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ASRock Industrial NUCS Box-1360P/D4 Review: Raptor Lake-P Plus Surprise ECC
- ianai 4y agoI don’t see ECC mentioned in any actual specs linked/listed (could have missed it). Hope this isn’t taken out after this first run.
- smegsicle 4y ago> Hope this isn’t taken out after this first run. did something like that happen a while back?
- ianai 4y agoIf it’s not clearly written out as a promise then it can be different. They called this a surprise so they didn’t expect it. Businesses are in the profit maximization at reducing all costs phase as a general rule right now. Gone are the days of “oh nice for you we left that in” or other consumer surpluses. There’s probably room to coin a term for this corporate strategy ala how they’ve coined the “quiet quitting” term for laborers. “Shrinkflation” comes to mind.
- skazazes 4y agoThese small boxes make for great homelab servers. I use a Topton box from AliExpress[1] as a router/VM/container host and love it. It has an iGPU in case SHTF, and 4 individual 2.5GB Ethernet ports. The only thing it really lacks is out of band management. Run pfsense/opn in a VM, plug in WAN/AP/NAS/Desktop and you have a lightning fast network/development lab (by home use standards at least). Even if you were not planning on using it as a lab, one of these kinds of boxes and a strong AP beats out even the high-end consumer focused routers all in ones without breaking a sweat at ~50W A long time ago I ran a rack-mount Dell R710 with an external disk shelf. It drew ~600W from what I remember and had a fraction of the power [1] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804669109631.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.5.66c9lQAPlQAPNf&algo_pvid=0fe5b0aa-8d0e-49ee-84c7-f65b1a906fcc&algo_exp_id=0fe5b0aa-8d0e-49ee-84c7-f65b1a906fcc-2&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000030763047061%22%7D&pdp_npi=2%40dis%21USD%21532.07%21345.85%21%21%21%21%21%40211bd3cb16751952775086933d06d9%2112000030763047061%21sea&curPageLogUid=RsbV9SeI9Esr https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804669109631.html?spm=a2g...
- sschueller 4y agoEven if you want to do 25gbit + you are still better off building a custom pc [1] than buying any dedicated routing hw. At least right now they are still very loud and cost way more. Plus as you said you can use it as a vm host for all kinds of stuff. [1] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/wiring-a-home-with-fiber/#router https://sschueller.github.io/posts/wiring-a-home-with-fiber/...
- wil421 4y agoI use an i3 on an x11 Supermicro board with ecc memory. Upgrading to 10gbit was easy. Once hardware costs comes down I may go to 25 or 100.
- nine_k 4y agoI suspect that a modest X11 Supernicro board alone is more expensive that this whole NUC from the article. Also, it's 2-3 times larger, just the board. That is, it's a great thing to have, but it's a different class of hardware.
- wil421 4y agoThe x11 board was less than $350 and the i3 was $140. I think I spend more on RAM than the board.
- zamadatix 4y agoDepends what exactly you want to do with the traffic. NAT v4 out to the internet at 25G? Yeah, nothing is going to beat the price for performance of a software box. Route+switch your home lab at 25G? You can get a 4 port 100G (up to 16 ports of 25G via breakout) line rate hardware offloaded performance using a $700 MikroTik switch which runs pretty damn quiet (and you can always throw in Noctuas if you really want it dead silent).
- tuananh 4y agoLovely post. I enjoyed reading it :)
- 1MachineElf 4y agoECC would be significant since the vast majority of these kinds of devices lack it.
- shjfddhfdhd 4y agois this real ECC tho? every PRO cpu and apu from amd have true ecc. this feel like intel catching up with gimmicks instead of the real thing.
- pbronez 4y agoArticle has a nice summary of the differences between standard and in-band ECC. Looks kinda like the difference between hardware and software RAID? In-band ECC trades performance for resilience because by allocating some of your memory bandwidth to checksums. This is dramatically simpler, and thus less expensive, than traditional side band ECC, which adds a redundant memory channel dedicated to parity information. Seems like a hugely valuable option to me. Needs more OS support (Intel says ChromeOS only for now??). Would be interesting to compare price/performance/resilience against used/low end server hardware.
