Shuttle XPC slim DH370 mini-PC Review: A Compact Digital Signage Powerhouse
by Ganesh T S on May 6, 2019 8:00 AM ESTHTPC Credentials - YouTube and Netflix Streaming
Our HTPC testing with respect to YouTube had been restricted to playback of a 1080p music video using the native HTML5 player in Firefox. The move to 4K, and the need to evaluate HDR support have made us choose Mystery Box's Peru 8K HDR 60FPS video as our test sample moving forward. On PCs running Windows, it is recommended that HDR streaming videos be viewed using the Microsoft Edge browser after putting the desktop in HDR mode.
As expected, we get the VP9 Profile 2 4K HDR stream and Edge is able to play it back without any issues. Various metrics of interest such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption were recorded for the first four minutes of the playback of the above video. The numbers are graphed below.
The GPU load is around 75% and the media engine load around 35%. At the wall, the system consumes around 35W in the steady state, with the GPU alone accounting for slightly less than 5W.
The Netflix 4K HDR capability works with native Windows Store app as well as the Microsoft Edge browser. We used the Windows Store app to evaluate the playback of Season 4 Episode 4 of the Netflix Test Patterns title. The OS screenshot facilities obviously can't capture the video being played back. However, the debug OSD (reachable by Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D) can be recorded.
The (hevc,hdr,prk) entry corresponding to the Video Track in the debug OSD, along with the A/V bitrate details (192 kbps / 16 Mbps) indicate that the HDR stream is indeed being played back. Similar to the YouTube streaming case, metrics such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption were recorded for the first three minutes of the playback of the title. The numbers are graphed below.
In the steady state, the GPU and media engine loads are around 70%, with the hardware decoder being loaded at slightly south of 50%. The at-wall power is around 28W, withthe GPU alone contributing around 5W to that number.
Overall, the Shuttle XPC slim DH370 ticks all the boxes for OTT streaming capabilities. It is, however, not particularly power efficient while doing that.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
37 Comments
View All Comments
NaterGator - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
Now this looks like one heck of a routerbox. If only it had 10GBase-T...fusebokme - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
I have this box (the XH version) running pfsense on a Pentium Gold G5600. Multiple openvpn connections don't stress it at all. Got G5600 due to high single thread performance (pppoe and openvpn are single threaded). Excellent box. Very stable. Intel NICs. As you say: 10gbit would be icing on the cake but not too many places you can get 10gbit internet yet.JHBoricua - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
Why? Way too expensive for that purpose, specially when you're limited to two interfaces. A HP T620 Plus with 8GB RAM and 16GB of storage plus a quad port intel i340 card can be built for half of what this costs as a barebones kit.0ldman79 - Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - link
If you're doing traffic shaping, sure.If you're just moving data it's massively overkill.
bill.rookard - Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - link
I have a SuperMicro itx board with an Atom D525 and dual NICs for my pfsense box - super quiet, and solid as a rock. Fraction of the price of this unit.(and no, there are no backdoor chips as far as I can see LOL)
GreenReaper - Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - link
Other than the Intel? Its PVAP (Protected Audio Visual Path) will remain:https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/remote-code-exe...
You might be able to use me_cleaner:
https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner
Of course, you will lose the ability to decode protected formats in hardware:
https://www.techarp.com/bios-guide/pavp-mode/
It may be paranoia to imagine that Intel has deliberately back-doored their decoder, but perhaps less so to imagine that there may be an exploitable bug in the code, especially given recent issues.
Irata - Wednesday, May 15, 2019 - link
It seems that Backdoor chips won't be needed.Hixbot - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
Another small pc review with no noise measurements...mikato - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
He has a couple sentences with some subjective noise analysis that was very helpful to me at least. "simply too noisy for use as a HTPC"Hixbot - Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - link
All of Ganesh's small pc reviews need objective noise measurements. It's one of the most important aspects of a HTPC. Temperature measurements are not much help if they can't be compared to noise levels.