The OnLogic Helix HX500 Review: A Rugged Fanless 35W mini-PC
by Ganesh T S on September 17, 2021 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Fanless
- Industrial PC
- Passive Cooling
- Comet Lake
- OnLogic
BAPCo SYSmark 25
The OnLogic Helix HX500 was evaluated using our Fall 2018 test suite for small-form factor PCs. In the first section, we will be looking at SYSmark 25.
BAPCo's SYSmark 25 is an application-based benchmark that uses real-world applications to replay usage patterns of business users in the areas of productivity, creativity, and responsiveness. The 'Productivity Scenario' covers office-centric activities including word processing, spreadsheet usage, financial analysis, software development, application installation, file compression, and e-mail management. The 'Creativity Scenario' represents media-centric activities such as digital photo processing, AI and ML for face recognition in photos and videos for the purpose of content creation, etc. The 'Responsiveness Scenario' evaluates the ability of the system to react in a quick manner to user inputs in areas such as application and file launches, web browsing, and multi-tasking.
Scores are meant to be compared against a reference desktop (the SYSmark 25 calibration system, a Lenovo Thinkcenter M720q with a Core i5-8500T and 8GB of DDR4 memory to go with a 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD). The calibration system scores 1000 in each of the scenarios. A score of, say, 2000, would imply that the system under test is twice as fast as the reference system.
SYSmark 25 also adds energy measurement to the mix. A high score in the SYSmark benchmarks might be nice to have, but, potential customers also need to determine the balance between power consumption and the efficiency of the system. For example, in the average office scenario, it might not be worth purchasing a noisy and power-hungry PC just because it ends up with a 2000 score in the SYSmark 2014 SE benchmarks. In order to provide a balanced perspective, SYSmark 25 also allows vendors and decision makers to track the energy consumption during each workload. In the graphs below, we find the total energy consumed by the PC under test for a single iteration of each SYSmark 25 workload. For reference, the calibration system consumes 8.88 Wh for productivity, 10.81 Wh for creativity, and 19.69 Wh overall.
The only aspect common to both the Zotac ZBOX CI662 nano and the OnLogic Helix HX500 is the fact that they are both fanless. The TDPs are different - 15W vs. 35W, and the performance differences are glaring too - 6 cores clocked low in the ZBOX compared to the 8 in the HX500. Given these aspects, the fact that the HX500 surpasses the ZBOX CI662 nano in both overall score and energy consumption is no surprise.
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lightningz71 - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
While this is a neat package, I'm personally more interested in the H600. It has an x16 PCIe slot for adding a card in. While some might add a graphics card, I'd much rather add a 4 port Ethernet card as this is a good size for a homebrew router/firewall. Unfortunately, it gets rather expensive, and there are other solutions out there that are more cost efficient.YB1064 - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
I agree. Option for an add in PCIe card would be better. Also, more ethernet ports are very useful in an industrial environment as several systems such as machine vision cameras , laser trackers etc have Ethernet IO.ZPrime - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
Problem is that stupid DMI link, which AFAIK is PCIe 3.0 x4 (so not quite 4GB/sec).4x 1GbE should be OK, as long as you aren't also doing anything intensive via USB3, or doing too much with the M.2 storage...
saratoga4 - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
>4x 1GbE should be OK~4x100 MB/s will definitely be ok on a 4000 MB/s PCIe link. 4x 10Gbe would be a little tighter, but ok in most realistic scenarios.
Frenetic Pony - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
Lot of problems with it. High price for what you get, out of date specs, no way to update any of it as you have to buy configged. The case is the real draw here, even just selling an up to date barebones setup at a relatively high price would be preferable to what you can get from OnLogic.Like, I get why. They're a specialty shop. But I suspect opening up past their industrial focus, where form factor and fanless and such is more important than specs and budget might get them a new customer segment. I'd certainly be a potential customer if they did, but I'm not holding out hope.
chromshan@gmail.com - Sunday, September 19, 2021 - link
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Threska - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
The two should be sufficient since a lot use a switch anyway, which would be smaller than this box.sarahmarcus - Tuesday, March 8, 2022 - link
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TheinsanegamerN - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
That H600 box is really neat, but over $1000 for that is an eye watering price (granted I know its specialty equipment, but still).zmeul - Friday, September 17, 2021 - link
"are suitable for industrial applications requiring longevity and minimal maintenance"since I had to deal with older units like the HX500, I would say they are not suited for some industrial applications - the crux of the problem is that these units are not sealed at all and certain environments can utterly destroy them