Really dissapointed there are no games benchmarked.
" If AMD's OEMs manage to create a mini-PC with, say, the Ryzen 7 5800U in a 25W cTDP-up configuration, Tiger Lake-U's appeal could be dented further."
Well that's just not going to happen. Even now 4700/4800u NUC sized PCs are extremely rare, and AMD isnt going to bother making their own.
That's nothing more then a product announcement. It's not a review, and if we base a products coverage by announcements then there are 15 electric trucks on the market already.
By "rare", do you mean product variety, or product availability? Because I can totally find the 4x4 BOX-4800U in stock, at newegg. They even have a BRIX with 4800U in stock. Of course, if you are outside of NA, then GL with that.
4x4 BOX-4800U user here in California. I bought it on NewEgg months ago, then it became out of stock, then apparently NewEgg is expecting a new batch. Good news for you guys: it is even less expensive now. Experience matches this review. Yes, the 4800U model has DASH allowing out-of-band management. The box is so small that some wide USB keys won't coexist pacifically with others. Ubuntu 20.04. When I ran Phoronix tests the box went quite hot and the fan is not really silent. Should be OK as HTPC though, won't get that hot playing video.
>> Well that's just not going to happen. Well not quite so fortunately! Gigabyte has anounced a UCFF barebone going up to a Ryzen 7 5800u to be released in "available in Q3 2021". https://www.gigabyte.com/Press/News/1915
In theory you could order one within the next 1 - 2 months, if and when you can really purchase these, we will see...
I own this device, you have to install a TB driver and I have a TB4 Hub attached with two TB3 NVME drives and they both work at TB3 speeds (40Gbps), Asrock didn't want to pay Intel, I bet Asrock gets sued over this. You can find the board on Ebay for around $260 if you are willing to wait, it's the better deal, the case is junk anyways. I was under the impression that both front USB C ports where TB4 but Asrock hinted they were and only one is.
Our flair for showcasing koramangala ingredients shines through in every one of our menus, whether you are looking for a casual lunch or dinner at sutra massage & b2b spa, or a traditional Afternoon sandwich massage. for more info visit here:- https://www.sutramassage.com
I have one of these. Its actually my work pc right now, I dont need a gpu or multiple cores to code, I and have dedicated servers avaiable to run the code. It serves me very well to be able to have 2 4k monitors and not strugle to move the mouse. My only issue with it, its when I try to hook up a gpu with a R43SG. Its very hard to boot, the issue is not the conection, I've used this connector to other mini pcs with my 6800 and always worked very well, the issue is this particular bios, I think.
You send them one, they'll be more likely to review it.
Now seriously, you can infer quite a bit on Ryzen by looking at what has been tested already.
All these APUs are basically the same silicon operated at distinct power settings, ~15 Watts for 5800U, ~35 Watts for 5900HX and ~65 Watts for 5700G.
The Vega9 graphics don't seem to benefit a terrible lot from extra Wattage, because it's mostly bandwidth constained. There are reviews out there which demonstrate the potential with overclocker DIMMs and an overclocked GPU, but those gains remain linear from a very low baseline.
Peak clocks are just a couple hundred MHz apart, hardly enough to matter, so what you mostly get from the extra Watts is sustained clocks on higher core counts. Go take the values for 15 Watts and 65 Watts, split the difference and add ~20% because CMOS won't give linear clock returns on Watts beyond say 2GHz.
Somewhere on Youtube you'll find someone raving about any thing. But APUs aim really for the very rational, just enough to get the work done in a couple of form factors and at a few price points.
How would a 1135G7 (28W) compare with a Ryzen 5 PRO 5650GE (35W)?
There are, or were, plenty of 1L class SFF PCs using the 4650GE, and OEMs are probably transitioning to the 5650GE right now.
If you are going to use a U series APUs at higher TDP, because it's a SFF, I think you might as well include 35W desktop APUs used in SFF for comparison.
I got the NUC8 (Iris 655), NUC10 (UHD) and NUC11 (Xe) all as i7, each with 64GB and 10Gbit via Sabrent TB3 (Aquantia really) NICs to operate as a oVirt(RHV) HCI cluster.
Played around with Windows a bit before they became "productive".
