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January 9, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

ASRock Industrial upgrades mini-ITX, micro-ATX, and ATX motherboards for Intel Core 14th Gen Raptor Lake-S Refresh processors

ASROCK Industrial 14th gen mini-ITX micro-ATX ATX motherboards

ASRock Industrial has just announced 25 (twenty-five!) industrial motherboards powered by 14th gen Intel Core Raptor Lake-S Refresh hybrid processors with up to 24 cores and 32 threads introduced last October, and supporting up to 96GB DDR5 4800/5600 memory. The thin and high-rise mini-ITX, micro-ATX, and ATX industrial motherboards support up to four 4K displays, PCIe Gen5 interfaces, up to three 2.5GbE ports (and 10GbE LAN for the IMB-X1316-10G model), and USB 3.2 Gen2x2 (20 Gbps) ports for factory automation, robotics, machine vision, smart retail, kiosks, digital signage, gaming, security, and more. I would usually list the specifications of the motherboards, but since we have 25 different models, I’ll skip that and provide a summary. One reason ASRock Industrial has so many models is that those are existing motherboards with socketed processors and the company offered 12th and 13th gen CPUs so far, and the company simply updated the BIOS […]

December 16, 2023February 9, 2024 by Vladislav Losev - 6 Comments

Chatreey AM08 Pro (Ryzen 9 7940HS) mini PC review – Part 1: unboxing, teardown, and first run

Chatreey AM08 Pro (also known as AM08pro) is a mini PC based on AMD Ryzen 7940HS CPU with up to 64GB dual-channel DDR5 RAM, one PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 2280 SSD socket, one SATA3 2.5” drive, WiFi 6E (8852BE) and Bluetooth 5.2, also 2.5GbE Ethernet, a full-fledged Type-C USB port, a 3.5mm audio jack and 4x USB 3.0 porta. I have bought AM08 Pro from Aliexpress with an AMD Ryzen 7940HS (8C/16T, 4.0GHz up to 5.2 GHz), 16GB DDR5 RAM (2x8GB), and 512GB SSD. The review will be done following the usual procedure with the first part listing the specifications, checking out the package content, tearing down the system, and giving it a first try, before testing it more thoroughly with the pre-installed Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.04 in the next parts. AM08 Pro specifications Model AM08 Pro CPU AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS (8 Cores, 16 Threads, 16MB Cache, 3.2 […]

November 21, 2023December 20, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

iKOOLCORE R2 mini PC and router review – Part 1: Specs, unboxing, teardown, and first boot

iKOOLCORE R2 is an Intel Alder-Lake-N mini PC and network appliance (router/firewall/gateway) that comes with four 2.5GbE ports, up to 16GB RAM, NVMe storage, and the usual HDMI and USB ports, and offered with either Processor N95 or Core i3-N305 SoC. It’s the successor of the iKOOLCORE R1 with four gigabit Ethernet ports and Intel Celeron N5095 or Jasper Lake processor, and the company sent us a sample for testing, so we’ll start with listing the specifications, check out the mini PC and accessories with an unboxing, teardown the multilayer mini PC to check out the hardware design and explain how to update the SSD or install a wireless module, and check whether it can still boot to Windows 11 (default, preinstalled OS) after my adventurous teardown… iKOOCORE R2 specifications Alder Lake-N SoC Intel Processor N95 quad-core processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel UHD […]

April 4, 2022 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 1 Comment

Beelink SER4 Review – Windows 11, Ubuntu 20.04, and “overclocking” AMD Ryzen 7 4800U SoC

Beelink has released the SER4 which is the latest in their ‘SER’ mini PC series and it features a Zen 2 AMD mobile processor. Beelink kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows and Ubuntu and dabbled with ‘overclocking’. Beelink SER4 Hardware Overview The Beelink SER4 physically consists of a 126 x 113 x 40mm (4.96 x 4.45 x 1.57 inches) square metal case. As an actively cooled mini PC, it uses AMD’s 7 nm Zen 2 Ryzen 7 4800U Renoir processor which is an eight-core 16-thread 1.8 GHz mobile processor boosting to 4.2 GHz with Radeon Graphics. The front panel has an illuminated power button, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a Type-C USB 3.1 port with Alternate Mode, dual USB 3.1 ports, and a reset pin-hole ‘CLR CMOS’. The rear panel includes a gigabit Ethernet port, a USB 3.1 port and a USB 2.0 port, […]

