ECS LIVA Z Plus Kaby Lake vPro UCFF PC Review
by Ganesh T S on April 12, 2017 8:00 AM ESTPower Consumption and Thermal Performance
The power consumption at the wall was measured with a 1080p display being driven through the HDMI port. In the graphs below, we compare the idle and load power of the ECS LIVA Z Plus with other low power PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran the AIDA64 System Stability Test with various stress components, as well as our custom stress workload (combination of Prime95 and Furmark), and noted the maximum sustained power consumption at the wall.
The system configuration and choice of SSD ensures that the idle and load power consumption numbers for the ECS LIVA Z Plus are excellent compared to the other systems with similar performance numbers.
Our thermal stress routine starts with the system at idle, followed by four stages of different system loading profiles using the AIDA64 System Stability Test (each of 30 minutes duration). In the first stage, we stress the CPU, caches and RAM. In the second stage, we add the GPU to the above list. In the third stage, we stress the GPU standalone. In the final stage, we stress all the system components (including the disks). Beyond this, we leave the unit idle in order to determine how quickly the various temperatures in the system can come back to normal idling range. The various clocks, temperatures and power consumption numbers for the system during the above routine are presented in the graphs below.
According to the official specifications, the junction temperature of the Core i5-7300U is 100C. The thermal solution is able to keep the package temperature below that. We find that the system is essentially limited by the 15W package power.
We repeated the same observations with our legacy stress test using the latest versions of Prime95 and Furmark - Prime95 v28.10 for 30 minutes (after launching with the max. stress option), followed by Furmark v1.18.20 for 30 minutes. The Prime95 load is then removed, allowing just the GPU alone to be stressed for 30 minutes. The system is then left idle.
The limiting factor here is again the 15W package power. However, we can see that the Prime95 AVX workload causes the cores to run at less than the base frequency of 2.6 GHz in order to be within the power limits. The temperature rise is also not as much as what we saw in the first workload component of the AIDA64 system stability test.
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FireSnake - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Will be interesting once we have Ryzen builds like this :)euler007 - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
What do they have in the 15W TDP range?Cygni - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Haven't been announced yet, but "M" series Raven Ridge processors are expected to be in the 15W window. Raven Ridge will also have "U" series mainstream mobile APUs (if we assume comperable TDP to Intel designs, perhaps this is 28W), and "H" series high end mobile APUs (perhaps 45W)Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
They now have VESA mount notebook trays for $20. Zip ties cost 5 cents. So why buy this when you can buy a i5 notebook for the same price, and mount it onto the back of your display? That way you get a faster processor, a free backup screen, and best of all, a free UPS.dispo-k - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Genuine question: why have so many of the reviews posted lately be these USFF barebones kits? I'm not knocking them, but I always thought they were more of a low end desktop for people who preferred the smaller form factor over performance or cost, and obviously for people using them purely for media like a HTPC. Have these systems grown in popularity or are they used in a wider range of applications than I realize?dispo-k - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Apologies. After reading a number of these lately, I F'd up and didn't read the article before posting. These are apparently popular enterprise solutions, and given that IT admins are likely one of the target demographics for this site, it makes perfect sense that they'd be interested in this type of content. Sorry for not RTFA before posting. I didn't see an option to delete my original post.SquarePeg - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Nice save! The Technorati would have been on you with gleaming blades and evil intent.fanofanand - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
What a strange business decision to go with 1x4 Gb. That has to impact performance, just to save $5-10?Ro_Ja - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
Basic Tasks and Browsing or Office Work don't need dual channel ram unless you want to play on this thing.Kisper - Saturday, April 15, 2017 - link
There are also some power savings to be had by going with one stick instead of two.