Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano Review: A Fanless Bay Trail-M mini-PC
by Ganesh T S on January 6, 2015 10:00 AM ESTHTPC Credentials
The absence of any moving parts inside the ZBOX CI320 nano enables a completely silent PC irrespective of the workload. This makes it an ideal HTPC. While acoustics form one part of the HTPC story, there are a few other aspects that we will cover in this section.
Refresh Rate Accurancy
AMD and NVIDIA have historically been able to provide fine-grained control over display refresh rates. The default rates are also quite accurate. Intel used to have an issue with 23 Hz (23.976 Hz, to be more accurate) support, but that was resolved with the introduction of Haswell and Bay Trail. As expected, the Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano has no trouble with refreshing the display appropriately in the 23 Hz setting.
The gallery below presents some of the other refresh rates that we tested out. The first statistic in madVR's OSD indicates the display refresh rate.
Network Streaming Efficiency
Evaluation of OTT playback efficiency was done by playing back our standard YouTube test stream and five minutes from our standard Netflix test title. Using HTML5, the YouTube stream plays back a 720p encoding, while Adobe Flash delivers a 1080p stream. Note that only NVIDIA exposes GPU and VPU loads separately. Both Intel and AMD bundle the decoder load along with the GPU load. The following two graphs show the power consumption at the wall for playback of the HTML5 stream and the Adobe Flash stream in Mozilla Firefox (v 33.1.1). The Flash plugin version used for benchmarking was 15.0.0.223. GPU load was around 33.05% for the HTML5 stream and 22.53% for the Flash stream.
Netflix streaming evaluation was done using the Windows 8.1 Netflix app. Manual stream selection is available (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S) and debug information / statistics can also be viewed (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D). Statistics collected for the YouTube streaming experiment were also collected here. GPU load in the steady state for the Netflix streaming case was 3.58%.
Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks
It is quite clear that passively cooled UCFF PCs such as the CI320 nano are not madVR-capable machines. Hence, we concentrate on local file playback using EVR-CP and Kodi. The decoder used was LAV Filters bundled with MPC-HC v1.7.7
| Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano - Decoding & Rendering Performance | ||||
| Stream | EVR-CP | XBMC | ||
| GPU Load (%) | Power (W) | GPU Load (%) | Power (W) | |
| 480i60 MPEG2 | 49.20 | 10.52 | 30.05 | 9.50 |
| 576i50 H264 | 46.29 | 10.24 | 55.29 | 10.29 |
| 720p60 H264 | 58.11 | 11.84 | 65.46 | 10.81 |
| 1080i60 MPEG2 | 80.57 | 14.35 | 74.47 | 13.61 |
| 1080i60 H264 | 89.04 | 15.08 | 81.13 | 14.18 |
| 1080i60 VC1 | 86.21 | 14.84 | 78.87 | 13.98 |
| 1080p60 H264 | 76.08 | 13.22 | 71.10 | 11.32 |
| 1080p24 H264 | 33.03 | 10.11 | 28.43 | 9.50 |
| 4Kp30 H264 | 80.09 | 13.97 | 44.65 | 11.14 |
The CI320 nano was able to pass all our test streams using decoders / renderers that the average consumer would use. Even the 4Kp30 H.264 stream decoded without frame drops and was output on to a 1080p display without issues. The only caveat is that HD audio bitstreaming is not enabled on these Bay Trail boxes under Windows, but works without issues in Linux. On a side note, this doesn't affect Dolby Digital Plus bitstreaming from the Netflix app. In our opinion, this would make a great little OpenELEC box or Ubuntu / XBMC system.
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andychow - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
Yes is has an IR sensor, but from what I read it's not very good and doesn't seem to wake up from sleep via IR, even if the option is in the bios, it doesn't work.lianthus - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
I love that you guys added XMBC to the tests, one thing though, what I have the most trouble knowing is how well these low powered chips do when playing a Hi10bit mkv file. Anime now is mostly encoded this way and my old ZBOX cannot properly play the files regardless of whether or not I'm using wireless, wired, or local playback. If you could add this one piece to your reviews it would save me a tremendous amount of trouble, as nobody ever seems to post anything about playing back these files. It is literally the most important part of my purchasing choices when it comes to media PCs like this one.bobbozzo - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
Also we need to worry about h.265 performance.saiga6360 - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
The latest version of XBMC or Kodi as it is now called supports HVEC or H265 encodes. As for Hi10p, not sure if there is hardware acceleration support but the latest Celerons and AMD APUs can run these MKV encodes in software just fine up to 1080p. I use the latest Kodi version 5.0 in OpenELEC and I can run these files on a Zotac AMD E-450 APU and a Chromebox 1.4 Celeron CPU.hlovatt - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
Any chance of reviewing the Mac mini to seen ow it compares?takeship - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
It would seem to me that a passively cooled box whose BIOS fails to implement dynamic frequency stepping properly (or apparently at all) needs more than "a little work". It's inexcusable to ship a product with an issue like that. I wonder Ganesh if you tested or ran into issues with APCI sleep/wake states as well? Those have been notable pain points of Zotac on other boxes. And given the storage perf numbers, are we sure that SATA6 is actually being used, instead of say 3? I've looked at these Zotac boxes with lust for years now, but ultimately have always avoided because of questions concerning driver/firmware. It looks like Zotac still hasn't gotten their house in order.zepi - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
HTPC Credentials needs to include H265 decode tests. That is soon going to be crucial.Wineohe - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
I would like to see these small form factor PC's move to a 12V supply instead of 19V. They would be more versatile for mobile use.AgeOfPanic - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
I don't understand how they cannot enable HD audio bitstreaming under Windows and have it work under Linux. Is there a logic behind it?saiga6360 - Thursday, January 8, 2015 - link
Driver issues