Beelink SER3 Mini-PC with AMD Ryzen 7 3750H CPU in review

Beelink SER3 – scope of delivery and design

The box of the Beelink SER3 contains the mini PC itself, an EU power supply unit, two HDMI 1.4 cables, one 1 m and one 20 cm long. The latter is well suited for people who want to mount the mini-PC directly behind the monitor, or operate it next to a portable monitor. There is also a bracket for wall mounting. Many probably don’t need it, but it doesn’t hurt. The 19V/3A power supply is particularly noticeable here, which looks quite large. This has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that the PC is smaller and less heat is generated inside the case (the power supply gets hotter than the PC itself during operation). The downside is that you have an oversized power adapter, which may block other outlets and isn’t exactly portable. Less critical for me, but certainly relevant for some.

The case of the Beelink SER3 (126x113x50) consists partly of metal with a matt finish, where I suspect a wrought aluminum alloy due to the weight (around 490 g), which certainly also ensures good heat transfer. At least I never felt the case to be hot and rarely warm, which could also have been due to the winter temperatures. The rest of the case is made of plastic. It would have been nice to keep the matte look here, since the front is the only area that attracts fingerprints and it is precisely this part that shines.

The mesh grille at the top is also made of metal and gives a similar look to a loudspeaker. Here the fan happily does its job and overall the Beelink SER3 looks really chic. A disadvantage, however, is that dust that falls on it from above, for example when the fan is not working, settles in the small holes. Accordingly, it makes sense to go over there with the vacuum cleaner every now and then. Also left and right we find the same type of grid. Here the air is sucked in and transported upwards.

At the front we have a few ports such as 2x USB 3.0, 1x USB-C, which I would have liked to have had at the back, a 3.5 mm jack and the power button. At the back there are three more mini ventilation shafts with more ports. A Gigabit RJ-45 LAN port, 2x USB 3.0 and 2x HDMI 2.0, which is especially great for dual screen users. If you have three, you don’t have to do without it either, as the USB-C connection can be used for a third monitor, so that all three can even run smoothly with 4K 60 Hz if you are not gaming. Finally, of course, we have the power supply connector. So despite the mini format, we really have a lot of ports. More than some notebooks.

Beelink SER3 – components, specifications, fans

A mini PC like the Beelink SER3 is defined by its inner values. Here, the AMD Ryzen 7 3750H is the brains. This 2019 CPU may be a bit older, but it’s still more than adequate and fast for many applications, so I think it’s aged well. I have a notebook with the same CPU, which has been running smoothly for years and where I (with proxies) have even cut complex 4K videos with it. Therefore, it should certainly be sufficient for one or the other creative user, definitely for all office users and, to a lesser extent, for gaming. The AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 GPU is responsible for the graphics.

The Beelink SER3 certainly has enough RAM with 16 GB for most (8 GB optional). These are 2x 8 GB Crucial DDR5-3200, although that doesn’t seem to be the norm. Some people have a single 16GB chip in there. The former is better in operation, the latter for upgrading. In general, you can exchange or upgrade all important components here. Also the 500 GB SSD from Kingston. When ordering, you can choose whether you want the faster Kingston SSD or the slower GSemi SSD. Both are NVME M.2 SSDs. If you want to use your own 2.5″ SSDs here, you can do so too. The corresponding device for this is available.

So far so good. The only component that bothers me about the Beelink SER3 is the fan. This is not particularly loud and often turns off completely so that you really don’t hear anything. In fact, it doesn’t need to be running during most tasks, but it is. It wouldn’t be bad if you could easily set the fan curve via software or via BIOS or UEFI. But you can’t. So, especially with Windows, you have a constant power on, power off, power on, power off. Now the fan is not noisy below 30 dB(A). It’s this pulsing that drives you insane. I have pointed this out to the manufacturer and hope that it will be fixed in newer models. Especially with the new flagship model. If you run other operating systems on it, such as Linux or Batocera for emulation, the problem does not exist. So it seems to be Windows specific. Therefore, many users seem to first replace the fan on this model so that they can control it directly. This is not expensive, but an extra effort.

Otherwise, the Beelink SER3 generally remains quite cool. Even when gaming, it often comes close to 57-58°C. I only reached 76 °C in stress test benchmarks. Shortly before 80 °C it seems to downclock, so that the temperature drops to slightly above 70. Accordingly, there is no need to worry about the internal temperature. Incidentally, the fan reaches a volume of around 36 to 42 dB(A) under load.

Incidentally, connectivity is not only available via WLAN, but also via WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 4. Bluetooth 5 would be nice, but you can certainly cope with it. WiFi 6 would certainly have been fantastic for streaming as then you could certainly have fun with Stadia, Game Pass or Playstation Now if you have a better internet connection than me. However, the older components do not provide this.

By the way, as already mentioned, a clean Windows 10 installation is running here, which I upgraded to Windows 11 directly via Windows Update for free. Simply because Windows 11 seems to run better on weaker chips in my experience.

Beelink SER3 – Gaming

For gaming, Beelink has recently released a better representative with a current chipset, but you can also create one or the other game with this. Classic representatives such as Counter Strike Go generally always run smoothly. GTA V only manages 47 FPS with medium settings, Witcher 35 FPS. Of course, the Beelink SER3 also allows a little overclocking, but I didn’t try that for this test. A little more performance can still be extracted in this way.

Where it could be really interesting for gamers would be the Mini-PC as an emulation station for old consoles such as PSX, PS2, Gamecube, N64, etc. Here you certainly have a good console feeling with open source systems like Batocera and the chipset even favors them Emulation of some systems to easily get to 60 FPS with upscaling.

Beelink SER3 benchmarks

Here I list some relevant benchmark results for those who are interested:

• PC Mark score: 3812 points
• Productivity: 6047 points
• Digital Content Creation: 3389 points
• 3DMark Fire Strike: 2032 points
• CineBench R23:
• Multi-core: 3879 points
• Single Core: 965 points
• CrystalDiskMark:
• Sequential Read: 1967MB/s
• Sequential Write: 1643MB/s

Beelink SER3 price and availability

The Beelink Ser3 Mini PC is already available and costs different depending on the specifications. Our variant with 16 GB RAM and 500 GB Kingston SSD currently costs 599 euros. With only 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB, the price goes down again to 519 euros. Personally, I would actually recommend people with a gaming focus to go 100 euros higher and get the GTR5 with the Ryzen 9, WiFi 6 and the quieter fan, as you would get more bang for your buck and be happier for longer. But for office applications, work and emulation, the Beelink SER3 is definitely a decent package. Incidentally, the manufacturer offers a voluntary three-year guarantee on all products.