ASRock Beebox-S 7200U Kaby Lake UCFF PC Review

The Kaby Lake-U (KBL-U) series with 15W TDP CPUs was introduced along with the 4.5W Kaby Lake-Y ones in Q3 2016. The first set of products with Kaby Lake-U were ultrabooks. However, ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) PCs were not long behind. There are already three vendors in the market with Kaby Lake UCFF PCs – ASRock (Beebox-S), GIGABYTE (BRIX), and MSI (Cubi 2). We have already reviewed the MSI Cubi 2 – a no-frills Kaby Lake ‘NUC’ The most important differentiating features of the ASRock Beebox-S 7200U include a USB 3.1 Gen 2 bridge, as well as a LSPCon (for HDMI 2.0 / HDCP 2.2 support) on the motherboard. This review takes a look at how the ASRock Beebox-S 7200U fares in typical UCFF PC workloads.

Introduction

Ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) PCs have become quite popular after Intel introduced the NUCs. They have become powerful enough to be the primary computing platform for many households. In addition to the Intel NUCs, many system vendors have come up with their own approach to UCFF PCs. These include ASRock (with the Beebox series), ECS (LIVA), GIGABYTE (BRIX), and MSI (Cubi) amongst others.

Kaby Lake-U, as per Intel’s claims, is fabricated on a much more mature 14nm process and brings about a 11% improvement in performance for the same power consumption. The GPU’s media engine has also been updated. On the whole, the performance improvements look good for UCFF PCs – particularly for those upgrading from the first or second-generation systems.

We have reviewed multiple Beebox systems before (Cherry Trail, Skylake), and, from an industrial design viewpoint, the Beebox-S 7200U Kaby Lake version is no different. The dimensions are one of the smallest to allow the installation of a 2.5″ drive. Unlike the MSI Cubi 2, the Beebox-S 7200U supports a M.2 2280 SSD (with the help of a M.2 riser – the same as the one used in the Skylake Beebox-S 6200U).

The Kaby Lake Beebox series is currently made of two SKUs, one based on the Core i3-7100U and another based on the Core i5-7200U. Both of these come barebones (no storage, memory, or OS). ASRock sampled us the version with the Core i5-7200U. The Beebox-S 7200U can take up to two DDR4 SO-DIMMs (operating at 2133 MHz). We completed the hardware build to result in the following specifications for our Beebox-S 7200U review configuration. Note that we processed most of our benchmarks with the NVMe drive, but a few testing routines used the SATA SSD (the relevant sections will go into the details).

The ASRock Beebox-S 7200U kit doesn’t come with any pre-installed OS, but does come with a CD containing Windows drivers. In any case, we ended up installing the latest drivers downloaded off ASRock’s product support page. In addition to the main unit, the other components of the package include a 65 W (19V @ 3.42A) adapter with a US power connector, a VESA mount (along with the necessary screws), a driver CD, user’s manual and a quick-start guide. In addition, we also have the appropriate cables – both data and power – to install a 2.5″ drive in the system. A small IR remote control with a pre-installed CR232 battery (not shown in the picture below) is also part of the package.

The unique part of the package is a small plastic tab and an additional screw that allows for installation of a M.2 2280 SSD in the unit. Note that even though Kaby Lake-U can theoretically support up to three simultaneous displays, the Beebox-S 7200U supports only two at a time (either HDMI 2.0 + HDMI 1.4 or HDMI 2.0 + DP). Other components that reside on the underside of the motherboard include the ASMedia ASM1142 USB 3.1 bridge chip and the MegaChips LSPCon to enable the HDMI 2.0 output from the DisplayPort output of the Kaby Lake-U SiP. The most important update from the Skylake Beebox is the additional HDCP 2.2 capability and DRM capabilities enabled by the Kaby Lake-U processor.

The PCIe lanes from the SiP are distributed as follow:

• PCI-E 2.0 x1 port #4      In Use @ x1 (ASMedia ASM1142 USB 3.1 xHCI Controller)
• PCI-E 2.0 x1 port #5      In Use @ x1 (Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 AC HMC WiFi Adapter)
• PCI-E 2.0 x4 port #9      In Use @ x4 (Samsung NVMe SSD Controller)

ASRock’s BIOS has plenty of features that are missing in the BIOS from other vendors. I will not go into the details of all the BIOS features, but, readers interested in checking out the available options can peruse the user manual available here.

Compared to the MSI Cubi 2 with Kaby Lake, we find the Realtek GbE adapter replaced by the Intel I-219V. The Wi-Fi adapter is the Intel AC3160 compared to the AC3168. Compared to the barebones Core i5 version of the Cubi 2 (Cubi2-006BUS) at $375, the Beebox-S 7200U with the same processor is cheaper at $350 and also comes with better capabilities.

In the table below, we have an overview of the various systems that we are comparing the ASRock Beebox-S 7200U against. Note that they may not belong to the same market segment. The relevant configuration details of the machines are provided so that readers have an understanding of why some benchmark numbers are skewed for or against the ASRock Beebox-S 7200U when we come to those sections.

The ASRock Beebox-S 7200U was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. Not all benchmarks were processed on all the machines due to updates in our testing procedures. Therefore, the list of PCs in each graph might not be the same. In the first section, we will be looking at SYSmark 2014 SE, as well as some of the Futuremark benchmarks.

BAPCo SYSmark 2014 SE

BAPCo’s SYSmark 2014 SE is an application-based benchmark that uses real-world applications to replay usage patterns of business users in the areas of office productivity, media creation and data/financial analysis. In addition, it also addresses the responsiveness aspect which deals with user experience as related to application and file launches, multi-tasking etc. Scores are meant to be compared against a reference desktop (the SYSmark 2014 SE calibration system in the graphs below). While the SYSmark 2014 benchmark used a Haswell-based desktop configuration, the SYSmark 2014 SE makes the move to a Lenovo ThinkCenter M800 (Intel Core i3-6100, 4GB RAM and a 256GB SATA SSD). The calibration system scores 1000 in each of the scenarios. A score of, say, 2000, would imply that the system under test is twice as fast as the reference system.

The scores tend to align with the capabilities of the CPU in the systems. The Core i5-7200U in the Beebox-S slightly lags the Core i7-7500U in the Cubi 2 in terms of both cache size and clock frequency. Obviously, neither of them can match the capabilities of the desktop-class CPU with higher TDP in the calibration system. The only scenario where the Beebox-S scores is responsiveness – likely due to the use of a NVMe SSD compared to the SATA SSD used in the Cubi 2.

SYSmark 2014 SE also adds energy measurement to the mix. A high score in the SYSmark benchmarks might be nice to have, but, potential customers also need to determine the balance between power consumption and the efficiency of the system. For example, in the average office scenario, it might not be worth purchasing a noisy and power-hungry PC just because it ends up with a 2000 score in the SYSmark 2014 SE benchmarks. In order to provide a balanced perspective, SYSmark 2014 SE also allows vendors and decision makers to track the energy consumption during each workload. In the graphs below, we find the total energy consumed by the PC under test for a single iteration of each SYSmark 2014 SE workload and how it compares against the calibration systems.

The comparative energy consumption numbers for each scenario are as expected. The Beebox-S is slightly more energy-intensive (despite the use of a CPU with the same TDP as the Cubi 2) likely due to the more power-hungry NVMe SSD in…