ECS LIVA Core Review: A Fanless Core M mini-PC

Performance Metrics - I

The ECS LIVA Core was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. Not all benchmarks were processed on all the machines due to updates in our testing procedures. 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 Core M 5Y10c is no match for the Core U CPUs that operate with 3x the TDP rating. However, it manages to handily beat all the Atom-based fanless PCs that we have evaluated before. Amongst the PCs based on sub-10W TDP processors, the closest competitor actually happens to be the Haswell-Y -based Zotac ZBOX CI540 nano (which uses a i5-Y platform).

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.

The aspects noted while discussing the Futuremark benchmark results hold true here also. Basically, platforms using processors with higher TDP perform better. When compared to platforms with similar TDP, the Core M-based ECS LIVA Core manages to easily provide the best possible performance.