
AMD Ryzen Mini-STX: ASRock’s DeskMini A300 - walterbell
https://smallformfactor.net/reviews/systems/asrocks-deskmini-a300-finally
======
Dunedan
That would be such a great system if it had an internal PSU. I'm so tired of
all these ultra small cases which require an additional bulky external PSU.
Apple seems to be the only manufacturer who cares about that.

~~~
mojo982
I've been looking for a good SFF home server system but every one I find has
an external PSU. It's surprising to me. I'd love an Intel NUC but I don't want
a power brick the size of the computer itself.

~~~
hollerith
In case you don't already know, the Mac mini has an internal PSU.

I'm like you; I want one box / lump, not two (mainly because I move the box
around a lot). Consequently, I have a Mac mini. The price cheapest non-used
Mac mini however has risen from $500 to $800 in about 3 years.

~~~
com2kid
It also overheats if you use it for too long (e.g. keep the Simulator open for
most of a work day), causing the machine to slow down to a barely usable
speed.

I'd prefer an external PSU.

~~~
p1necone
This seems to be a common thing with apple devices - supposedly powerful
hardware with woefully inadequate cooling. iirc one of the i9 macbook models
actually performed _worse_ than the corresponding i7 model because the cooling
was so bad.

~~~
p1necone
Seeing as I'm being downvoted - look! I found a source:
[https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-
Pro-15-Core-i9-s...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-
Pro-15-Core-i9-slower-than-Core-i7.396971.0.html)

I'm at work so I don't have time to do many more googles.

------
dxxvi
A lot of people in my company have their laptop on with lid closed and they
use external monitors. I, a Joe programmer, don't need a laptop to work and I
guess there are lot of people like me. So, if there's a desktop which is as
small as a laptop, but more powerful and more ports (USB, display port, HDMI,
DVI, VGA ...), cheaper than a laptop (because of no screen) and not very Linux
unfriendly, I think it will sell.

------
clircle
Whoa, this computer cost less than the case I bought for my m-ITX pc last
year.

~~~
lytedev
To be fair, I think this is essentially just a case, motherboard, and power
supply and not an entire computer. Still an amazing deal!

------
walterbell
The forum thread has more discussion, Newegg has been restocking every couple
of weeks and sold out within a day or two,
[https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/sffn-asrocks-
deskm...](https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/sffn-asrocks-
deskmini-a300-finally.10553/)

Asrock has an upcoming low-power fanless MB/barebone for embedded,
[http://linuxgizmos.com/worlds-first-amd-based-nuc-mini-pc-
sh...](http://linuxgizmos.com/worlds-first-amd-based-nuc-mini-pc-showcases-
ryzen-r1000/)

 _> ASRock Linux-ready “iBox-R1000” industrial PC and “NUC-R1000” mainboard
provide the new AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 SoC in a 4×4 NUC form-factor with up
to 32GB DDR4, 2x GbE, 3x USB 3.1, triple 4K displays, and 2x M.2 slots._

~~~
dsr_
There we go: 2 gig-e ports means it will be useful as a router/firewall. I
hope they don't price it too high.

~~~
tyfon
Hopefully there will be some tests for this, there are so many of these
computers that have onboard 1 gbit card that share the bus with other devices
so that in reality you can't route 1 gbit.

For my current router I had to buy separate pcie cards to get proper
throughput, the 1gbit cards on the intel motherboard could only sustain 300
mbit/s routing (600 mbit on the bus), but if only one card was used it could
accept or send 1 gbit.

------
CharlesW
Site has been hugged to death. Alternate review that works:
[https://www.techspot.com/review/1816-asrock-
deskmini-a300/](https://www.techspot.com/review/1816-asrock-deskmini-a300/)

EDIT: smallformfactor.net link appears to work again.

------
baybal2
If it is ASRock (an Intel shop for decades) makes bet on AMD, Intel should
begin to scratch their head at least.

The bet to prioritise server chips over consumer ones in fab priority may seem
like a win from money side, but loss of clients will be much more impactful on
them long term.

~~~
klingonopera
Ehhh.... Asrock has AFAIK never been an Intel shop, and also hasn't existed
for decades (they'll have for two in 2022).

Just head over to eBay and you can find a bunch of used Asrocks with Socket
A/462 for AMD Athlons from the mid-2000s.

------
coleifer
What would you use this for? Gaming? 4k home media? Bitshekel mining? General
purpose computer? I had to Google the term apu and I'm still not sure if I
understand (whether it's marketing or something distinct).

~~~
bArray
From Wikipedia [1]:

> The AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), formerly known

> as Fusion, is the marketing term for a series of 64-bit

> microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD),

> designed to act as a central processing unit (CPU) and

> graphics processing unit (GPU) on a single die.

My understanding is that it has always been a CPU and GPU combined, but is
some marketing wangle as you suggest. I've owned one in the past and it was
generally quite fast in general use, I believe it off-loaded simple GPU
related tasks to the GPU part of the APU which ultimately reduced the graphics
latency.

This seems to be quite similar to the Mali GPU which can be bundled on ARM
packages to handle simple graphics [2]. I believe this is how something like
the Raspberry Pi can output 4k over HDMI despite not being particularly
powerful.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_%28GPU%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_%28GPU%29)

~~~
tomcam
Why the down votes? I am trying to learn, just like the grandparent poster.
Parent seems to be giving information that I was seeking as well. Is the
parent’s post wrong or what?

