Tiny Ryzen sbc thoughts ?   (DFI GHF51) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: GrandTheftAuto4life
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2020, 11:49:13 am
content: https://www.dfi.com/product/index/1455Hackster writes:QuoteItis available on DFI-ITOX store for $378And in-depth review can be found here:https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/06/11/dfi-ryzen-embedded-r1606g-sbc-review-part-2-windows-10-enterprise-ltsc/I think this looks cool personally.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2020, 06:27:22 pm
content: It's cool, but all of these Ryzen boards have the problem of being too expensive. You can buy a much more capable machine fir similar money. Of course there's the form factor but that's a lot of money for just that.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2020, 11:40:31 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on August 10, 2020, 06:27:22 pmFor example?

author: mikerj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2020, 12:54:20 pm
content: Quote from: olkipukki on August 12, 2020, 11:40:31 amAny number of desktop PCs. As Mr Scram says you are paying for the form factor here.

author: RenThraysk
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2020, 04:27:35 pm
content: It's powerful little board for sure, but agree the prices of these AMD Ryzen Embedded boards are high.Sapphire's embedded boards have more connectivity, but still in the higher price bracket Eghttps://www.sapphiretech.com/en/commercial/ipc-fp5v-1geCan get a lot of desktop for $400.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2020, 09:37:08 am
content: Quote from: mikerj on August 12, 2020, 12:54:20 pmDo you think mentioned OP's board and an embedded Ryzen in general target same applications as "desktop PC"?

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2020, 09:38:28 am
content: Quote from: RenThraysk on August 12, 2020, 04:27:35 pmWhat do you recon CPU alone cost in a low quantities?

author: RenThraysk
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2020, 10:44:28 am
content: Here's a few with prices from AVNEThttps://www.avnet.com/shop/emea/search/ryzen%20embedded

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2020, 12:16:28 pm
content: Geez 300€ for a 4 core Ryzen SOC.Over 5 years ago i bought a Intel i7 4790K for slightly more than that(In just regular retail brand new). And back then this was the fastest stock 4 core x86 CPU in the world (Both in multithreaded and singlethreaded benchmarks). This was even back when AMD was out of the picture and Intel could charge whatever they want.But hey i suppose the embedded market is probably very different than the consumer market.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2020, 03:51:46 pm
content: Quote from: olkipukki on August 13, 2020, 09:37:08 amWho cares? A small regular motherboard and competent CPU has a massive overlap with this board. You need to have quite specific requirements to make this worthwhile. If it'd cost half what it costs there are much more sensible use cases. Don't forget there also are competing Intel offerings which are usually somewhat less powerful but also a lot cheaper. At this price I just don't see the angle, other than a few edge cases.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2020, 03:55:52 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on August 13, 2020, 12:16:28 pmAMD currently offers 4 core 8 thread CPUs that'll beat the pants off of almost all Intel offerings with similar core counts for around $100. AMDs competition has changed the market significantly, which is why these boards seem to be comparatively expensive.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2020, 04:38:29 pm
content: Quote from: GrandTheftAuto4life on August 10, 2020, 11:49:13 amWhile it sounds a fair bit more powerful than a Pi 4 I am struggling to think of a use-case where a Pi 4 (for 1/4 of the price) would not do just as well.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 12:56:08 pm
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on August 13, 2020, 04:38:29 pmMedia center, although it's not that hard to hide a full ATX board behind a TV. Really, someone should make a smart TV that just uses a standard PC motherboard to make upgrades trivial.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 01:04:52 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on August 14, 2020, 12:56:08 pmThere are computers out there that fit onto a VESA mount, so you can actually stick it to the back of a TV if you wanted.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 05:37:56 pm
content: ARM ones are better suited for media center use.On the cheap end,La Frite(Amlogic S805X, $20); seeLinux-Mesonfor the hardware capability details. The support is being mainlined to the Linux kernel proper, so users won't be beholden to integrator patches/support.On the more expensive end, you have Le Potato (Amlogic S905, $35 - currently sold out except for the $50 2GB model),Odroid-C4(Amlogic S905X3, $50),Odroid XU4(Samsung Exynos 5422, $50), andOdroid-N2(Amlogic S922X, $63-$79). The Amlogic ones are supported by LibreELEC AFAIK, and all Odroids have good support in standard ARM Debian and Ubuntu distros.If one wanted to make their own software, usempvas the media player, use the correct accelerated driver (in mpv config), andvideo-sync=display-resamplefor jitterless smooth playback. All these can run Android, too, if you prefer that.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 06:57:37 pm
content: Or you can just run Kodi (former XBMC) on any Linux machine, be it x86 or ARM. Does everything you would expect a media center to do and has lots of skins and plugins to make it work the way you want.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 07:28:35 pm
content: (LibreELEC is a minimal OS one can use to run Kodi on top of. Or you can use Debian or Ubuntu. Kodi is just the userspace application. I was describing the lower layers, and showing examples of cheap-ish Linux SBCs with good software support. Having good upstream kernel support for the SBC and the graphics chip mean you can run any stuff on it: Kodi, or even a full-fledged accelerated Xorg. You don't want to have to run the SBC manufacturers kernels and images, because they won't maintain them for long.)