I was really interested to see how the iGPU generations would play out and in IPC vs cores, 14nm vs. 10nm etc.
Twice the iGPU resources (48 vs 24EU) + the 128MB eDRAM on the Iris 655 only got 50% performance increase, just as the 3DMark gaming score shows. That seemed to spell trouble for the 96EU Xe, which doesn't have any of that. But it didn't. Instead the 96EU Xe scales pretty much linearly vs the 24EU UHD, but that still doesn't make it a games engine. Still a NIght Raid or WildLife type game runs just fine at FHD on the NUC11.
In terms of CPU benchmarks, it was a clear win for the NUC11. It got awfully close to my 5800X on single core benchmarks, especially on Linux, while the 6-Core 10700U could not gain ground against the 4-Core 1065G7 on e.g. Blender or anything thready.
I also have a Lenovo 5800U notebook, which can be configured for the 28Watt and 15Watt energy consumption levels (which is sticks to, religiously!) and it really can't gain much ground on thready workloads against the 1065G7, either, when that is configured to those same 15 and 28 Watt limits. I only measured via HWinfo, not at the wall, so there is that.
What I really like about the NUCs is that they allow very precise control over P1, P2, TAU and the fans (I need absolute control over maximum noise and want max CPU for that in operation). They give you that, while the generation over generation looks of that BIOS are so different, it seams to be completely different teams.
Ah and yeah, the Xe graphics do outperform the Vega9 on the 5800U significantly in numbers, while it doesn't really matter for gaming. Both are super smooth with Google Maps in 3D mode on Chromium in Windows at 4k. But any software less optimized will struggle beyond 2D.
Multi-Monitor support on all the Intel iGPUs is excellent on Windows and Linux, the Vega9 has serious issues switching between external and internal graphics even on Windows. A dual alt-mode USB-C adapter which supports a 4k primary and a FHD secondary seamlessly on any Intel iGPU with very OS I've tested works as you'd expect it, but with the Radeon drivers (both Lenovo and latest AMD) just switching between the 3k laptop screen and the external 4k primary freezes the output to the point where only a hard poweroff will bring it back.
With all systems playing with the power settings (15-64Watts for the NUCs, 12-28Watts for 5800U), those settings did little to nothing for the iGPU. It's really just all about how much left-over budget goes to enable higher CPU clocks (until thermals kick in).
1) "Asrock Industrial" is the name of the company.
2) The thing that most defines industrial computers is the promise to keep parts and productions for longer than most other computers. If you buy a Dell home computer, it might have a randomly selected hard drive or memory that differs each time you order it. If you buy a Dell business computer, you might get the same hard drive or same memory for a couple years. Many industrial computers have the exact same parts guaranteed to be in production for often up to 7 years. That really matters when you put in a fortune into equipment and another fortune into qualification of that equipment and suddenly the computer goes down.
Fanless is nice, but certainly not the biggest industrial need.
If it's not fanless and rugged it's not "industrial", as its components won't last as long (dust and other particulates in the air are never good for electronics). Using a computer in an industrial environment commands a level of ruggedness that you won't find in any computer fan.
It can, but with nothing to draw dust inside the computer it doesn't happen to a noticeable degree over the time between when the computer is deployed and when it's obsolete.
> with nothing to draw dust inside the computer it doesn't happen to a noticeable degree > over the time between when the computer is deployed and when it's obsolete.
That's not necessarily true. It depends on how prone the enclosure is to collecting dust, the orientation in which it's mounted, how much dust is in the environment where it's used, and how long it remains in service. It's not uncommon for machines to have a service life of close to a decade.
Yes, we can agree that fanless is the better option, if you're at all worried about dust. Whoever wants this SFF "industrial" PC must care more about size and performance than maintenance costs.
The 4x4 and 5x5 are recognized stand-ins for the NUC and mini-STX form-factors respectively, and I was using the imperial measurements to convey that this is a standard NUC board. I have since edited the piece to add the SI measurements also for the motherboard dimensions.
It's nice to see some form a NUC that doesn't thermal throttle itself just to keep itself from committing suicide because it has a proper thermal management solution.
It would be interesting to see how that fan will fair over time (with accumulation of dust, etc.).