~~~
bArray
No idea, I wish these people would at least reply and correct me if something
is wrong.

------
jstsch
This looks like a nice box. Powerful, _super_ cheap! Perhaps a bit thermally
constrained though.

On a similar note, I picked up a Gigabyte GB-BLCE-4105 a couple of months ago.
Very small box with a quad core J4105 Celeron CPU. Tiny fan. Added 16 gigs of
RAM and a 512GB NVME SSD.

Super nice home server, using a small amount of watts. Running a minimal
Ubuntu install which uses kvm to host multiple isolated VM's for different
applications (Unifi controller, domotica, smb, solar panel/energy control,
etc.).

------
wyldfire
> The rear IO is modest, including DisplayPort (1.2), HDMI, VGA (honestly?!)

Gee, I'm just happy that they reaped the RS232 DB9 ;)

------
seddin
Theres clearly a market for mini computers, I wish we had more products like
this or the Mac Mini.

~~~
jsilence
You might find the Udoo Bolt interesting: [https://www.udoo.org/udoo-
bolt/](https://www.udoo.org/udoo-bolt/)

------
julienfr112
Does anyone has a photo side by side with an intel nuc ? it looks maybe twice
the nuc size ?

~~~
walterbell
It can fit/cool dual 2.5" drives and a 65W TDP desktop CPU with a powerful
GPU, not the low-power laptop CPUs used by a NUC.

------
dvdbloc
Already out of stock at NewEgg! Anyone know of alternative suppliers that are
reputable?

------
JoshuaRLi
The recent STX form factors are a wonderful boon to SFF consumer computing,
and this is a welcome step towards wider SFF adoption. Looking forward to the
gradual miniturization of desktops, love efficiency at lower TDPs.

------
walrus01
The funny thing to me is that the front panel is obviously from an old design
which had a mounting point for a slimline 5.25" DVD-RW drive, but re-used for
USB ports and other stuff instead.

------
johnchristopher
Can you put a decent graphic card in it and play games from three years ago at
1080p?

~~~
walterbell
No PCIe slots in a 5"x5" motherboard.

The article says "GTA V, 50FPS at 1080P" for Ryzen 5 2400G with integrated
Vega 11 GPU.

------
glglwty
I would like to buy this if it supports ECC memory

~~~
sneak
Out of curiosity, what is your use case/application that requires ECC memory?

~~~
walterbell
One use case for ECC is ZFS.

~~~
Gracana
ECC is probably less important for ZFS than it is for just about any other
filesystem.

~~~
hestefisk
That’s simply not true. ECC is key to avoid bit rot.

~~~
sneak
ZFS includes strong checksums over stored data. Bit rot is more protected
against with ZFS on a non-ecc system than most other filesystems on a system
with a theoretical/impossible 0% memory error rate.

~~~
walterbell
And ZFS+ECC is better than ZFS without ECC.

~~~
hestefisk
Exactly my point. Then why the need to down vote my comment? The statement
that ECC is irrelevant for zfs is blatantly incorrect. There can be bit rot in
ZFS checksum values without ECC. Ask Allan Jude if need be.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
It's not irrelevant, but you should still use ZFS if you care about your data,
even if you don't have ECC.

------
Creationer
If you want to build your own SFF PC, using more powerful and widely available
components, there is a good guide here from the SFFPC subreddit:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bzVdvmb4jCohQz0xPN1_...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bzVdvmb4jCohQz0xPN1_3cLXCPvMkPmIPv28D7Cr7s8/edit?usp=sharing)

~~~
nqzero
i love the idea of sff, but my one attempt at mini-ITX resulted in a system
with non-standard PSU and mainboard (i think). i have an ATX case from college
that I'm still able to throw a new PSU and mainboard in, and i'm good to go.
have things stabilized enough in sff that i'd likely to be able to swap
mainboards for several generations ?

~~~
badlucklottery
>have things stabilized enough in sff that i'd likely to be able to swap
mainboards for several generations

If you get a case large enough to support a full-size GPU and SFX PSU (so
around 7-8L in volume), you're golden. Smaller than that you start having to
go with ITX GPUs or external PSUs.

I think every big motherboard maker has at least one ITX board for each new
generation/chipset so I haven't had any trouble in the last 3-4 years since I
switched over to ITX for my builds.

The only thing you really have to look out for is some of more recent extra
tall + wide GPUs. But even some full-tower ATX cases can't fit these without
vertical mounting.

------
ridiculous_fish
It's unfortunate that AMD has no chips with weak integrated graphics. Their
non-G chips require an external GPU, while the G line has a high powered iGPU,
which costs you compute performance.

AMD doesn't really have a good offering for small fast home servers that will
sit in a closet.

~~~
walterbell
They have the $55 2C/4T Athlon 200GE with Vega 3,
[https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-
athlon-220ge-240ge-...](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-
athlon-220ge-240ge-vega-cpu,5988.html)

Or 8-core Epyc embedded server motherboard with VGA BMC from Supermicro,
[https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-m11sdv-8c-ln4f-revie...](https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-m11sdv-8c-ln4f-review-
amd-epyc-3251-mitx-platform/)

~~~
ridiculous_fish
What they're missing is something like the i5 8600 or i7 8700.

That embedded server looks sweet but is overkill for most homes in terms of
connectivity and price.

