ASRock Industrial 4×4 BOX-7840U Review AMD Powered NUC Form Factor

AMD Ryzen 7 7840U Performance

Instead of going through the entire Linux-Bench test suite, we are going to show a few performance and power numbers here to give a general sense of performance. This also gives us the opportunity to test with Linux/ Ubuntu instead of just Windows.

Python Linux 4.4.2 Kernel Compile Benchmark

This is one of the most requested benchmarks for STH over the past few years. The task was simple, we have a standard configuration file, the Linux 4.4.2 kernel from kernel.org, and make the standard auto-generated configuration utilizing every thread in the system. We are expressing results in terms of compiles per hour to make the results easier to read:

Here, we saw the performance that we would expect from a Zen 4 CPU. The Ryzen 7 7840U is not as fast as the Ryzen 7 7840HS, however, it is a lower power part.

7-zip Compression Performance

7-zip is a widely used compression/ decompression program that works cross-platform. We started using the program during our early days with Windows testing. It is now part of Linux-Bench.

It also compares well to Core i7 chips from the Intel Alder Lake family, and is a solid generational improvment.

OpenSSL Performance

OpenSSL is widely used to secure communications between servers. This is an important protocol in many server stacks. We first look at our sign tests:

Here are the verify results:

It is often fun to sit and opine that one bar is longer than another. Realistically though, the top three quarters of these charts are made up of great desktop CPUs that, aside from high-end gaming, are more than capable. Mini PCs no longer feel slow in standard office tasks, even coming from professional workstation-class systems. Of course, doing high-end content creation will have one feel the difference quickly between a $750 PC and a $15,000 PC, but for the vast majority of users, this is everything they will need.

Geekbench Performance

Since we had numbers for the ASRock 4×4 BOX-5800U with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800U we figured a quick Geekbench 5 comparison is in order:

Here, the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U performed better compared to what we saw in Linux versus the Ryzen 7 5800U. Still, the pattern remained that the new part is a significant step up despite them both being Ryzen 7 U-series systems from ASRock Industrial.

ASRock Industrial 4X4 BOX-7840U Storage Performance

Some mini PCs skimp on PCIe lanes and speeds to the SSD. Since we had a Samsung 990 Pro in the system, we figured we could easily see if the system had a full PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 slot.

While certainly far from the best result with this SSD, it is certainly PCIe Gen4 x4. Of course, something we have seen with many mini PCs is also that the cooling is challenging with a SSD this fast, so we would get a slower and cooler SSD in here. At the same time, we at least verified the bus speed and width.

Next, let us get to the power consumption.