ECS LIVA Review: The Nettop Rises Again
by Ganesh T S on July 18, 2014 9:15 AM ESTConcluding Remarks
Coming to the business end of the review, it is clear that ECS must be applauded for trying to resurrect the nettop by cutting the appropriate corners while delivering a better performing machine (compared to older nettops) in a fanless chassis. The absence of SATA and SODIMM slots reduce the BOM cost and the eventual end-price for consumers (which is the reason the ECS LIVA is cheaper than a Bay Trail NUC). The use of a micro-USB conenction for power gives rise to interesting use-cases. For example, a TV with an USB port delivering around 10 W of power should be enough to run this unit for almost all common tasks.
On the flip side, the LIVA kit does have aspects that can be fixed by ECS. One of our major peeves was the positioning of the two USB ports. The placement between the micro-USB power inlet and the HDMI port makes it very difficult to utilize the USB ports (particularly for thick thumb drives). One or both of the USB ports need to be either in the front or on the sides. In addition, the Celeron N2806 SoC inside the LIVA kit doesn't have Quick Sync enabled. At the same price point, Intel has a new stepping which includes Quick Sync (the Celeron N2807). Quick Sync can enable some interesting use-cases. It would be good on ECS's part to integrate a Bay Trail-M part with Quick Sync enabled in the LIVA kits. In terms of storage, 32 GB of eMMC turns out to be very less after installing a couple of Windows updates. 64 GB should be the minimum, particularly since flash storage needs plenty of free capacity in order to maintain performance.
Back to the bigger picture, the question here is obviously the effect of LIVA on the nettop category. ECS has managed to put out a product which delivers better performance per dollar and better performance per watt compared to previous generation nettops. The category itself (small, underpowered machines used for basic computing tasks) has received a boost thanks to Chromebooks (and, in turn, Chromeboxes). The potential market for the LIVA could be further expanded if ECS were to get Chrome OS to run on it (though I personally prefer the flexibility offered by Windows), or if Windows were to be supplied for free (given that Microsoft is essentially not charging license fees for certain classes of products now, in order to compete with the Chromebooks and Chromeboxes). The ability to run Windows on this miniature unit, while being fanless in nature, should prove to be a great selling point for the unit. I do hope ECS will make note of some of the suggestions above (particularly with respect to the motherboard / chassis design) for future products in the LIVA lineup.
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nathanddrews - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
I'm guessing that if my Pentium T4400 laptop can do it, then this thing can as well, but that would be a great test now that Streaming is out of beta.rocktober13 - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
I was looking for something like this too. I ended up going with an Amazon Fire TV, and sideloaded limelight. It seems to be able to handle 1080p streaming, but I haven't tested it extensively. I just got it up and running. I would say it's a pretty nice solution at only $100. It does require an Nvidia card though. Oh, and you can side load XBMC for a complete HTPC replacement.djfourmoney - Wednesday, July 23, 2014 - link
Fire TV is the best set-top media streamer available ATM. For what I do with a HTPC, I had considered switching to a DirecTV HD-DVR (Tivo maybe) and a FireTV for all the streaming stuff.The FireTV can handle YouTube, but no support for Hulu Free, just Hulu Plus (boo!). Guess I could watch Hulu free via XMBC like you said side-loaded onto it.
I'm just not fond of switching inputs. But I do it manually not by remote, so maybe if I solved that issue, it would just leave Hulu.
I could then retire the P4 WHS 2011 and use the use the Llano as the server use less power and the case can hold four drives, adding 6TB would solve all my storage issues at once, in-fact just adding one more 3TB drive will do that.
We'll see... But I like the Liva for maybe a micro server? With Windows Server unfortunately you would have to put it on a larger drive first and then shrink it down.
owan - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
Can the slot occupied by the wifi module be repurposed for an SSD if the storage is insufficient? Obviously you lose wifi, but a USB based wifi would be an easy fix.ganeshts - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
No, I had the same question for ECS initially, but the answer is that the M.2 slot can be used only for the appropriate Wi-Fi cardsSamus - Saturday, July 19, 2014 - link
That's so stupid. Is there a BIOS blacklist or something?speculatrix - Saturday, July 19, 2014 - link
I think it's just that miniPCIe can be wired in different ways, for usb, sata and pcie-like, so quite possibly this board simply isn't wired for mSATA?Aikouka - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
When I saw that the unit had a M.2 slot, I had hopes that it could be replaced with a M.2-based SSD. Unfortunately, based on some Google searching, that Wi-Fi/BT card is a 1630 M.2 card ( http://www.embeddedworks.net/wlan515.html ), which means it's 30mm long. The smallest M.2 SSD that I can find is a xx42, which is 42mm long. =( 32GB would be really pushing it for PLEX, which stores its metadata (images) locally. Although, I think you can change settings to reduce it, but my HTPCs definitely use more than 32GB of their SSDs.ganeshts - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
Two ideas here:1. Add a USB thumb drive 'permanently'
2. If you have a NAS, create a iSCSI LUN and map it on this PC.
mcfrumpy - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
I just want something cheap I can run a Ventrilo server on. I'm assuming this will work great.