I have had an Asrock Beebox-S Series for an HTPC and will be replacing it soon because it started hard crashing when playing 4K MKVs a few months ago. generating graphical glitches upon rebooting, and generally becoming a PITA. Anything I buy from Gigabyte, Asus, Supermicro, and MSI I've gotten to last for 7+ years, but not Asrock, so I won't be buying their stuff again.
I've got my eye on the Minisforum Zen3 mini PC that xsoft7 mentioned. Everyone seems to be raving about it and 8 cores to add to the 16 Zen3 cores my desktop PC has when I'm ripping BluRays? Why not?
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
33 Comments
Back to Article
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
Really dissapointed there are no games benchmarked." If AMD's OEMs manage to create a mini-PC with, say, the Ryzen 7 5800U in a 25W cTDP-up configuration, Tiger Lake-U's appeal could be dented further."
Well that's just not going to happen. Even now 4700/4800u NUC sized PCs are extremely rare, and AMD isnt going to bother making their own.
xsoft7 - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
there is a Zen3 mini PC.. with 5900HXhttps://store.minisforum.com/collections/all-produ...
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, August 27, 2021 - link
Now that's interesting. Not a single tech outlet has talked about these guys yet.ganeshts - Friday, August 27, 2021 - link
Coverage dated Aug. 4th: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16866/minisforum-un...TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, September 7, 2021 - link
That's nothing more then a product announcement. It's not a review, and if we base a products coverage by announcements then there are 15 electric trucks on the market already.meacupla - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
By "rare", do you mean product variety, or product availability?Because I can totally find the 4x4 BOX-4800U in stock, at newegg. They even have a BRIX with 4800U in stock.
Of course, if you are outside of NA, then GL with that.
domih - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
4x4 BOX-4800U user here in California. I bought it on NewEgg months ago, then it became out of stock, then apparently NewEgg is expecting a new batch. Good news for you guys: it is even less expensive now. Experience matches this review. Yes, the 4800U model has DASH allowing out-of-band management. The box is so small that some wide USB keys won't coexist pacifically with others. Ubuntu 20.04. When I ran Phoronix tests the box went quite hot and the fan is not really silent. Should be OK as HTPC though, won't get that hot playing video.ifThenError - Friday, August 27, 2021 - link
>> Well that's just not going to happen.Well not quite so fortunately! Gigabyte has anounced a UCFF barebone going up to a Ryzen 7 5800u to be released in "available in Q3 2021".
https://www.gigabyte.com/Press/News/1915
In theory you could order one within the next 1 - 2 months, if and when you can really purchase these, we will see...
quiksilvr - Friday, August 27, 2021 - link
More disappointed that upon looking at the gallery it is two USB-C ports and not a Thunderbolt 4 port on the device.ginandbacon - Sunday, October 10, 2021 - link
I own this device, you have to install a TB driver and I have a TB4 Hub attached with two TB3 NVME drives and they both work at TB3 speeds (40Gbps), Asrock didn't want to pay Intel, I bet Asrock gets sued over this. You can find the board on Ebay for around $260 if you are willing to wait, it's the better deal, the case is junk anyways. I was under the impression that both front USB C ports where TB4 but Asrock hinted they were and only one is.sutramassage2 - Wednesday, September 1, 2021 - link
Our flair for showcasing koramangala ingredients shines through in every one of our menus, whether you are looking for a casual lunch or dinner at sutra massage & b2b spa, or a traditional Afternoon sandwich massage. for more info visit here:- https://www.sutramassage.commode_13h - Tuesday, September 21, 2021 - link
spammerwillis936 - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
This is a quite nice looking product. I just wish they'd have used a latching power connector.brunosalezze - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
I have one of these. Its actually my work pc right now, I dont need a gpu or multiple cores to code, I and have dedicated servers avaiable to run the code. It serves me very well to be able to have 2 4k monitors and not strugle to move the mouse. My only issue with it, its when I try to hook up a gpu with a R43SG. Its very hard to boot, the issue is not the conection, I've used this connector to other mini pcs with my 6800 and always worked very well, the issue is this particular bios, I think.xsoft7 - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
there is a Zen3 mini PC.. with 5900HX which costs 649$ can you review it?https://store.minisforum.com/collections/all-produ...
many youtube videos are raving about it.
abufrejoval - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
You send them one, they'll be more likely to review it.Now seriously, you can infer quite a bit on Ryzen by looking at what has been tested already.