June 12, 2021June 14, 2021 by Karl Johnson - 5 Comments

GMK NucBox2 Review – Windows 10, Unraid OS on a Coffee Lake mini PC

Karl here. Today we are going to look at a mini PC. It is by GMK. GMK’s first foray looks to be the NucBox, a super tiny mini pc. I would call the NucBox2 its older, bigger, more capable brother. What stood out to me was the M.2 4x NVMe slot. I don’t anticipate a superfast SSD to come with the NucBox2 but we will see. The NucBox2 only had one 8 GB stick of memory and I had an extra stick laying around so I installed it to get dual-channel support. I think they are doing this mini PC a disservice using memory in single-channel mode. A quick Google search shows an 8GB stick is about $50 and I would highly recommend this upgrade. Notable Specs Processor – Intel Core i5-8259U 4-core/8-thread Coffee Lake processor 802.11 AC WiFI M.2 NVMe 256 GB SSD (Netac) 8GB memory single-channel Gig Ethernet […]

May 19, 2021May 19, 2021 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 7 Comments

Beelink GKmini Review – An Intel Celeron J4125 mini PC reviewed with Windows 10 Pro, Ubuntu 20.04

Beelink have recently released another small form factor (SFF) design similar to the traditional Intel ‘NUC’ called the GKmini which they have provided for review. Available as a fully configured Windows 10 Pro mini PC means it can be up and running straight out of the box. Hardware Overview The Beelink GKmini physically consists of a 115mm x 102mm x 43mm (4.53 x 4.02 x 1.69 inches) rectangular plastic case. It is an actively cooled mini PC and uses Intel’s 14 nm J4125 Gemini Lake Refresh processor which is a quad-core 4-thread 2.00 GHz processor boosting to 2.70 GHz with Intel’s UHD Graphics 600. The front panel has a power button, a headphone jack, two USB 3.0 ports, and a ‘CLR CMOS’ pinhole that leads to a button which when pressed clears the CMOS. The rear panel includes the power jack, dual HDMI ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, a further […]

October 14, 2020January 23, 2021 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 7 Comments

MINISFORUM X35G review – An Intel Core i3-1005G1 Mini PC tested with Windows & Ubuntu

MINISFORUM have recently launched their X35G mini PC on Indiegogo which differentiates itself from the many Gemini Lake mini PCs by using a 10th generation Intel “Ice Lake” Core mobile processor with Gen11 graphics. Available as a barebones device and in various configurations MINISFORUM sent a fully configured model for review. MINISFORUM X35G Hardware overview Also known as DeskMini X35G, the MINISFORUM X35G is a slightly larger mini PC physically consisting of a 136.5 mm x 121.5 mm x 40.5 mm (5.37 x 4.78 x 1.59 inches) rectangular metal case with a plastic base. It is an actively cooled mini PC that uses Intel’s second-generation 10 nm+ Core i3-1005G1 processor which is a dual-core 4-thread 1.2 GHz processor boosting to 3.4 GHz with Intel’s Gen11 UHD graphics. The front panel has a power button, a Thunderbolt 3/Type-C USB port that supports video, and two 3.1 USB ports. Also on the […]

September 13, 2020September 13, 2020 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 7 Comments

Intel NUC 9 Extreme “Ghost Canyon” Kit – NUC9i9QNX Review

I’ve previously written about Intel’s (relatively) new NUC 9 range of mini PCs and now I am following up with my experiences of having bought one. Whilst I’ll cover some performance metrics from both Windows and Ubuntu I’ll also discuss the benefits and drawbacks of using either OS together with a comparison of gaming, thermals, and power usage as well as a brief look at overclocking potential and implications together with highlighting the issues encountered. NUC9i9QNX Hardware Overview The model I purchased and will be reviewing here is the NUC9i9QNX from Intel’s Ghost Canyon lineup and is formally known as the Intel NUC 9 Extreme Kit – NUC9i9QNX. It contains a “Compute Element” with an i9-9980HK which is an eight-core 16-thread 2.40 GHz processor boosting to 5.00 GHz with Intel’s UHD Graphics 630. The full specifications of the NUC9i9QNX include: The NUC9i9QNX is sold as a kit which essentially means […]