- dpedu 4y agoWas there nothing mentioned about noise under load or did I miss it? I bought an 8 core Miniforum AMD-based nuc to use as a home server and it's too noisy even under slight load.
- axytol 4y agoI had some good experience with Asus MiniPC P50 - also 8 cores, Ryzen. I noticed it was barely audible while running with a VM active.
- dpedu 4y agoMine's silent with just one or a few VMs but once I get the cpu maybe 50% loaded it gets too noisy. It's a bummer because I feel like I'm throwing away half of the system's capabilities. It would be nice if somebody made a NUC with a desktop-class CPU cooler. But I suppose that's getting pretty close to ITX territory.
- newman314 4y agoStill waiting for a NUC with built in 10G that can run ESXi. It's strange that this isn't a yet a thing.
- jeffbee 4y agoI used to want 10ge on my NUC then I bridged it via Thunderbolt to a machine that does have 10ge and that has been satisfactory.
- formerly_proven 4y agoDoes Ethernet over TB only pretend to be 10GbE but is actually faster or does it only use 10 Gibbons of the available bandwidth?
- lizknope 4y agoThere are some small form factor machines here with 10G but they aren't cheap https://mitxpc.com/collections/mini-server https://mitxpc.com/collections/mini-server
- bitbckt 4y agoThe R86S might be worth a look for you.
- newman314 4y agoI did look at the R86S with interest when the STH article came out but the 16G max of RAM is a limitation. 32 or 64GB would be ideal to be able to run a bunch of VMs.
- Scene_Cast2 4y agoFrom what I understand, these boxes are sold by ASRock as B2B. Does anyone have experience ordering them as a consumer (non-business)?
- laweijfmvo 4y agoNewegg carries the previous generations
- intrasight 4y agoThat would be a great home server machine. But would like to know the price, and to better understand this "pseudo-ECC"
- wil421 4y agoIn-band ECC is likely a lot more marketing speak and a lot less ECC. The way I look at ECC is like this, no extra die no ECC. In band “ECC” DIMMS store the ECC bits on the same memory chips using the same lanes as the data. Side band ECC uses dedicate lanes and a dedicated memory chip. If you don’t have 9 chips on your RAM sticks you have some marketing version of ECC (cheaper).
- wmf 4y agoIn-band ECC isn't as strong as chipkill but it will correct errors. It's not fake.
- wil421 4y agoI didn’t call it fake but I am hesitant to adopt something that doesn’t have a need. Is it better and more reliable or is it cheaper for the manufacturer to produce? My money is on it being cheaper to produce and with no benefit to the consumer. The anandtech author even states in band deserves more investigation. ZFS stores the error correcting bits on the same physical drive as the data. It’s not unheard of to do it that way.
- wmf 4y agoMy money is on it being cheaper to produce and with no benefit to the consumer. This is completely wrong. You're just making up theories. ZFS stores the error correcting bits on the same physical drive as the data. This isn't right either.
- IgorPartola 4y agoYes it is? ZFS can use multiple drives. But each block and it’s checksum do live next to each other on the same zpool.
- jcrawfordor 4y agoJust a quick caution, I had a frustrating series of issues with an Asrock Industrial NUC that I ordered from Newegg. Asrock Industrial support was fairly helpful and responsive and it definitely looked like my unit specifically had a faulty motherboard which, well, these things happen. The caution is that arranging an RMA turned into a real pain between Asrock and Newegg. I don't think Newegg is exactly selling them gray market, but they are not one of Asrock Industrial's distributors, which seemed to be the pain point (Newegg was not actually set up to handle RMAs). I think it might be a better idea to buy through https://mitxpc.com/ https://mitxpc.com/ which both sells direct to consumer and is a listed Asrock Industrial distributor. To their credit Newegg did take it back and send me a replacement but I think it had to be escalated to management and they ate the cost. It took a few days and a few back-and-forths with their CSAs.
