ASRock Industrial's 4X4 BOX 7000/D5 Series Brings Zen 3+ and USB4 40Gbps to UCFF Systems
by Ganesh T S on February 10, 2023 1:05 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- AMD
- UCFF
- ASRock Industrial
- Rembrandt
- Ryzen 7000 Mobile
ASRock Industrial's lineup of ultra-compact form-factor machines in the NUC BOX (Intel-based) and 4X4 BOX (AMD-based) series has gained popularity over the last couple of years. Being the first to market with the latest platforms has been one of the key reasons behind this. In 2022, the company had launched the Intel Alder Lake and AMD Cezanne UCFF systems together, with the NUC BOX-1200 series and the 4X4 BOX-5000 series becoming available for purchase within a few weeks of each other. Earlier this year, the Intel Raptor Lake-based NUC BOX-1300 series was launched (our review) and is already available for purchase. The company recently took the wraps off the 4X4 BOX 7000/D5 series based on AMD's low-power Rembrandt-R APUs. These APUs sport Zen 3+ cores along with a RDNA2 iGPU fabricated on a TSMC 6nm process.
One of the key updates in the new 4X4 BOX systems is the move to DDR5 SODIMMs. The other updates in the platform such as support for a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD and USB4 40 Gbps bring it almost on par with the premium UCFF systems based on Intel processors. Full-fledged USB4 support inclusive of PCIe tunneling has been somewhat of a hit or miss on AMD platforms, as many OEMs have refrained from integrating the necessary board components to enable it. AMD itself had some work to do on the firmware side before the feature baked into the hardware of Rembrandt and later APUs could be enabled. The good news here is that the ASRock Industrial 4X4 BOX 7000/D5 series has two USB4 ports capable of supporting DisplayPort 1.4 signals as well as PCIe tunneling - this means that Thunderbolt 3 peripherals should work when connected to those Type-C ports.
The 4X4 BOX 7000/D5 series comes in two flavors. The specifications of both models are summarized in the table below.
| ASRock Industrial 4X4 BOX 7000/D5 (Rembrandt-R) Lineup | ||||
| Model | 4X4 BOX-7735U/D5 | 4X4 BOX-7535U/D5 | ||
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 7735U 8C / 16T 2.7 GHz (Up to 4.75 GHz) 28W |
AMD Ryzen 5 7535U 6C / 12T 2.9 GHz (Up to 4.55 GHz) 28W |
||
| GPU | AMD Radeon 680M (12 CU / 768 Shaders) @ 2.2 GHz |
AMD Radeon 660M (6 CU / 384 Shaders) @ 1.9 GHz |
||
| DRAM | Two DDR5 SO-DIMM slots Up to 64 GB of DDR5-4800 in dual-channel mode |
|||
| Motherboard | 4.02" x 4.09" UCFF | |||
| Storage | SSD | 1x M.2-22(42/60/80) (PCIe 4.0 x4 (CPU-direct)) | ||
| DFF | 1 × SATA III Port (for 2.5" drive) | |||
| Wireless | Mediatek MT7922 (RZ616)? Wi-Fi 6E 2x2 802.11ax Wi-Fi (2.4Gbps) + Bluetooth 5.2 module |
|||
| Ethernet | 1x 2.5 GbE RJ-45 (Realtek RTL8125) 1x GbE RJ-45 (Realtek RTL8111EPV with DASH Support) |
|||
| USB | Front | 1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A 2x USB4 (with DisplayPort 1.4a Alt Mode) |
||
| Rear | 2 × USB 2.0 Type-A | |||
| Display Outputs | 1 × HDMI 2.1 (Rear, up to 8Kp60) 1 × DisplayPort 1.4a (Rear, up to 4Kp60) 2 × DisplayPort 1.4a (using Front Panel Type-C ports, up to 4Kp60) |
|||
| Audio | 1 × 3.5mm audio jack (Realtek ALC233) | |||
| PSU | External (19V/90W) | |||
| Dimensions | Length: 117.5 mm Width: 110 mm Height: 47.85 mm |
|||
Note that the M.2 2280 support is enabled by a separate bracket, similar to the previous NUC BOX and 4X4 BOX systems with 2.5" drive support and dual LAN capabilities.
