Jasper Lake Fanless Showdown: ECS LIVA Z3 and ZOTAC ZBOX CI331 nano UCFF PCs Review
by Ganesh T S on July 8, 2022 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- ZOTAC
- Fanless
- ECS
- Passive Cooling
- UCFF
- Mini-PC
- Jasper Lake
Setup Notes and Platform Analysis
Upon completion of the hardware configuration of the review samples, we took some time to look into the BIOS interface of both systems. The videos below present the entire gamut of available options for both systems.
ECS has opted for a vanilla keyboard-only BIOS for the Z3. Available options include power management for resumption of the system by LAN / USB etc., control of resumption behavior after power loss, etc. These are key aspects for commercial deployments.
The ZBOX BIOS is comparatively more modern. The control of C-states, for example, is a lot more fine-grained compared to the LIVA Z3's.
AIDA64's system report provides insights into the platform for both systems. While the USB ports on the systems come directly off the PCH, it is still interesting to figure out the high-speed I/O distribution.
On the ECS LIVA Z3, the PCIe Gen 3 lanes are budgeted as below:
- PCIe 3.0 x1 port #4: In Use @ x1 (Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 AC HMC WiFi Adapter)
- PCIe 3.0 x2 port #5: In Use @ x2 (Crucial/Micron DM0182 NVMe SSD Controller)
- PCIe 3.0 x1 port #7: In Use @ x1 (Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Adapter)
The PCIe Gen 3 lanes in the ZBOX CI331 nano are used primarily for the LAN controllers, with the Wireless-AC 9462 connecting through the CNVi interface:
- PCIe 3.0 x1 port #5: In Use @ x1 (Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Adapter)
- PCIe 3.0 x1 port #6: In Use @ x1 (Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Adapter)
In today's review, we compare the ECS LIVA Z3 and the ZOTAC ZBOX CI331 nano with a host of other systems based on processors using the Atom microarchitectures. The systems do not target the same market segments, but a few key aspects lie in common, making the comparisons relevant.
| Comparative PC Configurations | ||
| Aspect | ECS LIVA Z3 | |
| CPU | Intel Pentium Silver N6000 Jasper Lake 4C/4T, 1.1 - 3.3 GHz Intel 10nm, 4MB L3, 6W |
Intel Pentium Silver N6000 Jasper Lake 4C/4T, 1.1 - 3.3 GHz Intel 10nm, 4MB L3, 6W |
| GPU | Intel UHD Graphics (32EU @ 350 - 850 MHz) |
Intel UHD Graphics (32EU @ 350 - 850 MHz) |
| RAM | Gold Key Tech. Neo Forza NMSO440D85-2666E DDR4-2666 SODIMM 19-19-19-43 @ 2666 MHz 2x4 GB |
Gold Key Tech. Neo Forza NMSO440D85-2666E DDR4-2666 SODIMM 19-19-19-43 @ 2666 MHz 2x4 GB |
| Storage | Crucial P5 CT1000P5SSD8 (1 TB; M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe;) (Micron 96L 3D TLC; Micron DM0182 Controller) Biwin BWCTASC41P128G (128GB; eMMC) |
Crucial P5 CT1000P5SSD8 (1 TB; M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe;) (Micron 96L 3D TLC; Micron DM0182 Controller) Biwin BWCTASC41P128G (128GB; eMMC) |
| Wi-Fi | 1x GbE RJ-45 (Realtek RTL8168/8111) Intel Wireless AC-3165 (1x1 802.11ac - 433 Mbps) |
1x GbE RJ-45 (Realtek RTL8168/8111) Intel Wireless AC-3165 (1x1 802.11ac - 433 Mbps) |
| Price (in USD, when built) | (Street Pricing on June 21st, 2022) US $232 (w/eMMC, 4GB DDR4, and OS) US $352 (as configured) |
(Street Pricing on June 21st, 2022) US $232 (w/eMMC, 4GB DDR4, and OS) US $352 (as configured) |
The ECS JSLM-MINI is included to prove that the Z3's chassis design is solely responsible for performance loss under sustained realistic workloads. The ECS LIVA Z2 is included to obtain an idea of the generation-to-generation improvements, while the June Canyon NUC7PJYH is included to determine if the newer generation's fanless systems can compete well against the previous-generation's actively cooled flagship in the Atom-based product category. The next few sections will deal with comparative benchmarks for the above systems.
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mode_13h - Saturday, July 9, 2022 - link
> tldr both benches would have been a wash one way of the other.Huh? If old Skylake is 50% faster, and Jasper Lake is 3.5x as fast as Pi 4 Model B (which seems rather generous), then it wouldn't be "a wash", which is defined as:
13. an action or situation in which the gains and losses are
equal, or closely compensate each other.
(source: http://dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=g... )
or
8: any enterprise in which losses and gains cancel out; "at the
end of the year the accounting department showed that it was
a wash"
(source: http://dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=w... )
Since both comparisons are projected to be substantially lopsided, I think what you meant to call it is a "washout"?
abufrejoval - Thursday, July 14, 2022 - link
I have a PI4 with 8GB of RAM in a metal case that supports a 2GHz overclock without active cooling: pretty much the best PI you can have these days.I also have an Nvidia Tegra based Jetson Nano with 4GB of RAM.
At 2GHz the PI reaches 272/648 on Geekbench 4, the Tegra has to make do with 206/718 at 1.4GHz. The N6005 Jasper Lake reaches 781/2540 very similar to a Sandy Bridge i7-2600 at 3.8GHz Turbo.