All these APUs are basically the same silicon operated at distinct power settings, ~15 Watts for 5800U, ~35 Watts for 5900HX and ~65 Watts for 5700G.
The Vega9 graphics don't seem to benefit a terrible lot from extra Wattage, because it's mostly bandwidth constained. There are reviews out there which demonstrate the potential with overclocker DIMMs and an overclocked GPU, but those gains remain linear from a very low baseline.
Peak clocks are just a couple hundred MHz apart, hardly enough to matter, so what you mostly get from the extra Watts is sustained clocks on higher core counts. Go take the values for 15 Watts and 65 Watts, split the difference and add ~20% because CMOS won't give linear clock returns on Watts beyond say 2GHz.
Somewhere on Youtube you'll find someone raving about any thing. But APUs aim really for the very rational, just enough to get the work done in a couple of form factors and at a few price points.
meacupla - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
How would a 1135G7 (28W) compare with a Ryzen 5 PRO 5650GE (35W)?There are, or were, plenty of 1L class SFF PCs using the 4650GE, and OEMs are probably transitioning to the 5650GE right now.
If you are going to use a U series APUs at higher TDP, because it's a SFF, I think you might as well include 35W desktop APUs used in SFF for comparison.
abufrejoval - Thursday, August 26, 2021 - link
I got the NUC8 (Iris 655), NUC10 (UHD) and NUC11 (Xe) all as i7, each with 64GB and 10Gbit via Sabrent TB3 (Aquantia really) NICs to operate as a oVirt(RHV) HCI cluster.Played around with Windows a bit before they became "productive".
I was really interested to see how the iGPU generations would play out and in IPC vs cores, 14nm vs. 10nm etc.
Twice the iGPU resources (48 vs 24EU) + the 128MB eDRAM on the Iris 655 only got 50% performance increase, just as the 3DMark gaming score shows. That seemed to spell trouble for the 96EU Xe, which doesn't have any of that. But it didn't. Instead the 96EU Xe scales pretty much linearly vs the 24EU UHD, but that still doesn't make it a games engine. Still a NIght Raid or WildLife type game runs just fine at FHD on the NUC11.
In terms of CPU benchmarks, it was a clear win for the NUC11. It got awfully close to my 5800X on single core benchmarks, especially on Linux, while the 6-Core 10700U could not gain ground against the 4-Core 1065G7 on e.g. Blender or anything thready.
I also have a Lenovo 5800U notebook, which can be configured for the 28Watt and 15Watt energy consumption levels (which is sticks to, religiously!) and it really can't gain much ground on thready workloads against the 1065G7, either, when that is configured to those same 15 and 28 Watt limits. I only measured via HWinfo, not at the wall, so there is that.
What I really like about the NUCs is that they allow very precise control over P1, P2, TAU and the fans (I need absolute control over maximum noise and want max CPU for that in operation). They give you that, while the generation over generation looks of that BIOS are so different, it seams to be completely different teams.
Ah and yeah, the Xe graphics do outperform the Vega9 on the 5800U significantly in numbers, while it doesn't really matter for gaming. Both are super smooth with Google Maps in 3D mode on Chromium in Windows at 4k. But any software less optimized will struggle beyond 2D.
Multi-Monitor support on all the Intel iGPUs is excellent on Windows and Linux, the Vega9 has serious issues switching between external and internal graphics even on Windows. A dual alt-mode USB-C adapter which supports a 4k primary and a FHD secondary seamlessly on any Intel iGPU with very OS I've tested works as you'd expect it, but with the Radeon drivers (both Lenovo and latest AMD) just switching between the 3k laptop screen and the external 4k primary freezes the output to the point where only a hard poweroff will bring it back.
With all systems playing with the power settings (15-64Watts for the NUCs, 12-28Watts for 5800U), those settings did little to nothing for the iGPU. It's really just all about how much left-over budget goes to enable higher CPU clocks (until thermals kick in).
zsdersw - Friday, August 27, 2021 - link
What exactly is "industrial" about it? If it's not fanless it can't really be considered industrial and it's just another NUC-type computer.abufrejoval - Friday, August 27, 2021 - link
The marketing channel.They don't metion any testing specification in the technical data on the ASrock web site.
