the same as in Windows, and expected for this specific SATA SSD.

USB ports testing

The speed of the USB ports was tested with an ORICO M234C3-U4 M.2 NVMe SSD enclosure together with lsusb and iozone3 command line utilities. A Seagate USB HDD will be used for the USB 2.0 ports since the ORICO enclosure is not backward compatible.

For reference, here’s the output for the front left USB port (10 Gbps)…


… and the results for the top USB 2.0 port on the rear panel:


Summary of the results for the five ports:

  • Front panel (left to right)
    • USB-A #1 – USB 3.2 – USB 3.1 SuperSpeedPlus (10 Gbps) – Read: 870 MB/s; write: 991 MB/s
    • USB-A #2 – USB 3.2 – USB 3.1 SuperSpeedPlus (10 Gbps) – Read: 854 MB/s; write: 958 MB/s
    • USB-C #1 – USB 3.2 – USB 3.1 SuperSpeedPlus (10 Gbps) – Read: 853 MB/s; write: 944 MB/s
  • Rear panel
    • USB-A #1 (top) – USB 2.0  – USB 2.0 Hight-Speed (480 Mbps) – Read: 39 MB/s; write: 40 MB/s
    • USB-A #2 (bottom) – USB 2.0 – USB 2.0 Hight-Speed (480 Mbps) – Read: 40 MB/s; write: 31 MB/s

Everything works as expected here.

Networking performance (Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 6)

The Gigabit Ethernet port was tested with iperf3 using AAEON UP Xtreme 11 mini PC (192.168.31.12) on the other side.

  • Download

  • Upload

  • Full duplex


All good here. It’s better than in Windows, where the data rate dropped to 883 Mbps in one direction (upload).

Time to test WiFi 6 through a Xiaomi Mi AX6000 router.

  • Download

  • Upload


The results – 937 Mbps download and 939 Mbps upload – are so similar to the Ethernet results that we had to double-check, and the IP address is indeed different. As usual, WiFi data transfer rates are better in Linux than in Windows 11, where the system achieved 768 Mbps (DL) and 778 Mbps (UL).

We also quickly tested Bluetooth 5.2 by successfully transferring a file from an Android smartphone.

Beelink SEi12 Bluetooth send File test

Stress test and CPU temperature

We’ll now run a stress test on all 16 threads of the Intel Core i7-12650H processor while monitoring the package temperature with Psensor and the CPU frequency with the sbc-bench.sh script.

Stress test psensor Core i7-12650H mini PC
Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H stress test

The screenshot above shows the CPU temperature stays around 87-89°C, with the P-cores running at around 2,800 – 2,900 MHz and the E-core at 2,400 – 2,500 MHz while running the same stress test on the GEEKOM Mini IT12 revealed a different temperature chart with the package temperature quickly jumping to 91°C for a few seconds before dropping and stabilizing at around 81°C over the long run as the Core i7-12650H cores were clocked at 2,600 MHz (P-Cores) and 2,400/2,500 MHz (E-Cores). See below.

GEEKOM Mini IT12 Ubuntu Stress Test CPU Temperature
GEEKOM Mini IT12 stress test

These different behaviors should explain the 7-zip benchmark results differences between the two mini PCs, and that means the Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H performs better with the CPU operating at higher frequencies and temperatures under sustained heavy workloads. What we (the team at CNX Software) don’t know is how this might impact the expected lifetime of the processor and mini PC.

Fan noise

The mini PC’s fan is relatively quiet at idle and under light loads but becomes noisier under heavy loads without becoming too annoying. We measured the fan noise with a sound level meter placed approximately 5 cm from the top of the case:

  • Idle and web surfing – 45 – 47 dBA
  • Stress test (on 16 threads) –  50 – 53 dBA

Note that’s quite noisier than the Mini IT12 which we measured at 39.0 – 41.6 dBA at idle. The sound level meter measures 38 dBA in a quiet room.

We measured power consumption with a wall power meter as follows:

  • Power Off – 1.0 – 1.1 Watts
  • Idle – 10.7 – 10.9 Watts
  • Video playback – 57.0 – 63.5 Watts (YouTube 8K60fps in Firefox)
  • CPU stressed test (stress -c 16)
    • During the first 30 seconds 73.0 – 86.6 Watts
    • After 30 seconds 60.0 – 63.0 Watts

Note: The mini PC was connected over WiFi 6, one 2.4 GHz RF dongle for a wireless keyboard and mouse combo, and a 14-inch CrowView laptop monitor connected via HDMI port and its own power supply.

The stress test power consumption is higher than on the GEEKOM Mini IT12, but that’s normal because the Beelink SEi12 operates at a higher frequency. The big shocker is the power consumption while playing an 8K YouTube video as it’s about three times higher and points to software video decoding which would explain why the 8K 60 FPS video can’t be playing smoothly. Firefox’s compositing is set to “WebRender (Software)” and we tried to change a few settings, but did not manage to enable hardware video decoding.

Conclusion

The Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H mini PC performed well in Ubuntu 22.04 with all features working as expected including video output, gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6, Bluetooth, and USB ports. YouTube video playback is working fine up to 4Kp60 and 8Kp30, but not 8Kp60 in either Chrome or Firefox.

The SEi12 performs similarly to the GEEKOM Mini IT12, except for multi-core workload where it is quite faster due to different behavior under loads where the Core i7-12650H operates at a higher frequency and temperature in the Beelink mini PC, but the Mini IT12 is configured in such a way to operate at a lower frequency and temperature under sustained multi-core loads. The main downsides compared to the Mini IT12 are the lack of USB4 ports, gigabit Ethernet networking instead of 2.5GbE, and a smaller and slower SSD for the models we tested. The latter also supported 8K 60FPS videos

We’d like to thank Shenzhen AZW Technology (aka Beelink) for sending a review sample of the Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H with 32GB DDR4 and a 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD. This model can be ordered for $439 on Amazon (after ticking on the $110 discount coupon), Aliexpress (some countries only), and on the company’s online store where you can get a $50 discount with the code 1265050 valid until March 31 (but they seem to extend it every month…). For reference, the GEEKOM Mini IT12 (32GB/1TB) typically sells for a little under $520, so the SEi12 model we tested is a cheaper device albeit with a smaller 500GB SSD and fewer ports.

CNXSoft: This review is a translation – with a few additional insights – of the original article on CNX Software Thailand by Suthinee Kerdkaew.

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2 Replies to “Beelink SEi12 i7-12650H mini PC review – Part 3: Ubuntu 22.04 Linux”

  1. Hi, does Bluetooth and WiFi 100% work on latest Ubuntu 24? Just found that some people had issues in the past, but looks it was fixed?
    Thanks!

    1. We haven’t tried in Ubuntu 24.04. If the Beelink mini PC still uses the Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 module then there should be no issue. We did have problems with other mini PCs relying on MediaTek chipsets.

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