Zotac ZBOX CI540 nano Review: A Fanless Haswell-Y mini-PC
by Ganesh T S on October 31, 2014 11:00 AM ESTPerformance Metrics - I
The Zotac ZBOX CI540 nano was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. We revamped our benchmark suite earlier this year after the publication of the Intel D54250WYK NUC review. We reran some of the new benchmarks on the older PCs also, but some of them couldn't be run on loaner samples. Therefore, the list of PCs in each graph might not be the same.
Futuremark PCMark 8
PCMark 8 provides various usage scenarios (home, creative and work) and offers ways to benchmark both baseline (CPU-only) as well as OpenCL accelerated (CPU + GPU) performance. We benchmarked select PCs for the OpenCL accelerated performance in all three usage scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU in the system. The real tussle is between the CI540 nano, the BXBT-1900 and the ECS LIVA. Amongst these three, the CI540 nano and ECS LIVA are the only passive PCs. Given these constraints, it is indeed creditable that the unit performs the best amongst the three.
Miscellaneous Futuremark Benchmarks
3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R15
We have moved on from R11.5 to R15 for 3D rendering evaluation. CINEBENCH R15 provides three benchmark modes - OpenGL, single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of select PCs in all three modes provided us the following results.
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Teknobug - Sunday, November 2, 2014 - link
I wonder how this compares to the fanless Celeron N2930 (4C 1.86GHz) NUCs, I have some interest in a fanless box.Osamede - Sunday, November 2, 2014 - link
Why are these products not being compared to the Mac Mini in the tests. The use case is basically identical, especially with respect to HTPC.ultimatexbmc.com - Sunday, November 2, 2014 - link
Looks like a nice unit for the price.james16 - Monday, November 3, 2014 - link
This is probably the best looking Zotac mini-PC I've seen. Most of their other mini-PCs have an ugly glossy design.How fast is the SD card reader? I hope it's not connected through via USB 2.0. I have some SDXC cards that have 100+ megabytes/second sequential reads/writes which is useful when transferring large photos and videos.
Romulous - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
I believe that it was Via that kick started this form factor, not Intel.Romulous - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
"Zotac ZBOX CI540 nano". Will be supprised if Via dont sue them.Noëlius - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Why would you not just buy a Mac mini for $549, and have really great hardware vs mediocre garbage! Put windows or linux on it if you're not into OS X! Whatever!damageboy - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
Does the 4210Y GPU support decoding H265/x265 on HW?