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Asus PN50 4700U review

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The Asus PN50 is a NUC-sized mini PC based on AMD’s Renoir mobile platform. The PN50 is available in four configurations ranging from a Ryzen 3 4300U (4C/4T) to Ryzen 7 4800U (8C/16T).

I am not made of money and the 4800U commands an extreme premium for less than extreme additional performance over the 4700U (8C/8T), so I ordered the 4700U. I pre-ordered the 4700U in August for 370£ (408€) from Amazon UK (EU prices were 🤪).

Due to reasons which were never well communicated by Asus or Amazon, the release date of the product was delayed several times from early September 2020 until mid-October 2020.

tl;dr – The PN50 with the Ryzen 7 4700U offers a lot of computing power for the size and power budget, and offers a healthy amount of IO. If you are in the market for a NUC-sized PC, you would be remiss if you did not consider the PN50. The 4700U offers impressive performance, beating an i9-8950HK at one third the power.

The PN50 is sold as a barebones system, although some retailers offer it as a bundle with RAM and an SSD if you prefer overpaying for someone else installing 3 socketed components.

In the box:

  • Asus PN50
  • 19V power supply (65W for 4300/4500U, 90W for 4700/4800U)
  • IEC 60320 “mickey mouse” power cable
  • VESA mount
  • Screws for mounting the 2.5″ hard drive, M.2 SSD, and VESA mount
  • User’s guide and driver CDROM

Typical reviews are full of benchmarks (both CPU and GPU), but I want to provide my own perspective on the system so the benchmark section will be brief.

Renoir eats Intel’s mobile offers for lunch. The newest Intel system I have access to is an XPS 15 (9570) laptop with an Intel Core i9-8950HK.

Ryzen 7 4700U (Asus PN50) versus Intel Core i9-8950HK (XPS 15″ 9570)

The PN50 with Ryzen 7 4700U scores 10% higher in single-threaded performance and 12% higher in multi-core performance. The 8950HK is not the latest from Intel, but it’s still incredibly impressive that the Ryzen 7 4700U delivers superior performance at one third the power (i9-8950HK: 45W TDP; Ryzen 7 4700U: 15W TDP).

Looking at the internals of the Asus PN50, it seems that the configurable port that Asus offers on the rear is achieved by the use of a ribbon cable to a daughterboard:

DisplayPort daughterboard in the Asus PN50

On all retail units that I have seen for sale thus far, the port is configured as a full size DisplayPort. The Asus website shows DisplayPort, RS-232, VGA, and RJ-45 options under the configurable port. I don’t know if Asus ever plans to sell the FPC and daughterboards separately or if they will only be available as BTO options.

There is an FPC connector present for the secondary network (or RS-232) interface, as well as another FPC connector present for an M.2 carrier (though it isn’t clear what interface the M.2 card would use):

Unused FPC connectors for secondary LAN and M.2 card

Removing the metal guide for the bottom of the internal chassis is simple, only 4 Philips screws, and two cables (one for 2.5″ SATA connector and one for the micro SD reader):

Removing the bottom of the internal chassis is straightforward

Removing the plastic rear IO shield is also easily accomplished, as there are only 6 plastic retention clips and only 3 need to be released to remove it:

Clips to remove the plastic rear IO shield
Rear view of the PN50 with plastic IO shield removed

Unfortunately, I was unable to determine how you remove the motherboard from the chassis.

Here is the output of lspci with an NVMe SSD installed:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir Root Complex
00:00.2 IOMMU: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir IOMMU
00:01.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:01.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir PCIe GPP Bridge
00:02.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:02.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir PCIe GPP Bridge
00:02.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir PCIe GPP Bridge
00:02.3 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir PCIe GPP Bridge
00:08.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
00:08.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir Internal PCIe GPP Bridge to Bus
00:08.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir Internal PCIe GPP Bridge to Bus
00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SMBus Controller (rev 51)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH LPC Bridge (rev 51)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir Device 24: Function 0
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir Device 24: Function 1
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir Device 24: Function 2
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir Device 24: Function 3
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir Device 24: Function 4
00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir Device 24: Function 5
00:18.6 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir Device 24: Function 6
00:18.7 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir Device 24: Function 7
01:00.0 USB controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1042A USB 3.0 Host Controller
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 0e)
02:00.1 Serial controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 816a (rev 0e)
02:00.2 Serial controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 816b (rev 0e)
02:00.3 IPMI Interface: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 816c (rev 0e)
02:00.4 USB controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 816d (rev 0e)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (rev 1a)
04:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981/PM983
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Renoir (rev c2)
05:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Device 1637
05:00.2 Encryption controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 17h (Models 10h-1fh) Platform Security Processor
05:00.3 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir USB 3.1
05:00.4 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Renoir USB 3.1
05:00.5 Multimedia controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor (rev 01)
05:00.6 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 17h (Models 10h-1fh) HD Audio Controller
05:00.7 Signal processing controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Raven/Raven2/Renoir Sensor Fusion Hub
06:00.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 81)
06:00.1 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 81)

Here is the output of lsusb:

Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 8087:0029 Intel Corp. 
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0bda:0129 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTS5129 Card Reader Controller
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Unfortunately the micro SDXC card reader is only connected via USB 2.0, and the maximum read speed I was able to obtain using a UHS-1 class card was 41MB/s.