Overall, these systems bring the AMD UCFF scene on par with the high-end Intel NUCs and its clones - except for the newer NUC BOX-1300/D5 series which has Thunderbolt 4 ports that also have USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 support for 20Gbps PSSDs. The USB4 ports in the 4X4 BOX 7000/D5 support only up to USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds in legacy USB (non-PCIe tunneling) mode. The RDNA2 iGPU in the new machines should also help these systems perform as well as the the Alder Lake and Raptor Lake mini-PCs in graphics-heavy workloads.
We have reached out to ASRock Industrial for clarity on market availability dates and pricing, and will update the article with the details after receiving them (Update - Feb 15, 2023: The systems will be available for purchase in mid-March 2023. The 4X4 BOX-7735U/D5 will have a pre-tax MSRP of $650, and the 4X4 BOX-7535U/D5 will have a pre-tax MSRP of $500).
Source: ASRock Industrial
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HideOut - Friday, February 10, 2023 - link
yeah, that guy is clueless. DDR5 helps the CU's with far more memory bandwidth from the old DDR4 days.PeachNCream - Saturday, February 11, 2023 - link
I believe the argument being made regarding 12CUs is that the GPU's performance will be limited by sharing system memory bandwidth before fully realizing the performance of all 768 shaders. The implication is that the GPU will be idle or in a wait state while RAM responds to its needs which was a common problem with pretty much every iGPU. DDR5 is faster, but I don't think it fully mitigates the problem compared to having contemporary GDDR dedicated to graphics usage.lmcd - Monday, February 13, 2023 - link
Zen 4 is not out in mobile SoC form factors yet. By nature of the fact that it is not out yet, Zen 3+ is still the latest. That is how releases work.12 CU count is misleading to someone who is trying to go apples-to-apples with CU count against dedicated graphics cards (or even against the 2 CUs present in the Zen 4 desktop package). DDR5 is very much still a bottleneck because the total width of the bus is anemic compared to a DGPU.
Besides -- 2 channels of DDR5 is not notably different bandwidth than the LPDDR5 memory the 6000M series regularly shipped with. We already have evidence it is both excellent and underperforms a dGPU with a similar configuration, the Radeon 6400. Sorry I didn't stick to the AMD party line?
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, February 14, 2023 - link
If by "AMD party line" you mean "making any sense whatsoever" or "formatting my sentence so you can understand what I am saying".IDK why on earth you are bringing up a dGPU, when boxes of this size do not typically have one, the OP was not asking about one, and the whole conversation was on the APU itself. Methinks you are bringing up "12cu" just to be ornery. And frankly, given the performance of the 680m VS the 2cu in zen 4 desktop chips, to say the 12cu would be a massive improvement would be completely true.
We never discussed the RX 6400, nor LPDDR5, and none of it was in the comment. Stop being so cryptic and people wont think you're flat out drunk when posting.
lmcd - Thursday, February 16, 2023 - link
The RX 6400 has the same CU count as the 680M. Keep up.This exact GPU has already shipped with LPDDR5 and now is shipping with DDR5. Keep up.
Methinks you have no idea what any of these things mean and shouldn't make an "ornery" reply just to defend your limited understanding.
sjkpublic@gmail.com - Tuesday, February 14, 2023 - link
In general the diff between DDR5 and LPDDR5 is power usage. DDR5 usually comes in with slower clock speeds. LPDDR5 comes in with higher clock speeds (in general) but uses less power. At the end of the day they provide roughly the same performance but LPDDR5 uses slighly less power.sjkpublic@gmail.com - Wednesday, February 15, 2023 - link
Self correction - LPDDR5 uses less power. Which may lead to slower performance. Do the DD.lmcd - Thursday, February 16, 2023 - link
LPDDR5 and DDR5 are completely different technologies. LPDDR5 BGA implementations should still be ahead of DDR5, especially if AMD's DDR5 controller in their Zen 3+ APU is anything like their controller in Zen 4 desktop.sjkpublic@gmail.com - Tuesday, February 14, 2023 - link
CU (GPU computational unit) and DDR5 (memory) work together through the chipset. I am pretty sure a 12CU GPU cannot over saturate the memory so I am not sure what this person is saying. Maybe they can repost and explain.lmcd - Thursday, February 16, 2023 - link
A 12 CU GPU can easily saturate the bus, without even factoring in the CPU's bandwidth requirements.