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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imaheadcase - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
$523 (no OS). That is the problem with these type of things. It ends up being expensive that you could build own without investing in a SFF like that.At that price be better off getting a intel NUC
Alistair - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
Basically Microsoft's monopoly and ridiculous Windows pricing (Microsoft just raised the price to $212 after tax in Canada, no freaking joke) can wreck any builder's day. Steal it or get a grey market $20 dollar copy from India. No remorse whatsoever. Who honestly thinks a price of $212 is warranted??? Government should have stepped in and limited the price to $50 a long time ago.Alistair - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
Windows 10 Home OEM $212 after taxes:https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/p/windows-10-home/...
Mr Perfect - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
Oh, yeah, don't buy direct from MS. Newegg Canada has it for almost half that. https://www.newegg.ca/Operating-Systems/SubCategor...close - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
Alistair, what's your day job? Because I'm entirely sure the government should have stepped in and limited your income to 25% of whatever you're making now a long time ago. Governments should do that you know...isthisavailable - Sunday, March 17, 2019 - link
Or just run insider preview builds in the slow ring for free?close - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link
No! It has to be stable. And free.Qasar - Sunday, March 17, 2019 - link
i agree... dont buy direct from microsoft... 2 comp stores here.. have win home 64 but for 140 cdn or less, even as low as 120 when on sale...Death666Angel - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
I don't get it. This thing costs 150€ for a mainboard, case, PSU and WiFi. The cheapest 1151v2 ITX mainboard start at 75€, plus an ITX case with a PSU is another 50€ at least. So that is at least 125€ and no WiFi. It is also a helluvalot larger, but has better upgradeability. But you probably don't care about that, since you mention NUCs as a comparison.The cheapest current i3 (15W) NUC starts at (German prices) 260€. The DeskMini with a (much more powerful) i3-8100 (65W) costs 270€. And this thing actually can take a 6C/12T i7-8700. So it is not much more expensive, but definitely more versatile and powerful than a NUC.
Don't look at the "as configured" bit and compare it to what you would buy or bought a while ago. Ganesh uses the same things for everything for comparison sake and did not look for deals or what makes sense for the individual build. You can shave a lot of costs off by using M.2 SATA drives and other RAM for example. My config with brand new parts would be 420€ wtih 2x8GB DDR4, 500GB MX500 and a i3-8100.
sudhansu9dm - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
Thanks for the reviewing this! I think this is a fantastic form factor held back by the use of older and nerfed chipsets.