Ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) machines have been one of the major drivers in the resurgence of the PC market. The trend was kickstarted by Intel's NUCs in the early 2010s. These PCs have usually relied on low-power processors with compelling performance per watt metrics. AMD was largely absent in this market till the introduction of the Ryzen processors. While ASRock Industrial was one of the first to release a UCFF mini-PC based on the first-generation Ryzen embedded processors, multiple OEMs have lined up to utilize the second-generation AMD processors in their own high-performance mini-PC lineups.

The PN series represents the range of UCFF PCs from ASUS. The ASUS PN30 (a fanless PC based on Carrizo-L) was introduced in early 2020 as AMD's sole representation in the PN series. This was followed up in Q3 2020 by the ASUS PN50, and more recently, the PN51. While the PN30 was a low-end offering, the ASUS PN50 (which we are looking at today) makes a play for the high-end market by using the Renoir APUs in the Ryzen 4000 mobile series. The focus of the PN series in general, and the PN50 in particular, is more on small and medium-businesses rather than the home consumer base.

This is not our first look at the Renoir APUs in the NUC form-factor. We had reviewed another Ryzen 7 4800U offering in the ASRock Industrial 4X4 BOX-4800U late last year. Since then, Intel's Tiger Lake-based UCFF PCs have been introduced into the market. The electronics industry supply chain is continuing to face challenges, requiring business consumers to line up and qualify multiple options for deployment. This review provides a comprehensive evaluation of the performance and value proposition of the ASUS PN50 in this context.

Introduction and Product Impressions

Small form factor PCs have become one of the top choices for installation in business environments. Thanks to continued improvements in processor computing power as well as power efficiency, scenarios that require traditional tower desktops have shrunk considerably. UCFF systems fulfilling business requirements such as remote management and ease of deployment have become widely deployed in SMBs and SMEs. Intel's vPro offerings have been the mainstay in this market segment, with AMD's adoption of DASH for out-of-band client management enjoying comparatively limited success.

After the introduction of Zen 2-based APUs, there has been renewed interest in SMB / SME UCFF PCs based on AMD's processors. Thanks to TSMC's 7nm process and AMD's revamped microarchitecture, the Renoir APUs based on Zen 2 were able to offer stiff competition to Intel's flagship processors. In addition to retaining the multi-core leadership, the improvements enabled Renoir to to challenge Intel's offerings in in both single-threaded performance and power efficiency.

AMD prioritized the delivery of Renoir APUs to the notebook market, with mini-PCs following soon after. ASRock Industrial and ASUS were the first ones to launch UCFF systems based on these parts. Similar to the 4X4 BOX-4000 series of ASRock Industrial, the ASUS PN50 has four SKUs with CPU core counts of 4 (Ryzen 3 4300U), 6 (Ryzen 5 4500U), 8 (Ryzen 7 4700U), and 8 (Ryzen 7 4800U). The last one is the flagship in the Ryzen 4000 U-series, with the highest core count and fully enabled GPU, and the ASUS PN50 with the Ryzen 7 4800U is the one being looked at in this review.

The ASUS PN50 employs a well-ventilated plastic chassis measuring 115 mm x 115 mm x 49 mm to house the Ryzen 7 4800U SoC. This is an octa-core processor with SMT enabled (8C/16T) capable of operating with a TDP configurable between 12W and 25W. While the PN50 is available as a barebones PC from various e-tailers, ASUS has pre-built ready-to-deploy configurations for B2B customers - evident from the memory and storage options presented in the product technical specifications page. The company sampled us with a mid-tier configuration using the Intel SSD 660p and SK hynix DDR SODIMMs. The full specifications of our ASUS PN50 review configuration are summarized in the table below.

