ASRock Brings Zen 2 NUC : 4X4 BOX-4800U Renoir Mini-PC Reviewed
by Ganesh T S on November 25, 2020 11:00 AM ESTHTPC Credentials - I
The ASRock 4X4 BOX-4800U comes with four display outputs. All of them support 4Kp60, with the HDMI port providing support for HDR as well as HDCP 2.2. Unfortunately, UHD Blu-rays can't be played back on the system, though HDCP 2.2 enables other protected content to be displayed at full resolution. The system also supports HD audio bitstreaming over the HDMI port.
Our evaluation of the 4X4 BOX-4800U as a HTPC was done using the native HDMI output connected to a TCL 55P607 4K HDR TV via a Denon AVR-X3400H AV receiver.
We tested out various display refresh rates ranging from 23.976 Hz to 59.94 Hz. Of particular interest is the 23.976 Hz (23p) setting, which Intel used to have trouble with in the pre-Broadwell days.
The gallery below presents screenshots from the other refresh rates that were tested. The system has no trouble maintaining a fairly accurate refresh rate throughout the duration of the video playback.
Our HTPC testing with respect to YouTube had been restricted to playback of a 1080p music video using the native HTML5 player in Firefox. The move to 4K, and the need to evaluate HDR support have made us choose Mystery Box's Peru 8K HDR 60FPS video as our test sample moving forward. On PCs running Windows, it is recommended that HDR streaming videos be viewed using the Microsoft Edge browser after putting the desktop in HDR mode.
The system is supposed to support 4Kp60 VP9 Profile 2 playback, and MS Edge automatically gets the correct encode from the YouTube servers. However, the playback was punctuated by frequent dropped frames as shown in the statistics segment of the above screenshot.
Various metrics of interest such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption were recorded for the first four minutes of the playback of the above video. The numbers are graphed below.
The GPU and decoder utilization numbers spiking close to 100% in the above graph explains the dropped frames. Interestingly, as we shall see in the next section, local playback fo VP9 Profile 2 videos didn't result in any issues.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
53 Comments
View All Comments
Stoinis MO - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
Macy’s cardholders need to activate their Macy’s card. Macy’s Card Activation allow their customer to activate Macy’s Card if users want to activate their Macy’s Card then with this post customers didn’t have to do more hard things.http://philagribiz.com/macys-card-activation/
deil - Thursday, November 26, 2020 - link
About ram it depends on how you work, I have 32GB and it daily goes above 24GB used, while browser/slack/spotify/30tabs on ff and few other things that I just never close take ~6GB. (I am on linux, it does use ram way more conservative that windows) When I last time used windows for work it did abuse all 32GB and started to slow down.its up to what you do and on 16GB it mostly work, but at least in my case 2-3 times a day I need a bit more, and like once a week 16GB is just not enough.
as It costs just like 70$ once, and it saves me few minutes daily, I think it paid for itself in my health at least.
damianrobertjones - Thursday, November 26, 2020 - link
Plus there's also SUperfectch that caches various duties. A lot of people forget that.Spunjji - Friday, November 27, 2020 - link
"...I've had more crashes in a month than in years of Intel/Nvidia systems. I've lost more time to lost work than when I was using Windows 98..."I'm calling bullshit on that. My understanding is that the APU driver situation isn't as good as discrete components (which I'm currently running without issue), but I can't believe that it's *worse than Windows 98*.
philehidiot - Monday, November 30, 2020 - link
Bullshit? Perhaps because you've just made assumptions about the set up? Read properly before accusing people of lying.Thanks.
at_clucks - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
I guess they were saying it's PEBKAC. Which it is. Having even 2 or 3 crashes in a month is already too much to be caused by AMD, their hardware, or their drivers, or else tens or hundreds of thousands of people would be affected and you'd hear about it. Not saying their drivers are perfect but if your PC is constantly crashing *you* have a problem. You probably don;t really know what's happening in there but you heard a rumor...I lost count of how many acquaintances had rootkit encrusted PCs, full of every garbage known to man after clicking on everything that fell under their mouse, everything running with hacks, cracks, and other torrented junk, from the OS image to the "security" software. They had no idea what's going on but all had some form of (ridiculous) theory based of stuff they heard from someone, or read on the internet but probably neither them nor their source understood it.
Fix your stuff, stop blaming the tools. Also having at least a decent meal before drinking helps.
Radhouse - Friday, November 27, 2020 - link
Interesting experience. I've been using an ASUS PN50 R5 4500 system for 2 months as my entertainment computer without a single crash, and typically keep 25+ web pages open in Chrome. It is configured with 32 GB 3200 MHz Crucial memory and an 500 GB EV0 970 Plus SSD running Windows 10 Pro 20H2. (Initially installed V 2004) In addition to Chrome, I'm a heavy user of the following Apps; Netflix, Amazon, & Hulu.I'm not sure where the source of your problems, but I've been also running a PN50 R3 system as a workstation without any issues.
Targon - Friday, November 27, 2020 - link
No problem with AMD drivers for my X370 based motherboard, Ryzen 9 3900X CPU, or Vega64 reference model video card(yes, I need a 6800X or 6900X, just waiting on the 6900X to be released at this point). People who claim to have this or that problem may be encountering problems between components that in turn cause their issues with Radeon cards. Looking for what is in common between people who have a problem and then looking at those without problems to see what the differences are is something that most people don't seem to understand.QA process: Reproduce problem, identify source of problem, figure out workaround or fix for the problem.
philehidiot - Monday, November 30, 2020 - link
Your set up is very close to mine. 3900x, vega64, but I'm on the x570 mobo.What is very strange is these crashes are happening at low load (as is when working). No crashes during games or when I'm hammering it. It is unlikely to be a dodgy background application as it's a fairly new install and I routinely avoid installing bloat, etc. Only stuff required to make it go is enabled on start up to this end.
I'm on the verge of shifting to Linux but for one major issue - I have a decent sound card which is not supported in Linux. I'm unwilling to unplug and ditch a few hundred quid worth of kit. Hopeful Linux drivers will emerge but creative aren't exactly helpful.
damianrobertjones - Monday, November 30, 2020 - link
Shift. Do it. Go to linux. You might then appreciate Windows a little more. Maybe. Both platforms have issues.