Habey BIS-6862 & Shuttle XPC Slim DS77U Fanless Kaby Lake Industrial PCs Review

Power Consumption and Thermal Performance

The power consumption at the wall was measured with the LG43UD79-B monitor driven at 3840x2160 / 59.94 Hz using the Display Port output of the systems. In the graphs below, we compare the idle and load power of the Habey BIS-6862-I3 and the Shuttle XPC Slim DS77U 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 test, and noted the maximum sustained power consumption at the wall.

The Habey system has surprisingly lower idle power compared to the Shuttle unit, though it is not as low as the Atom-based fanless systems we have evaluated before. The load power graph is along expected lines - the Shuttle system is closer to the Atom-class units, while the Habey one is closer to the other Core-equipped fanless PCs.

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.

The AIDA64 SST shows consistent power consumption under load from the Habey system. We see that the package power is close to the claimed 15W for two of the four workload segments. There is no throttling at play here. On the other hand, we see that the Shuttle unit seems to be running at 7.5W maximum package power (which could have something to do with the use of a single SODIMM and leaving one of the DRAM slots empty). Temperature-wise, AIDA64 SST shows the package peaking at around 90C for the Habey unit, and 55C for the Shuttle unit. This shows that the Shuttle system is configured very conservatively in the default BIOS settings.

The AIDA64 system stability test uses real-world workloads to stress the system components. However, power virus tests such as the Prime 95 torture test and Furmark stability test can subject the system to greater stress. We repeated our thermal stress routine with 30 minutes of Prime 95 (v29.1), followed by 30 minutes of Prime 95 and Furmark (1.19.1). The Prime 95 load was then removed, and the GPU stressing Furmark test was allowed too run for another 30 minutes. The various clocks, temperatures and power consumption numbers for the system during the above routine are presented in the graphs below.

The Prime95 power virus test shows the protection mechanism kicking into action in the Habey system. After 15 minutes of continuous load, we see the power consumption at the wall going from around 30W to start oscillating between 18W and 32W. Correspondingly, the package power oscillates around the 15W mark. The protection against the power virus workload starts kicking in as soon as the package temperature reaches the 80C mark. Interestingly, running the GPU at full throttle actually rises the temperature to 98 - 99C. However, the GPU shifts in a narrow frequency range between 800 MHz and 1.05 GHz to ensure that the junction temperature is not reached.

The Shuttle XPC Slim DS77U, on the other hand, shows that the package is actually configured for a maximum power of 10W. Thanks to the large number of ventilation holes and orientation requirements, the temperature of the package does not exceed 60C even under heavy loading.