ASRock Beebox-S 6200U Review - An Alternative to the Skylake NUC
by Ganesh T S on August 10, 2016 8:00 AM ESTNetworking and Storage Performance
Networking and storage are two major aspects which influence our experience with any computing system. This section presents results from our evaluation of these aspects in the ASRock Beebox-S 6200U.
One of the interesting aspects of the Skylake-U platform is the bandwidth available for communication between the CPU and the PCH inside the Skylake-U package. By default, Intel ships them optimized for low power consumption (effectvely four lanes of PCIe 2.0 bandwidth). However, its customers can optimize for higher performance (effectively four lanes of PCIe 3.0 bandwidth) depending on the end system in which the Skylake-U SiP gets deployed. We covered this in detail in our article on choosing the right M.2 SSD for the NUC6i5SYK.
ASRock has configured the Core i5-6200U for hgher performance in the Beebox-S 6200U. Our quick check for this involved running the CrystalDiskMark benchmark on the Samsung SSD 950 PRO after installing it in the Beebox-S 6200U. We can see that the M.2 PCIe SSD is able to meet its full claimed performance numbers (possible only with a PCIe 3.0 x4 link).
In order to further evaluate storage performance, one option would be repetition of our strenuous SSD review tests on the drive(s) in the PC. Fortunately, to avoid that overkill, PCMark 8 has a storage bench where certain common workloads such as loading games and document processing are replayed on the target drive. Results are presented in two forms, one being a benchmark number and the other, a bandwidth figure. We ran the PCMark 8 storage bench on selected PCs and the results are presented below.
Thanks to ASRock's attention to the OPI link rate in the Core i5-6200U, the storage benchmarks show the Beebox-S 6200U come out in the top half of the list.
On the networking side, we restricted ourselves to the evaluation of the WLAN component. Our standard test router is the Netgear R7000 Nighthawk configured with both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks. The router is placed approximately 20 ft. away, separated by a drywall (as in a typical US building). A wired client is connected to the R7000 and serves as one endpoint for iperf evaluation. The PC under test is made to connect to either the 5 GHz (preferred) or 2.4 GHz SSID and iperf tests are conducted for both TCP and UDP transfers. It is ensured that the PC under test is the only wireless client for the Netgear R7000. We evaluate total throughput for up to 32 simultaneous TCP connections using iperf and present the highest number in the graph below.
In the UDP case, we try to transfer data at the highest rate possible for which we get less than 1% packet loss.
The Beebox-S has very good antenna placement, and make it come out on top when other PCs that have 1x1 configurations are considered. However, mini-PCs that have 2x2 802.11ac WLAN chipsets obviously perform better than the Beebox-S 6200U.
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tipoo - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
I like how they'll keep including CDs after they removed DVD slots, lolBrokenCrayons - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Yeah, that is sort of silly. It probably boils down to cost. Cheap little USB drives are several dollars whereas a disc is a few pennies and can't be accidentally erased by the end user...though you could write protect any other storage medium too.Chaitanya - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
There are couple of NAND based products that follow: write once read many scheme. I wouldnt mind having a read only USB flashdrive containing drivers and bios for safe fall back option.ganeshts - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Yes, Zotac and GIGABYTE do that. ASRock is following the feedback from this article, so they will be getting the message :)thegreenhundred - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Or we can save the OEM a few bucks and lots of supply chain/production work by downloading & backing up any drivers we want for the infamous "what if" scenereos........ that and getting said drivers from component vendors is likely to give much newer/better versions of said drivers than what the OEM could assemble at time of production.BrokenCrayons - Thursday, August 11, 2016 - link
It's good to know ASRock is taking feedback into account. Even if the company elects to continue shipping products with drivers on discs, the fact that they're at least considering feedback at all says a lot of nice things about them.Shiitaki - Sunday, August 14, 2016 - link
What Asrock and the rest of the PC industry should be looking at is a proper drive curation system. Microsoft COULD be better here. Any modern UEFI motherboard should be able to phone home for firmware updates and even download a driver package. If Apple can pull this off, then the board manufactures certainly could as well. After all you would only need to write the UEFI app once and then include it in every firmware upgrade. Even older boards could be upgraded retroactively. The option to dump them on to a flash drive should be a standard method. That way real drivers and firmware updates are both easy and available. Though Microsoft should be releasing updated images every month instead of every OS release.Ro_Ja - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
I'd still pick the Intel NUC6i5SYK over this. Is the Samsung 950 Pro more expensive than Samsung SM951? Sorry guys I'm really new to these things.fanofanand - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
I was thinking the same thing, the 5SYK has much better Wi-Fi, a faster processor, and though it would be about $90 more if the SSD capacity were identical, you would also be getting Intel QC. Slightly better timings on the RAM used on the 5SYK as well. I am still holding out hope that I can get one of these for my son instead of building out a rig. I don't think we are quite there yet. Great for office and light browsing, facebook etc., but still not ready for primetime.jaydee - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
I'm not sure you're looking at this the right way. The i5-6200 CPU should be faster than the i5-5250U. The RAM typically doesn't come supplied with either unit, you buy/install whichever you want. The Wifi card is an easy replacement for either, I wouldn't let that be a determining factor either.