Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano Review: A Fanless Bay Trail-M mini-PC
by Ganesh T S on January 6, 2015 10:00 AM ESTPerformance Metrics - I
The Zotac ZBOX CI320 nano was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. We revamped our benchmark suite earlier this year 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 Ceneron N2930 in the CI320 nano is not as powerful as the Haswell-Y Core i4 in the CI540 nano or the Haswell-U CPUs in the NUCs with similar form factor. However, those PCs are either much costlier or require fans for cooling.
Miscellaneous Futuremark Benchmarks
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.
Benchmarks which rely on GPU performance are won by the AMD Temash-based ZBOX CA320 nano, while those relying on CPU performance (either single or multi-threaded) are won by the ZBOX CI320 nano. The ECS LIVA lags both of these, but it does come at a lower price point.
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tential - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
Yes for small machines like this the benchmarks are nice, but we need to have in the "Final Words" section some notes about their usage of this machine. Because the benchmark doesn't tell me if using Office/WebBrowsing feels alright or not.I'm VERY happy though that they started doing XBMC testing and to find this PC handles it perfectly. I'm curious to see how this would be priced without Windows so I could make it a dedicated XBMC machine.
jimbo2779 - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
The price listed is already the price without the OS. It came with no OS and they had to install it themselves.bsd228 - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
Windows with Bing is free for computers < $250. Basically they don't want to lose that business to Chrome.074geodude - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
I'm starting to see a rise in popularity of low cost ($200 or less) miniPCs. At CES 2015 HP just announced the $180 Stream Mini. Gone will be the days of huge bulky desktops sitting on top of your desk. Now we'll have pocket-sized PCs at every monitor or TV that are capable of doing the daily tasks that most consumers need, like Office/web-browsing/streaming video.Solandri - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
I would argue that most everyone already has a pocket-sized PC in their pocket - a smartphone. And all that's needed is a straightforward way to interface it with an external monitor/TV and keyboard/mouse any time you want to use a "PC" at a desk. Microsoft realizes this, which is why they are pushing Windows Phone and were pushing Windows RT. Intel realizes this, which is why they're concentrating on power savings and mobile processors (to take on ARM), rather than trying to push high-end performance.t.s. - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
Agreed!Solandri - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
That is exactly what the PCMark benchmarks on page 2 are for. They do a bunch of things which simulate home, office, or creative tasks and boil it down to a single number.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCMark
kmmatney - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
The benchmarks I see are video encoding, compression, and some photoscan benchmark. Not really the same as using it as an office computer. It would also be nice to see these systems compared to a cheap desktop system with a Celeron or Pentium.silverblue - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
I'd like to see a test that exposes the JPEG acceleration in Temash/Kabini; surely a valid usage scenario given the image-heavy nature of the Internet.Both the CI320 and CA320 confuse me. The former is hamstrung by having only one DIMM (Bay Trail supports dual channel at 1333MHz) and the latter has an astonishingly pedestrian CPU but actually costs more to buy. The top Mullins APU is far faster and wouldn't use any more power, so perhaps we'll see one in the not too distant future? Also, adding in an extra DIMM to the CI320 to test for any difference in performance would be very interesting.
Libertysyclone - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
I see there is a spot for an IR sensor, is that built in? I didnt see it on the specs sheet