ECS LIVA Z3 and ZOTAC ZBOX CI331 nano UCFF PCs Review

Intel’s Jasper Lake series products (based on the Tremont microarchitecture) were launched in early 2021. Since then, notebooks and motherboards / mini PCs based on these processors have been introduced to the market. Ultra-small form factor (UCFF) machines based on the Atom series offer attractive entry-level options in the NUC domain. Their low power nature also helps in passively cooled designs.

Intel’s Jasper Lake SKU is a follow-up to Gemini Lake. In 2018, we reviewed two different Gemini Lake UCFF PCs. Intel’s active-cooled June Canyon NUC and ECS’s passive-cooled LIVAZ 2. For Jasper Lake, we have procured four different UCFF PCs. Two passive cooling systems with a 6W TDP processor and two active cooling systems with a 10W TDP processor.

Today’s article details the performance and capabilities of the two passive cooling systems (ECSLIVAZ3 and ZOTAC ZBOXCI331 nano). Both are based on a 6W TDP processor with slight differences in frequency and iGPU capabilities. The two vendors take different approaches to power limiting, with unexpected performance impacts. In addition to exploring the features offered to traditional PC workloads, we also delve deeper into thermal design to provide insights into why fanless systems meet user requirements.

Introduction and impression of the product

Immediately after Intel’s Apollo Lake SoC (Goldmont-based) introduced in 2016, Gemini Lake (Goldmont Plus) followed in late 2017. However, the delay associated with 10 nm manufacturing created a huge gap before the introduction of Tremont-based Jasper Lake products. The new Jasper Lake product has improved CPU performance (Intel claims a 33% improvement) due to its updated microarchitecture and larger cache compared to Gemini Lake. The integrated GPU will also have a higher clock with the addition of the EU. In terms of Intel systems, faster expansion with up to 8 Gen 3 lanes (compared to Gemini Lake’s 6 Gen 2 lanes) and 14 USB ports (up to 10 Gbps) (compared to Gemini’s 8 ports up to 5 Gbps) Options are available. lake). Jasper Lake also integrates Wireless-AX MAC for a cost-effective system that supports Wi-Fi 6. Manufacturers can take advantage of these features in a variety of ways to bring their differentiated products to market.

Similar to the experiments on Apollo Lake (Intel Arches Canyon and ECS LIVA Z) and Gemini Lake (Intel June Canyon and ECS LIVA Z2), we obtained multiple Jasper Lake UCFF PCs for evaluation. Today’s review focuses on two fanless systems, the ECSLIV AZ3 and the ZOTAC ZBOX CI331nano.

A quick comparison of ECSLIV AZ3 and ZBOX CI331nano reveals the following differentiating aspects:

• Support for 2.5 “SATA disk drives in ZBOX. Not available in LIVAZ3.
• Support for M.22280 NVMe SSD in LIVAZ3, not available in ZBOX
• Cannot be used with 128GB eMMC and ZBOX integrated into LIVAZ3
• VGA display outputs (3 in total including HDMI and DisplayPort) are available in ZBOX, but LIVA Z3 has only 2 (HDMI and mini-DP).
• ZBOX includes dual LAN and SDXC / SDHC card readers, but LIVAZ3 has only one LAN port
• A quad microphone (DMIC) array integrated into the LIVA Z3, the ZBOX has a separate headphone jack and microphone jack.

ZBOX also uses a more advanced WLAN solution (Intel Wireless-AC 9462 with Bluetooth 5.1) compared to the LIVA Z3 (Intel Wireless-AC 3165 with Bluetooth 4.2). The form factor is also slightly different, and the LIVA Z3 does not support 2.5-inch disk drives, allowing for slimming.

There are several types of LIVA Z3. The OS-less version with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC is $ 220, and another version bundled with Windows 10 Pro is $ 250. ZBOX CI331 nano has a similar bundle, but the barebone version is sansmemory or eMMC. The barebone version is priced at $ 260. The reason for the price premium will become clear as the review progresses.

The use cases of the two systems are diverse and fanless in nature make them suitable for digital signage, kiosks, retail applications and more. ZBOX’s dual LAN capabilities make it even more attractive for networking applications.

The system packages provided by ECS and ZOTAC are similar. Both include a 65W power adapter (19V @ 3.42A) and a VESA mount. The ZOTAC package includes a separate WLAN antenna and an additional thermal pad for the SATA drive.

The ECS LIVA Z3 review sample occupies both memory slots (2x 4GB DDR4-2666 SODIMM). The board also includes a 128GB eMMC, which is not enough for benchmarking purposes. I installed the Crucial P5 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD on my system as the primary drive using the M.2 NVMe slot. The complete specifications of the tested ECSLIV AZ3 sample are shown in the table below.

The ZOTAC ZBOX CI331 nano was a barebone sample similar to the CI662 nano we reviewed last year. Zotac’s C-series avoids M.2 slots and instead opts for traditional 2.5-inch SATA drive bays. The SSD (SK hynix Gold S31) used in that review was reused in the CI331nano. The DRAM option was more tricky. Jasper Lake platform Officially supports DDR4-2933. Given the large number of DDR4-2933 / DDR4-3000 / DDR4-3200 SODIMMs collected (since the Skylake era), I expected one of these early high frequency SODIMMs to work with DDR-. 2933 speed of CI331 nano. Unfortunately, they were all set to DDR-2400 by default, and the BIOS wasn’t very helpful in allowing DRAM timing changes. Only recent DDR4-2933 + SODIMMs could work with DDR-2933. System-Unfortunately, in recent batches I only had 32GB SODIMMs. Finally, the ZBOX CI331nano was equipped with a 2x32GB DDR-2933 Mushkin Redline SODIMM with a total of 64GB of RAM. This is much higher than the officially specified 16GB. Maximum memory capacity of the Jasper Lake platform Fortunatel y, despite this wild configuration, the system worked fine through the benchmark routine. The complete specifications of the tested ZOTAC ZBOX CI331nano sample are shown in the table below.

The next section describes the details of thermal design and the need to scrutinize it.