ASUS PN50 Specifications
Processor	AMD Ryzen 7 4800U Zen 2 (Renoir) 8C/16T, 1.8 - 4.2 GHz TSMC 7nm, 8MB L3, 12-25 W (20W)
Memory	SK hynix HMA81GS6DJR8N-XN DDR4-3200 SODIMM 22-22-22-52 @ 3200 MHz 2x8 GB
Graphics	AMD Radeon Graphics (Renoir) - Integrated GPU with 8 CUs
Disk Drive(s)	Intel SSDPEKNW512G8 (512 GB; M.2 Type 2280 PCIe 3.0 x4; Intel 64L 3D QLC) (Silicon Motion SM2263 Controller)
Networking	Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2x2 802.11ax - 2400 Mbps) 1x Realtek RTL8111G Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Audio	3.5mm Headphone Jack Capable of 5.1/7.1 digital output with HD audio bitstreaming (HDMI / DisplayPort)
Miscellaneous I/O Ports	1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (Front) 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (Front) 1x microSDXC UHS-I 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (Rear) 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (Rear)
Operating System	B2B unit comes with Winodws 10 Professional, but we installed Windows 10 Enterprise x64
Pricing (As configured)	$630 (barebones) $774 (as configured)
Full Specifications	ASUS PN50 Specifications

An overview of the chassis design and arrangement of different ports is shown in the gallery below. It must be noted that the full-sized DisplayPort output in the rear panel is a configurable port. Models sold in the e-tailer channel in the US have this video output, but models elsewhere could replace it with a 2.5Gbps Ethernet port, or a serial port. Customization is possible for B2B consumers with specific requirements for large-scale deployments.

The B2B version of the ASUS PN50 comes with Windows 10 Professional x64 pre-installed. Barebones buyers can install their OS of choice. BIOS updates and Windows drivers are available off te product support page. One of the key differentiation aspects of the ASUS PN50 over other UCFF PCs is the bundling of a wired keyboard and mouse in the package. While the build quality of the two components are just passable, they do help IT personnel in quickly deploying a system from a single package. In addition to the main unit, the other components of the package include a compact 90W power adapter (19V @ 4.74A), US power cord, a VESA mount, and associated screws.

Setting up a barebones system or getting access to the build components is as simple as popping off four screws from the underside of the chassis and sliding off the bottom panel. It must be noted that the 2.5" drive is mounted to this underside, and the act of sliding enables the SATA drive to connect to the pre-installed SATA drive receptacle in the main chassis. Slots for installing the SODIMMs and the M.2 SSD are also evident after opening up the unit.

As for networking support, the PN50 is equipped with an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 adapter, which is common in contemporary high-end UCFF systems. ASUS also has certain configurations with 802.11ac Wi-Fi or even no Wi-Fi at all, but those are for specific B2B models not sold in the US e-tailer channel.

On the wired side, ASUS offers a single gigabit LAN port with the PN50. For customers who need faster wired networking, they do offer a custom option to install a 2.5 GigE adapter in place of the DisplayPort output. But again, this is only for custom configurations.

In the table below, we have an overview of the various systems that we are comparing the ASUS PN50 against. Note that they may not belong to the same market segment. The relevant configuration details of the machines are provided so that readers have an understanding of why some benchmark numbers are skewed for or against the ASUS PN50 when we come to those sections.

Comparative PC Configurations
Aspect	ASUS PN50	ASUS PN50Intel NUC8i5BEK (Standard Kit)SYSmark 25 CalibrationIntel NUC10i7FNH (Frost Canyon)ASRock NUC BOX-1165G7ASRock 4X4 BOX-4800U
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 4800U	AMD Ryzen 7 4800U
GPU	AMD Renoir (Radeon RX Vega 8 / GCN5)	AMD Renoir (Radeon RX Vega 8 / GCN5)
RAM	SK hynix HMA81GS6DJR8N-XN DDR4-3200 SODIMM 22-22-22-52 @ 3200 MHz 2x8 GB	SK hynix HMA81GS6DJR8N-XN DDR4-3200 SODIMM 22-22-22-52 @ 3200 MHz 2x8 GB
Storage	Intel SSDPEKNW512G8 (512 GB; M.2 Type 2280 PCIe 3.0 x4; Intel 64L 3D QLC) (Silicon Motion SM2263 Controller)	Intel SSDPEKNW512G8 (512 GB; M.2 Type 2280 PCIe 3.0 x4; Intel 64L 3D QLC) (Silicon Motion SM2263 Controller)
Wi-Fi	Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2x2 802.11ax - 2400 Mbps)	Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2x2 802.11ax - 2400 Mbps)
Price (in USD, when built)	$630 (barebones) $774 (as configured)	$630 (barebones) $774 (as configured)

The next section provides the platform analysis - in particular, the differences compared to the ASRock Industrial's 4X4 BOX-4000 series products. This is followed by sections dealing with performance benchmarks before moving on to some discussions on power consumption and thermal performance.

