Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano Review: A Fanless Bay Trail-M mini-PC
by Ganesh T S on January 6, 2015 10:00 AM ESTPerformance Metrics - I
The Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. We revamped our benchmark suite earlier this year after the publication of the Intel D54250WYK NUC review. We reran some of the new benchmarks on the older PCs also, but some of them couldn't be run on loaner samples. Therefore, the list of PCs in each graph might not be the same.
Futuremark PCMark 8
PCMark 8 provides various usage scenarios (home, creative and work) and offers ways to benchmark both baseline (CPU-only) as well as OpenCL accelerated (CPU + GPU) performance. We benchmarked select PCs for the OpenCL accelerated performance in all three usage scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU in the system. The Ceneron N2930 in the CI320 nano is not as powerful as the Haswell-Y Core i4 in the CI540 nano or the Haswell-U CPUs in the NUCs with similar form factor. However, those PCs are either much costlier or require fans for cooling.
Miscellaneous Futuremark Benchmarks
3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R15
We have moved on from R11.5 to R15 for 3D rendering evaluation. CINEBENCH R15 provides three benchmark modes - OpenGL, single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of select PCs in all three modes provided us the following results.
Benchmarks which rely on GPU performance are won by the AMD Temash-based ZBOX CA320 nano, while those relying on CPU performance (either single or multi-threaded) are won by the ZBOX CI320 nano. The ECS LIVA lags both of these, but it does come at a lower price point.
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marvdmartian - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
Seeing as a mini-ITX motherboard specification is 6.7" x 6.7" in size, then yes, I'm pretty sure it's not the small Gideon Bible you'd find in a hotel room.You could easily, however, cram that into an enclosure that's the size of a sheet of notebook paper, and no more than 4" thick, by using a small form factor power supply, like you'd find in a Shuttle SFF barebones computer.
Pissedoffyouth - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
Exactly, I use a picoPSU so external power brickPissedoffyouth - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
Size of case 19 x 21 x 6.2cm.I use a PicoPSU 120w and it works great.
StevoLincolnite - Monday, January 12, 2015 - link
You would be surprised how well AMD processors undervolt.Like overclocking... AMD and Intel actually have a bit of leeway with the voltages that they apply, so that there is more tolerance for chips that are less than stellar at lower volts.
Of course that's to the advantage of the enthusiast as heat output can then be reduced whilst retaining the same level of performance by undervolting.
That 45w chip could easily end up being a 30w chip or lower if he is lucky and plays with the clocks and voltages.
Conversely, CPU's are generally not under 100% load 24/7, so the heat probably isn't a big concern if his usage demand is only in big but short bursts.
rahduke - Monday, January 19, 2015 - link
Of course he is, there are a ton of mini-itx AMD f2+ boards out there. The Minibox is the smallest mini-itx case out there and their pico PSU makes it all seem quite plausible...rahduke - Monday, January 19, 2015 - link
This is precisely what I've been looking into. I was going to go with the A8-7600 since you can clock it down to 45watts and use the pico PSU that minibox sells. How is this thing working out for you?justareader - Tuesday, January 20, 2015 - link
Size of a bible. What bible? Soon you and your extremist friends will want eternal damnation for a sell out site.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
Typos on page 2 in the second paragraph - "The Ceneron N2930 in the CI320 nano is not as powerful as the Haswell-Y Core i4 " Probably a Celeron and a Core i3 instead of Ceneron and Core i4.074geodude - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
While I generally love Anandtech for their thorough benchmarks and testing, I couldn't help but feel this review totally missed the mark. I think what consumers want to know is, how good would the Zbox work as a home office PC? All these benchmarks are meaningless if they don't provide insight into the daily tasks that someone would be using this for.Can someone run Office and web browse with acceptable performance? Could this be a good inexpensive PC for students? Can it handle light gaming like League of Legends or DOTA 2 perhaps?
And most importantly, how does it compare to the Chromebox, arguably its most direct competitor?
Jodo116 - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
In an office setting, this is a pretty darn good machine. I have the N2840(dual core vs this quad core) and it's perfect. I would maybe argue that this is a little too pricey with the HP and Acer 11" netbooks that have the N2840 for under $200 but this is a solid machine.It won't be able to handle much for gaming though, with a caveat, as even Minecraft is none too keen to play on this machine. The caveat however is in Steam streaming if you have a more powerful computer elsewhere in the house. This is the perfect Steam in-home streaming device. You can play AAA games at ultra setings at 1080p with no real issues. I use mine for this and it's flawless.
I replaced my AppleTV with this and while this is obviously more expensive, the use cases are much much more.