Asrock Beebox-S 6200 Review: An affordable book-sized HTPC

[Steve]

Those on the hunt for an affordable book-sized HTPC will have likely come across the impressive Asrock Beebox. Released around this time last year, we reviewed the dual-core Celeron N3000 model which goes for about $125; bring memory and storage to the table and you have a complete HTPC solution and respectable PC for less than $200 (not including software). In other words, the Beebox is a very cost effective solution albeit a tad underpowered.

Meet the new Asrock Beebox-S. The ‘S’ stands for Skylake, powered by a Core i5-6200U, we expect it to provide quite a step up over the previous Beebox N3000. There are other upgrades as well. Support for DDR4 memory rather than DDR3L, and the old mSATA port has been replaced with a high-speed PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot. Peripheral connectivity has also been greatly improved. USB 3.1 Type-C is now on offer and 4K is supported at 60Hz thanks to the inclusion of HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.4.

The price for the Core i5 Beebox is $320 for the barebone system - around 50% cheaper than the Intel Skull Canyon though the NUC is definitely the faster option. In terms of value, the Beebox-S has a few things on its side apart. It can be paired with a 2.5” SSD which means there are considerably more options available and most of them significantly more cost effective.

Read the complete review.

 

[Blacksun]

I think that Beebox-S, the 'S' just like Posche 911 Carrera S.

 

[FranX2016]

I bought into the hype for the Beebox N3000 last year and it was a big disappointment.

BAREBONE ASROCK | BEEBOX N3000/B R 1 $129.99
Installed: Mushkin Enhanced Atlas Series 240GB Mini-SATA (mSATA) MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MKNSSDAT240GB-DX
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 16GB (2 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3L 1600 (PC3L 12800) Laptop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-16GRSL

Contacted ASRock support and was told to set performance to Sport and that I had installed the wrong memory and storage to get the best out of it.

It is just a paperweight now.

 

[Steve]

I bought into the hype for the Beebox N3000 last year and it was a big disappointment.

BAREBONE ASROCK | BEEBOX N3000/B R 1 $129.99
Installed: Mushkin Enhanced Atlas Series 240GB Mini-SATA (mSATA) MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MKNSSDAT240GB-DX
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 16GB (2 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3L 1600 (PC3L 12800) Laptop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-16GRSL

Contacted ASRock support and was told to set performance to Sport and that I had installed the wrong memory and storage to get the best out of it.

It is just a paperweight now.

I don't really follow. What is the issue? Performance? Did you benchmark it to see if your results were in line with the various reviews on the Internet?

 

[Phr3d]

Hey Steve, thanks for reviewing the latest iteration of the NUC (complete with SSD cable issues, year after year, lol)

I -do- realize that it's a lot to ask, but if you could mention its ability (or Not) regarding installing a fresh win7 install, or simply Moving an old win7 install for the processor/connectivity benefits against a pretty small upgrade price, I know of one or two readers that have tried the W10-juggernaught and found that it didn't Quite fit the bill for them.
As this is Not a performance device, if Win7 were Allowed to work (I'm -still- trying to find why I cannot ghost my present Win7, creates a broken install) I'm humbly offering that this info, if you can fit it into the time-space, would be appreciated and valuable. USB3 is obviously a Problem (the reason many kits still include a USB2, for the experts that wonder about that), but doable with a little effort.

Thanks for the NUC-ish attention, regardless -- quiet and good enuf is exactly that, good enuf for a few customers that read here.

OT -- can you tell me what happened to the Ignore User button? Thank You!

 

[zztopless]

The size and performance given said size is impressive, NUCs seems to be coming into their own.

Also and a bit off-topice, that Red Bull loos like some type of extreme Monza spec - no wings at all!

 

[axiomatic13]

I'm sure the guts of this PC are fine. But I prefer the cool blue white black drawings of the machine more than this glossy turd that is in the real pictures.

 

[Blacksun]

I'm sure the guts of this PC are fine. But I prefer the cool blue white black drawings of the machine more than this glossy turd that is in the real pictures.

The photo quality is not good enough. I don't know if it is possible to improve.

 

[FranX2016]

I don't really follow. What is the issue? Performance? Did you benchmark it to see if your results were in line with the various reviews on the Internet?

I purchased it because of the few reviews I found online about it---bought the storage and memory based on one of the reviews---but it performs worse than my 6 year old Toshiba laptop[at the time]. Wasn't expecting a high end computer, but something to replace laptop. BTW, replaced laptop hhd with ssd and upgraded to Windows 10 and the laptop performs better now.

 

[Aaron Jones]

TechSpot Editors:

One of your encoding graphs says that higher is better, but it is in fact a time-to-complete-task graph. It should say lower is better. Also, your power consumption graph says it pulled 49 Watts under full CPU and GPU load, but you also state in the introduction that the power input is 12V 3A (only 36W).