SimplyNUC Unveils Sequoia: AMD Ryzen V-Series-Based UCFF PC | Hacker News Reader

SimplyNUC Unveils Sequoia: AMD Ryzen V-Series-Based UCFF PC

anandtech.com

71 pointsNicoJuicy34 comments

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It was only 8 days ago that I mentioned what was missing for now with AMD... And why you would still buy Intel.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21471023

> I think why you want to buy a Intel now is:

- Laptop ( battery life is better on Intel CPU's), but AMD has this covered next Q.

- Intel NUC ( it's very practical )

- For Single core optimized applications ( eg. Some games) when you don't care about the total price at all. Intel's one core performance was better and support in games is lacking for a lot of cores. I think next Ryzen will handle this.

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Note: and Mozilla Rr software

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What has changed in those 8 days:

- Intel is doing security patches. Probably AMD will lead in single core performance.

And there are AMD NUC's now, with up to 64 gb. Memory.

This is absolutely nuts. I have never seen a hardware company execute in such a rapid succession with such great results. And have never seen this bad luck at a competitor.

It's also the first product I can buy, since I'm not looking for a replacement of my laptop/desktop currently. I was searching for a decent NUC for the last 2 months ( as diy docker host).

Well done AMD. Well done.

There will soon be a plethora of Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers selling NUC-sized things based on Ryzen instead of core i5/i7 CPUs. I've already seen some. Take a look on Newegg.

For the record, almost all big/respectable motherboard companies are also Taiwanese.

So basically, we are about to see some top quality ASUS AMD NUCs in a few months.

It's definitely cool.. though I do think an ITX build may make more sense unless you're actually mounting the NUC to something, since it's much lower performance, and the cost does feel a bit over-priced. Very cool all the same.

Aside, if you're doing a docker host, without doing kubernetes, take a look at dokku, definitely a favorite... `git push deploy` with a Dockerfile in the project root, for most of my one-off projects.

I mentioned 150-700€ range 9 days ago, so i totally agree that i'd like some cheaper variants ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21463162 )

Thanks for Dokku, had it already starred on Github, but didn't remember it ;) Will definately try it out!

I also have a 8x RPi 4 cluster, to learn Kubernetes. The AMD NUC would be a standalone Docker host though. Microservices in dot net core .... and experimentation :p

Yeah, dokku has been great for smaller/personal things, have a $15 droplet in DO configured. The lets-encrypt plugin is great and pretty straight forward. Easy-peasy deployments.

Been using Docker with .Net Core (and MS SQL Linux in Docker) for dev/testing for close over a year now, really nice for the most part. Though I still prefer Node over .Net Core. Next project will finally let me use it server-side (outside ci/cd orchestration).

We're in the same boat, loving cqrs and Events ( domain/Integration) right now.

Really underestimated it "it's the same as DDD, but just split up" was my previous opinion

I like the NUC form factor since I can mount it behind my monitor. Makes for a clean desktop.

You can mount some ITX cases.

Where did you read about the 64G option? The ones in the post max out at 32G.

I'm curious as well. Afaik, 32GB has been the documented max for both recent Ryzen Embedded as well as Intel NUC. Having said that, the Intel NUC (6th-8th) Gen can take advantage of 2 x 32GB SO-DIMM and I believe, I may have been the first to at least confirm this publicly [1].

I also recently did the same for an AMD M1000V system which I had shared [2] and will posting a blog post soon with more details on the unit which is similiar to the SimplyNUC Sequoia system.

[1] - https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2019/03/64gb-memory-on-the-i...

[2] - https://twitter.com/lamw/status/1194851757261611008

Here's the blog post[1] reviewing the ASRock M1000V

[1]- https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2019/11/hands-on-with-new-am...

there are 2 NUC, I saw it at the most expensive one

It's a good first effort, but I'd still give Intel the lead for now:

* No Thunderbolt (so forget about extending with eGPU) or even Type C.

* No HDMI.

* I wonder about the cooling. 90W is close to the high end in this form factor. Have had cases where older i7 NUCs shut down when the temp got too high. Did they get it right first time with AMD?

On the plus side, it comes with 2 NICs!

Given the I/O i think its clear the intended market is as an off the shelf digital signage box, but the dual NICs are a feature I hope makes it into any future consumer oriented Zen based NUC.