The Jetson Nano actually does reasonably well on my 43" 4k desktop for basic 2D work, because it has a GPU with 128 Maxwell cores. Of course its CPU power is at the level of a Snapdragon 800 mobile phone.
The PI struggles badly at 4k, because the GPU has much less muscle. The slightly faster CPU is hard to notice.
Actually it was when Tom's hardware did a report on a PI compute cluster, that I wanted to retort just how stupid that project was, because you could get a single Jasper Lake Atoms for much less money, that would run rings around that cluster and could in fact simulate it all in software via VMs.
And that's when I found that finally a Jasper Lake NUC was available for purchase at €200 (including VAT) and immediately ordered one of the first and last ever sold here.
And yes, it runs rings around both with roughly 4x the CPU power, 64GB of RAM expandability and quite a reasonable GPU performance on a 4k display.
My favorite usability test is to use the "3D Globe View" on Google Maps under a Chrome based browser on Windows and to then tilt and turn a city landscape there. It's about the most efficient 3D graphics pipeline I've ever seen (puts Flight Simulator to total shame!) and performs quite reasonable on such a Jasper Lake NUC. With Firefox it's much worse on these low power devices, but with a beefy PC you'd never notice.
After quite a bit of tweaking I managed to get it to work on both the PI and the Tegra at 1920x1080 and the Tegra even gave a bit of interactivity thanks to its much stronger GPU. But on the PI that was about one frame a minute.
The PI and Nano are toys and ok for the €100 I spent on each.
A Jasper Lake NUC is quite a reasonable desktop machine and even an interesting micro server for some real workloads.
At €200 (without RAM or storage) the price/performance ratio is very hard to beat, but evidently none of the vendors really want you to know or buy that. I think it's the major reason you never could.
mode_13h - Thursday, July 14, 2022 - link
> At 2GHz the PI reaches 272/648 on Geekbench 4, the Tegra ... 206/718 at 1.4GHz.Keep in mind that Jetson Nano has ostensibly 2x the memory bandwidth of the Pi v4. That surely helps offset the difference in raw CPU performance, as well as with 4k display performance.
Oh, and if that test was with the machines driving a 4k display, then merely refreshing your monitor will have been using a non-insignificant amount of the Pi's memory bandwidth (about 1 GB/s).
> N6005 Jasper Lake reaches 781/2540
Wow! Dual-channel memory configuration, I presume?
> on the PI that was about one frame a minute.
Uh... that sure sounds like you were using a software rendering path. The Pi's GPU is trash, but that's simply atrocious!
> evidently none of the vendors really want you to know or buy that.
> I think it's the major reason you never could.
I'm reasonably confident it's actually just supply chain-related. Intel has been steering its limited fab capacity towards more profitable models and probably steering its limited supply of Jasper Lakes to chromebooks, where they're probably desperate not to lose market share.
timecop1818 - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
There are Chinese mini PCs withIntel Celeron N5100 that are like 250$ with 16G ram and 256gb sata SSD.
https://www.lazada.com.my/products/walkfish-m6-11t...
there's like 5 different "brands" selling same thing on AliExpress etc. it runs win 10 just fine and is enough for 1080p Minecraft and basic office computing. great deal. most models have Intel 2.5G Ethernet too.
Jorgp2 - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
I just want a Jasper lake motherboard with plenty of sata and a PCI-E slotmode_13h - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
You could get SATA, but not PCIe. According to this, Jasper Lake and Elkhart Lake have only x8 PCIe 3.0 and x2 SATA ports.Most boards are probably going to give you a x4 NVMe slot. Then, they could use a 3rd Party SATA controller to give you 4 more ports. Then, if they compromise on the bandwidth to that SATA controller, you can have a second Ethernet port and then a x1 PCIe slot that just might be open-ended (but probably not), to support a graphics card.
Sorry, but they really kneecapped this platform relative to what it could've been. You might do better with some equivalent Atom-branded CPUs. Atom C-series (Parker Ridge) has 16 integrated SATA ports, x32 PCIe 3.0 lanes, and up to 8 cores. P-series (Snow Ridge) has the same, but up to 24 cores.
* https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/produc...
* https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/produc...
mode_13h - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
Oops, forgot the link for Jasper Lake. For good measure, here's Elkhart Lake, as well.* https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/produc...
* https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/produc...
Thala - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
Interestingly my 3 years old Surface Pro X scores higher than any of the tested devices in Cinebench R23 under x64 emulation!mode_13h - Saturday, July 9, 2022 - link
The Surface Pro X from 2019 has a Microsoft SQ1 SoC, which is basically a Snapdragon 8cx and consists of 4x Kryo 495 Gold @ 3 GHz+ 4x Kryo 495 Silver @ 1.80 GHz (manufactured on TSMC 7 nm). According to wikichip, these are tweaked A76 and A55 cores. So, that seems credible, if not exactly an outcome I'd have presumed.Something to keep in mind is that Jasper Lake is meant cheap chromebooks. Like, sub-$200 cheap, whereas Snapdragon 8cx is a premium part.
nandnandnand - Saturday, July 9, 2022 - link
They wanted it to be thought of as premium, it's more of an expensive joke. Like Lakefield but with no excuses.https://semiaccurate.com/2021/12/01/qualcomm-8cx-g...
https://www.gizchina.com/2022/01/04/qualcomm-blame...
Snapdragon 7c (Gen 1?) should be more comparable in price to Jasper Lake. I think I've seen that as low as $170-200. Also, the Apcsilmic Dot 1 and ECS LIVA Mini Box QC710 mini PCs recently launched with the 7c starting at around $219.
If the leaks about Alder Lake-N are true, it will shake things up, if the price is right.