ASRock Industrial 4X4 BOX-7840U

The ASRock 4X4 BOX-7840U provided us with the opportunity to evaluate an AMD Phoenix-based UCFF PC with premium features. The Phoenix platform had already impressed us in its 65W avatar in the Beelink GTR7. That product had its share of early-adopter troubles, which we thankfully didn't encounter in the ASRock Industrial 4X4 BOX-7840U. There are still a few worrisome iGPU driver issues related to media playback that keep reappearing in different releases. Hopefully that is something AMD can address, now that they are gaining significant market share in this segment. In terms of I/O capabilities, the two USB4 40 Gbps ports bring these systems on par with the mainstream Intel NUCs. The iGPU performance is better for most workloads. Unless single-threaded performance is of vital importance, these Phoenix systems offer a much better value proposition compared to the Raptor Lake-P ones.

There are many of our readers that will gravitate to the AMD Ryzen 7040 series because of the AMD Radeon 780M graphics that we have seen a number of times. Also, AMD has only P-cores in this 8-core/16-thread platform. So ASRock Industrial has a platform that offers a really nice mix of CPU, integrated GPU, and codec performance. This is a system my parents or wife could use every day if they were Windows or Linux and not Apple folks.

The ASRock 4X4 BOX-7840U offers near-class-leading number-crunching capabilities while consuming less power than its direct competition. Additionally, it is easier to work on and upgrade, making it a well-rounded system for a home office, casual gaming, or emulation.

ASRock's 4x4BOX 7840U offers generational performance improvements including the addition of AMD Ryzen AI and the Radeon 780M GPU.