MSI Cube 5 12M mini PC Review: A Tiny Everyday Computer

There are various good causes for desirous to personal a compact PC. The obvious, after all, is the area financial savings. In actual fact, compact PCs are sometimes mountable to the again of a monitor for zero desktop footprint. Mixed with sturdy wi-fi capabilities, you cannot solely achieve severe desktop area but in addition lower down on cables.

Efficiency-wise, many of those compact PCs can greater than maintain their very own for on a regular basis computing duties. The MSI Dice 5 12M mini PC is a mid-tier compact laptop providing strong specs and a well-thought-out kind issue.

Does the MSI Dice 5 12M’s mixture of measurement and efficiency make for a worthy buy? Let’s discover out.

MSI Dice 5 12M mini PC

The MSI Dice 5 12M mini PC can deal with on a regular basis computing duties and takes up minimal desk area.

Model

MSI

Storage

512GB SSD (M.2 SSD (NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 / SATA auto swap)

CPU

Intel Core i7-1255U 1.7GHz

Reminiscence

16GB (8GB x2) RAM (DDR4 2666 / 3200MHz SO-DIMMs)

Working System

Home windows 11 Skilled

Ports

USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind A (x4), ThunderBolt 4 USB Kind-C, HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.4, RJ45 (x2), 3.5mm

Graphics

Intel Iris XE Graphics

Dimensions

4.88 x 4.88 x 2.11 inches

Weight

1.2 kilos

Wi-fi

802.11 AX (WiFi 6E) and BlueTooth 5.3

Professionals

• Good on a regular basis desktop efficiency
• Newest wi-fi and dual-LAN ports
• Compact and mountable
• Simple to open and improve

Cons

• Sluggish SSD
• Just one USB-C port
• Cannot be powered over USB
• No devoted GPU

Type Issue

The MSI Dice 5 12M measures simply 4.88 x 4.88 x 2.11 inches and weighs roughly 1.2 kilos. The included 65W AC adapter is a couple of quarter of the scale of the PC. The pc is so compact that it comes with a VESA mounting plate and screws to connect it to the again of a suitable monitor or different show. After all, when mounting, you will need to be sure that the facility button is accessible, but it surely’s a neat idea that is actually solely doable with a computing machine this small and light-weight.

The pc is all black save for a white MSI letter emblem on the highest of the case. On the entrance of the unit is the mixture 3.5mm mic-in and headphone-out jack, two USB 2.3 Gen 2 Kind-A ports, one ThunderBolt 4 USB Kind-C port, a blue SSD exercise indicator mild, and an influence button. By default, the facility button performs the shutdown perform from Home windows and in addition flashes when the pc is in a sleep state.

The rear of the unit has one HDMI 2.0b port, one DisplayPort 1.4 port, one RJ45 2.5G LAN port, one RJ45 1G LAN port, two extra USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind-A ports, and one DC energy jack. In brief, there are many ports, together with the shocking bonus of twin LAN ports, which make this a simple platform to attach a number of units to with out the necessity for extra adapters.

Air vents are positioned on all sides of the machine, save for the entrance. On the best aspect of the unit is a Kensington Lock slot for the standard safety cable lock.

Whereas there are 4 USB-A ports, it might have been good to have multiple USB-C port. I might have additionally favored the power to energy the pc from USB-C, as an example with a monitor just like the INNOCN Ultrawide 40-Inch 40C1R, which offers 90W of output together with video and audio. The included 65W AC adapter within reason compact, but it surely’s nonetheless an additional plug, significantly when mounting the pc on the again of a show.

{Hardware} and Software program

The important thing technical specs for the MSI Dice 5 12M are an Intel Core i7-1255U 1.7GHz CPU, which was first obtainable in early 2022, 16GB of DDR 4 2666 / 23200MHz RAM from two 8GB reminiscence chips, a 512GB M.2 SSD, and 802.11AX and Bluetooth 5.3 wi-fi. Together with the usage of Home windows 11 Skilled because the working system and its plethora of ports, it is a surprisingly succesful, compact workstation.

The 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage are good minimums for a compact PC workstation, however the MSI Dice 5 12M is designed to be upgraded when wanted. Eradicating 4 screws from the rubber toes on the underside of the unit offers you quick access to the internals.

The principle efficiency bottleneck with a PC like that is its lack of a discrete graphics card, or GPU. No devoted GPU means you are restricted within the complexity of graphic design and video enhancing duties you may full and within the kinds of video games you may play. Then again, a system with one of these processor and RAM can simply deal with net searching, fundamental graphic design and video enhancing, easier or older 3D video games, and normal productiveness duties like doc or spreadsheet creation and enhancing.

Though a 4K show has lots of pixels to push and is overkill for many customers, this laptop ought to nonetheless carry out nicely for the standard purposes you’d use, even at a better decision or throughout a number of shows. As such, I made a decision to make use of this compact PC’s sole front-mounted ThunderBolt 4 USB-C port to connect with an AVA WirelessHD moveable monitor’s ThunderBolt 3 USB-C port for video and audio. The show was set to a 3840 x 2160 decision, 8-bit RGB shade depth, and 59.98Hz refresh price. Home windows scale was set to 150% in order that textual content could be extra readable on the 15.6-inch show. Touchscreen options have been additionally routinely enabled.

Fan noise was minimal, even beneath heavy load, with the case feeling solely barely heat to the contact. General, noise and warmth have been regulated significantly better than you’d discover in a typical laptop computer or efficiency desktop.

