Intel PPSTCK1A32WFC Bay Trail-T Compute Stick Review
by Ganesh T S on April 22, 2015 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Bay Trail
- HDMI Stick
Power Consumption and Thermal Performance
The power consumption at the wall was measured with a 1080p display being driven through the HDMI port. In the graphs below, we compare the idle and load power of the Intel PPSTCK1A32WFC with other low power PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran Furmark 1.12.0 and Prime95 v27.9 together. The numbers track what one might expect from the combination of hardware components in the machine.
It is not a surprise (given the tablet platform that is inside the Compute Stick) that the unit proves to be the least power-hungry of the lot.
Our thermal stress routine starts with the system at idle, followed by 30 minutes of pure CPU loading. This is followed by another 30 minutes of both CPU and GPU being loaded simultaneously. After this, the CPU load gets removed, allowing the GPU to be loaded alone for another 30 minutes. The various clocks in the system throughout this routine are presented in the graph below.
The cores burst up to 1.83 GHz for a few seconds, before settling down to 1.58 GHz during the pure CPU loading process. The core temperature plateaus around 76 C, while power consumption at the wall is slightly more than 6 W. With thee GPU also loaded, the temperature reaches 80 and the power consumption is closer to 9 W. However, the CPU and GPU frequencies adjust themselves to be within the power budget. The cores run at 1.3 GHz while the GPU is clocked at slightly more than 300 MHz. Removing the CPU load brings temperatures back to 75 C and power consumption to less than 7 W. The CPU cores idle at 500 MHz, while the GPU clocks in around 440 MHz.
It is a very effective thermal solution and the temperatures do not raise any alarm. The presence of active cooling definitely helps in this situation.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
103 Comments
View All Comments
azazel1024 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Also, PS where the heck is the Airmont architectual review and Surface 3 review? I feel like Anand had a Silvermont arch review within a couple of weeks (+/-) of Bay Trail being released and even a preview one a couple of months before. I have seen nada on Airmont so far and a couple of reviews of the surface 3 from othersites a couple of days ago.kyuu - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Yeah I'm definitely missing the indepth reviews of new processors. Hopefully that's not something that has gone away with Anand's departure.tuxRoller - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
I run plex on a local machine along with bubble. Those two handle pulling in various streams and transcoding everything properly to the chromecast.Xpl1c1t - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
14nm. Sure will be better!maxxbot - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Chromecast only does one very specific thing while this is a general purpose machine, the two products are not comparable at all.close - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Why not compare it with a Kindle? Which also has a screen so it must be better...duploxxx - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
have ugoos m2 for about a year now, half the price, 1/4 power consumption. full XBMC support.x86 is useless in uber small form factor
Jumangi - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Chromecast? This is a fully working PC. Have you heard the phrase Apple and Oranges?Marthisdil - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Except Chromecast isn't a valid comparison. Chromecast doesn't do anything...It's a neat tool for casting from a computer or mobile device to your tv...but that's about all it does.
the comparison isn't valid
Jumangi - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
They got a fully working windows machine onto a USB sized stick for $150 that includes Windows. That it works at all is impressive.