ASRock Industrial NUCS Box-1360P/D4 Review: Raptor Lake-P Plus Surprise ECC

https://www.anandtech.com/show/18732/asrock-industrial-nucs-box1360pd4-review-raptor-lakep-ecc

by zdw • 3 years ago

105 87 3 years ago

ianai2• 3 years ago

I don’t see ECC mentioned in any actual specs linked/listed (could have missed it). Hope this isn’t taken out after this first run.

smegsicle• 3 years ago

Hope this isn’t taken out after this first run.

did something like that happen a while back?

ianai2• 3 years ago

If it’s not clearly written out as a promise then it can be different. They called this a surprise so they didn’t expect it.

Businesses are in the profit maximization at reducing all costs phase as a general rule right now. Gone are the days of “oh nice for you we left that in” or other consumer surpluses. There’s probably room to coin a term for this corporate strategy ala how they’ve coined the “quiet quitting” term for laborers. “Shrinkflation” comes to mind.

skazazes4• 3 years ago

These small boxes make for great homelab servers. I use a Topton box from AliExpress[1] as a router/VM/container host and love it. It has an iGPU in case SHTF, and 4 individual 2.5GB Ethernet ports. The only thing it really lacks is out of band management.

Run pfsense/opn in a VM, plug in WAN/AP/NAS/Desktop and you have a lightning fast network/development lab (by home use standards at least).

Even if you were not planning on using it as a lab, one of these kinds of boxes and a strong AP beats out even the high-end consumer focused routers all in ones without breaking a sweat at ~50W

A long time ago I ran a rack-mount Dell R710 with an external disk shelf. It drew ~600W from what I remember and had a fraction of the power

[1] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804669109631.html?spm=a2g...

sschueller2• 3 years ago

Even if you want to do 25gbit + you are still better off building a custom pc [1] than buying any dedicated routing hw. At least right now they are still very loud and cost way more. Plus as you said you can use it as a vm host for all kinds of stuff.

[1] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/wiring-a-home-with-fiber/...

wil4215• 3 years ago

I use an i3 on an x11 Supermicro board with ecc memory. Upgrading to 10gbit was easy. Once hardware costs comes down I may go to 25 or 100.

zamadatix• 3 years ago

Depends what exactly you want to do with the traffic. NAT v4 out to the internet at 25G? Yeah, nothing is going to beat the price for performance of a software box. Route+switch your home lab at 25G? You can get a 4 port 100G (up to 16 ports of 25G via breakout) line rate hardware offloaded performance using a $700 MikroTik switch which runs pretty damn quiet (and you can always throw in Noctuas if you really want it dead silent).

tuananh• 3 years ago

Lovely post. I enjoyed reading it :)

pbronez4• 3 years ago

I am so jealous of your ISP situation! I’ve got symmetric gigabit from Verizon FiOS, which is great for what it is, but there is zero roadmap to anything faster in the US.

You can look at commercial offerings, but they charge way more for much less speed on a dedicated line. The cable folks are bragging that they hit 10Gbit in the lab, but no indication of when they will actually sell that. 25G is a fantasy.

404mm• 3 years ago

… but you are comparing a reasonably priced Chinese box with multiple LAN (ideal for router) with a $1000 single Ethernet box. Kinda not the same thing.

I like used enterprise level small factor PCs for home server. Lots of cheap parts on eBay, decent performance and low TDP. For example, HP EliteDesk 800 series.

blibble• 3 years ago

I'd love it if someone produced a reasonably priced mini-pc with a pci-e slot

(of course it wouldn't be so mini...)

more or less like servethehome's tinyminymicro project (but not relying on used equipment from 3 years ago)

AlbertoGP• 3 years ago

Do you know about the Minisforum B550?

It has an external PCI-E 16x male port that goes into a small dock/riser where you can plug a graphics card for instance.

https://droix.co.uk/blogs/minisforum-b550-review/

A second review with a different conclusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihcGnBjUAm4

Not so reasonably priced, so it maybe does not fit your criteria.