This is disappointing as UHS SD cards are frequently capable of read speeds in excess of 100MB/s and Asus appears to have cost-optimized the SDXC card reader here by going with an older USB2.0 design.

I will give a brief overview of the BIOS, but suffice to say it’s pretty basic with no advanced functionality. But first, the pretty Asus splash screen:

Much incredible, so Renoir

The Main summary is quite basic, and seems to have a bug where the M.2 SSD is shown as Not Present even when installed. The bug is present in both 0409 and 0416 releases.

Summary screen of Asus PN50 0416 BIOS

Despite the Main page stating Not Present, an installed NVMe device is visible under Advanced > NVMe Configuration

The Monitor view offers a summary of system temperatures, CPU Vcore, and fan speed. You can select the fan profile as well.

NVMe temperature is present here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The included EzFlash utility makes updating firmware easy, simply extract the ZIP archive containing the firmware update and put the CAP file on a FAT formatted USB device.

EzFlash: Select the update file from your USB device
Updating the firmware requires a few minutes but is otherwise painless

There seems to be a bug where you are prompted to save settings before entering the utility, and selecting No prevents you from entering EzFlash.

MCTP Configuration, DASH Configuration, and Serial Port Console Redirection are all options added in BIOS 0416 that were not present in BIOS 0409.

Advanced menu of BIOS 0416

Thus far, it seems there is no option to select a temporary boot device from the main splash screen, you must first enter BIOS and then navigate to the Boot menu. It would be nice if Asus added the option to select a temporary boot device to the splash screen in a future release.

BIOS boot menu

I had no issues with 64GB of Mushkin RAM running at 3200MHz on BIOS 0409 or BIOS 0416. The PN50 ran 4 passes of Memtest86 (BIOS 0409) without any errors.

Sadly Asus offers no option to set the cTDP at 15W or 25W. From what I’ve read, the cTDP should be set to 15W in the PN50, though I am not sure how to verify this is actually the case. It would be nice if Asus offered the option to set the cTDP at 15W or 25W, though perhaps their thermal design would not accommodate that.

I have only had my PN50 for about a week, but initial impressions are quite good. It is not overly loud and performance is quite frankly amazing for the 15W TDP.

I am really excited to use the PN50 to accelerate the time consuming tasks I have now, such as buildroot make clean && make. For someone who has been using a Xeon E3-1220v3 and Xeon E5-2620v2 for compiling, the Ryzen 7 4700U is stupidly fast and sips power. It even embarrasses the Intel i9-8950HK in the XPS 15, which is a top-spec laptop from just 2 years ago.

I am excited and cannot wait to see what Cezanne brings in 2021. Hopefully Asus see fit to update their mini PC offering for future AMD platforms.

CompuLab fitlet2 review

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Introduction
The CompuLab fitlet2 is a new model in their fitlet series. The new fitlet2 switches from AMD to Intel’s Apollo Lake SoCs. My unit has the Intel Atom x7-E3950.

First we should discuss the elephant in the room, the fitlet2 is quite small. Here is the fitlet2 compared to a standard 3.5″ hard drive:

Disclaimer: My unit was provided by CompuLab to evaluate its potential as a target for coreboot, and to poke at their firmware (?). I received no compensation for this review, apart from the gratis hardware, and CompuLab did not have any input or influence on the review except to clarify my questions.

In the box
The fitlet2 is quite minimal, in the box you have:

  1. fitlet2
  2. 12V 3A power supply with plugs for AU/EU/UK/US
  3. Small sheet of information (FCC certification, manual download, etc)

There are no other cables or accessories included in the box.

CompuLab use a small form factor port for RS-232, so if you plan to use the onboard RS-232 port, you will need to remember to order the accessory cables package during checkout.

I found the lack of rubber feet a bit strange. The bottom case is slightly elevated thanks to some protruding metal at each corner, but without the rubber feet the device is very slippery on most surfaces. It would be nice if CompuLab included rubber feet in the box that you could apply if you wanted to put the device on your desk.

Hardware

  • Intel Apollo Lake SoC: Atom x5-E3930, Celeron J3455, or Atom x7-E3950
  • Up to 16GB DDR3L-1866 Non-ECC (single SODIMM)
  • M.2 SATA storage
  • M.2 NGFF for WiFi or cellular modem
  • Dual Intel Gigabit Ethernet interfaces (Intel i211)
  • HDMI 1.4b and mini DisplayPort 1.2 outputs supporting 4K resolution
  • Two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports
  • MicroSD card reader
  • 3.5mm Audio in/out

The CPU in the fitlet2 is low-end. I personally don’t feel there’s any point in trying to talk up the capabilities of the Intel Atom series because they weren’t designed for performance. The Atom specializes as a low power CPU, with the Atom x5-E3930 consuming 6.5W, the Celeron J3455 consuming 10W, and the Atom x7-E3950 consuming up to 12W.

