Mini-PC
Low-power processors have traditionally been geared towards notebooks and other portable platforms. However, the continued popularity of ultra-compact form-factor desktop systems has resulted in UCFF PCs also serving as lead vehicles for the latest mobile processors. Such is the case with Intel's Raptor Lake-P - the processor SKUs were announced earlier this month at the 2023 CES, and end-products using the processor were slated to appear in a few weeks. Intel is officially allowing its partners to start selling their products into the channel today, and also allowing third-party evaluation results of products based on Raptor Lake-P to be published. ASRock Industrial announced their Raptor Lake-P-based NUC clones as soon as Intel made the parts public. With the new platform, the company decided to trifurcate...
Intel NUC 12 Pro Wall Street Canyon Kits Review: Alder Lake in UCFF Avatar
Intel introduced the ultra-compact form-factor in 2012 to reinvigorate the PC market. The incredible success of the product line has now resulted in the brand name propagating to other...
24 by Ganesh T S on 1/26/2023
ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-1260P and 4X4 BOX-5800U Review: Alder Lake-P and Cezanne UCFF Faceoff
The past few years have seen Intel and AMD delivering new processors in a staggered manner. In the sub-45W category, Intel's incumbency has allowed it to deliver products for...
34 by Ganesh T S on 8/5/2022
Intel Atlas Canyon (NUC11ATKPE) and GEEKOM MiniAir 11 UCFF PCs Review: Desktop Jasper Lake Impresses
Intel's low-power Tremont microarchitecture has powered a range of products - from the short-lived Lakefield, to Elkhart Lake in the embedded space, and finally, Jasper Lake in the client...
23 by Ganesh T S on 7/14/2022
Jasper Lake Fanless Showdown: ECS LIVA Z3 and ZOTAC ZBOX CI331 nano UCFF PCs Review
Intel's Jasper Lake series of products based on the Tremont microarchitecture was launched in early 2021. Since then, we have seen a steady stream of notebooks and motherboards /...
52 by Ganesh T S on 7/8/2022
Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra Melds Desktop Alder Lake and NVIDIA Professional Graphics
Over the last decade or so, advancements in CPU and GPU architectures have combined extremely well with the relentless march of Moore's Law on the silicon front. Together, these...
11 by Ganesh T S on 6/21/2022
CES 2022: ZOTAC Unveils ZBOX MAGNUS EN173080C mini-PC with Tiger Lake and Ampere
ZOTAC, one of the major players in the SFF PC market, has two different mini-PC families equipped with discrete GPUs. The larger (~5L) one is equipped with desktop-class GPUs...
5 by Ganesh T S on 1/5/2022
ASUS PN50 mini-PC Review: A Zen 2 Business NUC
Ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) machines have been one of the major drivers in the resurgence of the PC market. The trend was kickstarted by Intel's NUCs in the early 2010s...
32 by Ganesh T S on 10/1/2021
Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS ONE SFF Gaming PC Review: Desktop Comet Lake Charges Up with Ampere
Zotac has been a pioneer in bringing compact small form-factor (SFF) machines to the market right since the ION days. A few years back, they also got into the...
19 by Ganesh T S on 8/13/2021
MinisForum Unveils Cezanne EliteMini HX90 and Tiger Lake EliteMini TL50 mini-PCs
MinisForum, a Shenzhen based manufacturer of compact computing platforms, has been steadily bringing both AMD and Intel-based systems into the market. While the mix has mostly involved platforms that...
42 by Ganesh T S on 8/4/2021
Computex 2021: ASRock Announces Mars 5000U Series Mini PC
During Computex 2021, ASRock unveiled the latest series in its Mars mini-PC range, the Mars 5000U. ASRock claims it's the thinnest AMD mini PC globally and comes equipped with...
21 by Gavin Bonshor on 6/4/2021
Intel's Tiger Lake NUC11: Panther Canyon for Asia Alone
The electronics industry supply chain is facing a number of issues due to the ongoing pandemic. Companies are unable to meet product demand, and are being forced to fine-tune...
27 by Ganesh T S on 2/4/2021
Intel Announces Phantom Canyon: Tiger Lake and Turing Tango in 3rd Gen Enthusiast NUC
As part of its CES 2021 announcements, Intel officially unveiled a number of NUCs based on their Tiger Lake SoCs. The NUC11 Performance lineup was covered earlier. This piece...
33 by Ganesh T S on 1/20/2021
CES 2021: Zotac MAGNUS ONE Gaming mini-PC Flagship Charges Up Comet Lake with Ampere
Zotac's mini-PC lineup received a new flagship as part of its CES 2021 announcements - the MAGNUS ONE. It features a Comet Lake CPU (Core i7-10700) along with NVIDIA's...
13 by Ganesh T S on 1/14/2021
Zotac ZBOX CI662 nano Fanless mini-PC Review: Second Stab at Silencing Succeeds
Zotac is one of the major players in the SFF PC space, having marketed ultra-compact form-factor machines even before the NUCs took off. The growth in that segment has...
16 by Ganesh T S on 1/5/2021
ASRock Brings Zen 2 NUC : 4X4 BOX-4800U Renoir Mini-PC Reviewed
AMD-based ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) systems are slowly gaining market acceptance, with the Zen architecture slowly catching up with Intel on both the performance as well as power consumption front...
53 by Ganesh T S on 11/25/2020
ASRock Industrial's NUC 1100 BOX Series Brings Tiger Lake to UCFF Systems
Intel's introduction of the Tiger Lake U-series processors with support for a range of TDPs up to 28W has resulted in vendors launching a number of interesting systems with...
13 by Ganesh T S on 10/13/2020
MinisForum Unveils EliteMini H31G: 65W CPU & 75W GPU in a Compact Mini-PC
MinisForum has been making some interesting moves in the last few months with their computing platforms, ranging from the DMAF5 based on the Ryzen 3000H-series SoCs to the Ice...
3 by Ganesh T S on 9/29/2020
ASRock Industrial's 4x4-BOX UCFF PC Series Goes Premium with Ryzen 4000U Renoir APUs
ASRock Industrial has been at the forefront of AMD-based UCFF PCs, being one of the first to bring out systems based on the Ryzen Embedded APUs in mid-2019. In...
36 by Ganesh T S on 9/8/2020
ASUS PN50 Mini-PC, with Ryzen Mobile 4000 APUs, Coming September
AMD launched its Ryzen Mobile 4000 ‘Renoir’ processors in January, and one of our questions was around the appetite for AMD to push mini-PC designs. Processors that have both...
66 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 8/3/2020
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