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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watzupken - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Looking at the performance as a whole, it is nowhere near impressive. But if you consider the price of this, there is not much to complain to be honest. I am looking forward to something like this with the new Cherry Trail chip to use as my HTPC.mathew7 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Are there any interoperability issues with BT and WIFI? I'm asking because I have a Tronsmart 4-core stick (actually 2) and when I am connected to 2.4GHz Wifi and use a BT mouse, I cannot watch anything. I noticed this first with HBO go, where using a BT mouse would result in not playing. but even in play store I had lots of "retry" messages.Then I saw this about a Hanspree clone: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RQORH45TGR8KU/ref=c...
"The WiFi and Bluetooth can get a bit flaky if used together. Using one causes the other to slow down or drop out completely. I've got a USB network adapter attached so I can use a bluetooth controller. Those wanting to use this as a steam machine might want to either do the same, or use a wireless 360 controller with its adapter to avoid using the bluetooth and WiFi together."
This led me to the conclusion that 1x1 2.4GHz radio cannot work reliably with BT and Wifi.
mathew7 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Strange to reply to my own mail.But I've seen some posts about people realizing a slower Wifi connection when BT is active (even about Apple devices).
So maybe this stick does has a stable connection, but the wifi performance is degraded by Bluetooth activity.
So please, please, tell us how you tested (BT mouse+KB ?) and also report the other way. This is really important for this class of devices.
ganeshts - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I got curious and tested out by disabling Bluetooth completely. Peak TCP Wi-Fi performance with our test router gave around 15 Mbps in the same physical setting. A slight improvement, but I suspect the BT interference is not that bad in the Compute Stick.mathew7 - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
Actually, in my experience, it's the BT transfer that's problematic. As in: if I click on something and don't move the mouse, it works correctly, but if I keep moving the mouse, cursor is jerky and network problems appear.So you tested with BT completely off....it is a good info. But did you also move the BT mouse while testing?
SilverBlade - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Saying that the absence of HD audio bitstreaming will not bother too many consumers is flat out entirely false.Any HTPC MUST have the ability to bitstream HD audio. It is a 100% REQUIRED and ESSENTIAL ability.
Why bother having an HTPC that can only output DVD quality? Makes zero sense. May as well get a proper blu-ray player or a media player from 5 years ago that is quite capable of bitstreaming HD audio.
It is a complete and utter fail.
Sorry, Intel screwed this up. This is entirely, 100% useless to me until they give it the ability to bitstream HD audio.
mathew7 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
So I guess you don't travel and use the hotel's (maybe) stereo TV, where HD audio is impossible.To listen to HD audio you already need a serious 5.1 (or more) receiver, which means size does not really matter and most likely you already have a BD player. So go buy the NUC.
Also videos with HD audio tracks need so much storage that the compactness of this device is useless , as it can't power directly a 2.5"HDD or BD reader, which means you need an additional power brick. This is before I get to the single USB port.
ganeshts - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Having HD audio bitstream would be nice, but, if you are having an AVR capable of bitstreaming I strongly suggest you spend a little more and get a NUC or some other 'capable' HTPC for playback purposes.Anyways, Netflix DD+ bitstreaming works.
Tranzaction77 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
The Netbook of Compute Sticks.damianrobertjones - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
"32 GB, simply put, is just not enough after Windows installs a couple of updates."Although I do agree there are other options. Remove the recovery partition, disable virtual memory, disable hibernation etc to grab back all of the space. Also after installing updates run disk cleanup to recover even more space taken by the updates.
Not sure why this is never mentioned.