Setup Notes and Platform Analysis

Assembling the ASUS PN50 is a trivial task with the disassembling instructions outlined in the previous section. In any case, ASUS sells pre-configured systems suitable for immediate deployment to B2B customers.

The ASUS PN50 sports a regular AMI BIOS offering multiple configuration knobs meant for system administrators in business settings - including configuration of DASH support on the Realtek NIC. The video below presents the entire gamut of available options.

The AIDA64 system report for the sampled hardware configuration provided the following information:

• North Bridge: AMD K17.6 IMC
  • PCIe 3.0 x1 port #3 In Use @ x1 (ASMedia ASM1142 USB 3.0 xHCI Controller)
  • PCIe 3.0 x1 port #5 In Use @ x1 (Realtek RTL8111xP RealManage Virtual COM1, Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Adapter)
  • PCIe 3.0 x1 port #6 In Use @ x1 (Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter)
  • PCIe 3.0 x8 port #0 In Use @ x4 (Intel SSD 660p NVMe Controller)

The above breakdown needs to be taken in the context of the fact that the Renoir APUs are monolithic dies. They are true SoCs with all I/Os being sourced from the APU without a platform controller hub (PCH) in the picture.

The distribution of the HSIO lanes for the various ports in the chassis is brought out in the diagram below.

The distribution of various USB ports in terms of bandwidth sharing is much more balanced compared to the ASRock Industrial 4X4 BOX-4800U. This is in part due to the use of the ASMedia ASM1142 discrete USB 3.2 Gen 2 controller in the PC (the equivalent PCIe lane is used for a 2.5Gbps LAN port in the 4X4 BOX-4800U). There is also a microSDXC UHS-I slot in the front panel that is enabled by a Realtek USB 2.0 card reader attached to one of the in-built USB 3.2 Gen 2 controller in the APU.

Moving on to the performance evaluation report, we first take a look at various UL benchmarks, followed by BAPCo's SYSmark 25. Following this, the performance of the system for various real-world workloads including practical applications of cryptographic extensions, etc. is presented.

UL Benchmarks: PCMark, 3DMark, & Storage

This section deals with a couple of UL Futuremark benchmarks - PCMark 10 and 3DMark. While PCMark evaluates the system as a whole, 3DMark focuses on the graphics capabilities with emphasis on gaming workloads.

PCMark 10

UL's PCMark 10 evaluates computing systems for various usage scenarios (generic / essential tasks such as web browsing and starting up applications, productivity tasks such as editing spreadsheets and documents, gaming, and digital content creation). We benchmarked select PCs with the PCMark 10 Extended profile and recorded the scores for various scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU and GPU in the system, though the RAM and storage device also play a part. The power plan was set to Balanced for all the PCs while processing the PCMark 10 benchmark.

A comparative analysis of the scores reveals two important aspects - in productivity workloads, where multi-core performance plays a good part, the 8C/16T configuration of the PN50 helps it to surpass UCFF PCs like the NUC BOX-1165G7. However, when single-threaded performance matters, the Tiger Lake PC gets a healthy lead. On the graphics side, when compared to Frost Canyon and Bean Canyon NUCs, the Vega iGPU gets a handy lead. However, with Tiger Lake, Intel gets the graphics crown. When comparing the ASRock 4X4 BOX-4800U and the ASUS PN50, the latter has a slight edge (reasons for which will become clear in a later section).

PCMark 10 Storage

On the storage side, one option for evaluation would be repetition of our strenuous SSD review tests on the drive(s) in the PC. Thankfully, to avoid that overkill, UL's PCMark 10 has a Full System Drive Benchmark storage test certain common workloads such as booting, loading games, and document processing are replayed on the target drive. The average access times and bandwidth numbers are recorded for each trace and the overall numbers contribute to a benchmark score.

In case of single drive systems, we attempt to allocate 180GB to the primary partition, and leave the remaining space on the drive as a secondary partition.

