Links: Amazon
The UM350 Mini PC is a compact desktop PC branded by manufacturers like Coofun, Minisforum, and others. Coofun was much cheaper on Amazon US, but Minisforum is also on other sites like AliExpress. This PC costs around US$280-340 for a 16GB/512GB variant, but can be found for cheaper if you go with lower specs for as low as $220 on Amazon. For some reason UM350s are more expensive on AliExpress.
Specs:
I bought two of the UM350 PCs mainly to replace two power-hungry tower servers (one HPE ML110 Gen10 and one Ryzen X470D4U homebuilt). I was intrigued by small compact servers for many years, but pre-2017 and pre-Ryzen, small machines were very underpowered: they were at best dual core, or a Quad-core "Celeron" with very weak cores. Compact business PCs just took off in the "new" market around then so refurb wasn't an option.
The advantage of the UM350 is that it's small while being a better deal than the HP T740 if PCIe slots aren't needed, yet has an Intel 2.5GbE NIC. However, the T740 has the advantage of a PCIe slot which makes sense for pfSense or >2.5GbE networking, but the stock NIC is Gigabit Realtek.
The UM350 is also very easy to open, just push the top cover and you got the RAM and SSD. I haven't had a computer as easy or elegant to open since one of my teachers gave me an old PowerMac G4, far from the soldiered everything modern Apple machines are.
The UM350 has one big disadvantage: it does not like 16GB DDR4 SO-DIMMs. I tried Corsair 16GB SO-DIMMs in both my Mini PCs and neither worked. I had to revert to the stock Crucial 8DM SO-DIMMs.
Installing Linux
I replaced the stock Windows 11 installation with openSUSE Leap 15.4 in the server configuration (meaning no desktop) on both my UM350s. One of them runs Nextcloud (in Podman) and a Caddy web server, and the other runs a Tor middle relay (via two instances).
One caveat: while openSUSE installed fine, the UM350 UEFI still booted into the Windows UEFI loader, but Windows was wiped while the EFI system partition wasn't. I got an error from the Windows bootloader. I had to go to the BIOS menu, boot openSUSE, and remove the Windows entry with efibootmgr.
Other LInux/BSD distros may be different, but haven't tried them.
UPDATE: I have tried FreeBSD on the UM350. Unlike openSUSE, FreeBSD's installer wiped the EFI boot partition and put it's own, and OpenBSD is also the same. FreeBSD 13.1 supports the hardware (even as a desktop), but *BSD (and Windows) is slightly slower than Linux. I haven't tested other Linux distros, however.
Pictures & Unboxing
The UM350 Mini PC is a compact desktop PC branded by manufacturers like Coofun, Minisforum, and others. Coofun was much cheaper on Amazon US, but Minisforum is also on other sites like AliExpress. This PC costs around US$280-340 for a 16GB/512GB variant, but can be found for cheaper if you go with lower specs for as low as $220 on Amazon. For some reason UM350s are more expensive on AliExpress.
Specs:
- AMD Ryzen 5 3550H (2.1GHz Quad-core Octa-thread Mobile CPU)
- 16GB (2x8GB) Crucial DDR4
- 512GB NVMe SSD (Unbranded model)
- Single Intel 2.5GbE I225-V NIC
- Intel Wi-Fi AC7265
- Windows 11 (or 10, based on seller)
I bought two of the UM350 PCs mainly to replace two power-hungry tower servers (one HPE ML110 Gen10 and one Ryzen X470D4U homebuilt). I was intrigued by small compact servers for many years, but pre-2017 and pre-Ryzen, small machines were very underpowered: they were at best dual core, or a Quad-core "Celeron" with very weak cores. Compact business PCs just took off in the "new" market around then so refurb wasn't an option.
The advantage of the UM350 is that it's small while being a better deal than the HP T740 if PCIe slots aren't needed, yet has an Intel 2.5GbE NIC. However, the T740 has the advantage of a PCIe slot which makes sense for pfSense or >2.5GbE networking, but the stock NIC is Gigabit Realtek.
The UM350 is also very easy to open, just push the top cover and you got the RAM and SSD. I haven't had a computer as easy or elegant to open since one of my teachers gave me an old PowerMac G4, far from the soldiered everything modern Apple machines are.
The UM350 has one big disadvantage: it does not like 16GB DDR4 SO-DIMMs. I tried Corsair 16GB SO-DIMMs in both my Mini PCs and neither worked. I had to revert to the stock Crucial 8DM SO-DIMMs.
Installing Linux
I replaced the stock Windows 11 installation with openSUSE Leap 15.4 in the server configuration (meaning no desktop) on both my UM350s. One of them runs Nextcloud (in Podman) and a Caddy web server, and the other runs a Tor middle relay (via two instances).
One caveat: while openSUSE installed fine, the UM350 UEFI still booted into the Windows UEFI loader, but Windows was wiped while the EFI system partition wasn't. I got an error from the Windows bootloader. I had to go to the BIOS menu, boot openSUSE, and remove the Windows entry with efibootmgr.
Other LInux/BSD distros may be different, but haven't tried them.
UPDATE: I have tried FreeBSD on the UM350. Unlike openSUSE, FreeBSD's installer wiped the EFI boot partition and put it's own, and OpenBSD is also the same. FreeBSD 13.1 supports the hardware (even as a desktop), but *BSD (and Windows) is slightly slower than Linux. I haven't tested other Linux distros, however.
Pictures & Unboxing
Last edited:
