Raptor Lake-P Impresses, plus Surprise ECC

Low-power processors have traditionally been reserved for notebooks and other portable platforms. However, with the continued popularity of ultra-compact form factor desktop systems, UCFF PCs also serve as the primary vehicle for modern mobile processors. The same is true for Intel’s Raptor Lake-P. The processor SKU was announced at his 2023 CES earlier this month, and final products using the processor were expected to appear within a few weeks. Intel is today officially authorizing partners to start selling their products into the channel, as well as allowing them to publish third-party evaluation results of products based on Raptor Lake-P.

ASRock Industrial introduced a Raptor Lake-P based NUC clone as soon as Intel revealed the parts. With the new platform, the company decided to split the product into 3 – NUC BOX-13x0P/D4 with DDR4 SODIMM slot slim version (without 2.5 inch drive support), NUC BOX with 2.5 inch drive Supported regular height version – 13x0P/D4, and a slightly tweaked version of the latter with DDR5 SODIMM slot on NUC BOX-13x0P/D5. The NUCS BOX-1360P is the company’s flagship product in the first category, and the relative maturity of DDR4-based platforms has allowed the product to enter the channel early.

ASRock Industrial provided NUCS BOX-1360P/D4 as a sample from the first production run. We were hoping for a series of upgrades with performance and power efficiency improvements.During the review process, we’ve seen some new/major Raptor Lake-P features that Intel didn’t bother to announce during the CES announcement. It turns out that the system can control some in-band ECC. This review provides a comprehensive look at the Raptor Lake-P’s feature set for desktop platforms, with detailed performance and power efficiency analysis for SFF PC workloads.

Introduction and product impressions

Intel’s Raptor Lake-P builds on Alder Lake-P and its heterogeneous processor architecture by moving to a more efficient manufacturing process. Unlike the desktop version, which has improved cache size per performance core and doubled the number of efficiency cores, the -P series offers a substantial improvement from the updated VF curve. This allowed Intel to increase the turbo clock for both core types for better performance and power efficiency. At the same time, it maintains the same nominal TDP of 28W as Alder Lake-P. There are also some I/O improvements, such as an additional he Thunderbolt 4 port and USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 support, but their adoption depends on the system manufacturer’s choice of other board components.

ASRock is a well-known vendor in the consumer PC market. In 2011, the company established his ASRock industrial business unit to focus on industrial motherboards. This division he branched out in 2018 as an independent vendor specializing in B2B products. The company has products for deployment in small business (office), automation, robotics, security, and other industrial/IoT applications. Primarily, the company develops motherboards and sells them to various system integrators who can offer their own added value. Additionally, the company sells mini PCs based on the motherboards it developed to retail channels. We previously took a closer look at the performance profiles of various ASRock industrial UCFF PCs, including the NUC BOX-1260P based on the Core i7-1260P Alder Lake-P processor.

The company provided us with a sample of the first Raptor Lake-P mini PC, the NUCS BOX-1360P/D4. This is basically the successor to his NUC BOX-1200 series, but not a complete replacement. NUC BOX-1200 series had dual LAN function, you could choose both HDMI and Display Port output, but in NUC BOX-1300 series, you can replace Display Port output with another HDMI port and use 1 of LAN port remove one.

The NUC BOX series uses a chassis that dates back to ASRock’s now-discontinued Beebox product line, but the NUCS BOX is a first for ASRock Industrial. Chassis height was reduced from 48mm to 38mm as there is no need to support 2.5″ drives. The original fingerprint magnet on top of the chassis has also been replaced with matte plastic. The relative distance between the motherboard and the top of the chassis remained the same. However, it has been changed (the height reduction is entirely on the underside where the 2.5″ drive caddy was located). All ASRock Industrial has done with the NUCS BOX-1300 series is a slight change in the I/O cutouts to accommodate the new boards.

The main focus of ASRock Industrial is our B2B customers. It’s no surprise that their system is packaged in a nondescript way. However, inside the package is everything the end user needs, including a VESA mount and related screws, an M.2 SSD mounting aid, a region-specific power cord, and a 90W power adapter.

ASRock Industrial sells mini PCs with minimal configuration, leaving the choice of RAM and SSD up to the end user. To install these components, from the underside of the unit he has to remove four screws, insert the SODIMM into the slot and screw the M.2 SSD in place. Note here that installing his M.2 SSD on the NUC BOX-1360P is much easier compared to the NUC BOX-1200 series. This is because the screw slots are directly on the board instead of another plastic tab. The chassis has intake holes on the sides and vents on the back for laptop-style blower fans to expel the air after it passes through the heat spreader.

For a complete comparison, I decided to use the same set of components used in my review of the NUC BOX-1260P. The NUCS BOX-1360P/D4 was equipped with 2x 32GB of ADATA XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite and Kingston FURY Impact DDR4-3200 SODIMM. The full specifications of the review sample (tested) are listed in the table below.

The next section provides an analysis of BIOS options and motherboard platforms. It also includes an overview of in-band ECC features that Intel neglected at launch. Following that are several sections focusing on various performance aspects with and without in-band ECC before concluding with an analysis of the system’s value proposition.