The ASUS PN50's 512GB Intel SSD 660p drive is based on QLC NAND, and can't keep up even with DRAM-less NVMe SSDs such as the Patriot P300 in the ASRock 4X4 BOX-4800U. There is no comparison to be made against the the PCIe 4.0 SSD (ADATA XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite) in the NUC BOX-1165G7, and the Crucial P5 in the Frost Canyon NUC, as seen in the above graph. On the plus side, this basic SSD brings down the cost of the system significantly.

3DMark

UL's 3DMark comes with a diverse set of graphics workloads that target different Direct3D feature levels. Correspondingly, the rendering resolutions are also different. We use 3DMark 2.4.4264 to get an idea of the graphics capabilities of the system. In this section, we take a look at the performance of the Asus PN50 across the different 3DMark workloads.

3DMark Ice Storm

This workload has three levels of varying complexity - the vanilla Ice Storm, Ice Storm Unlimited, and Ice Storm Extreme. It is a cross-platform benchmark (which means that the scores can be compared across different tablets and smartphones as well). All three use DirectX 11 (feature level 9) / OpenGL ES 2.0. While the Extreme renders at 1920 x 1080, the other two render at 1280 x 720. The graphs below present the various Ice Storm worloads' numbers for different systems that we have evaluated.

UL 3DMark - Ice Storm Workloads

The 3DMark Ice Storm workloads show a win for the Vega iGPU across the board, even with the Tiger Lake iGPU in the picture. Between the ASRock and the ASUS units, most scores are within the margin of error of each other.

3DMark Cloud Gate

The Cloud Gate workload is meant for notebooks and typical home PCs, and uses DirectX 11 (feature level 10) to render frames at 1280 x 720. The graph below presents the overall score for the workload across all the systems that are being compared.

This low-stress workload is an easy win for the Vega iGPU, even though the Tiger Lake NUC BOX is able to put up a good showing compared to the Bean Canyon and Frost Canyon NUCs.

3DMark Fire Strike

The Fire Strike benchmark has three workloads. The base version is meant for high-performance gaming PCs. Similar to Sky Diver, it uses DirectX 11 (feature level 11) to render frames at 1920 x 1080. The Extreme version targets 1440p gaming requirements, while the Ultra version targets 4K gaming system, and renders at 3840 x 2160. The graph below presents the overall score for the Fire Strike Extreme and Fire Strike Ultra benchmark across all the systems that are being compared.

UL 3DMark - Fire Strike Workloads

For 1440p and higher resolution gaming performance targeted by this workload, the single-threaded performance of the Tiger Lake processor likely gives it the edge and a healthy score advantage over the 4800U in the ASUS PN50.

3DMark Time Spy

The Time Spy workload has two levels with different complexities. Both use DirectX 12 (feature level 11). However, the plain version targets high-performance gaming PCs with a 2560 x 1440 render resolution, while the Extreme version renders at 3840 x 2160 resolution. The graphs below present both numbers for all the systems that are being compared in this review.

UL 3DMark - Time Spy Workloads

Similar to Fire Strike, the Time Spy workload also favors the Tiger Lake system over the ASUS PN50. This is likely due to the single-threaded performance edge of the Core i7-1165G7 over the PN50's Ryzen 7 4800U.

3DMark Night Raid

The Night Raid workload is a DirectX 12 benchmark test. It is less demanding than Time Spy, and is optimized for integrated graphics. The graph below presents the overall score in this workload for different system configurations.

The ST performance advantage of the Tiger Lake processor gives the ASRock NUC BOX-1165G7 a slight edge in this benchmark geared towards integrated graphics. However, the gulf is not as wide as what was observed in the other benchmarks targeting graphics performance at 1440p+ resolutions.

3DMark CPU Profile Benchmark

UL recently introduced a benchmark to test the multi-threaded capabilities of the CPU in a system. Since gaming workloads are often multi-threaded, it makes sense to include this testing as part of the 3DMark suite. The benchmark routine attempts to perform the simulation of birds / bird-like objects flocking together using as many advanced capabilities as offered by the processor. The workload is configured to run with different number of threads ranging from 1 to 16 (and a single entry for the maximum number of threads allowed in the system).

