Asus ExpertCenter D9 SFF D900SC review: A compact office PC for professional use

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Asus is more familiar to most users as a hardware manufacturer or as a laptop manufacturer. However, Asus has also been present for a long time in the area of desktop PCs. With the ExpertCenter series, the system manufacturer offers powerful office PCs with current hardware.
Based on the Intel Core i7-11700, with the Rocket Lake CPU, there is a modern octa-core processor that is also relatively efficient at the same time. The 32 GB of working memory will also allow you to run storage intensive applications without any trouble, such as virtual machines, for example. In addition, our test unit includes a professional graphics card with the Nvidia T600, which transforms the system into a compact workstation. In this way, the system as configured in our test covers a very wide range of usage scenarios, overall.
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The Asus ExpertCenter D9 SFF in Detail
Case
The case and particularly also the internal construction remind us strongly of a typical industrial PC, which isn't necessarily meant as a negative. The construction is well thought-out and functional, and that is what matters. All the components can be replaced and expanded quickly and without any problems. However, you should note that expansion cards can only be installed in the low-profile format. This will naturally also limit the use of dedicated graphics cards significantly.
The selection of materials is dominated by aluminum and plastic. The latter is used mainly in front. We did not find any sharp edges that could lead to injuries, and the workmanship is at a very good level. At almost 5 kg (~11 lb), the office PC is not excessively heavy.
Equipment
The base is an Asus mainboard with a Q570 chipset. With this, the Asus ExpertCenter D9 SFF D900SC offers numerous USB connections. Six USB Type-A ports in front and four in the back are more than sufficient. We also find HDMI, DisplayPort, and VGA connections in the back. However, those only use the iGPU of the Intel Core i7-11700. In addition, the Nvidia T600 brings four Mini DisplayPort connections. Our test unit also offers a serial port, further expanding the usage scenarios for the PC.
Another sensitive addition is the card reader next to the SD card reader, which is an appreciated feature in the business segment.
Communication
The WiFi module of the Asus ExpertCenter D9 SFF D900SC offers WiFi 6, which is the newest standard for the fastest data transfer. However, in our comparison, the performance is only sufficient for the good middle of the test field. But there is also a RJ45 connection, and transfer rates of up to 1 Gbit/s are possible here.
Networking | |
iperf3 receive AXE11000 6GHz | |
Intel Dragon Canyon NUC - RTX 3060 | |
Zotac ZBOX Magnus EN173070C | |
Prime Computer Primestation Pulsar | |
Average Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 (919 - 1675, n=3) | |
Average of class Desktop (430 - 1851, n=8, last 2 years) | |
Asus ExpertCenter D9 SFF | |
Minisforum EliteMini TH50 | |
Minisforum EliteMini B550 | |
iperf3 transmit AXE11000 6GHz | |
Intel Dragon Canyon NUC - RTX 3060 | |
Prime Computer Primestation Pulsar | |
Zotac ZBOX Magnus EN173070C | |
Average of class Desktop (572 - 1696, n=8, last 2 years) | |
Average Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 (981 - 1252, n=3) | |
Asus ExpertCenter D9 SFF | |
Minisforum EliteMini TH50 | |
Minisforum EliteMini B550 |
SD Card Reader
To mention the positive aspect first, there is an SD card reader. However, in terms of performance, it only offers USB 2.0 speeds. This unfortunately makes fast data transfers impossible. In the best case, our UHS-II storage card (AV Pro SD microSD 128 GB V60) is read at only about 20 MB/s, and when writing, the transfer rates aren't any better either.
SD Card Reader | |
average JPG Copy Test (av. of 3 runs) | |
Average of class Desktop (17 - 197, n=15, last 2 years) | |
Zotac ZBOX Magnus EN173070C (AV Pro SD microSD 128 GB V60) | |
Asus ExpertCenter D9 SFF (AV Pro SD microSD 128 GB V60) | |
maximum AS SSD Seq Read Test (1GB) | |
Average of class Desktop (17.7 - 223, n=15, last 2 years) | |
Zotac ZBOX Magnus EN173070C (AV Pro SD microSD 128 GB V60) | |
Asus ExpertCenter D9 SFF (AV Pro SD microSD 128 GB V60) |
Performance
Processor
In terms of the processor, Asus currently uses an Intel Core i7-11700 of the Rocket Lake S series. The processor offers 8 cores and 16 threads at a basic clock speed of 2.5 GHz. However, most of the time, this is exceeded, and in Turbo up to 4.9 GHz are possible. The power consumption is 190 watts in our model, which is the PL1 as well as the PL2 value. With this, the full performance of the processor is always available. However, in practice the cooling also needs to ensure that there are no limitations here as well.
Our test comparison shows that the Intel Core i7-11700 produces approximately the performance of an Intel Core i5-11600K. The Intel Core i7-10700 is about 10% slower. Compared to the current Alder Lake S generation, the Core i7-11700 has to be content with a disadvantage of about 17% to the Intel Core i5-12600K. Despite of this, the Intel Core i7-11700 is still a fast processor that is also suited for computing-intensive applications.
You can find additional benchmarks on the processors here.
* ... smaller is better
AIDA64: FP32 Ray-Trace | FPU Julia | CPU SHA3 | CPU Queen | FPU SinJulia | FPU Mandel | CPU AES | CPU ZLib | FP64 Ray-Trace | CPU PhotoWorxx
AIDA64: FP32 Ray-Trace | FPU Julia | CPU SHA3 | CPU Queen | FPU SinJulia | FPU Mandel | CPU AES | CPU ZLib | FP64 Ray-Trace | CPU PhotoWorxx
The Asus ExpertCenter D9 SFF in the Cinebench R15 Multi Loop
The behavior of the Intel Core i7-11700 in the Asus ExpertCenter D9 SFF D900SC is similar to the processors in the two Intel NUC comparison devices and the Zotac ZBOX Magnus. The result of the initial run will not be achieved in further runs anymore, which means that the Asus is unable to keep the performance of the processor constant. On the other hand, the performance across the 50 runs of the Cinebench-R15 constant loop remains stable to a large extent, so that you don't have to expect any additional performance drops.
Application Performance and Storage Solution
The subjective impression of the Asus ExpertCenter D9 SFF D900SC system performance is good. At the same time, our test unit also has some trouble to achieve good results at times in the measured values. For example, it is only sufficient for the next to last place in the PCMark score. On the other hand, the system is able to achieve relatively good results in the render tests due to the Nvidia T600. In order to emphasize the performance in this regard, we also included a system with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 here. Both graphics cards are based on the same chip. The separate tests show clearly what is possible with better driver optimizations.
The subjective performance impression is also influenced significantly by the SSD that is used. The 1-TB M.2-2280 SSD from Intel offers fast read and write rates. We particularly want to point out the very good 4K read rate, which will increase the load speed of many small files considerably.