However, there are other areas where the fitlet2 surprises, such as the ability to accept a 16GB SODIMM. The Atom x5-E3930 and x7-E3950 also support ECC memory, although CompuLab confirmed that to offer the Celeron J3455 version they’ve removed ECC support from the motherboard. Be sure to check the fitlet2 RAM Qualified Vendor List (QVL) before purchasing.

Somewhat disappointingly, 4K@60Hz is not supported on both display outputs. This is an Intel Apollo Lake limitation, and will hopefully be resolved in their next generation SKUs. If you want to use 4K@60Hz via HDMI, you’ll need to buy an active adapter to convert the mini DisplayPort output to HDMI 2.0. DisplayPort MST is supported, so you can daisy chain DisplayPort MST capable displays. Unfortunately in my testing I was not able to daisy chain any combination of 4K displays. Daisy chaining two 1080p displays functioned normally. HDMI also functions while DisplayPort MST is active, so in my testing I was able to have three simultaneous 1080p displays driven by the fitlet2. I only have two 4K capable displays, so I’m not able to test all possible display combinations.

The micro SD reader is a nice inclusion, however the slot is so recessed in the front panel I found it impossible to insert or eject a micro SD card with my fingers. I ended up using another SD card to gently push the micro SD into the slot. Even with this helper, I found it difficult to insert and remove the micro SD card. This experience convinced me that if you’re going to use a micro SD card frequently with the fitlet2, an external reader is a must. If your plan is to use the micro SD as expandable storage that is rarely removed, then I don’t think that would be an issue.

My unit came with 4GB of RAM and a 64GB M.2 SATA SSD installed. The M.2 SSD (2242) in my unit is the Kingspec NT-64.

I have been using Kingspec SSDs in low performance applications (such as firewalls) since the beginning of 2017 and haven’t experienced any failures or issues, so while they’re relatively unknown in the West I don’t think they’re necessarily a bad choice. If you want to add a name brand M.2 SSD such as Transcend or ADATA you would probably be better off to buy the barebones model and add the SSD yourself.

The stock model only accepts 7-20V DC input. CompuLab does offer a build-to-order (BTO) version of the fitlet2 which accepts 9-36V DC input.

Software
CompuLab isn’t currently shipping the fitlet2 with any OS. But since the fit-iot website shows a render of the case in the Linux Mint colour scheme, it’s possible they will introduce a bundle with Linux Mint in the future as they have done with past products like the MintBox 2.

I do plan to test Linux, BSD, and Windows 10 IoT on the fitlet2. However I decided to wait on performing any extensive testing or benchmarks until patches for Meltdown and Spectre are available for all the above operating systems. Thoroughly evaluating an OS takes some time, so it may take me some months to get around to reviewing the fitlet2 with the above operating systems (and I have other projects in my pipeline too).

I’m also waiting to hear back from CompuLab on whether they plan to include support for Secure Boot. While some people are against Secure Boot, I think including the option to enable it and letting the user define their own keys would be a wise idea. For hardware intended to be installed in an industrial scenario and left unattended for years in the field, cryptographic verification of the entire boot process is vital to maintaining endpoint security.

Xubuntu 17.10 installs and runs nicely on the fitlet2. Average power consumption at the desktop is around 4.5W. There does appear to be a minor issue with Xubuntu not fully powering off the fitlet2, which CompuLab is aware of and will hopefully be resolved soon.

Conclusion
The fitlet2 is not the smallest x86 platform available (that honour would probably go to the Intel Compute Stick), but certainly offers a lot of I/O and expansion options for its diminutive size.

The fitlet2 is similar, though slightly less I/O rich, to the PC Engines APU2 (Quad Core, 2/4GB RAM, 3x GigE, 3x mPCIe, SD reader) while offering more convenient interfaces like HDMI and DisplayPort for people who don’t live in a 115200 baud world.

The dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces would make it ideal as a low power firewall or an IoT gateway. Triple display support (DisplayPort MST & HDMI) out of the box could also see the fitlet2 used to power an informational or advertising display. Given CompuLab’s “IoT” marketing for the fitlet2, maybe there will even be a LoRaWAN FACET module available at some point in the future?

For consumers interested in an inexpensive, low power, and fanless PC, the fitlet2 is also functional as a desktop or a small server. It supports multiple displays and has USB3.0, but don’t expect miracles from the CPU or GPU. Worth noting is the stock model doesn’t support WiFi, though there are many inexpensive USB to WiFi adapters which are compatible with Linux and Windows, should you wish to add WiFi later. The fitlet2 also lacks USB Type-C which is supported by Apollo Lake and is slowly becoming more mainstream.

The fitlet2 comes with CompuLab’s standard 5 year return to depot warranty, but CompuLab also offers the Atom x5/x7 models with an extended 15 year availability. This is an important consideration for business customers who want stability in their supply chain or plan to develop and support long-lived products with the fitlet2 (e.g. CNC controllers, PLC applications, IoT gateway).

With barebone models starting from $154 I think the fitlet2 offers good value for the price. I feel CompuLab have a good offering here for the industrial segment as the fitlet2 is much more affordable than previous CompuLab products like the Intense PC, and competing products from companies like Logic Supply.