- mewse-hn 4y agoGamersNexus on youtube had an incredibly messed up experience returning an open box motherboard to newegg and made a whole video series about it. They actually got an interview with newegg execs, some of whom had only been there a few months and have already left the company.
- z3t4 4y agoWhy not add a fan and heatsink to it?
- KennyBlanken 4y agoThe thing is not remotely "industrial", but I guess that label is an attempt to justify the outrageous pricetag. It's firmly office, maybe light commercial at best. The review itself mentions that the design is based off a consumer product and they only altered the cooling vent location to accommodate a new motherboard layout. This is aimed at customers like the previously-on-HN JesusChicken chain which is placing NUCs at every store. Even then: I'd expect better sealing.
- ndneighbor 4y agoKinda a stupid comment from me but I am wondering why Framework doesn't get into the NUC business. The ASRock NUCs usually retail from $750-$650 and that's around the cost of an upgrade kit from Framework. Considering that most industrial compute is mostly dealing with long lived deployments of edge hardware, it seems like the sort of stuff that their emphasis on ecosystem can help here. Anyways, I should stop my homelab hobby even though I find this stuff fun. I might pick this up regardless. https://frame.work/products/12-gen-intel-upgrade-kit?v=FRUPGRDKIT01 https://frame.work/products/12-gen-intel-upgrade-kit?v=FRUPG... https://mitxpc.com/collections/ultra-small-form-factor/nuc-12-pro https://mitxpc.com/collections/ultra-small-form-factor/nuc-1...
- wmf 4y agoDo upgradeable NUCs make sense? I would imagine almost all the cost is in the motherboard, unlike a laptop where you can reuse the screen, battery, keyboard, etc.
- Arn_Thor 4y agoI can imagine a sort of "NUC of Thesus" where you can swap the wifi module, ethernet port, mainboard, storage, CPU or RAM as requirements change—all in a pretty simple enclosure that remains standard in size. If you're not particularly picky about the size or form factor, it might even be possible to do so with the existing parts Framework already makes and sells
- toast0 4y agoMy NUC size things tend to have user replacable wifi (mostly m.2), storage (m.2 or 2.5" sata), and ram (sodimm). If you want to swap the cpu or the ethernet, buy a different NUC and move your stuff. Or swallow your pride and use usb ethernet.
- walrus01 4y agoTruly "industrial" small x86-64 PCs will have direct wiring terminals for 12VDC power, or -48VDC, not a consumer grade 110-240VAC to DC-something power brick with it.
- liketochill 4y agoOr 24vdc, or 120v dc
- DrPhish 4y agoNot to mention -40 to 80C operating temperature range for all components, waterproof port shields and operation at 100% humidity. I didn’t even see an RS-232 port let alone RS-485. There’s some industrial operations admin offices this thing wouldn’t survive in! I’m guessing they’re working on a very liberal interpretation of “industrial”
- Animats 4y agoIt's not really "industrial". It's for office environments. It's only rated for temperature 0C - 40C, humidity 5% - 95%. No locking connectors.
- entropicgravity 4y agoIn which case the Asus PN51 would also be worth a look. Very useful for turning a smart TV into a dumb TV.
- ChuckMcM 4y agoVery nice! I wish they would have copied Intel's moving the power switch to the front as the top switch is a falling book reboot waiting to happen. (I've got 1/2 dozen servers in this form factor doing different things and all but one have front facing power switches. I even designed a way to easily mount them to the side supports of an IKea Jerker Desk[1] :-). [1] https://www.printables.com/model/198517-computer-and-network-mount https://www.printables.com/model/198517-computer-and-network...
- RedShift1 4y agoYou can't really call it industrial if it doesn't have a terminal block to connect 12-32 V to it and can't be DIN rail mounted out of the box.
- jnsaff2 4y agoAt the same time, also on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34604877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34604877