UL 3DMark - CPU Profile Benchmark

We present the benchmark results for the single and maximum threads case above. As expected the four extra cores in the Ryzen 7 4800U helps the ASUS PN50 score almost double that of the NUC BOX-1165G7 in the multi-threading case. However, the single threaded performance crown is retained by the Tiger Lake system.

Otherwise, as far as graphics performance and features are concerned, we opted not to process our regular HTPC workloads on the PN50, as the platform is already a known quantity with respect to suitability for such tasks. Hardware decode acceleration is available for all common codecs other than AV1.

BAPCo SYSmark 25

The Asus PN50 was evaluated using our Fall 2018 test suite for small-form factor PCs. The test suite includes BAPCo's SYSmark 25 - an application-based benchmark that uses real-world applications to replay usage patterns of business users in the areas of productivity, creativity, and responsiveness. The 'Productivity Scenario' covers office-centric activities including word processing, spreadsheet usage, financial analysis, software development, application installation, file compression, and e-mail management. The 'Creativity Scenario' represents media-centric activities such as digital photo processing, AI and ML for face recognition in photos and videos for the purpose of content creation, etc. The 'Responsiveness Scenario' evaluates the ability of the system to react in a quick manner to user inputs in areas such as application and file launches, web browsing, and multi-tasking.

Scores are meant to be compared against a reference desktop (the SYSmark 25 calibration system, a Lenovo Thinkcenter M720q with a Core i5-8500T and 8GB of DDR4 memory to go with a 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD). The calibration system scores approximately 1000 in each of the scenarios. A score of, say, 2000, would imply that the system under test is twice as fast as the reference system.

The mix of workloads in SYSmark 25 puts more emphasis on single-threaded performance, and it is no surprise that the Tiger Lake NUC BOX-1165G7 and the Frost Canyon NUC outscore the ASUS PN50. Between the PN50 and the 4X4 BOX-4800U, the ASUS system has the edge across all workloads. Across all cases, the system scores better than the Coffee Lake-based calibration system.

SYSmark 25 also adds energy measurement to the mix. A high score in the SYSmark benchmarks might be nice to have, but, potential customers also need to determine the balance between power consumption and the efficiency of the system. For example, in the average office scenario, it might not be worth purchasing a noisy and power-hungry PC just because it ends up with a 2000 score in the SYSmark 2014 SE benchmarks. In order to provide a balanced perspective, SYSmark 25 also allows vendors and decision makers to track the energy consumption during each workload. In the graphs below, we find the total energy consumed by the PC under test for a single iteration of each SYSmark 25 workload. For reference, the calibration system consumes 8.88 Wh for productivity, 10.81 Wh for creativity, and 19.69 Wh overall.

Thanks to the judicious choice of components (only 16GB of DRAM, and a QLC SSD), the energy consumption is the lowest of the lot for the ASUS PN50 across all workloads. Overall, the performance per watt metric presents an attractive picture of the system for the workloads in its target market.

Additional Benchmarks: x265, Cinebench, & More

This section looks at some of the other commonly used benchmarks representative of the performance of specific real-world applications.

Web Browser Benchmarks - JetStream and Speedometer

Web browser-based workloads have emerged as a major component of the typical home and business PC usage scenarios. Beginning with this review, we are including browser-focused benchmarks from the WebKit developers. Hosted at BrowserBench, JetStream 2.0 benchmarks JavaScript and WebAssembly performance, while Speedometer measures web application responsiveness. We also process MotionMark, but the confidence level of the results vary as much as +/-35%. Hence, we present only the Jetstream 2.0 and Speedometer results for the three top browsers below.

In order to maintain reproducibility, we self-host the BrowserBench benchmarks (git clone of the WebKit repository as on July 1, 2021). The browser versions used for the numbers above are presented in the table included in each system's review. Since this is a new benchmark in the suite, the tables for all systems presented in the graphs above are given below.

