The ASRock DeskMini A300 Review: An Affordable DIY AMD Ryzen mini-PC

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• Haawser - Sunday, April 28, 2019 - link

  @oliwek That's the 310, it's an Intel barebones system, not Ryzen.

• sor - Saturday, April 27, 2019 - link

  If you sign up for Newegg notifications you’ll probably have one within a week. I got one of mine about three weeks ago and the other last week.

• yankeeDDL - Monday, April 29, 2019 - link

  I'm just going to throw it as a suggestion.
  I understand the purpose and the rationale in comparing similarly priced models, and all relatively recent/available, however ... I think it would add an enormous value to "normal" users to be able to somewhat put things in perspective with slightly dated hardware.
  
  I am not saying that we should be able to compare the Ryzen 5 2400G with an 80486, but, to give you an example, I have an A10-8700P and I have been considering an upgrade, but it seems really difficult to find a way to get an idea of just how much faster the 2400G is.
  The A10-8700P is certainly not efficient, but it does have 4 cores, and a decent iGPU, already based on the GCN. There's no question that the 2400G will trounce it in efficiency, but is it a worth upgrade?
  
  It is just an example, to indicate that having also 2-3 previous generations in the comparisons would not be such a bad idea, in my opinion. Just a thought.

• Irata - Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - link

  If you are looking for this type of comparison, planet3dnow de has one between an Athlon 5350 (Jaguar) vs Athlon 200GE. It's in German but maybe you can get useable results using Google translate.
  
  They also did a review of the Hewlett-Packard 17-ca1004ng notebook with a Ryzen 5 3500U comparing it to its Bristol Ridge predecessor.
  
  Both show just how far AMD has come with Ryzen.

• mikato - Tuesday, April 30, 2019 - link

  Ganesh, you didn't talk about noise at all. I feel like that should always be included in these mini PC articles. You have 3 pages on HTPC credentials and 1 page on Power Consumption and Thermal Performance but no mention of noise. How does it compare to the Intel NUC8i7BEH that you mentioned had a noisy fan with any load? Or the ZBOX CI660 which was fanless but had a dull whine and a strange grating sound though it wasn't noticeable beyond 10 feet? Did you think that optional CPU heatsink/fan they included was adequate?
  
  By the way, 10 feet isn't close enough. How about 6 feet? If you give one noise impression from 10 feet, you could move a few feet closer and check what it is at 6 feet as well... for future reviews.
  
  If you keep doing these Mini PC reviews, I will keep reading them!

• Lucky Stripes 99 - Sunday, May 5, 2019 - link

  I was also puzzled at the lack noise testing. One of the reasons I'm looking at mini-STX and thin mini-ITX systems instead of a NUC is because of the fan noise many of those NUC systems suffer from.
  
  Some folks have been installing low-profile Noctua CPU coolers in their Deskmini systems and they report that they are "nearly silent", even while under heavy load. I'd really like to know how silent that really is.

• werpu - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link

  I have a ryzen 2400g mini itx system with the flat noctua, and it is very silent, even under heavy load it is almost not hearable. I however had to add 2 smaller noctuas later in my system because the vrm would get rather hot with my standalone noctua and the case I was using. Still a very silent system and definitely less noise than a nuc.

• mikato - Tuesday, April 30, 2019 - link

  At first I thought Bean Canyon was the best way to go for an HTPC with the performance and power efficiency. But with an idle power usage of 11.24 watts for this DeckMini A300 vs the 8.45 watts of the NUC8i7BEH with Bean Canyon - that difference is so little. As my HTPC, it would be left on and most of the time it would be idling. And the "as configured, no OS" prices in your reviews for these were $465 for the DeskMini A300 and $963 for the NUC8i7BEH...
  
  Let's see, your DeskMini A300 had:
  G.Skill Ripjaws F4-3000C16D-16GRS 2x8 GB (newegg $100)
  Western Digital WD SN500 500 GB (newegg $70)
  
  While your NUC8i7BEH had:
  G.Skill Ripjaws F4-3000C16D-32GRS 2x16 GB (newegg $185 - your review listed RipjawsV F4-3000C16-16GRS but I couldn't find that anywhere and the photos in your NUC8i7BEH review showed it was F4-3000C16D-32GRS instead so I think your specs table was incorrect)
  Western Digital WD Black 3D NVMe SSD (2018) 1 TB (newegg $238 for the SN750, older 2018 one costs more)
  
  Let's see... that's $185-100=85 and $238-70=168. 85+168=253
  So your combined storage and memory choices for the NUC8i7BEH cost $253 more.
  
  And the difference in your overall "as configured, no OS" prices was $963-465=498.
  
  So if I remove the difference in your storage and memory choices, I calculate that the DeskMini A300 is still $498-253 = $245 cheaper!
  
  Sure the A300 doesn't look as nice or compact as the NUC, but that is some solid money.

• Irata - Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - link

  The Intel models are usually configured with higher end components vs. the AMD based models. Same for laptops where $600 AMD based notebooks go up against $1,600 Intel ones .
  
  I guess it's a hold over of the "AMD = budget" days.

• mikato - Thursday, May 2, 2019 - link

  Well, it's not a laptop. What do you think might be a higher end component here? This is basically a case, motherboard, and power supply, right?