ECS LIVA x2 Review: A Compact & Fanless Braswell PC
by Ganesh T S on August 24, 2015 8:00 AM ESTHTPC Credentials
Given the ECS LIVA x2's fanless nature and the presence of Intel HD Graphics, we expect many purchasers to use it as a media playback machine / HTPC. Given the specifications, it is quite clear that we are not looking at a madVR capable machine, but one targeted at the entry-level / average HTPC user or someone looking for a HTPC to put in a second or third room (non-primary HTPC). There are two HTPC aspects that we will explore in this section, one related to network streaming (OTT services), and the other related to local file playback. Prior to that, we have a small sub-section dealing with refresh rate accuracy.
Refresh Rate Accurancy
Starting with Haswell, Intel, AMD and NVIDIA have been on par with respect to display refresh rate accuracy. The most important refresh rate for videophiles is obviously 23.976 Hz (the 23 Hz setting). As expected, the ECS LIVA x2 has no trouble with refreshing the display appropriately in this setting.
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. Since YouTube now defaults to HTML5 for video playback, we have stopped evaluating Adobe Flash acceleration. 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 (MP4/AVC @ 1080p) in Mozilla Firefox (v 40.0.2).
GPU load was around 41.53% for the YouTube HTML5 stream and 8.26% for the steady state 6 Mbps Netflix streaming case.
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 ECS LIVA series of PCs have consistently been amongst the most power-efficient OTT streaming boxes around. The LIVA x2 is not the most efficient, but it is still quite a bit lower than the other passively cooled mini-PCs that we have evaluated before.
Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks
Prior to testing out the decoding and rendering performance, we take a look at the DXVA decoding support available via Intel's Braswell GPU drivers. Note that we using v10.18.14.4234 of the Intel HD Graphics Drivers for Braswell and DXVA Checker v3.60 (compared to v10.18.14.4214 and v3.50 respectively that we used in the ASRock Beebox review)
The codec support has not changed, though DXVA Checker now confirms explicitly that VP8 and VP9 DXVA decoding support for Braswell doesn't exist (at least on Windows 8.1). As we already know from the Beebox review, the above screenshot confirms hardware acceleration for MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264 and HEVC. However, there is no HEVC Main10 support.
In order to evaluate local file playback, we concentrate on EVR-CP and Kodi. We already know that EVR works quite well even with the Intel IGP for our test streams. In our earlier reviews, we focused on presenting the GPU loading and power consumption at the wall in a table (with problematic streams in bold). Starting with the Broadwell NUC review, we decided to represent the GPU load and power consumption in a graph with dual Y-axes. Nine different test streams of 90 seconds each were played back with a gap of 30 seconds between each of them. The characteristics of each stream are annotated at the bottom of the graph. Note that the GPU usage is graphed in red and needs to be considered against the left axis, while the at-wall power consumption is graphed in green and needs to be considered against the right axis.
All the clips played back comfortably in Kodi. In MPC-HC v1.7.9, the 1080i clips occasionally hit 100% GPU loading, but no visible frame drops were seen. This is in contrast to the ASRock Beebox where we had no such issues. Perhaps a combination of change in the software as well as the DRAM in the unit has led to this substantially higher GPU loading for interlaced clips.
Moving on to HDMI audio, we find that v10.18.14.4234 Intel HD Graphics driver package has no updates to the audio driver. Dolby Digital Plus bitstreaming works well (both in the Netflix app and from various local media playback programs), but HD audio bitstreaming (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA) capability is not present.
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casteve - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
"Even though this is a power virus test, the chassis temperatures reach an uncomfortable 75 C. ECS has taken the unenviable task of providing passive cooling for a 6W TDP SoC in a plastic chassis, and the problems are evident. It is likely that a chassis design similar to that of the Zotac C-series nano units (with perforations all around) could help with this aspect."Maybe. I found the Zotac CI320 to have a 60+ min thermal tail with steady state idle temp of 50C. Perhaps a solution with both the perforated case of the Zotac and the better heatsink of the Liva would cut it. I think 6W TDP is the limit of what you can put in a plastic case. Beyond this, you need a metal case plate or a fan.
Thanks for the review.
takeshi7 - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
Can you please review the Liva Core, next?hojnikb - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
I wish someone made Core M PCs. Silvermont is okay for light tasks, but thats about it.And Core M could be easily passivly cooled.
takeshi7 - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
ECS makes the Liva Core. It has a passively cooled Core M.johnsonx - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
Recently sold some MSI Cubi systems to clients, really nice. All use Haswell SoC's, commonly available are dual-core 1.5Ghz Celeron, 1.9Ghz Pentium, and 2.0Ghz Core i3 with Hyper-threading. They do have fans, but are VERY quiet.nathanddrews - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
AMD really needs to get new Carrizo (non-L) into this category if they can. It would be HTPC and light gaming PERFECTION.V900 - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
Having looked into both Bay Trail as well as Braswell recently when I wanted a passively cooled mini PC, I came away pretty disappointed with Braswell.The unfortunate truth is, that despite the Braswell N3050/3150 being a 14nm part, and the Bay Trail J1800/1900 a 22nm part, in most use cases the Bay Trail is faster than the Braswell.
Most users would be better off getting the older Bay Trail system with the dual core J1800 CPU or the quadcore J1900. Why?
First of all Intel cut down power usage TOO MUCH. So much that it impacts performance. The Bay Trail parts have a 10W TDP, and manage to be cooled passively just fine. The Braswell parts have 4/6W TDP, and if you want to know where Intel found the additional Watts, look at the base clock.
The Braswell parts turboclock to just over 2GHZ, but the rest of the time they skip along at a pretty slow 1.6 GHZ.
The Bay Trail quadcore part on the other hand has a base clock of 2 GHZ but turbos up to 2.4, whereas the dualcore J1800 has a base clock of 2.4 GHZ, and turbos up to 2.6 GHZ.
That's why the Bay Trail parts are faster at most tasks then the newer Braswell. If you look at some of the reviews you'll see how they handily beat them in most benchmarks...
BMNify - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
i cant see the point of any of these low power soc no matter what purpose , if it doesn't have avx/2 ( and none of these do) and at least quad cores its no better than the other 2006 sse4 simd available since Penryn then its already obsolete , IMO not even really good enough for the bargain basement generic £20 wifi router in 2015V900 - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
You're being waaay to performance-snobbish here.Don't see the point? It's 2015 man! Intel has squeezed so much performance out of X86 that these their cheapest CPUs are fast enough for most people.
They're fine for everyday computing tasks, as long as your needs are just basic web surfing, YouTube/movie playing and light Office work.
My dad uses one for the above. Yeah, he could have gotten something with an i3 or i5 but he wanted something quiet, and for most tasks the speed difference is barely noticeable.
They also have plenty of horsepower (and Intel quicksync video) to be a nifty and silent media center. And really cheap too. You can get one an embedded CPU, mini Itx motherboard and 4gb ram, for less or right around a hundred dollars.
BMNify - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
see below for the many of the 5v/2A arm boxes that have real HDMI2 at 60fps HW/SW playback of UHD1 content....as long as intel do not provide the 2015 options (avx2 ,HDMI2/UHD1/60P etc instead of 2006 simd etc) on these low power SOC they will never pass the profitable ARM quad/octacore UHD compliant boxes we can buy right now....