Mini-PC

As part of its 2024 CES announcements, ASUS officially unveiled a number of NUCs based on Intel's Meteor Lake platform. The company had earlier released the NUC 13 Rugged - the first NUC product that had not been inherited from Intel's existing lineup - based on Alder Lake-N processors. The new NUCs fall under the mainstream category and are marketed with the Pro tag. The Pro line represents the original 4" x 4" ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF). The new ASUS NUC 14 Pro products fall under the UCFF category. In addition, ASUS is also introducing the NUC 14 Pro+. These are slightly wider (144mm vs. 117mm) than the regular Pro models. Their height of 41mm is slightly more than the slim Pro kit's 37mm, but shorter...

ASRock Industrial 4X4 BOX-7840U mini-PC Review: AMD Phoenix in an UCFF Avatar

AMD's Phoenix line of low-power processors for the notebook market has been lapped up by various second and third-tier mini-PC vendors in the Asian market. The platform's value proposition...

15 by Ganesh T S on 12/28/2023

ASRock Industrial 4X4 BOX 8040 and NUC(S) Ultra 100 BOX Series Bring Accelerated AI to Mini-PCs

ASRock Industrial maintains a lineup of ultra-compact form-factor machines in the NUC BOX (Intel-based) and 4X4 BOX (AMD-based) series. These systems have gained significant market acceptance (evidenced by the...

10 by Ganesh T S on 12/23/2023

GEEKOM A5 mini-PC Review: Affordable Cezanne Zen 3 at 35W

Ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) desktops have gained significant market share over the last decade. Processors with TDPs ranging from 6 - 15W formed the backbone of this segment in the...

35 by Ganesh T S on 12/8/2023

Zotac's Zbox Pico PI430AJ Uses Frore's AirJet Solid-State Active Cooling

Zotac has introduced the industry's first compact PC featuring Frore's AirJet solid-state cooling system. Zotac's ultra-compact Zbox Pico PI430AJ is powered by Intel's Core i3 processor is designed primarily...

18 by Anton Shilov on 10/20/2023

GEEKOM Mini IT13 Review: Core i9-13900H in a 4x4 Package

The performance of ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) desktops has improved significantly over the years, thanks to advancements in semiconductor fabrication and processor architecture. Thermal solutions suitable for these 4in. x...

9 by Ganesh T S on 10/16/2023

ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-N97 and GMKtec NucBox G2 Review: Contrasting Compact ADL-N Options

Intel has been maintaining a low-power / low-cost x86 microarchitecture since the introduction of the Silverthorne Atom processors in 2008. Its latest iteration, Gracemont, made its debut in the...

20 by Ganesh T S on 10/6/2023

Asus Formally Completes Acquisition of Intel's NUC Business

ASUS has formally acquired Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC) products based on Intel's 10th to 13th Generation Core processors. Asus is set to continue building and supporting Intel's...

9 by Anton Shilov on 10/2/2023

Khadas Mind Premium Review: Raptor Lake-P in a Modular Portable Workstation

Khadas is a well-known vendor in the ARM-based single-board computer (SBC) circles. Recently, the company made its first foray into the small form-factor x86 PC space with a rather...

20 by Ganesh T S on 9/14/2023

Minisforum Unveils Mini-ITX Motherboard with MXM Slot for… SSDs

Minisforum continues to diversify its business beyond compact PCs and this week it introduced a rather unusual Mini-ITX motherboard with an MXM slot. Typically used for graphics cards, Minisforum's...

15 by Anton Shilov on 9/8/2023

ASRock Reveals 4x4 Box 7040 Series: SFF PCs with AMD Phoenix and USB4

ASRock Industrial has introduced a new lineup of NUC-like systems based on AMD's Ryzen 7040-series 'Phoenix' processors for laptops and compact desktops. The new 4x4 Box 7040 series compact...

9 by Anton Shilov on 9/5/2023

GEEKOM Mini IT13 Packs Core i9 into 4x4 NUC Chassis: 14-Cores NUC

While Intel's classic 4x4 NUCs have been pretty powerful systems capable of handling demanding workloads, the company never cared to install its top-of-the-range CPUs into its compact PCs. GEEKOM...

21 by Anton Shilov on 8/25/2023

Beelink GTR7 mini-PC Review: A Complete AMD Phoenix Package at 65W

The increasing popularity of small form-factor (SFF) PCs has allowed a number of second and third tier vendors to market their wares. While the trend was kickstarted by the...

56 by Ganesh T S on 8/24/2023

Zotac Taps Desktop and Laptop GeForce RTX 4070s For New SFF Zbox PCs

Zotac this week introduced two new compact desktops, both packing versions of NVIDIA's higher-end GeForce RTX 4070-series graphics processors. The Zbox Magnus One is an upgradable, desktop-style SFF machine...

17 by Anton Shilov on 8/18/2023

GEEKOM AS 6 (ASUS PN53) Review: Ryzen 9 6900HX Packs Punches in a Petite Package

The market demand for small form-factor (SFF) PCs was kickstarted by the Intel NUC in the early 2010s. Since then, many vendors have come out with their own take...

15 by Ganesh T S on 7/31/2023

ASUS Signs Agreement to Continue Development and Support of Intel's NUC Business

ASUS and Intel late on Tuesday announced that they had agreed to a term sheet involving Intel's NUC business, ensuring the continued support of existing NUC hardware as well...

6 by Ganesh T S & Anton Shilov on 7/19/2023

ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-1360P/D5 Review: Raptor Lake-P on the Leading Edge

ASRock Industrial has been a key player in the ultra-compact form-factor PC space over the last few years. They have managed to release 4"x4" systems based on the latest...

21 by Ganesh T S on 7/18/2023

Palm-Sized Minisforum EM680 Desktop PC Packs AMD's Ryzen 7 6800U and USB4

We've seen AMD's Ryzen Mobile 6000 series chips show up in several mini-PC devices thus far, and now a recently-released mini-desktop from Minisforum is the smallest yet. The Mini-PC...

19 by Anton Shilov on 6/8/2023

Topgro's $499 Fanless PC Packs Core i7-1255U 'Alder Lake' CPU

One of the perks of modern mobile CPUs is that, being designed for laptops and their very limited cooling capacity, they can be placed in a NUC-sized (or smaller...

10 by Anton Shilov on 5/5/2023

Zotac’s Zbox Edge MI351 Packs Alder Lake-N and Offers Upgradeability

Introduced back at CES 2023, Intel’s Alder Lake-N platform is the company's newest and latest budget platform for entry-level PCs. With the hardware now shipping, Zotac is among the...

16 by Anton Shilov on 4/14/2023

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