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 09:33:52 pm
content: A relatively high end x86 small format industrial SBC for 400$ and you people are complaining about the price?The premium for industrial SBCs compared to consumer hardware used to be a whole lot higher than that.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 10:24:15 pm
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on August 13, 2020, 04:38:29 pmWell, you don't have to deal with Broadcom, so that's an advantage..

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2020, 12:49:19 am
content: Quote from: Marco on August 14, 2020, 09:33:52 pmWhat's industrial about this? You see that term used a lot, but in a lot of cases it just means they ask a comparatively large amount of money without anything backing their moniker up. Is it additionally certified in any way?

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2020, 01:03:43 am
content: Form factor, power supply, engineering support, fanless temperature range etc.They've been targeting industrial customers for 10 years, they'd have run out of money by now if they couldn't find them.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2020, 01:11:59 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on August 14, 2020, 05:37:56 pmUnless you also want more than retro gaming.

author: RenThraysk
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2020, 03:21:43 pm
content: Best (guess/untested) use case I can think of for the DFI board is adding a camera and doing something computer vision related with OpenCV.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2020, 04:12:14 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on August 15, 2020, 01:11:59 amI don't think you know what 'retro' means. Hint: If a game runs on non-Windows systems, it does not necessarily have to be 'retro'.What you mean, is that if you want to play Windows games, you have to have a Windows machine. 'Retro' has nothing to do with it.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2020, 07:31:26 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on August 15, 2020, 04:12:14 pmSomething that needs better graphics than what current affordable ARM boards can do. Steam runs on Linux but I suspect most of the games won't be playable on a Pi.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2020, 12:50:56 pm
content: I really don't know what Raspberry Pi can do, but La Frite has Mali-450 ("utgard") and Odroid-N2 Mali-G52 ("bifrost") graphics; the others are between the two. (I don't know enough of gaming, since I'm not really interested in it, to give proper comparisons to common hardware and consoles, so I'll just do a quick overview.)Mali-450was released in 2012, supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenGL VS 1.1, including geometry and pixel shaders; with hardware MPEG2, MPEG4, and VC9 decoding up to 1080p60 resolution. It does not match discrete PC graphics cards, but other than not having OpenCL support, roughly matches built-in Intel/AMD graphics from a few (say, 5-8) years back. The maximum accelerated resolution is the bottleneck for Mali-450 (1920x1080, 60Hz progressive/non-interlaced).Mali-G52was released in 2018, and supports Vulkan 1.0/1.1, OpenGL ES 1.1 to 3.2, OpenGL VS 1.1, and OpenCL 2.0 (full profile). I do believe hardware decoding goes up to 4k×2k@60fps, but am not 100% sure. I believe it is on par with integrated Intel/AMD graphics on laptops, but again, I don't do gaming, so that's just a rough estimate, others may disagree.I do know that a lot of people use ARM-based Linux SBCs for running MAME and other emulators, so perhaps that was where the 'retro' comes from, but the hardware is actually quite capable.The DFI GHF51 has AMD Radeon Vega 3 graphics. I foundthis RX Vega 3 review, with aMali G-52 reviewon the same site, that says that their 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited Graphics Score 1280x720 offscreen are 80755 and 23875, respectively; GFXBench Manhattan Onscreen OGL onscreen 25.5fps and 38fps; and GFXBench Car Chase Onscreen 21.3fps and 15fps. I have no idea if these tell anything, though.I do believeXonoticruns fine in Linux on these SBCs, although the installation is a "hack" (you install the engine, then just dump the game files in a subdirectory, and launch the engine pointing it to the new game files). I haven't played it myself, butdarkplaces, the underlying game engine, is available for both armhf and arm64 architectures in Ubuntu (and Debian, I guess).More importantly, the Odroids have Android images (I'm not sure if the La Frite one is available), and Android being derived from the Linux kernel, does have the same hardware acceleration support. So, I'd say that if you like to play games, you should check if the games you like are available on Steam for Android, and if yes, do an Android-based SBC media center for yourself. If you don't play games, but like Kodi, or like messing with Linux SBCs, do a Linux (LibreELEC or Debian/Ubuntu) -based media center. If you want to play Windows games, do an x86-64 based media center, running Windows on it.(I hope you can see why I objected to the 'retro' term in this context. If one does want to play non-Steam, non-free games, Windowsispretty much the only option for a self-built gaming computer / media center machine. However, there are lots of non-retro games out there, although the selection is only a tiny fraction of the size of the Windows games pool. The Android/Steam selection is way bigger than the free Linux/online HTML5 games, though. It can sound odd using your media center to play "mobile" or "web" games, but there's really no reason not to, except possibly having to mount your TV vertically for some games, I guess.)

