ASRock Industrial's 4X4 BOX 7000/D5 Series Brings Zen 3+ and USB4 40Gbps to UCFF Systems

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.

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).