ASUS PN50 Browser Bench
	Speedometer 2.0	JetStream 2.0	MotionMark 1.2
Microsoft Edge (92.0.902.55)	128.9 ± 0.71	147.297	606.66 ± 11.24%
Google Chrome (92.0.4515.107)	151 ± 2.0	145.461	791.74 ± 7.38%
Mozilla Firefox (90.0.2.7872)	112 ± 1.2	90.885	301.5 ± 31.03%

BAPCo's SYSmark 25 and UL's PCMark benchmarks both include web browser activities as part of their evaluation scheme. However, the performance for this increasingly important workload tends to get lost in the presentation of a single number. JetStream and Speedometer help us focus on how different PC configurations vary in terms of the user experience with respect to web browsers. Single-threaded performance matters heavily for web browsing, and that is brought out in the higher scores for the NUC BOX-1165G7 compared to the PN50 for both JetStream and Speedometer.

3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R23

We use CINEBENCH R23 for 3D rendering evaluation. R23 provides two benchmark modes - single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of different PC configurations in both supported modes provided us the following results.

As expected, the multi-threaded case sees the two Renoir mini-PCs handily outwit the 6C/12T Frost Canyon NUC and the 4C/8T Tiger Lake NUC BOX. The Tiger Lake processor has a handy ST performance lead, as expected.

x265 Benchmark

Next up, we have some video encoding benchmarks using x265 v2.8. The appropriate encoder executable is chosen based on the supported CPU features. In the first case, we encode 600 1080p YUV 4:2:0 frames into a 1080p30 HEVC Main-profile compatible video stream at 1 Mbps and record the average number of frames encoded per second.

Our second test case is 1200 4K YUV 4:2:0 frames getting encoded into a 4Kp60 HEVC Main10-profile video stream at 35 Mbps. The encoding FPS is recorded.

Both workloads reveal performance scaling with number of cores, as even the CML-U-based Frost Canyon NUC outperforms the NUC BOX-1165G7. With a 8C/16T configuration, the ASUS PN50 and the ASRock Industrial 4X4 BOX-4800U have no trouble getting a handsome lead in the performance for these workloads.

7-Zip

7-Zip is a very effective and efficient compression program, often beating out OpenCL accelerated commercial programs in benchmarks even while using just the CPU power. 7-Zip has a benchmarking program that provides tons of details regarding the underlying CPU's efficiency. In this subsection, we are interested in the compression and decompression rates when utilizing all the available threads for the LZMA algorithm.

MT performance again plays a major role. With multiple cores available to process the compression / decompression, the rate can scale linearly as long as the memory subsystem is able to keep the cores fed. The extra cores in the Ryzen 7 4800U help the two Renoir systems to beat the Intel-based offerings with a handsome margin.

Cryptography Benchmarks

Cryptography has become an indispensable part of our interaction with computing systems. Almost all modern systems have some sort of hardware-acceleration for making cryptographic operations faster and more power efficient. In this sub-section, we look at two different real-world applications that may make use of this acceleration.

BitLocker is a Windows features that encrypts entire disk volumes. While drives that offer encryption capabilities are dealt with using that feature, most legacy systems and external drives have to use the host system implementation. Windows has no direct benchmark for BitLocker. However, we cooked up a BitLocker operation sequence to determine the adeptness of the system at handling BitLocker operations. We start off with a 2.5GB RAM drive in which a 2GB VHD (virtual hard disk) is created. This VHD is then mounted, and BitLocker is enabled on the volume. Once the BitLocker encryption process gets done, BitLocker is disabled. This triggers a decryption process. The times taken to complete the encryption and decryption are recorded. This process is repeated 25 times, and the average of the last 20 iterations is graphed below.

The PN50 is comparatively slower at processing BitLocker volumes in software (the 4X4 BOX-4800U with the same processor doesn't have the issue). It is likely that default BIOS settings are putting the system at a disadvantage.

Creation of secure archives is best done through the use of AES-256 as the encryption method while password protecting ZIP files. We re-use the benchmark mode of 7-Zip to determine the AES256-CBC encryption and decryption rates using pure software as well as AES-NI. Note that the 7-Zip benchmark uses a 48KB buffer for this purpose.

The issues seen in the BitLocker benchmark are not seen here, as we can see 7-Zip cryptographic functions getting accelerated handsomely compared to Intel's offerings. Both AES-NI acceleration and software performance scale with the number of cores.

