ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-1260P and 4X4 BOX-5800U Review: Alder Lake-P and Cezanne UCFF Faceoff

The past few years have seen Intel and AMD delivering new processors in a staggered manner. In the sub-45W category, Intel’s incumbency has allowed it to deliver products for both the notebook and ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) within a few months of each other. On the other hand, AMD’s focus has been on the high-margin notebook market, with the chips filtering down to the desktop market a year or so down the road. In this context, AMD’s Cezanne (most SKUs based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture) and Intel’s Tiger Lake went head-to-head last year in the notebook market, while Rembrandt (based on Zen3+) and Alder Lake-P are tussling it out this year. In the desktop space, Cezanne-based mini-PCs started making an appearance a few months back, coinciding with the first wave of Alder Lake-P systems. ASRock Industrial launched the NUC BOX-1200 series (Alder Lake-P) and the 4X4 BOX-5000 series (Cezanne) within a few weeks of each other. The company sent over the flagship models in both lineups for review, giving us a chance to evaluate the performance and value proposition of the NUC BOX-1260P and 4X4 BOX-5800U. Read on to find out how Alder Lake-P and Cezanne stack up against each other in the mini-PC space, and a look into what helps ASRock Industrial introduce mini-PCs based on the latest processors well ahead of its competitors.

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