The ASRock DeskMini 310 Mini-PC Review: A Cost-Effective Mini-STX Platform
by Ganesh T S on March 15, 2019 9:30 AM ESTUL Benchmarks - PCMark and 3DMark
This section deals with a selection of the UL Futuremark benchmarks - PCMark 10, PCMark 8, and 3DMark. While the first two evaluate the system as a whole, 3DMark focuses on the graphics capabilities.
PCMark 10
UL's PCMark 10 evaluates computing systems for various usage scenarios (generic / essential tasks such as web browsing and starting up applications, productivity tasks such as editing spreadsheets and documents, gaming, and digital content creation). We benchmarked select PCs with the PCMark 10 Extended profile and recorded the scores for various scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU and GPU in the system, though the RAM and storage device also play a part. The power plan was set to Balanced for all the PCs while processing the PCMark 10 benchmark.
The DeskMini 310 is in the middle of the pack for the Essentials and Productivity workloads. We already know that the gaming workloads are a weak point for the integrated GPUs in the low-end Core series desktop CPUs. Therefore, the relative positions in the other workloads are not surprising
PCMark 8
We continue to present PCMark 8 benchmark results (as those have more comparison points) while our PCMark 10 scores database for systems grows in size. 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. As expected, the DeskMini 310 comes in the middle in the Work scenario. Homw and Creative workloads don't seem to strongpoints for the system.
3DMark
UL's 3DMark comes with a diverse set of graphics workloads that target different Direct3D feature levels. Correspondingly, the rendering resolutions are also different. We use 3DMark 2.4.4264 to get an idea of the graphics capabilities of the system. In this section, we take a look at the performance of the ASRock DeskMini 310 across the different 3DMark workloads.
3DMark Ice Storm
This workload has three levels of varying complexity - the vanilla Ice Storm, Ice Storm Unlimited, and Ice Storm Extreme. It is a cross-platform benchmark (which means that the scores can be compared across different tablets and smartphones as well). All three use DirectX 11 (feature level 9) / OpenGL ES 2.0. While the Extreme renders at 1920 x 1080, the other two render at 1280 x 720. The graphs below present the various Ice Storm worloads' numbers for different systems that we have evaluated.
UL 3DMark - Ice Storm Workloads | |||
3DMark Cloud Gate
The Cloud Gate workload is meant for notebooks and typical home PCs, and uses DirectX 11 (feature level 10) to render frames at 1280 x 720. The graph below presents the overall score for the workload across all the systems that are being compared.
3DMark Sky Diver
The Sky Diver workload is meant for gaming notebooks and mid-range PCs, and uses DirectX 11 (feature level 11) to render frames at 1920 x 1080. The graph below presents the overall score for the workload across all the systems that are being compared.
3DMark Fire Strike Extreme
The Fire Strike benchmark has three workloads. The base version is meant for high-performance gaming PCs. Similar to Sky Diver, it uses DirectX 11 (feature level 11) to render frames at 1920 x 1080. The Ultra version targets 4K gaming system, and renders at 3840 x 2160. However, we only deal with the Extreme version in our benchmarking - It renders at 2560 x 1440, and targets multi-GPU systems and overclocked PCs. The graph below presents the overall score for the Fire Strike Extreme benchmark across all the systems that are being compared.
3DMark Time Spy
The Time Spy workload has two levels with different complexities. Both use DirectX 12 (feature level 11). However, the plain version targets high-performance gaming PCs with a 2560 x 1440 render resolution, while the Extreme version renders at 3840 x 2160 resolution. The graphs below present both numbers for all the systems that are being compared in this review.
UL 3DMark - Time Spy Workloads | |||
3DMark Night Raid
The Night Raid workload is a DirectX 12 benchmark test. It is less demanding than Time Spy, and is optimized for integrated graphics. The graph below presents the overall score in this workload for different system configurations.
As expected, the gaming prowess of the Core i3-8100 in the DeskMini 310 is nothing to write home about. It comes in second from last across all the workloads, turning out to be only slightly better than the Zotac ZBOX MI553 (using the Core i5-7300HQ).
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skpetic - Saturday, March 16, 2019 - link
Can you please review the possibilities for passively cooling the CPU in this case? I feel this is a device that could really be a hit in the low noise HTPC market. Interested in Arctic Alpine AM4 Passive cooler and the like.AdditionalPylons - Saturday, March 16, 2019 - link
The Arctic Alpine AM4 heatsink won't fit in the A300 case. Max supported CPU cooler height is 46 mm, while the Alpine is 70 mm. That said you can of course run with the case open but that's not an option for most people. Possibly move the motherboard to another case?SaturnusDK - Saturday, March 16, 2019 - link
The stealth cooler that comes with a 2200/2400G does fit though.skpetic - Sunday, March 17, 2019 - link
Do you know if the 2400G will throttle badly if you disable the fan on that / can the chip be under volted to remedy it somewhat?guidryp - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Just dremel the case and let the Arctic Alpine fins stick out.vithrell - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link
Could you review 2400GE/2200GE at the same time, those are very interesting SKU, but solid reviews are nowhere to be found, especially with power consumption numbers.IGTrading - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
Is there an AMD Ryzen based version ?I'll wait for that.
toliman - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
Check youtube for at least 2 reviews of the deskmini A300, with a Ryzen 2400G. They really should have focused on the A300 review as intel NUC hardware has been around for years & other options are available. Price is usd $149 on neweggdeil - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
I want one. Only reason I checked this article.....m.2 drive, amd apu, 3200 ram, vesa mount. mini-gaming-god.
Ashinjuka - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
I find the AMD-oriented DeskMini A300 Series much more interesting in this little sub-segment. I'm tempted to grab one to play with but I'll probably just wait until summer and the Ryzen 3000's and do a full build.