ASRock Industrial is one of the few vendors with a lineup of ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) computing systems based on the latest Intel and AMD platforms. Their lineup of NUC clones – the NUC BOX series with Intel, and the 4X4 BOX series with AMD – has enjoyed significant market success, mainly due to their commitment to leading edge processors. The company introduced the 4X4 BOX-7000 series UCFF PCs based on AMD's Rembrandt-R SoCs in early February, and sent across their flagship SKU – the 4X4 BOX-7735U/D5 – to be put through our rigorous evaluation routine.
The 4X4 BOX-7735U/D5 is one of the first UCFF mini-PCs to rely on DDR5 SODIMMs, and it is the first AMD-based mini-PC in our labs to include USB4 functionality (with PCIe tunneling). The process improvements in moving to Zen 3+ and a re-architected integrated GPU should theoretically deliver significantly better performance and power efficiency over a range of workloads when compared to the Cezanne-based flagship (4X4 BOX-5800U) from last year.
The Ryzen 7 7735U, despite being a Zen 3+ part, was actually introduced only in January 2023. With a TDP of 28W, this U series SKU is meant primarily for notebook platforms. However, its deployment in an actively cooled UCFF chassis has allowed ASRock Industrial to provide the end user with a bit of flexibility in terms of power consumption – and, as an extension, performance. Read on for a detailed investigation into the performance and product experience delivered by AMD's Rembrandt-R in a UCFF platform.
