MSI Cubi 2 Kaby Lake UCFF PC Review
by Ganesh T S on December 30, 2016 3:30 PM ESTNetworking and Storage Performance
Networking and storage are two major aspects which influence our experience with any computing system. This section presents results from our evaluation of these aspects in the MSI Cubi2-005B. On the storage side, one option would be repetition of our strenuous SSD review tests on the drive(s) in the PC. Fortunately, to avoid that overkill, PCMark 8 has a storage bench where certain common workloads such as loading games and document processing are replayed on the target drive. Results are presented in two forms, one being a benchmark number and the other, a bandwidth figure. We ran the PCMark 8 storage bench on selected PCs and the results are presented below.
The 2.5" SATA SSD makes the Cubi2-005BUS come in the lower half of the storage benchmarks order (since most of the other PCs are using a NVMe SSD). However, the score (5001 vs. 5085 for the pack leader) shows that most consumers with office and gaming workloads do not have much to gain by going for a NVMe SSD compared to a SATA SSD.
On the networking side, we restricted ourselves to the evaluation of the WLAN component. Our standard test router is the Netgear R7000 Nighthawk configured with both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks. The router is placed approximately 20 ft. away, separated by a drywall (as in a typical US building). A wired client is connected to the R7000 and serves as one endpoint for iperf evaluation. The PC under test is made to connect to either the 5 GHz (preferred) or 2.4 GHz SSID and iperf tests are conducted for both TCP and UDP transfers. It is ensured that the PC under test is the only wireless client for the Netgear R7000. We evaluate total throughput for up to 32 simultaneous TCP connections using iperf and present the highest number in the graph below.
In the UDP case, we try to transfer data at the highest rate possible for which we get less than 1% packet loss.
The 1x1 nature of the WLAN component (Intel AC3168) results in lower Wi-Fi performance compared to the PCs with 2x2 radios. Internal antenna placement and orientation also has an effect on these numbers.
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voicequal - Saturday, December 31, 2016 - link
I just spent 20 mins looking at the power & thermal charts. It's fascinating to see how the CPU & GPU clock respond to the shared 15W power and thermal budget of the integrated package. Time 1800-3600 shows how the GPU steals performance from the CPU, resulting in the CPU clock dropping to 1.2 GHz, far below the Core i7-7500U spec of 2.7 GHz. I've always thought it misleading to claim this a 15W 2.7GHz CPU, when this is only the case if GPU utilization is negligible.niva - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link
That is indeed interesting, but the whole i7 label on these chips is misleading in my opinion.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link
I know right. There've been i7 dual core processors since 2010 or so and despite all those years, it's still dreadfully complicated and confusing. Intel is so hush-hush about specifications too. They don't publish anything about the CPU specs. It's like they're all mysterious black boxes.Robalov - Saturday, December 31, 2016 - link
If it's same as cubi 1, the heat sink fan mounts are soldered onto the pcb.They're weak and fall off. The system will barely last to warranty and is difficult to repair.
Kakti - Friday, December 30, 2016 - link
"We didn't evaluate 4K Netflix streaming on this PC because there is no HDCP 2.2 support."Intel really dropped the ball in regards to their Y and U chips not being able to decode HDCP 2.2 streams. Do we know if the 200-series chipset for LGA 1151 Kaby Lake processors will include native HDCP 2.2 support, or will it be the same story there?
vlado08 - Saturday, December 31, 2016 - link
At the end of the review: "Over the next few months, we will be reviewing a few more Kaby Lake-U PCs that bring in features like HDMI 2.0b and full Netflix 4K support with HDCP 2.2"Pazz - Saturday, December 31, 2016 - link
In respect of the HDCP 2.2, Ganesh is referring to the Beebox-S and BRIX Kaby Lake models which both feature a LSPCon.fanofanand - Friday, December 30, 2016 - link
I'd still rather have the skulltrail unit1_rick - Friday, December 30, 2016 - link
You mean the skull canyon NUC? It's pretty awesome--I have one. With 16GB of RAM you can run two simultaneous VMs running small SQL Server database as well as light gaming in the host OS. You wouldn't want it for high-end gaming without an eGPU, but for everything else, it's pretty sweet.fanofanand - Saturday, December 31, 2016 - link
That's the one! It is similarly priced but even a year later holds it's own with the iris GPU