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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My only complaint is they cut costs using the Intel 3160 instead of the Intel 8260 (or even the older Intel 7260) which is ridiculous when you consider the 3160 and last-gen 7260 are virtually the same price.
But at least they didn't use a 802.11n card. I can't believe how many of those I still see even in $1000 Thinkpad's and Elitebook's. Literally talking a few dollars in difference for improved range, performance and battery life going from 1x1 to 2x2.
I would love to see a review of the newest generation (and revision) of the Gigabyte Brix. The newest revisions have USB 3.1 (type c) ports and DDR4 RAM in addition to the Skylake CPUs
I have it in the queue, but I am waiting for a BIOS update : http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx... : Intel has made a bunch of fixes in the Skylake-U platform that are BIOS-related, and I want to evaluate with the most stable / recent platform Until GIGABYTE updates their BIOS with the fixes from Intel, I am not going to recommend the Skylake BRIX units.
Oh I didn't know there were problems with the Skylake BRIX units, I'll have to go re-read the Anandtech review.
I just put together a simple Skylake BRIX i3 (the DDR3L version) for a friend using all open box parts from amazon. Seems to be humming right along for HTPC and emulator duties. I was considering upgrading my existing HTPC with one of the DDR4/USB C versions.
Someone needs to make something like this with passive 24v 4wire Power over Ethernet or one of the active PoE standards that supports voltage in the 48v range. I have a NUC rigged up to run off of one of these switches: https://www.netonix.com/wisp-switch.html with this PoE extractor: http://tyconsystems.com/index.php/passive-gigabit/... (using 24VH mode on the switch) but it required a bit of cutting. There isn't really any good SFF PC with PoE input anywhere on the market I've found.
I can appreciate the desire to test the unit in it's best light with a 950 Pro and the 16GB of RAM, but it seems like overkill and jacks up the price way up. You fail to even mention the base price, although I can go shopping. A more likely configuration for me is a mainstream 250gb SSD and 8GB. It would be perfect in my sailboat.
I would love to see a NUC/UCFF that doesn't sandwich a hot WiFi adapter between the SSD and the MoBo. I usually don't install the WiFi if I care about the data on the drive.
Another over-priced mini PC based around a low powered ultrabook-series CPU. Wouldn't it make more sense to buy an ultrabook laptop where a screen, keyboard, trackpad... memory and storage are included in the price?! I know it's a smaller footprint an ultrabook but I feel like potential customers are getting hammered on price, or certainly here in the UK. The NUC, with the much better Iris HD 540 graphics component, seems much more appealing, to me, but again the price is the big off putter and lack of things like a Thunderbolt 3 port limit the appeal of mini PCs, at the moment. If the price were much lower, I think the things it lacks would be less conspicuous by their absence. Thanks for the review. It would be nice to think it might spark some competition but here in price fixing UK, competition seems to be a dirty word. Hopefully the next generation will make for viably priced and appealing little gaming console alternatives.
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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.dsraa - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
You're right, the link for newegg is a barebones unit for $319. Doesnt include anything.Ro_Ja - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Heh...We're talking about the NUC with the Skylake :)Ro_Ja - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
The NUC's also good enough for gaming if you're not the type of maxing everything out at 1080P.vailr - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
I think they stole the name from Jean-Louis Gassée:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox
hojnikb - Thursday, August 11, 2016 - link
> you would also be getting Intel QC.You means that "famous" intel QC, where they had to release numerous bios updates before the thing became useful ?
Samus - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
My only complaint is they cut costs using the Intel 3160 instead of the Intel 8260 (or even the older Intel 7260) which is ridiculous when you consider the 3160 and last-gen 7260 are virtually the same price.But at least they didn't use a 802.11n card. I can't believe how many of those I still see even in $1000 Thinkpad's and Elitebook's. Literally talking a few dollars in difference for improved range, performance and battery life going from 1x1 to 2x2.
u.of.ipod - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
I would love to see a review of the newest generation (and revision) of the Gigabyte Brix. The newest revisions have USB 3.1 (type c) ports and DDR4 RAM in addition to the Skylake CPUsganeshts - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
I have it in the queue, but I am waiting for a BIOS update : http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx... : Intel has made a bunch of fixes in the Skylake-U platform that are BIOS-related, and I want to evaluate with the most stable / recent platform Until GIGABYTE updates their BIOS with the fixes from Intel, I am not going to recommend the Skylake BRIX units.tipoo - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Still fixing it this long after Skylakes launch eh. What a mess. Kind of puts into perspective why there's no Macbook Pros with Skylake yet.u.of.ipod - Saturday, August 13, 2016 - link
Oh I didn't know there were problems with the Skylake BRIX units, I'll have to go re-read the Anandtech review.I just put together a simple Skylake BRIX i3 (the DDR3L version) for a friend using all open box parts from amazon. Seems to be humming right along for HTPC and emulator duties. I was considering upgrading my existing HTPC with one of the DDR4/USB C versions.
Arnulf - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Where is Apollo Lake?I want one of those on a desktop-sized motherboard (uATX?).
Ro_Ja - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
The Celerons and the Pentiums? They'll be better off with Compute Sticks.maglito - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Someone needs to make something like this with passive 24v 4wire Power over Ethernet or one of the active PoE standards that supports voltage in the 48v range. I have a NUC rigged up to run off of one of these switches: https://www.netonix.com/wisp-switch.html with this PoE extractor: http://tyconsystems.com/index.php/passive-gigabit/... (using 24VH mode on the switch) but it required a bit of cutting. There isn't really any good SFF PC with PoE input anywhere on the market I've found.BedfordTim - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
On the plus side at least there are still NUCs that support 24V input.MrCommunistGen - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Wouldn't some of the Skylake NUC's performance advantage be related to the fact that the i5-6260U has 64MB of eDRAM?ganeshts - Thursday, August 11, 2016 - link
Very true. I had mentioned Iris graphics in the comparison table for the NUC6i5SYK, but didnt mention the eDRAM aspect in the text.Wineohe - Thursday, August 11, 2016 - link
I can appreciate the desire to test the unit in it's best light with a 950 Pro and the 16GB of RAM, but it seems like overkill and jacks up the price way up. You fail to even mention the base price, although I can go shopping. A more likely configuration for me is a mainstream 250gb SSD and 8GB. It would be perfect in my sailboat.Jookie - Wednesday, August 17, 2016 - link
I would love to see a NUC/UCFF that doesn't sandwich a hot WiFi adapter between the SSD and the MoBo. I usually don't install the WiFi if I care about the data on the drive.Mathewlin - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Cool be good for my mom! :)Detosx - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
Another over-priced mini PC based around a low powered ultrabook-series CPU. Wouldn't it make more sense to buy an ultrabook laptop where a screen, keyboard, trackpad... memory and storage are included in the price?! I know it's a smaller footprint an ultrabook but I feel like potential customers are getting hammered on price, or certainly here in the UK. The NUC, with the much better Iris HD 540 graphics component, seems much more appealing, to me, but again the price is the big off putter and lack of things like a Thunderbolt 3 port limit the appeal of mini PCs, at the moment. If the price were much lower, I think the things it lacks would be less conspicuous by their absence. Thanks for the review. It would be nice to think it might spark some competition but here in price fixing UK, competition seems to be a dirty word. Hopefully the next generation will make for viably priced and appealing little gaming console alternatives.