February 19, 2026
Tiny box, big brawls
An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review
Tiny ARM server, big drama: driver hiccups, price drops, and a chunky power brick
TLDR: A reviewer got a budget ARM mini‑server working by switching to Fedora after network issues, sparking cheers and jeers. Commenters roasted the oversized power brick, bragged about Amazon price-juggling, and argued over Fedora vs. server OS norms—plus worries about power draw from a linked post—making this little box a big debate.
A homelab fan slapped a tiny ARM-based Minisforum MS‑R1 into their rack and immediately hit a plot twist: the network ports didn’t work on Rocky Linux, so they jumped to Fedora, which did. Cue the comments turning into a tech reality show. The loudest chorus? “That power brick!” One user mocked the “twice-the-size” adapter and asked why this thing isn’t using modern GaN chargers. Another bragged about gaming Amazon’s pricing—buy one, watch the price drop $150, buy again, return the first—and the thread nodded like, yeah, that’s the hustle.
Then the distro wars lit up. The author called Fedora “not a good option for a server,” and a commenter fired back: why not? Expect a food fight over fast updates vs. long-term stability. Meanwhile, someone dropped a Jeff Geerling link claiming the MS‑R1’s unusual CPU layout might cause power draw weirdness, fueling “early adopter tax” jokes. And when the author said “no” to Debian and “please” to future drivers, another commenter asked the ultimate hot take: why not just use a Mac with macOS if you want ARM?
Bottom line: the MS‑R1 is winning hearts as a cheap, quiet, tiny server, but the crowd is split between love for the price and side-eye for drivers, power bricks, and power draw. It’s ARM homelab heaven—with a little chaos for spice.
Key Points
- •The author evaluated the Minisforum MS-R1 as an affordable ARM-based homelab server, adding a 1TB SSD to a barebones unit.
- •Rocky Linux booted but failed to detect onboard NICs (Realtek RTL8127); manual driver sideloading worked but was impractical across kernel updates.
- •Fedora was adopted because it included drivers for the RTL8127 NIC, enabling full functionality for the author’s needs.
- •Hardware limitations noted: a second slot cannot accept an M.2 SSD (only U.2), limiting RAID options; MS-01/A2 models have multiple M.2 slots.
- •Additional issues included a Marvell AQC107 NIC not being detected by UEFI and a non-functioning “power on after outage” setting; despite this, the MS-R1 performs well as a headless ARM hypervisor.