ECS LIVA x2 Review: A Compact & Fanless Braswell PC
by Ganesh T S on August 24, 2015 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The ECS LIVA x2 provided us with the opportunity to evaluate yet another Braswell-based passively cooled mini-PC (after already having had a look at the ASRock Beebox last month). However, the goal of ECS is quite different from that of ASRock. While ASRock aimed at getting out the maximum possible performance and provided upgradability options to the end user, ECS is aiming at the developing markets and budget-conscious consumer with the ECS LIVA x2. The soldered DRAM and eMMC storage reduce the platform cost compared to mSATA SSD and dual-channel SO-DIMM capabilities. The motherboard features (such as the presence of a VGA video output) also points to usage in markets where legacy equipments continue to be in operation. In all these scenarios, the fanless nature proves to be a huge plus.
Despite the much higher performance that one can expect from the Intel Celeron N3050 in the LIVA x2 compared to the N3000 in the Beebox, the other choices made in the platform ensure that there is not much to differentiate the two systems in terms of computing performance. This is a bit of a disappointment, since the LIVA x2 has to handle a 6W TDP SoC, while the Beebox only had a 4W TDP SoC to cool.
The thermal solution seems fine at first glance. It should allow for more than acceptable performance under normal client workloads. However, we believe the chassis design could be altered for better airflow and convective cooling. In terms of storage, I have always been critical of 32GB drives as primary OS drives. The absence of any upgrade possibilities is a big downside. ECS does have a 4GB/64GB option, and, unless the consumer is buying the PC for a specific purpose (i.e, the number and size of the programs that the consumer plans to install is known ahead of time), the 4GB/64GB option is a better choice compared to the 2GB/32GB option that we have reviewed today. Despite these shortcomings, the LIVA x2 seems like a worthy upgrade to the existing LIVA and LIVA X units.
The LIVA x2 reviewed today comes in at $170. The pricing is a positive factor compared to the ASRock Beebox which comes in at $220 (though that price includes more memory and a mSATA SSD). Talking about Braswell, the issues that Intel needs to address in the drivers has already been talked about in the Beebox review. There seems to be no change in the feature set between the driver versions used for the two reviews.
Coming to the business end of the review, we can say that, taken standalone, the ECS LIVA x2 more than delivers $170 worth of computing performance. It also manages to keep thermals under limit for consumer workloads. Features such as the EZ Charge USB 3.0 port and 802.11ac Wi-Fi are welcome changes compared to the Bay Trail LIVA units. The idle and load power consumption profiles of the LIVA x2 are excellent and continue the tradition of the LIVA PCs being one of the most power-efficient lineups in the market. ECS has taken the bold decision to cool a 6W TDP SoC compared to the 4.5W TDP SoCs in the LIVA and LIVA X. For this aspect, ECS must be commended.
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BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
Hi BMN! Not everyone out there is concerned with video playback for a system like this. As a small/cheap/quiet word processor and e-mail fetcher, platforms like the Liva x2 are perfectly suitable. Also, many people don't really worry much over specific decoding capabilities. As long as their new little computer can stream YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu, there's nothing to worry about and digging into the specifics isn't important or relevant.kmmatney - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
I have a baytrail 3735D (quad core), which benchmarks about the same as the Braswell N3050, and while it seems fast enough most of the time, there are way to many instances where it skips and lags. Maybe it has to do with the eMMC storage, the overall experience isn't great. It's fine for a little while, but open up a few web pages, and things suddenly slow way down (with 2GB of RAM).BillyONeal - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
Perhaps you meant envelope ?
experttech - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
I just built a ASROCK N3150 B based HTPC and am quite impressed with the performance. The quad core chip comes for the same price as the N3050 and is quite impressive at I think it was like 6 watts of power. First time using a fanless CPU it feels awesome and weird when you turn on the system. You don't really feel its turned on! Perfect for watching all kinds of movies!BMNify - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
you are far better off buying any Amlogic S812 or related HTPC box with http://www.cnx-software.com/ that comes with HDMI2 at 60fps HW/SW playback NEON 128-bit SIMD (and encode if its activated) as a generic option than even the very latest Atom x5 x5-Z8300 that yet again removes AVX/2 SIMD and is by all accounts not even as good as the antiquated Atom-Z3735F Q1'14 http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Atom-x5-x5-Z8300-vs-..."Instruction set extensions
SSE2
SSE4
SSE3
EM64T
SSE
SSE4.1
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Supplemental SSE3
AES
Supports dynamic frequency scaling N
owarchild - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
BMNify, I'm not aware of any Amlogic S812 box with HDMI 2.0, can you give an example? CPU wise, Braswell is more powerful than Amlogic S812, for example a N3150 can decode H264 Hi10p. It's a pitty that Anandtech doesn't test the Braswell boxes with the latest OpenELEC beta versions...BMNify - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
see http://kodi.wiki/view/Android_hardware for list to start with several Rockchip ,Amlogic, and x1 devices are capable, you need to review them and choose your requirementssearch "Amlogic HDMI 2" etc and try here for a device that suits you http://www.geekbuying.com/Search/?keyword=RK3288
emblemparade - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
I have the original LIVA, which has a N2807, and costs about the same as this new one. I love it!The only reason to "upgrade" would be for the better GPU and slightly better wifi. The CPUs, in fact, are equal in ability: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2263&cmp[]=2541
But actually, the X2 seems like a worse machine. It's bigger and sips more power. If you're interested in this box, consider getting the original model if you can find it!
ZachSaw - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
For so many years Anandtech's HTPC reviews have been spreading misconceptions about the 23.976Hz refresh rate. As an avid reader, I used to think getting the perfect 23.976Hz refresh rate is all you need and have spent countless hours trying to do that with the various HTPCs I've owned over the years.As you used madVR to test HTPC "credentials", it unfortunately lacks an important metric in its debug OSD -- the actual frame rate the video is being played back. This takes the reference clock into account - so even if the display refresh rate says 23.976Hz (which in this case isn't even close - it's only 23.974Hz), you still have to multiply that by refclk (-ve makes it even lower). As you could see in your own screenshot, you still get a frame drop every half an hour. The unfortunate thing about this is, every ECS LIVA x2 box is going to have a slightly different rate.
And let's not forget that not all sources are 23.976fps - some are true 24p video, others are 60p etc. Some monitors still don't report 60Hz in its EDID!
To get true frame drop-/repeat-free playback, your media player needs to have the ability to do something like Reclock. Most of you probably haven't noticed but the DirectSound Audio Renderer (or any non-exclusive audio renderers) already resamples your audio before it goes out to your audio card (the only case where it doesn't resample is when your audio stream is the exact match of your Windows global audio settings and nothing else is playing audio). As such, asking the audio renderer to resample the audio a bit to make it match the display refresh rates won't affect the audio quality much but it will get rid of frame repeats / drops completely. If you care about audio quality, the Sanear Audio Renderer in Wasapi mode is the preferred choice. Anything less than 3% in clock adjustments will yield max audio quality. So even if you have a 24Hz refresh rate, adjusting 23.976fps to play at 24fps won't affect audio quality.
MPDN has an open source implementation of Reclock (to be used with either DirectSound or Sanear Audio Renderer) - https://github.com/zachsaw/MPDN_Extensions/blob/ma...
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
Why not run the thermal test with the top of the unit off?