ASRock Beebox Review: A Fanless Braswell UCFF PC
by Ganesh T S on July 14, 2015 8:00 AM ESTPerformance Metrics - 1
The ASRock Beebox N3000-NUC was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. We revamped our benchmark suite in early 2014 after the publication of the Intel D54250WYK NUC review. We reran some of the new benchmarks on the older PCs also, but some of them couldn't be run on loaner samples. Therefore, the list of PCs in each graph might not be the same.
Futuremark PCMark 8
PCMark 8 provides various usage scenarios (home, creative and work) and offers ways to benchmark both baseline (CPU-only) as well as OpenCL accelerated (CPU + GPU) performance. We benchmarked select PCs for the OpenCL accelerated performance in all three usage scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU in the system. The Celeron N3000 Cherry Trail SoC is obviously not as powerful as the Core-Y or Core-U platforms in the Logic Supply industrial PCs or even the Zotac ZBOX CI540 nano (Y-series). However, it shows marked improvement over the Bay Trail-based units.
Miscellaneous Futuremark Benchmarks
GPU performance shows a similar trend to the CPU performance. The difference when compared to Bay Trail is considerable.
3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R15
We have moved on from R11.5 to R15 for 3D rendering evaluation. CINEBENCH R15 provides three benchmark modes - OpenGL, single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of select PCs in all three modes provided us the following results.
In Cinebench R15, the issues with the Celeron N3000 being a 2C/2T SoC come into play. In the multi-threaded benchmark, the quad-core Bay Trail SoCs in the ECS LIVA X and Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano manage better scores.
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losergamer04 - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
The lack of bitstream audio is surprising given the box includes an IR remote.Flunk - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Very few people actually use home theater systems and those who do can probably afford to spend a bit more on a media computer. I can see why they wouldn't bother on such a low-end system.waldojim42 - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Just because people can spend more, doesn't mean they want to. A $220 media PC, with bitstream audio that will bolt on to the back of the TV sounds quite nice. Especially if it works well in that role.owarchild - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Agreed! The Raspberry Pi2 and the Celeron 2955U Chromebox are widely used for inexpensive HTPCs by the Kodi community. Braswell could become a nice alternative featuring HEVC support.chrnochime - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Or just go buy the NUC version that does support DTS-MA/HDcjs150 - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Flunk: It is not about whether it is low end, but whether it does what is needed. I have a home theatre system and want something like Beebox. What I need is something that plays ripped Blu-rays perfectly, correctly delivers the sound to the AV receiver, can deal with Netflixs, Amazon Prime, Youtube in HD and light web browsing yet at the same time sips power so that it is on 24/7.Gadgety - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
@cjs150 Yep, me too.Cinnabuns - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Me three.GTVic - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Everything has a purpose. If you purchase a Vitamix it also will do a spectacular job of not delivering bitstream audio to your HTS.kmmatney - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Can an iPad with Airplay do all that? Or an iPad with a $15 HDMI adapter? Seems like it would be much better than any HTPC for everything you mentioned. I use Air video for watching movies on our iPads (best $3 I ever spent) but haven't tried connecting it to the TV. You can buy used iPads for $200, and that's a much better deal, as you can do a lot more with it, besides the typical HTPC functions. Also, don't modern "Smart" TVs do everything you mentioned?