ZBOX Sphere OI520 Plus: Zotac's Take on the NUC
by Ganesh T S on August 1, 2014 8:50 AM ESTMiscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks
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 ZBOX OI520 Plus with other low power PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran Furmark 1.12.0 and Prime95 v27.9 together. The unit could have been more power efficient compared to the Intel NUC kit if it had come with a SSD instead of the hard drive.
Given the active nature of the thermal solution, it is no surprise that the unit is able to handle full loading without any throttling. In fact, even after a hour of processor-intensive tasks (30 minutes of full CPU loading + 30 minutes of full CPU and GPU loading), the maximum temperature of the cores was only 71 C (as show in the gallery below).
Coming to the business end of the review, it is heartening to see motherboard / mini-PC vendors sit up and build upon Intel's NUC efforts. The OI520's performance is very similar to the high-end NUC, but it has additional I/O options (extra USB 2.0 ports, card reader etc.). For users looking to get a mini-PC that is not just a plain rectangular box, the ZBOX Sphere OI520 makes for a very good choice. Pretty much the only downside is that the Plus model makes for a questionable choice as it come with hard drives instead of SSDs and only one SO-DIMM slot occupied. Readers would be better off grabbing the non-Plus model and putting in a SSD / two SO-DIMM sticks for better performance.
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Assimilator87 - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
You guys are forgetting that the NUC and related SFF PCs all use mobile chips. If you want a full Kaveri with 512 shaders, the FX-7600P has a 35W TDP. For something with similar TDP to the i5 U, there's the FX-7500 at 19W, although that only has 384 shaders.Voldenuit - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
Needs copper foam afro.Bobs_Your_Uncle - Sunday, August 3, 2014 - link
Given the spherical nature of this beast, maybe even a copper foam Goatee would be a stylish compliment to the fro action.( Scratching your head? => http://hexus.net/tech/news/systems/72569-silent-po... )
know of fence - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
Any chance that those Benchmarks find their way into Bench?I'd really appreciate some perspective of just how a dual core i5 fits into the full picture or how it compares to the 10W 4C/4T J1900 CPUs formerly known as Bay Trail, which also come with 9-19VDC adapters and are available as mini-ITX boards.
With the piddly cooling system being the Achilles heel of these SFFs, some noise testing would be appreciated.
Josh Peck - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
It's only the most sophisticated gaming experience ever created by humans.And it's spherical!
SPHERICAL!
arod916 - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
Looks like the design was ripped off from the Nexus Q. Google could sue them hmmm.M/2 - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
A Mac Mini is the same price... why do Mini's never make the "compared to" list? You can run MS & Linux as well as OSX on a Mini.... At the risk of being called a Fanboy (they're all JUST MACHINES). IMHO, I'd still opt for a MiniM/2 - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
PS: Sound is the only thing I see that may be better than a mini. Mini's have options for i7, 2 memory slots, so someone tell why this hardware set (or most of the others) are better?Iketh - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
what's a "mac" ?FelixDraconis - Saturday, August 2, 2014 - link
The mini is lacking the newest Haswell chip, which should hopefully come soon. Should be an even better value proposition.But people also didn't take into account that it comes with an OS, whereas the Zotac does not.
We often use Mac Minis for light servers and compile machines, as you can fit a whole bunch of them in a small space and span virtual screens with software. They're not amazing but they're solid and dependable and get the job done.