Overall I’m satisfied with my purchase, but Minisforum refurbished is a bit different than I’m used to via Corsair or Apple - whom have premium refurbished products.

The machine was a fantastic deal and overall it was clean and in overall good shape (fans were free of dust). This was a barebones, so I had to install memory and storage. There was no manual included, but I didn’t expect that either. The latest firmware was also installed, which is great considering it requires Windows and I only have Linux.

Where I was a bit surprised was the lack of thermal pads and the condition of the ones that were installed. This machine comes new with thermal pads to keep the SSD and memory within operating temperatures, it’s not a nice to have. There were used thermal pads, but they were ripped and there wasn’t enough for the RAM to be kept cool. I ended up finding some high quality ones from Amazon, but it extended my purchase. The case had a small scratch, but it’s not super noticeable on a quick glance. Thankfully it’s going in a rack.

Overall, now that everything is setup it’s working amazingly well (knock on wood). It seems to run cool and it’s been a solid machine so far. Great features for the price.

Got a great deal on the last available refurbished MS-A1. Already had the ram and M.2 SSD from a previous computer and bought a used Ryzen 8700G on eBay.

Assembly was easy enough. I like the sturdy MS-A1 PC chassis and the 4 slots for M.2 drives. Fast Ethernet ports access my NAS efficiently. Only wish would be 4 sodimm slots rather than the 2 to make a ram upgrade easier and cheaper.

All around very nice mini pc. Minisforum builds nice stuff!