That being said I see no reason to ignore these if planning a homelab/micro compute cluster (chick-fil-a uses NUCs at the edge) besides perhaps the lower-ish spec CPUs.

What are the use cases for 2 NICs?

Using it as a router / NAT / firewall comes to my mind.

Failover for one, you can also bond the NICs to increase bandwidth to devices with faster network access, or other similar boxes with multiple NICs bonded

Beefy firewall is the first that comes to mind.

Build your own firewall.

I hope people realize these are 1st-generation Zen CPUs that are Not Very Fast(tm), not the respectable Zen2 parts you've been reading good things about. AMD's marketing is very confusing right now. There are not any Zen2 APUs.

So it looks like the pricing for the higher end version is around $775 USD.

Here's a comparison of a high-end Intel NUC CPU https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Core-i7-8559U-vs-...

This might be a better comparison - from a $750 Intel NUC https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-Embedded-V160...

Would have to look closer at the other attributes of each NUC to make a really good determination, but the Intel chips look to be higher performers, if not by a wide margin.

EDIT: My bad - didn't read the above article closely enough. The Sequoia v8 comes with a Ryzen V1807B (not a V1605B) as found in my comparisons above. See the reply below for better links.

Pricing for the v8 is identical to the NUC7i7DN. v6 is identical to NUC7i5DN.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-Embedded-V180...

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-Embedded-V160...

Zen 1s are plenty fast. They're just not as fast as Zen 2s. The first generation 32 core Threadripper was the fastest CPU in the world when it was released, and that wasn't that long ago.

They are not very competitive for the price. They are about 50% slower than same-priced quad core Core i3 CPUs on Chrome Octane 2 benchmarks, 25% slower on video encoding, etc. AMD is free-riding the good reviews of their latest parts by giving these APUs very similar model numbers. In reality these are obsolete parts.

How does this compare to things like a DeskMini A300? https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/DeskMini%20A300%20Series/

The DeskMini has a full blown AM4 socket, meaning you can drop in any of their desktop processors (mostly limited to their apu's, though, if you want to use those video outputs). These nucs use low power version of ryzen chips more akin to intels xeon-d lineup. The chip and IO choices make it clear these aren't intended for the desktop market for the most part, but for a small dev/home cluster could be drop in replacement for NUCs, especially given the dual NICs. I'm considering replacing an intel bassed homelab with them currently.

Alas, the A300 won't even boot headless with a non-APU: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/bk3nui/has_anybody_tri...

Re: the general idea of smallish, headless Ryzen boxes for a cluster, Intel kind of blurs the server vs. consumer distinction with the entry-level Xeon E chips, and I can sort of imagine a similar-shaped niche for low-end AMD servers. There's some ECC functionality in the Ryzen silicon (https://www.overclock3d.net/news/cpu_mainboard/amd_confirms_...), and although the PCIe/RAM capacity isn't near EPYC's, seems like enough for the price to be interesting to somebody.

OK thanks. But the form factor is close to the NUCs and the price for these systems is only about $425 total so couldn't the DeskMini actually replace the NUCs?

Yeah for sure, the size difference is borderline negligible depending on the application, and the Asrock boxes pack a ton more features.

If the intended use is as a low spec desktop/dev machine the DeskMini would fit the bill well. That being said in an application like mine, having three fit into 1U of rack space, not only are the DeskMini's too large, but they also dont have dual NICs.

> Serial RS-232/Serial RS-485 video outputs,

As a formal columnist, later editor the sloppiness of such writing / editing is downright painful

The author of the article is already well known among AnandTech readers for this type of copy/pasta articles with glaring errors and little to no proof reading and fact checking. Take this article for example where a month and a half later the table still states stuff like 3x32GB=128GB, 4x32GB=256GB [0].

[0] https://www.anandtech.com/show/14964/gskill-launches-32-gb-d...

The serial ports make me feel very Zentronic. Besides that:

[1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/video-display-terminal [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_terminal

So not entirely incorrect ;-)

Tranquil PC make an USFF PC [1][2] with the same AMD Ryzen V1605B CPU as the Sequoia v6. It's a little bit more expensive, but has four DisplayPort 1.2 outputs and is completely fanless.

[1] https://www.quietpc.com/tranquilpc-mmdpc-001-v1605b

[2] https://tranquilpcshop.co.uk/mini-multi-display-pc-v1605b/

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