Lammy• 3 years ago

You can get flexible risers to turn the m.2 slot into a PCI-e 4x

GloriousKoji• 3 years ago

Have you heard of zima board?

https://www.zimaboard.com/

aborsy• 3 years ago

Zimaboard has a PCIe external expansion, 2 external SATA ports, and 2 NICs. Low power, passively cooled.

skazazes4• 3 years ago

Intel has the NUC Extremes which offer a full x16 slot in a fairly small footprint. The Core of the computer itself looks like a small GPU, and it plugs into a daughter board that acts as a coupler for its two x16 slots.

I think most people throw GPU's in them but I don't see a reason why you couldn't just fit it with a nice NIC

csdvrx2• 3 years ago

Is ECC an option?

skazazes4• 3 years ago

On the linked Topton box from Aliexpress, in theory it could be given the architecture but the product description specifically says non-ecc sodims

rainsford• 3 years ago

I definitely agree about using boxes like the one being reviewed here as mini homelab servers, but I tend to prefer the actual router be a separate device. For one thing, the ASRock box only has a single Ethernet port, which isn't ideal for a router (yes, you can use a managed switch and VLANs to make it work, but that's not always optimal either). I think there's also value in keeping your router separate from a reliability and security standpoint. I use a box similar to the ASRock as a VM server and a fitlet[1] as a dedicated router running Opnsense. Tiny homelab footprint and super reliable so far.

[1] https://fit-iot.com/web/products/fitlet2/

teruakohatu• 3 years ago

What are you using to run VM's and containers?

skazazes4• 3 years ago

I run Debian and install Docker and Proxmox on it

1MachineElf• 3 years ago

ECC would be significant since the vast majority of these kinds of devices lack it.

shjfddhfdhd• 3 years ago

is this real ECC tho?

every PRO cpu and apu from amd have true ecc. this feel like intel catching up with gimmicks instead of the real thing.

pbronez4• 3 years ago

Article has a nice summary of the differences between standard and in-band ECC. Looks kinda like the difference between hardware and software RAID?

In-band ECC trades performance for resilience because by allocating some of your memory bandwidth to checksums. This is dramatically simpler, and thus less expensive, than traditional side band ECC, which adds a redundant memory channel dedicated to parity information.

Seems like a hugely valuable option to me. Needs more OS support (Intel says ChromeOS only for now??). Would be interesting to compare price/performance/resilience against used/low end server hardware.

dpedu2• 3 years ago

Was there nothing mentioned about noise under load or did I miss it? I bought an 8 core Miniforum AMD-based nuc to use as a home server and it's too noisy even under slight load.

axytol• 3 years ago

I had some good experience with Asus MiniPC P50 - also 8 cores, Ryzen. I noticed it was barely audible while running with a VM active.

dpedu2• 3 years ago

Mine's silent with just one or a few VMs but once I get the cpu maybe 50% loaded it gets too noisy. It's a bummer because I feel like I'm throwing away half of the system's capabilities.

It would be nice if somebody made a NUC with a desktop-class CPU cooler. But I suppose that's getting pretty close to ITX territory.

newman3142• 3 years ago

Still waiting for a NUC with built in 10G that can run ESXi. It's strange that this isn't a yet a thing.

jeffbee2• 3 years ago

I used to want 10ge on my NUC then I bridged it via Thunderbolt to a machine that does have 10ge and that has been satisfactory.

formerly_proven• 3 years ago

Does Ethernet over TB only pretend to be 10GbE but is actually faster or does it only use 10 Gibbons of the available bandwidth?

lizknope• 3 years ago

There are some small form factor machines here with 10G but they aren't cheap

https://mitxpc.com/collections/mini-server

bitbckt• 3 years ago

The R86S might be worth a look for you.

newman3142• 3 years ago

I did look at the R86S with interest when the STH article came out but the 16G max of RAM is a limitation. 32 or 64GB would be ideal to be able to run a bunch of VMs.

