ECS LIVA Z Mini-PC Review: Efficiency Still Matters

It is almost two years ago now when the ECS Liva X was reviewed here at Modders-Inc, showing what a PC that is only about the same volume as a 355ml can of beer can do. Many has changed since then and the latest incarnation of the ECS mini-PC is even smaller. The new Liva Z packs the latest Intel Apollo Lake SoC which should provide quite a bit more muscle than the Intel Bay Trail Atom SoC used in the Liva X. The ECS Liva Z also brings plenty of storage connectivity options and is equipped with dual-Gigabit LAN as well as Wireless 802.11AC + Bluetooth so it is ready to be used as a media PC for the living room. The Liva Z comes in three Intel Apollo Lake options: Celeron N3350 (which is this model being reviewed), Celeron N3450 and Pentium N4200. The N3350 is a dual-core/dual-thread SoC while both the N3450 and the Pentium N4200 are quad-core models. The ECS Liva Z has a fairly conservative design with a 3/4 view of the Liva Z in front on a black background. Since the Liva X is available in different configurations, the specifications on the side show what storage and memory capacity the unit inside contains. This one specfically is the N3350 version with 32GB eMMC storage. Inside the box, the top compartment houses the new Liva Z unit while the compartment to the bottom and side of it contains the accessories which include a power adapter for North America. A VESA mount (75mm/100mm) with mounting screws. The ECS Liva X does not ship with an OS by default. Specifications: Platform Intel® Apollo Lake Pentium® N4200 SOC Intel® Apollo Lake Celeron® N3450 SOC Intel® Apollo Lake Celeron® N3350 SOC Memory 2 x SO-DIMM Memory DDRR3L Up to 8GB Expansion Slot 1 x M.2 for SSD Storage Support 1 x eMMC 32GB/64GB Audio 1 x Combo Jack 1 x Digitial Mic LAN 2 x Gigabit LAN USB 3 x USB3.1 Gen1 Ports 1 x USB3.0 Type-C port Video Output 1 x HDMI Port (HDMI 1.4) 1 x mDP Port Wireless Intel® WiFi 802.11ac & Bluetooth 4.0 PCB Size 115 x 111 mm Dimension 117 x 128 x 51 mm VESA Supports 75mm / 100mm Adapter Input: AC 100-240V,Output: DC 19V / 3.42A OS Support Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Windows 10 *Recommends to install Windows, ECS does not provide other OS installation technical support. Accessory 1 x Power adapter 1 x VESA Bracket 6 x VESA Mount Screws Quick Guide & Driver DVD A Closer Look at the ECS Liva Z Physically, the new Liva Z almost the same size as a typical 120mm fan. It measures 117 x 128 x 51 mm and the top has the Liva logo on the back corner with circular patterns surrounding it. At the front are four USB 3.0 ports, three of which are Type-A and one is a Type-C reversible. To the left of them is the power button which lights up with a white LED ring constantly when pressed. It turns orange when the Liva Z is put to sleep. To the far right of the front is a 3.5mm audio jack for headphones. Like the Liva X, the Liva Z is passively cooled so there are ventilation grills on both sides so that air can flow through. The rear has a mini-DisplayPort, HDMI 1.4b port, dual Gigabit LAN port and the power jack. Underneath, a rubber ring around the middle acts to keep the Liva Z from moving around. Four screws in the corner hold the bottom cover in place so these need to be removed if installing an M.2 drive inside. Inside, a single 4GB Kingston DDR3L SO-DIMM is pre-installed with one more slot open for an upgrade. The Intel 3165NGW Dual-Band Wireless 802.11AC +Bluetooth module is also pre-installed underneath where a 2242 M.2 drive can be installed. There is also a header available for installing a SATA based drive via SATA ribbon cable and there is a 3-pin header for a +5V fan. The system battery is also accessed here if it ever needs replacing. The main PMU is a Richtek RT5073 which handles power distribution throughout the unit. A pair of Realtek 8111H with SwapNet NS692417 transform modules handle the Gigabit Ethernet connectivity while a Realtek ALC283, similarly found in Intel NUCs, handles the audio duties. The Apollo Lake SoC in the middle has thermal interface material as it makes contact with a passive aluminum heatsink block. The entire underside of the top cover is copper coated and the antenna from the WiFi/Bluetooth module extends to these to act as signal amplifiers. BIOS Overview The default BIOS start page has options for changing the date, time and system language. The second tab is the Advanced section where the bulk of the settings are including LAN configuration, power management, expansion slots and port options. The third tab is the Chipset page that allows viewing of the Platform firmware version as well as adjust SoC Chipset features. The M.I.B. III page is usually where overclocking/underclocking option is but all the options are grayed out. The Boot is self explanatory where all the initialization options are present. Passwords can be set in the Security tab. The last exit page allows for saving the settings and quick boot override options. System Benchmarks While the ECS Liva Z has an m.2 slot and SATA (via extra ribbon adapter) storage option for expansion and does not come with an OS out of the box, performance is tested by installing the recommended Windows 10 x64 Pro on the 32GB eMMC storage which would closely simulate the out-of-the-box performance of the system. ECS also suggests Ubuntu as an alternative OS. 32GB is very tight for Windows installation, especially if updating to the latest Anniversary Edition. Users might be required by Windows to insert at least a 10GB USB drive to complete the update if the eMMC space is filled out. CPU-Z: CPU-Z read out shows the single channel 4GB DDR3 memory installed, running at 1600MHz. The Intel Celeron N3350 SoC runs up to 1.10GHz and using the built-in CPU-z benchmark, it shows more than three times the performance compared to an AMD E1-2100 APU. MAXON’s Cinebench R15 runs two sets of benchmarks, a processor test for the CPU and an OpenGL test for the graphics cards. The 3D rendering workload is based on Maxon’s Cinema 4D, a program utilized by movie