ECS LIVA Review: The Nettop Rises Again
by Ganesh T S on July 18, 2014 9:15 AM ESTPower Consumption and Thermal Performance
The power consumption at the wall was measured with the display being driven through the HDMI port. In the graphs below, we compare the idle and load power of the ECS LIVA with other low power PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran Furmark 1.12.0 and Prime95 v27.9 together.
In order to evaluate thermal performance, we first ran our test for load power consumption and made sure that the unit wasn't getting throttled. In order to determine the efficiency of the cooling system, we first loaded up the CPU alone using just Prime 95 for around 30 minutes. This was followed by addition of the GPU load (FurMark) for another 30 minutes, and then removal of the CPU load for 10 minutes. The system was then left idle. The various frequencies and temperatures during this loading process are recorded in the graphs below.
The above graphs show that ECS has designed a 25% overclock into the Celeron N2806, operating it at 2.00 GHz throughout our CPU loading test (with and without the GPU loading). The GPU is also able to sustain the maximum dynamic frequency of 750 MHz+ without thermal issues. At idle, the cores drop down close to 500 MHz and the GPU drops down to around 350 MHz. On the temperature side, we see the temperature stabilizing at slightly less than 100 C. With a junction temperature of 105 C, I believe consumers don't need to worry about thermal throttling at usual room temperatures (~78 F was the ambient when we tested) irrespective of the load on the unit.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
55 Comments
View All Comments
nathanddrews - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
"if it attempts to bitstream Dolby Digital Plus in non-WASAPI mode"I believe that attempting to bitstream anything without WASAPI results in stuttering for XBMC on any platform whether it's Intel, NVIDIA, or AMD...
ganeshts - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
I am talking about XBMC's sound device settings. If it is left at default, XBMC tries to bitstream DD+ and fails. If it is explicitly set to WASAPI mode, then DD+ bitstreaming is successful. I have seen this issue only in the Intel GPUs. NVIDIA and AMD are perfectly OK.nathanddrews - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
Strange, I run XBMC on all three GPUs and am connected via HDMI to HD-audio AVRs and always have to select WASAPI to make stuttering go away when bitstreaming. I'm using XBMC Frodo on Windows 7.I only have a couple DD+ tracks from HD-DVDs, but everything else is DD/DTS, PCM, or TrueHD/DTSMA. I'll have to test those out tonight to make sure.
Anonymous Blowhard - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
"On the temperature side, we see the temperature stabilizing at slightly less than 100 C."How hot does the actual casing get? I'm a little concerned by a nettop that could boil water.
puppies - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
I don't think you have much to worry about, if you don't believe me go and fine a 12 watt kettle and boil some water. See you in a month.ganeshts - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
I wouldn't be too concerned, as the 100C is for the CPU core. There is plenty of air gap between the chassis top and the heat sink itself. The chassis is plastic, doesn't get too hot at all. Heat dissipation from the heat sink is via perforations on top of the chassis lid.Most importantly, the 100C was reached during a 'power virus' test designed to stress the system with conditions that are rarely, if ever, reached during normal usage.
Lyrick_ - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
What's the chance of you guys introducing a Steam Streaming Bench on HTPC like configurations?FoolOnTheHill - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
A Steam streamer is the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw this. I'd love to see this reviewed somewhere (preferably here). I have a decent gaming PC that is in a completely separate room from my HDTV, and I'd love to have a cheap way to do Steam game streaming. Would this be able to handle 1080p streaming?daddacool - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
I tried a Giga-byte BRIX with a Baytrail Celeron N2807 for a Steam streamer with mixed result. I'm on a gigabit LAN and the host machine is an i7 3770K with a GTX 770 OC. Tomb Raider was practically unplayable at 1080P.I also have a BRIX with a Core i3-3227U in it and that's much better- it will drop a few frames at 1080P but it super smooth at 720P.
djfourmoney - Wednesday, July 23, 2014 - link
Should have gotten the AMD 5545m Brix, runs GREAT on Stream. Intel Graphics are improved but still Intel Graphics and at least a generation behind ATI/AMD.