Yet another cryptography application is secure network communication. OpenSSL can take advantage of the acceleration provided by the host system to make operations faster. It also has a benchmark mode that can use varying buffer sizes. We recorded the processing rate for a 8KB buffer using the hardware-accelerated AES256-CBC-HAC-SHA1 feature.

Both Frost Canyon and Bean Canyon had an issue with OpenSSL cryptography performance compared to Renoir APUs. The Tiger Lake improvements now give it a handy lead in the encryption case, and narrows the gap for the decryption case.

Agisoft Photoscan

Agisoft PhotoScan is a commercial program that converts 2D images into 3D point maps, meshes and textures. The program designers sent us a command line version in order to evaluate the efficiency of various systems that go under our review scanner. The command line version has two benchmark modes, one using the CPU and the other using both the CPU and GPU (via OpenCL). We present the results from our evaluation using the CPU mode only. The benchmark (v1.3) takes 84 photographs and does four stages of computation:

• Stage 1: Align Photographs (capable of OpenCL acceleration)
• Stage 2: Build Point Cloud (capable of OpenCL acceleration)
• Stage 3: Build Mesh
• Stage 4: Build Textures

We record the time taken for each stage. Since various elements of the software are single threaded, and others multithreaded, it is interesting to record the effects of CPU generations, speeds, number of cores, and DRAM parameters using this software.

The performance for most of the stages scales well with the number of cores, and hence we see the two Renoir-based mini-PCs appear in the top of the charts.

Dolphin Emulator

Wrapping up our application benchmark numbers is the new Dolphin Emulator (v5) benchmark mode results. This is again a test of the CPU capabilities - more specifically, single-threaded performance.

The Tiger Lake-based NUC BOX-1165G7 emerges as the winner by a handsome margin, with the Renoir-based systems relegated to performance similar to that of the Bean Canyon NUC.

Power Consumption and Thermal Performance

The power consumption at the wall was measured with a 4K display being driven through the HDMI port. In the graph below, we compare the idle and load power of the ASUS PN50 with other low power PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran the AIDA64 System Stability Test with various stress components, as well as our custom stress test with Prime95 / Furmark, and noted the maximum sustained power consumption at the wall.

Thanks to the use of a low-power SSD and lesser amount of RAM compared to systems such as the 4X4 BOX-4800U and the NUC BOX-1165G7, the PN50 makes an appearance in the middle of the chart for idle power. The system is placed second in terms of peak load power consumption, coming behind the Tiger Lake system.

Our thermal stress routine starts with the system at idle, followed by four stages of different system loading profiles using the AIDA64 System Stability Test (each of 30 minutes duration). In the first stage, we stress the CPU, caches and RAM. In the second stage, we add the GPU to the above list. In the third stage, we stress the GPU standalone. In the final stage, we stress all the system components (including the disks). Beyond this, we leave the unit idle in order to determine how quickly the various temperatures in the system can come back to normal idling range. The various clocks, temperatures and power consumption numbers for the system during the above routine are presented in the graphs below.

ASUS PN50 System Loading with the AIDA64 System Stability Test

The average frequency of the cores stays well above the rated 1.8 GHz whenever the CPU is loaded. GPU clocks range from 200 MHz at idle to around 1.7 GHz at full load. On the temperatures side, we see throttling kick in when the cores reach around 95C. The iGPU itself doesn't cross 85C even under load. Under stress, the SSD does reach around 75C - pointing to the need for a thermal pad or some other thermal solution for the storage device. The at-wall power consumption stays between 40 - 45W (with package power contributing 25W) prior to throttling. After the temperature reaches 95C, the package power drops down to 20W, and the at-wall number comes down to around 35W. In contrast, the ASRock Industrial 4X4 BOX-4800U using the same SoC sustains a package power of 15W under load. This explains the reason for the ASUS PN50 outscoring the 4X4 BOX-4800U across many benchmarks.

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The custom stress test involves running Prime95 for 30 minutes, followed by the addition of the Furmark stress workload. After 30 minutes, the Prime95 load is removed, and the Furmark workload is allowed to run for 30 minutes. The system is then left idle for 30 minutes.