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2020, 05:22:05 pm
content: Quote from: RenThraysk on August 13, 2020, 10:44:28 amIf you have noticed, OPs board use R1606G, so YE1606xxx cost approx 1/3 of the mentioned price in a low quantities.That's not too bad in total BOM cost of the product and shows how little a skim is there.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2020, 05:28:52 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on August 13, 2020, 03:51:46 pmNobody?Quote from: Mr. Scram on August 13, 2020, 03:51:46 pmHow come? Where is it?Quote from: Mr. Scram on August 13, 2020, 03:51:46 pmAs far as now we have following here:- "Any number of desktop PCs"- "Intel offerings"- "A small regular motherboard and competent CPU "Is it right time to be more specific?

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2020, 10:00:42 pm
content: The first and the last are self explanatory. Add a few components together at your favourite hardware site and hey presto. Examples of somewhat less powerful SBCs are the Seed Odyssey, LattePanda's offerings or any of the other hits that turn up when you Google "Windows SBC". Let me know if you need help with any other basic tasks.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2020, 01:14:33 am
content: You do not only pay extra for the small form factor.You also pay extra for "industrial" part, which consists of extended temperature range, tighter process control during manufacturing (maybe underfilled IC's, etc) long term availability of parts and other factors.About "media center" stuff, if you want "flat", it may be a good option to take the mobo out of an old (not too old) laptop. Such a flat mobo should be easy to hide behind a big flatscreen.I've been looking of buying a new (to me) pc. One of the options I looked at was to buy a 2nd hand Intel in the price range of around EUR300. For that money you have a box with 8GB of RAM and a passmark rating of between 4000 and 5000. This is similar to a Ryzen 3000G + 8GB + Mobo + SSD + Power Supply + empty box. All brand new, and you have much more choice about what hardware you buy.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2020, 01:52:27 am
content: Quote from: Doctorandus_P on August 19, 2020, 01:14:33 amThat's what I asked about before but very little of it seems to be quantified. Support is longish so that's good. Temperature range is 0-60C which is nothing special. I don't see anything which indicates special process control, qualification or anything else which makes the "industrial" moniker more substantial.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2020, 02:25:52 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on August 19, 2020, 01:52:27 amIf the 60C figure is ambient operating, that's a very big deal. Most motherboards are only rated for up to 40C ambient operating at most.

author: RenThraysk
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2020, 12:12:18 pm
content: Quote from: Doctorandus_P on August 19, 2020, 01:14:33 amFor media center stuff, AMD Ryzen 4000 mobile CPU based mini PCs are supposedly coming next month. Scan.co.uk has mid September ETA for ASUS's PN50.The AMD Ryzen 3 4300U barebone is around EUR300 but no SSD or memory. But looks like it outperforms the 3000G (7700 passmark), with lower TDP, two more cores, and comes with VESA mounting.