Scene_Cast2• 3 years ago

From what I understand, these boxes are sold by ASRock as B2B. Does anyone have experience ordering them as a consumer (non-business)?

laweijfmvo• 3 years ago

Newegg carries the previous generations

intrasight• 3 years ago

That would be a great home server machine. But would like to know the price, and to better understand this "pseudo-ECC"

wil4215• 3 years ago

In-band ECC is likely a lot more marketing speak and a lot less ECC. The way I look at ECC is like this, no extra die no ECC.

In band “ECC” DIMMS store the ECC bits on the same memory chips using the same lanes as the data. Side band ECC uses dedicate lanes and a dedicated memory chip. If you don’t have 9 chips on your RAM sticks you have some marketing version of ECC (cheaper).

wmf6• 3 years ago

In-band ECC isn't as strong as chipkill but it will correct errors. It's not fake.

amelius• 3 years ago

The price is $700 (bare-bones) to $1050 (the configuration as discussed in the article without OS).

tpowell• 3 years ago

I know it's apples vs oranges for a lot of folk' applications, but boy does the updated M2 Mac Mini starting at $549 (at time of comment) seem like a steal.

coder543• 3 years ago

and to better understand this "pseudo-ECC"

Page 2 discusses it in great depth: https://www.anandtech.com/show/18732/asrock-industrial-nucs-...

tl;dr it reserves 3% of your RAM for ECC parity/check values, which is all handled transparently without your operating system needing to know anything.

jcrawfordor2• 3 years ago

Just a quick caution, I had a frustrating series of issues with an Asrock Industrial NUC that I ordered from Newegg. Asrock Industrial support was fairly helpful and responsive and it definitely looked like my unit specifically had a faulty motherboard which, well, these things happen. The caution is that arranging an RMA turned into a real pain between Asrock and Newegg. I don't think Newegg is exactly selling them gray market, but they are not one of Asrock Industrial's distributors, which seemed to be the pain point (Newegg was not actually set up to handle RMAs). I think it might be a better idea to buy through https://mitxpc.com/ which both sells direct to consumer and is a listed Asrock Industrial distributor.

To their credit Newegg did take it back and send me a replacement but I think it had to be escalated to management and they ate the cost. It took a few days and a few back-and-forths with their CSAs.

mewse-hn2• 3 years ago

GamersNexus on youtube had an incredibly messed up experience returning an open box motherboard to newegg and made a whole video series about it. They actually got an interview with newegg execs, some of whom had only been there a few months and have already left the company.

thedaly• 3 years ago

And this is why I buy exclusively from Microcenter. My sympathies to those without local access to one.

inetknght• 3 years ago

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fnXsmXzphI

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL-eB_Bv5Ik

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1R4wbuXFII

I didn't hear that the Newegg Execs he talked to have already left the company though. Where's that info?

esskay• 3 years ago

That newegg interview was the strangest and most awkward encounter imagineable. The whole overly corporate feel of the company was exposed and just made them look even worse.

KennyBlanken2• 3 years ago

Newegg is a shitshow and has been for a long, long time.

So many people have been burned by them, and the writing was on the wall as long as a decade and a half ago when they would purposefully not process orders for 2-3 days to get you to pay extra to have an order process in their warehouse in a reasonable period of time.

It doesn't matter whether Newegg was "set up to handle RMAs" for Asrock. They sold you something defective. They shouldn't get credit for "taking it back and sending a replacement"...that's required of them.

jcrawfordor2• 3 years ago

It's important to understand here that the product was well outside of Newegg's return period and this all occurred over the manufacturer's warranty. The problem is that most B2B manufacturers expect their distributors to handle warranty claims. Based on my interactions with Newegg I think they had gotten into this situation somewhat accidentally and may not have realized that the NUC was from Asrock Industrial, a distinct sales channel from Asrock's consumer products. Of course this doesn't speak positively of their internal processes.

