ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-1360P/D5 Review: Raptor Lake-P on the Leading Edge

HTPC Credentials

The 2022 Q4 update to our system reviews brings an updated HTPC evaluation suite for systems. After doing away with the evaluation of display refresh rate stability and Netflix streaming evaluation, the local media playback configurations have also seen a revamp. This section details each of the workloads processed on the ASRock NUC BOX-1360P/D5 as part of the HTPC suite.

YouTube Streaming Efficiency

YouTube continues to remain one of the top OTT platforms, primarily due to its free ad-supported tier. Our HTPC test suite update retains YouTube streaming efficiency evaluation as a metric of OTT support in different systems. Mystery Box's Peru 8K HDR 60FPS video is the chosen test sample. On PCs running Windows, it is recommended that HDR streaming videos be viewed using the Microsoft Edge browser after putting the desktop in HDR mode.

YouTube Streaming Statistics - Normal Mode

YouTube Streaming Statistics - Performance Mode

The GPU in ASRock NUC BOX-1360P/D5 supports hardware decoding of VP9 Profile 2, and we see the stream encoded with that codec being played back. The streaming is perfect in both the normal and performance modes, thanks to the powerful GPU and hardware decoding support - the few dropped frames observed in the statistics below are due to mouse clicks involved in bringing up the overlay.

The streaming efficiency-related aspects such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption are also graphed below.

YouTube Streaming Efficiency - Normal Mode

YouTube Streaming Efficiency - Performance Mode

The normal mode configuration is one of the most energy efficient playback segments we have seen in our labs, tying with the Panther Canyon NUC and the Akasa Newton TN. Despite the higher PL1 numbers and constantly running fan, the performance mode is also better off in energy numbers compared to the rest of the considered systems.

Hardware-Accelerated Encoding and Decoding

The transcoding benchmarks in the systems performance section presented results from evaluating the QuickSync encoder within Handbrake's framework. The capabilities of the decoder engine are brought out by DXVAChecker.

Video Decoding Hardware Acceleration in ASRock NUC BOX-1360P-D5

The iGPU in Raptor Lake-P system supports hardware decode for a variety of codecs including AVC, JPEG, HEVC (8b and 10b, 4:2:0 and 4:4:4), and VP9 (8b and 10b, 4:2:0 and 4:4:4). AV1 decode support is also present. This is currently the most comprehensive codec support seen in the PC space.

Local Media Playback

Evaluation of local media playback and video processing is done by playing back files encompassing a range of relevant codecs, containers, resolutions, and frame rates. A note of the efficiency is also made by tracking GPU usage and power consumption of the system at the wall. Users have their own preference for the playback software / decoder / renderer, and our aim is to have numbers representative of commonly encountered scenarios. Our Q4 2022 test suite update replaces MPC-HC (in LAV filters / madVR modes) with mpv. In addition to being cross-platform and open-source, the player allows easy control via the command-line to enable different shader-based post-processing algorithms. From a benchmarking perspective, the more attractive aspect is the real-time reporting of dropped frames in an easily parseable manner. The players / configurations considered in this subsection include:

• VLC 3.0.18
• Kodi 20.2
• mpv 0.35.1 (hwdec auto, vo=gpu-next)
• mpv 0.35.1 (hwdec auto, vo=gpu-next, profile=gpu-hq)

Fourteen test streams (each of 90s duration) were played back from the local disk with an interval of 30 seconds in-between. Various metrics including GPU usage, at-wall power consumption, and total energy consumption were recorded during the course of this playback.

All our playback tests were done with the desktop HDR setting turned on. It is possible for certain system configurations to automatically turn on/off the HDR capabilities prior to the playback of a HDR video, but, we didn't take advantage of that in our testing.

VLC Playback Efficiency - Normal Mode

VLC Playback Efficiency - Performance Mode

The 8Kp60 AV1 stream playback is attempted in software, resulting in extremely high power consumption at the wall (80+ W). Otherwise, at-wall numbers remain below 20W for VLC playback, with the normal mode configuration being particularly energy efficient.

Kodi Playback Efficiency - Normal Mode

Kodi Playback Efficiency - Performance Mode

Similar to VLC, the 8Kp60 AV1 clip is problematic for Kodi 20.2. However, active power consumption is lower for Kodi compared to VLC. Kodi, at idle, does consume more power than just leaving the desktop idle. So, the energ numbers for Kodi are not great compared to VLC. However, within the considered systems, Kodi was more energy-efficient on the normal mode NUC BOX-1360P/D5.

mpv 0.35.1 Playback Efficiency - Normal Mode

mpv 0.35.1 Playback Efficiency - Performance Mode

mpv attempts to play back the 8Kp60 AV1 clip with hardware acceleration, but the playback still dropped half the frames (same symptom we have been observing in all recent mini-PC reviews). Active power numbers are much higher than Kodi or VLC.

mpv 0.35.1 (GPU-HQ) Playback Efficiency - Normal Mode

mpv 0.35.1 (GPU-HQ) Playback Efficiency - Performance Mode

Adding GPU-HQ shaders to the mix drives up the energy consumption numbers for all systems, with the Wall Street Canyon becoming the most efficient of the lot. Surprisingly, only the AV1 clip continued to drop frames during playback.