Without that it may just mean that consumer (fool protection) return rights might not apply.
dullard - Friday, August 27, 2021 - link
1) "Asrock Industrial" is the name of the company.2) The thing that most defines industrial computers is the promise to keep parts and productions for longer than most other computers. If you buy a Dell home computer, it might have a randomly selected hard drive or memory that differs each time you order it. If you buy a Dell business computer, you might get the same hard drive or same memory for a couple years. Many industrial computers have the exact same parts guaranteed to be in production for often up to 7 years. That really matters when you put in a fortune into equipment and another fortune into qualification of that equipment and suddenly the computer goes down.
Fanless is nice, but certainly not the biggest industrial need.
zsdersw - Monday, August 30, 2021 - link
If it's not fanless and rugged it's not "industrial", as its components won't last as long (dust and other particulates in the air are never good for electronics). Using a computer in an industrial environment commands a level of ruggedness that you won't find in any computer fan.dullard - Monday, August 30, 2021 - link
There are plenty of industries that are not filthy.mode_13h - Tuesday, August 31, 2021 - link
Yeah, exactly. There are applications like kiosks, point-of-sale, and backroom appliances.zsdersw - Tuesday, August 31, 2021 - link
All of which benefit from fanless computers. Dust is everywhere and always bad for electronics.dullard - Tuesday, August 31, 2021 - link
Dust can also collect on fins on fanless computers and render their cooling worse. It isn't a concept of "works" vs "doesn't work".zsdersw - Wednesday, September 1, 2021 - link
It can, but with nothing to draw dust inside the computer it doesn't happen to a noticeable degree over the time between when the computer is deployed and when it's obsolete.mode_13h - Tuesday, September 21, 2021 - link
> with nothing to draw dust inside the computer it doesn't happen to a noticeable degree> over the time between when the computer is deployed and when it's obsolete.
That's not necessarily true. It depends on how prone the enclosure is to collecting dust, the orientation in which it's mounted, how much dust is in the environment where it's used, and how long it remains in service. It's not uncommon for machines to have a service life of close to a decade.
Yes, we can agree that fanless is the better option, if you're at all worried about dust. Whoever wants this SFF "industrial" PC must care more about size and performance than maintenance costs.
Manvadher - Friday, August 27, 2021 - link
I really love this site and its reviews but why did you do this"The NUC-1165G7 places the 4.09" x 4.02" motherboard inside a chassis measuring 110 mm x 117.5 mm x 47.85 mm"
Two different units in the same sentence!
Either way thank you for the review!
ganeshts - Monday, August 30, 2021 - link
The 4x4 and 5x5 are recognized stand-ins for the NUC and mini-STX form-factors respectively, and I was using the imperial measurements to convey that this is a standard NUC board. I have since edited the piece to add the SI measurements also for the motherboard dimensions.alpha754293 - Friday, August 27, 2021 - link
It's nice to see some form a NUC that doesn't thermal throttle itself just to keep itself from committing suicide because it has a proper thermal management solution.It would be interesting to see how that fan will fair over time (with accumulation of dust, etc.).
Oxford Guy - Saturday, August 28, 2021 - link
Dual-channel RAM operating at a good speed? 3D TLC NAND?Better than the over $1000 small form factor machine reviewed here recently. It came with a single RAM SO-DIMM and, as far as I recall, QLC.
Psionic Potato - Monday, August 30, 2021 - link
I have had an Asrock Beebox-S Series for an HTPC and will be replacing it soon because it started hard crashing when playing 4K MKVs a few months ago. generating graphical glitches upon rebooting, and generally becoming a PITA. Anything I buy from Gigabyte, Asus, Supermicro, and MSI I've gotten to last for 7+ years, but not Asrock, so I won't be buying their stuff again.I've got my eye on the Minisforum Zen3 mini PC that xsoft7 mentioned. Everyone seems to be raving about it and 8 cores to add to the 16 Zen3 cores my desktop PC has when I'm ripping BluRays? Why not?