Intel PPSTCK1A32WFC Bay Trail-T Compute Stick Review
by Ganesh T S on April 22, 2015 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Bay Trail
- HDMI Stick
Power Consumption and Thermal Performance
The power consumption at the wall was measured with a 1080p display being driven through the HDMI port. In the graphs below, we compare the idle and load power of the Intel PPSTCK1A32WFC with other low power PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran Furmark 1.12.0 and Prime95 v27.9 together. The numbers track what one might expect from the combination of hardware components in the machine.
It is not a surprise (given the tablet platform that is inside the Compute Stick) that the unit proves to be the least power-hungry of the lot.
Our thermal stress routine starts with the system at idle, followed by 30 minutes of pure CPU loading. This is followed by another 30 minutes of both CPU and GPU being loaded simultaneously. After this, the CPU load gets removed, allowing the GPU to be loaded alone for another 30 minutes. The various clocks in the system throughout this routine are presented in the graph below.
The cores burst up to 1.83 GHz for a few seconds, before settling down to 1.58 GHz during the pure CPU loading process. The core temperature plateaus around 76 C, while power consumption at the wall is slightly more than 6 W. With thee GPU also loaded, the temperature reaches 80 and the power consumption is closer to 9 W. However, the CPU and GPU frequencies adjust themselves to be within the power budget. The cores run at 1.3 GHz while the GPU is clocked at slightly more than 300 MHz. Removing the CPU load brings temperatures back to 75 C and power consumption to less than 7 W. The CPU cores idle at 500 MHz, while the GPU clocks in around 440 MHz.
It is a very effective thermal solution and the temperatures do not raise any alarm. The presence of active cooling definitely helps in this situation.
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uzm - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
can it output 4K desktop? I'm looking for something that can drive an image slideshow on a 4K TV.zeo - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
Probably better off considering something like the Surface 3 with Cherry Trail, the new Gen 8 GPU is significantly better than Bay Trail's Gen 7 GPU and the display port should easily handle a 4K display better than most models with HDMI output...Bansaku - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I wonder if you could Hackintosh it?azazel1024 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I don't know how that can be considered an effective thermal solution. Maybe it is how tiny the chasis is. In my T100 with the z3740 (and plastic chasis, but obviously a larger chasis than the compute stick, but the compute stick has active cooling), I hit 1.83-1.86GHz and the CPU will stay pegged there under max load. I don't think I've ever monitored it for more than ~10 minutes, but running handbrake on it to test, it loaded all 4 cores at 95-99% and over the course of 10 minutes it never dropped the CPU frequency below that 1.83-1.86GHz range.The brief bit of testing (VERY brief) running some games (Kerbal space program actually) my T100 runs (after a minute or two to settle the thermals) the CPU at 1.33-1.6GHz generally and the GPU at around 450MHz or so with some brief bursts on both up towards 1.7GHz and 650MHz respectively.
Also 8w sounds like a LOT of power. Back to the whole KSP thing, I can get a little over 5 hours of battery life on my T100 running KSP, which is on a 31hwr battery, which equates to about 6 watts of average consumption under heavy CPU and GPU load (okay, probably not be as high as prime + furmark) for the ENTIRE platform, SoC, memory, screen, keyboard dock, etc. I'd be shocked if the SoC itself was drawing more than 4w.
ganeshts - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
For this chassis size, I will call the thermal solution effective since the CPU is running at the rated 1.3 GHz without throttling for more than 30 minutes, all the while maintaining the temperature below 85 C for the CPU package. The only time I would call a thermal solution ineffective is if it allows the CPU to reach junction temperature or makes the CPU run at less than rated speed.azazel1024 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
I guess that is a point, but since it seems to throttle within just a couple of seconds back towards or to base clock, I think I'd call that thermal solution marginal. Does the processor melt down or throttle below base clock? No, but at the same time, the turbo core speeds seem close to worthless, because only occasionally would you ever see them.At least something that can manage to hit max turbo for 10-20s, you would likely see real benefits of that in a lot of light work loads, but here you'd only get to experience it for very, very brief periods of time (perhaps a webpage load, but you aren't going to see it in an application load even).
zodiacfml - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Pricey but its probably tested to run 24 7 on a display for ads....than cheaper intel windows tablets. Id reccomend this at my work.valnar - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
The WiFi speed is barely adequate, and that is only 20' away. Given the single radio, any issues whatsoever and video would hiccup. I think for about the same price or a little more, it would be safer to have a slightly bigger box. 'Something in the NUC range. After all, you aren't really saving that much space, and the thing still needs a power plug anyway.cen - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
It pisses me off to no end when Anandtech does not test Linux with these devices.CharonPDX - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Not a fail to me - just a very specific set of use cases.Micro HTPC (car-PC?)
"Always with you" desktop PC you can plug in to just about any TV (along with a micro Bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo.)
Business "thin client" type PC.
Full-function Raspberry Pi replacement.