Zotac ZBOX CA320 nano PLUS Review: A Fanless AMD mini-PC
by Ganesh T S on November 26, 2014 2:00 PM ESTHTPC Credentials
The absence of any moving parts inside the ZBOX CA320 nano enables a completely silent PC irrespective of the workload. This makes it an ideal HTPC. While acoustics form one part of the HTPC story, there are a few other aspects that we will cover in this section.
Refresh Rate Accurancy
AMD and NVIDIA have historically been able to provide fine-grained control over display refresh rates. The default rates are also quite accurate. Intel used to have an issue with 23 Hz (23.976 Hz, to be more accurate) support, but that was resolved with the introduction of Haswell. As expected, the Zotac ZBOX CA320 nano has no trouble with refreshing the display appropriately in the 23 Hz setting. In fact, the accuracy is much more compared to what we have been used to seeing in AMD-based PCs and AMD GPUs over the last few years.
The gallery below presents some of the other refresh rates that we tested out. The first statistic in madVR's OSD indicates the display refresh rate.
Network Streaming Efficiency
Evaluation of OTT playback efficiency was done by playing back our standard YouTube test stream and five minutes from our standard Netflix test title. Using HTML5, the YouTube stream plays back a 720p encoding, while Adobe Flash delivers a 1080p stream. Note that only NVIDIA exposes GPU and VPU loads separately. Both Intel and AMD bundle the decoder load along with the GPU load. The following two graphs show the power consumption at the wall for playback of the HTML5 stream and the Adobe Flash stream in Mozilla Firefox v33.1.1 using Adobe Flash 15.0.0.223 and AMD Catalyst 14.9 drivers. OTT streaming doesn't seem to be as efficient as what we had in the ECS LIVA and the GIGABYTE BXBT-1900. While the HTML5 stream had an average GPU load of 37.68%, the Flash stream loaded it to only 28.44%.
Netflix streaming evaluation was done using the Windows 8.1 Netflix app. Manual stream selection is available (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S) and debug information / statistics can also be viewed (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D). Statistics collected for the YouTube streaming experiment were also collected here. The average GPU load was around 17%.
Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks
The specifications of the A6-1450 APU make is very clear that the HTPC is not meant for usage with madVR. In order to evaluate local file playback, we concentrated on EVR-CP (using MPC-HC v1.7.7) and Kodi (v 14.0-b5). We already know that EVR works quite well even with the Intel IGP for our test streams. The decoder used was LAV Filters v0.63.0 (default configuration) bundled with MPC-HC v1.7.7. We left the video playback settings at default (using DXVA2) in Kodi also.
| Zotac ZBOX CA320 nano - Decoding & Rendering Performance | ||||
| Stream | EVR-CP | Kodi | ||
| GPU Load (%) | Power (W) | GPU Load (%) | Power (W) | |
| 480i60 MPEG2 | 53.82 | 10.41 | 29.28 | 8.84 |
| 576i50 H264 | 47.36 | 10.63 | 32.13 | 10.27 |
| 720p60 H264 | 72.72 | 11.84 | 57.51 | 11.26 |
| 1080i60 MPEG2 | 98.04 | 12.50 | 57.86 | 10.86 |
| 1080i60 H264 | 97.12 | 12.56 | 77.64 | 11.78 |
| 1080i60 VC1 | 96.91 | 12.45 | 71.67 | 11.62 |
| 1080p60 H264 | 57.13 | 11.23 | 45.43 | 10.33 |
| 1080p24 H264 | 23.41 | 9.71 | 32.32 | 9.43 |
| 4Kp30 H264 | 31.65 | 11.63 | 22.92 | 9.26 |
One of the unfortunate aspects was that the interlaced streams caused too much loading on the GPU and the frame drops during playback was quite obvious. On the other hand, the 1080p60 stream, despite being light on the GPU had stuttered playback, enough to be unwatchable. 4K decoding is not supported by the Temash GPU and the CPU is not strong enough to support software decoding. The 4Kp30 playback was a slideshow. On the other hand, things were a little bit better with Kodi (though deinterlacing wasn't perfect for some streams). Frame drops during playback for the interlaced streams, if any, were not discernible. However, the issues seen with EVR-CP / DXVA2 decoding for the 1080p60 and 4Kp30 streams were also seen in Kodi.
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DryAir - Thursday, November 27, 2014 - link
I would also like to see a review for the Alpha.Seems to be much better than the other "gaming" mini pcs reviewed here (Brix), and its also the best deal of any PC at its price, be it OEM or DIY.
OtisRush - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
Good Review. Looking forward to seeing how this one stacks up to the CI320 with the Celeron N2930 4core CPUmilli - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
x264 Benchmark: 'However, it is no match for the quad-core Celeron J1900 at much higher clocks (but, one which also has a much higher TDP and is actively cooled).'The TDP difference is 8W vs 10W. Your own load testing shows 1.2W difference. How does that translate in your book into a 'much higher TDP'? The J1900 is close to double the speed.
There are enough J1900 products that are passively cooled too.
ganeshts - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
There are a couple fo reasons:1. The J1900 was part of the GIGABYTE BXBT-1900 system - an actively cooled mini-PC, which could sustain the J1900 at higher clocks - the default BIOS took some liberty in allowing the SoC to be overclocked.
2. Even though the load power difference was only 1.2W, the power adapters were different - the CA320 uses a power brick with, in my educated guess, a lower efficiency compared to the plug-in wall wart used by the BXBT-1900.
I would say that the TDP difference is of the order of 4W in operation for the two PCs, and when you have 4W around the 8 - 15W ballpart, that is almost 20 - 25%. But, I do agree, I should have just used 'higher TDP' instead of 'much higher TDP'.
Conficio - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
Zotac's offering with the ZBOX CI540 nano aims to strike a balance. $175 for a barebones configuration is quite reasonable for this type of system.Was it not the CA 320 under review? Typo?
ganeshts - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
Thanks for spotting this! Fixed the typo.Ancalagon44 - Thursday, November 27, 2014 - link
So Zotac releases a product using Kabini 6 months after Beema/Mullins is released?Notice also that this is a mobile part, not a desktop part. So, considering they are using mobile parts, they could have used Beema or Mullins here.
But I don't blame Zotac. It is nearly impossible to buy Beema or Mullins in a notebook anyway. I blame AMD for soft-launching products MONTHS before they are actually ready to go go market.
daisysdaddy - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
You all sound VERY TECHY... I am NOT.... HELP... Is this an independent functional computer that will hook up to a Monitor, keyboard and mouse? [I was told they are NOT a computer on their own... but only an ADD ON for a computer.??] Is it true they will not play a Movie recorded in 1080? These look interesting, and my computer SUCKS and always needs repair! These are also well priced... [higher in Canada.... but still good] Could someone reply ASAP? Thanksjospoortvliet - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
It is an independent computer for sure, hook up keyboard/mouse/monitor and you are good to go. It can play your videos just fine unless they are extremely high quality, the HTPC test checks if it provides also support for various post processing and 4K, which it does not - too slow for that.Throwaway007 - Wednesday, December 31, 2014 - link
This reviewer is way more intelligent than the other idiot, the one who insists on his stupid temperature delta and power consumption delta charts.Thank you, thank you, thank you!