ECS LIVA X Review: A Fanless Bay Trail-M mini-PC
by Ganesh T S on January 16, 2015 11:30 AM ESTPerformance Metrics - I
The ECS LIVA X was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. We revamped our benchmark suite last 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 Bay Trail-M processor is not as powerful as the Core-U processor in the Logic Supply Core-ML320. The main devices to compare against in a similar price range are the Zotac ZBOX CA320 / CI320 nano and the ECS LIVA. The Celeron N2808 is an upgrade over the N2806 that was in our ECS LIVA sample, thanks to a slight bump up in the base frequency. However, the benchmark numbers against the Celeron N2930-equipped ZBOX CI320 nano are not positive, becase the N2930 happens to be a quad-core solution.
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.
The observations we had for the PCMark 8 benchmarks hold true for the other test cases also.
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Oxford Guy - Wednesday, January 21, 2015 - link
I'm not saying the test isn't interesting, but it's not particularly practical in this case. The only thing it does is let people know that if they want to run Furmark and Prime together they need to introduce some active cooling or a low ambient temperature. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with knowing that. However, it's not very high on the list of practical information.Oxford Guy - Monday, January 19, 2015 - link
"32 GB is not enough once a couple of Windows updates get installed."False. I have a 32 GB model and it has around 6 or 7 GB of free space with a fully updated Windows 8.1
random2 - Tuesday, January 20, 2015 - link
"...(UCFF) have emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market."Someone needs to do a study on the sales volumes seen in the PC component industry. There are a lot of people building these days rather than buying pre-made units from manufacturers like Cyberpower, Dell and others.
BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, January 20, 2015 - link
Thanks for posting idle and load power consumption numbers and addressing some reader concerns about the usefulness (or lack thereof) of delta charts where wattage is concerned.djfourmoney - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
I like these tiny PC's. I was interested in the first Liva but it's shortcomings I knew would be addressed if I waited.As for case use -
Small HTPC. I have a Llano HTPC currently with a great ANTEC case with six drive slots not to mention the I can put two SSD's in it's 2.5 slot (no floppy) and replace the 5.25 slots with hot swap cages.
In other words it would make a very nice, fairly low draw server that can easily trans-code, among other things.
There was a time when I thought I would use the HTPC for more PC games, which is why I got the Llano but as time goes on, I use it more for console emulation when I do play games and I have PS2 and PS3.
Plus I can mount something like this on the back of a LCD and run everything else off a power USB 3.0 hub.
That said my Cable CARD tuner has to be hard reset every so often because it drops both tuners, I guess I could go with a network tuner but then I would need another cable run to where the router is.
Anyway, beyond that downgrading my HTPC seems to make sense to me. My original target was the Gigabyte Brix but only two AMD sku's are offered and the least expensive model might be discontinued and is hard to find.
m-ITX is an option but cost is off-putting.
Just thinking out loud I suppose.