ASUS PN50 System Loading with Prime95 and Furmark

The core and GPU frequencies behave similar to he AIDA64 SST, though Furmark limits GPU frequency to around 1.5 GHz. Throttling kicks in after the core temperature hits 95C, and we see the 25W to 20W package power transition play out in this case also.

Overall, the thermal solution in the Asus PN50 is perfect for a 20W TDP configuration. Asus seems to allow 25W TDP operation until the thermal solution is overwhelmed. Once the core temperature hits the 95C threshold, the operating TDP is scaled down to something more manageable for the form factor and thermal design of the system.

Closing Thoughts

Wrapping things up, it's clear from the get-go that the ASUS PN50 has a SMB / SME focus. This is evident from the range of configurable options, as well as the bundled keyboard / mouse for ease of deployment. It brings out all the important features of AMD's Renoir APUs while maintaining a low system cost.

None the less, that doesn't mean the PN50 is no-frills. The system offers four display outputs (including two Type-C, and one HDMI and DisplayPort each), support for up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 SO-DIMMs, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-C ports, and three USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) ports with well-balanced bandwidth distribution. Digital microphones in the front ensure painless usage of voice assistants like Cortana, while the HDMI CEC header / IR receiver can also enable some business use-cases such as digital signage in retail scenarios.

Further underscoring the business focus for the PN50, the system is part of ASUS's corporate stable model (CSM) program that ensures a 36-month stable supply guarantee. ASUS also subjects PN50 to a rigorous QA process involving vibration testing, drop testing, extreme temperatures / humidity operation testing, and line voltage / frequency variation testing. These are bound to increase the confidence of IT departments while deploying these systems. The presence of a hardware TPM 2.0 chip and DASH support for remote management using the Realtek NIC expands the target market for the PN50 even further.

On the technical front, ASUS's use of AMD's Renoir processor is likely to raise a couple of eyebrows, as the chips are coming up on two years old. But as we mentioned earlier in the review, this is ASUS making the best of the hand they've been given. Supply chain issues have meant that only the notebook market is receiving AMD's latest generation of processors. For the AMD mini-PC market, Renoir continues to be the go-to SoC for those machines – inside and outside of ASUS.

To that end, the PN50 is able to provide better performance compared to other Renoir-equipped mini-PCs. This is mainly due to operation of the SoC in 25W TDP mode for as long a time as possible. The thermal solution itself can sustain only a 20W TDP, though. The supplied review configuration was handicapped a bit on the storage side with the QLC SSD, making its performance for disk-intensive workloads less than ideal. However, those types of workloads are also uncommon in the business scenarios being targeted by the PN50.

With all of that said, actually getting some of these ASUS mini-PCs is proving easier said than done. The challenges in the electronics supply chain have meant that outlets selling these PCs at ASUS's suggested prices are significantly backordered Third-party sellers abound on various e-tailers do have stock, but they are charging a hefty premium - even for the lower-end models in the series (example: $550 for the R5-4500U model, while the first-party listing for the same model is $430, but out of stock).

The lowest price we have seen for the barebones version of the 4800U model is $630 on special order. The ASRock 4X4 BOX-4800U is available for $593. For the extra cost, the ASUS PN50 provides a microSDXC UHS-I slot at USB 2.0 speeds, and higher TDP support for better sustained performance. It's also worth noting that the PN50 model sold in the US retail channel doesn't have a 2.5 Gbps port that comes default with the 4X4 BOX-4800U.

It must also be noted that ASUS has a PN51 series based on the Ryzen 5000U series processors - these models use the Zen 2-based Lucienne SKUs - the 5300U, 5500U, and 5700U. The features of the PN51 are exactly the same as the PN50 otherwise - fulfilling AMD's promise of allowing their partners to reuse the board and system designs while retaining same ballpark performance. That said, the updates in Lucienne should result in better power efficiency and also show slightly better graphics performance for workloads that are not memory bound. The PN51 also seems to have addressed the SSD temperature issue with an additional heatsink.

Overall, the ASUS PN50 has some unique features that make the system stand out of the crowd in the Renoir mini-PC market. The feature set makes it very attractive for deployment in SMBs and SMEs, as well as scenarios like digital signage. The competition in the mini-PC market is good news for consumers, but the supply chain issues need to get resolved for the cost benefits to be realized by the end-users.