With this kind of product you can often find lower prices from distributors other than authorized ones, at the cost that the warranty is not serviceable. It's usually referred to as gray-market sales. I think Newegg was effectively a gray-market seller here but unknowingly, as they were advertising Asrock Industrial's warranty even though they weren't authorized to service it.

sleepydog• 3 years ago

That sucks. I usually try to buy parts from Newegg even if it costs a little more than Amazon because of their stance on patent trolls. When I got a bad gpu from them in 2012, the RMA experience was easy. I wonder what went wrong.

annoyingnoob• 3 years ago

I've had good experiences with ASRock. Newegg however is garbage.

ChuckMcM2• 3 years ago

This. NewEgg earned a place on my "Never do business with this vendor ever again for any reason" list.

ajsnigrutin• 3 years ago

If a device you bought from a store (online or not) doesn't work, can't you just return it to the seller and have them deal with it... I mean.. they did sell it to you, they should be responsible for the warranty and everything else.

...or is this some kind of only-in-EU type of regulation?

z3t4• 3 years ago

Why not add a fan and heatsink to it?

KennyBlanken2• 3 years ago

The thing is not remotely "industrial", but I guess that label is an attempt to justify the outrageous pricetag. It's firmly office, maybe light commercial at best.

The review itself mentions that the design is based off a consumer product and they only altered the cooling vent location to accommodate a new motherboard layout.

This is aimed at customers like the previously-on-HN JesusChicken chain which is placing NUCs at every store. Even then: I'd expect better sealing.

ndneighbor• 3 years ago

Kinda a stupid comment from me but I am wondering why Framework doesn't get into the NUC business. The ASRock NUCs usually retail from $750-$650 and that's around the cost of an upgrade kit from Framework. Considering that most industrial compute is mostly dealing with long lived deployments of edge hardware, it seems like the sort of stuff that their emphasis on ecosystem can help here.

Anyways, I should stop my homelab hobby even though I find this stuff fun. I might pick this up regardless.

https://frame.work/products/12-gen-intel-upgrade-kit?v=FRUPG... https://mitxpc.com/collections/ultra-small-form-factor/nuc-1...

wmf6• 3 years ago

Do upgradeable NUCs make sense? I would imagine almost all the cost is in the motherboard, unlike a laptop where you can reuse the screen, battery, keyboard, etc.

Arn_Thor• 3 years ago

I can imagine a sort of "NUC of Thesus" where you can swap the wifi module, ethernet port, mainboard, storage, CPU or RAM as requirements change—all in a pretty simple enclosure that remains standard in size. If you're not particularly picky about the size or form factor, it might even be possible to do so with the existing parts Framework already makes and sells

walrus01• 3 years ago

Truly "industrial" small x86-64 PCs will have direct wiring terminals for 12VDC power, or -48VDC, not a consumer grade 110-240VAC to DC-something power brick with it.

liketochill• 3 years ago

Or 24vdc, or 120v dc

DrPhish• 3 years ago

Not to mention -40 to 80C operating temperature range for all components, waterproof port shields and operation at 100% humidity. I didn’t even see an RS-232 port let alone RS-485. There’s some industrial operations admin offices this thing wouldn’t survive in! I’m guessing they’re working on a very liberal interpretation of “industrial”

Animats• 3 years ago

It's not really "industrial". It's for office environments. It's only rated for temperature 0C - 40C, humidity 5% - 95%. No locking connectors.

entropicgravity• 3 years ago

In which case the Asus PN51 would also be worth a look. Very useful for turning a smart TV into a dumb TV.

ChuckMcM2• 3 years ago

Very nice! I wish they would have copied Intel's moving the power switch to the front as the top switch is a falling book reboot waiting to happen. (I've got 1/2 dozen servers in this form factor doing different things and all but one have front facing power switches.

I even designed a way to easily mount them to the side supports of an IKea Jerker Desk[1] :-).

[1] https://www.printables.com/model/198517-computer-and-network...

RedShift1• 3 years ago

You can't really call it industrial if it doesn't have a terminal block to connect 12-32 V to it and can't be DIN rail mounted out of the box.

jnsaff2• 3 years ago

At the same time, also on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34604877

ASRock Industrial NUCS Box-1360P/D4 Review: Raptor Lake-P Plus Surprise ECC

Related Stories