production studios world wide for special effects so it is a semi-synthetic test closer to real-world 3D graphics benchmarking. Compared to the Liva X, the Liva Z gets more than twice the OpenGL score (5.97 vs 11.15 fps), while the multi-thread CPU load is up to 91 from 68 and the single-threaded performance is up from 36 to 50. AIDA64 is a multi-tool suite that has several tests for different various PC components. A GPGPU test and Memory benchmark is available for the CPU. AIDA has not received an update in a while and it looks like it does not fully support Apollo Lake entirely yet like with the AMD Ryzen 1800X CPU I recently reviewed also shows weird cache performance numbers. It gives a decent overview of the memory performance however and the GPU performance. PCMark 8 simulates typical home-related workloads and storage-oriented tests including web browsing, gaming, photo editing, video chat and productivity. Like Futuremark’s 3DMark, a numerical score is generated from the combination of semi-synthetic tests and the gives a close to real-world evaluation in a controlled run. Since this is a total system performance evaluation, the scores can be compared directly to another system to gauge how it measures up. While the Liva X measure 1162 in the Home Conventional score, the Liva Z scored 1404. AIDA64 is used once again, but this time for its disk benchmark to show read performance of both its built-in eMMC (C/Drive #0) and USB 3.0 port (D/Drive #1). Crystal Disk Mark is also used to show read/write performance. Network performance was tested with the Passmark network testing program for the wired TCP as well as UDP loads. Multimedia, Power and Thermal Performance Benchmarks Online streaming/YouTube 4K VP9: Online video streaming is a basic function and this should be a fairly easy task, YouTube's VP9 is fairly lightweight for the Apollo Lake SoC. The bottleneck mostly resides on the Internet connection as 4K videos tend to be big but using a wired connection, streaming is not a problem. Power consumption reached 8W. H.264 Playback H.264 1080p playback is pretty much expected from any current HTPC hardware as acceleration is available although 4K playback can be taxing on most. Using Media Player Classic Home Cinema (DXVA), performance is tested across a variety of common HTPC media files including 4K performance. Both 1080p and 4K performance for 24 and 30fps went without a hiccup. It definitely handles it a lot better than the Liva X did. Power consumption reached 10W under 4K load. With HEVC load, there is an initial hiccup on first load but playback is smooth with the rest. HEVC 10-bit 4K playback is a different story however, and it is where the Apollo Lake shows it is not ready for media that far ahead yet. The HDMI is also 1.4b instead of 2.0 so there are bandwidth limitations in that regard. Although there is a mini-DisplayPort option included. Thermal Performance We saw a bit of the power consumption in the multimedia test but let us see the thermal performance when the system is loaded and whether the passive cooling system is enough to keep the Intel Apollo Lake SoC in check without throttling under full load. AIDA64's system stability was used as you can customize the load to each component or you can load it entirely simultaneously. Idle temperatures averages at mid-40s celcius, but then again it is passively cooled. Peak temperature is detected as 59C by HWInfo and AIDA64 (core). Graphics also peaked at 56C as well. Power consumption under this load is not as much as the HEVC 4K load, and only peaked at 10W from the wall. Final Thoughts Compact and efficient, the ECS Liva Z brings a lot more to the table despite being smaller than previous ECS Liva units. The layout and thermal performance has also been worked out quite a bit and this is their best Liva design in terms of functionality. The strategically placed vents on the side allows for air to passthrough on top of the substantial heatsink on the SoC. This new Apollo Lake is very efficient and runs a lot cooler than Braswell or other older Intel SoCs but ECS did not take a chance at all with the cooling setup this time compared to earlier ECS Liva units which ran hotter. The four USB ports in the front offer plenty of expansion options with fast enough transfer rates that extra internal storage is not too much of a concern. And if that ever became an issue with the 32GB eMMC not sufficient enough for the task, an M.2 slot is available that accepts 2242 sizes. There is also a SATA header for plugging in a ribbon cable (laptop style connector) so users can actually put a 2.5" SSD in there. Not entirely due to the space, but some units are only using half-height PCBs such as 120GB or 240GB models, so users can take these SATA SSDs apart from their enclosure and place them inside connected with a ribbon cable. Simple enough mod to do for resourceful folks, although again, there is an M.2 option for those who don't want to go through that trouble, or simply use any of the four USB 3.0 ports in front. ECS made sure the Network connectivity does not come up short as well just in case users want to hook the Liva Z up to a NAS or a router. Having two Gigabit Ethernet ports gives the Liva Z an impressive flexibility when it comes to that. It is all about the connectivity for these small form factors so looks like ECS really made sure there is no shortage of it. Some might think dual Gigabit LAN is overkill in this setup, but this design is simply playing it safe so that users never run out of connectivity options. There is also of course the 802.11AC plus Bluetooth connectivity, essential for any small form factor system that can go anywhere. Overall the ECS Liva Z is an impressive piece of hardware that embodies efficiency in design. If the N3350 still feels underpowered for your needs, ECS has also beefed up the Liva Z ranks now with the Liva Z Plus. These Plus models are equipped with much more powerful Kaby Lake i3-7100U and i5-7300U SoC with DDR4 while using the same elegantly compact form factor that the Liva Z has.