Moreover MSI Heart and Norton 360, no different apps have been included—past what comes inventory with Home windows 11 Professional. MSI Heart offers backup performance, {hardware} monitoring, and the power to optimize for varied use circumstances, like with Sensible Precedence for inventive purposes. Norton 360 is the same old 60-day trial and consists of machine safety, cloud backup, and safe VPN.

Efficiency Exams

As anticipated with a pc with these specs, I had no challenge searching the net, watching full-screen YouTube movies in 4K, utilizing Microsoft 365 apps like Phrase and Excel, and utilizing Adobe Inventive Cloud apps like Photoshop. Gaming-wise, this technique is actually solely good for 2D, or older, much less 3D-intensive video games. As an illustration, I had no bother easily working a wildly in style sport from late 2016 that is nonetheless receiving common updates, “Sid Meier’s Civilization VI”, utilizing DirectX 12 at a 4K decision of 3840 x 2160. This manner issue can also be in style for many who prefer to emulate older consoles and computer systems, as these are inclined to rely extra on CPU energy than graphics processing energy.

Subjectively, the MSI Dice 5 12M did an important job with frequent computing duties. Nonetheless, working 4 goal benchmarks does present among the extra sensible limitations of this technique’s total efficiency. These efficiency checks have been carried out with default, out-of-the-box settings and the most recent drivers put in. As standard, extra settings tweaks can have an effect on efficiency by some means, though these are usually extra modest results for a non-gaming laptop like this one.

PC Mark 10 Prolonged is a roughly 30-minute benchmark that gives a extra full evaluation of system efficiency primarily based on typical workplace duties like net searching, video conferencing, app start-up, writing, spreadsheet work, photograph and video enhancing, and extra. Though the graphics card was marked as not acknowledged and labeled as “generic VGA(1x),” the benchmark produced a remaining rating of three,961, which was higher than 20% of all outcomes. That is solely barely higher than an workplace laptop computer from 2020, which averaged 3,916, and nicely beneath a gaming laptop computer from 2020, which averaged 5,773.

Geekbench 6.1.0 for Home windows AVX2 measures CPU efficiency for on a regular basis duties utilizing checks that mannequin real-world purposes. It does the identical for GPU efficiency. The CPU benchmark gave a single-core rating of two,073, equal to an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz (6 cores), a desktop CPU from late 2020, and a multi-core rating of 5,865, just like the efficiency of an AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 3.6 GHz (6 cores), a workstation CPU from early 2017. The GPU benchmark utilizing the OpenCL API gave a rating of 9,759, which ranked simply barely above the ATI Radeon Professional 450 Laptop Engine, a cell graphics chip from late 2016.

PC UserBenchmark checks throughout a wide range of efficiency outcomes, figuring out precise efficiency versus expectations. General, PC efficiency ranked within the 56th percentile. The processor ranked within the 51st percentile, graphics efficiency within the sixty fifth percentile, and reminiscence within the 88th percentile. The place the MSI Dice 5 12M fared the worst was with its SSD, performing approach beneath expectations in simply the nineteenth percentile, a end result that may clarify among the poorer numbers within the different benchmarks.

For gaming efficiency, which measures common in-game FPS and is primarily influenced by the GPU, PC UserBenchmark charges the MSI Dice 5 12M as a “Surfboard” (15%), the second-poorest designation, simply above “Tree trunk” (0%). For workstation efficiency, which focuses on audio/video encoding, quantity crunching, digital machines, and databases, and requires sturdy multi-core CPU and GPU efficiency, the MSI Dice 5 12M additionally rated as a “Surfboard.” In desktop efficiency, which measures net searching, workplace apps, and media playback, and depends upon single/quad-core CPU efficiency, the MSI Dice 5 12M was rated positively as a “Battleship” (70%), which is the fourth-best designation after third-ranked “Plane Service” (80%).

Cinebench R23, which makes use of a 3D engine to judge CPU rendering efficiency capabilities, gave the MSI Dice 5 12M a CPU (multi-core) rating of 5,756 factors, putting it above the two.81 GHz, eleventh Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 at 28W, which had a rating of 4,904, and beneath the 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7-7700K, which had a rating of 6,302. In CPU (single-core), the rating was 1,529, which was an in depth second to the primary place 2.81 GHz, 11 Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 at 28W, which scored 1,532.

Ought to You Purchase the MSI Dice 5 12M mini PC?

Although this isn’t a price range product, In order for you a PC that saves area and is transportable quite than moveable, the MSI Dice 5 12M is lower than the worth of a laptop computer with equal specs. You may additionally take up much less desk area and customarily do higher with fan noise over a similarly-spec laptop computer.

General efficiency of the MSI Dice 5 12M is strong, however there are some bottlenecks. Though the pc can simply drive a 4K show for on a regular basis duties, graphics-intensive video enhancing and 3D-centric gaming are usually not one thing a system like that is designed for. The processor and RAM are performance-oriented, however the SSD is on the slower aspect. Luckily, if the time comes so as to add extra reminiscence or a bigger and quicker SSD, it is a simple system to improve.

In case you’re ready the place you want a compact PC and primarily need a strong system for net searching, workplace apps, and media playback, the MSI Dice 5 12M makes a powerful case. If you have already got a show, keyboard, and mouse, it can save you much more cash over an equal laptop computer. Simply be mindful the potential limitations and if a decrease priced desktop PC with equal efficiency, however one which occurs to take up extra desk area, can serve the identical perform.

MSI Dice 5 12M

The MSI Dice 5 12M mini PC can deal with on a regular basis computing duties and takes up minimal desk area.